Category: 2018

Over the course of three years, I’ve seen my sleep cycle get blown to tatters because I take on more work that I can accomplish in maybe, 8 hours that I can stay awake for after the class day is over. This year’s been a constant attempt to change that – with me even sleeping 8 hours in my own bed, and sometimes taking mid-day naps – things I didn’t normally do, in a bid to reclaim my sleep.

I feel like a lot of these conscious changes have started coming because I realize I’m going to leave University in within 1.5 years, and if I don’t change a lot of lifestyle habits I’ve gotten into since I’ve come here.

I’ve been super unsuccessful on several days, but that’s taught me a lot about the power of habit. It takes much longer to create one than it does to destroy one. It took less than 3 months for my sleep cycle to be utterly screwed, but three years later, I’m still having trouble figuring out how to sleep properly.

My Chair has broken.

I am saddened.

A person’s relationship with his Chair or his place of seating is perhaps the most important relationship apart from a person’s relationship with his place of sleeping. For some, the two overlap. For me, they’re very distinct. Unless I fall asleep on my chair (this happens often), or sit on my bed (which is not as often as I would like), these two pieces of furniture will only interact where I wish to stretch my legs out and work.

Eliminating my Chair from the equation leaves my room with 3 pieces of furniture that belong to me. I am a proper Hostel student.

My chair has always been something I hold very dear to me. My room still contains the first chair I’ve ever owned, and over the years, my posture and back health has been defined by how much time I spend at my desk – considering I’m on my laptop/studying/reading for atleast 8 hours in a day.

When I was around 8, we purchased a really nice blue chair for my room – a chair that was with me till I left Dubai. I don’t really have any memories of it, particularly, but it served me consistently. Never did it let me down.

When we first moved to India, my parents and I searched and found the most incredible Blue Featherlite chair. It was an Office chair – one of those fancy “ergonomically” designed ones. All I know is that it had wheels, and therefore I could roll around my room. And it had a height adjustment feature. I was in love.

6 months in, my grandmother (of all people), broke that Chair. None of us really know the sequence of events that took place – because she was changing in my room at the time, but we entered to find her on the floor, in pain, and my chair, in pieces.

I was part shocked, part confused, and get this: I laughed.

I understand that that makes me a horrible human being. But my grandmother laughed at me when I fell over when I was 5 years old. Because I backtracked and went to sit where I thought the chair was (without actually feeling for the chair), and promptly fell on my ass. She found it hilarious.

I considered this payback. Of course I was a petty 6th Grader at the time, but the chair I had longed for had been broken, so you really can’t blame me.

We purchased a new chair. Which I’ve come to like, but I can never love as much as the Blue Featherlite.

When college rolled around (see what I did there), I wanted the full Hostel experience, so I didn’t invest in a chair.

My back decided to rebel against me. I developed a pilonidal sinus (which is legitimately the worst thing I have heard of), and develops as a result of too much friction near your butt and too much sitting. It was hilarious (but very painful).

And thus, I went and purchased a chair from Infocity. I was cheap about it and bargained, and did the usual things. But having it in my room made me so happy. It had wheels, it didn’t hurt my back, I could rock back & forth on it, and it was supremely comfortable.

Around 4 months in, I accidentally put too much weight on one of the arms of the chair & it collapsed promptly, but I loved the chair nonetheless.

2 years later, the chair has disintegrated fully. A true tragedy.

I am sad, and now in search of a Chair to fulfill the empty space this is left in my heart (and in my room). My butt longs for a place to rest and to leave an impression – perhaps one of the only impressions I will leave upon college (this is a joke, I am very committed to doing things for college).

Please tell if you have extra ones in your room. Thanks in advance.

This post is going to encapsulate why I love the Debating Society and being a part of the GNLU Debate year after year.

The DebSoc is underappreciated and underrated within our Community. I think this is true for most Law schools which are newer because several activities are rated above activities that are not as lucrative on an individual’s Curriculum Vitae, or which do not directly show correlation to employability and/or admission into Masters courses. So the DebSoc is very tightly knit together, and everyone, including members who aren’t continuously active are very quick to appreciate things that are done well.

It’s also a community that has become, in some sense “exclusive”. As a result of several factors, including the way social circles develop within college – the debating community becomes a set of far too few people than it initially starts off with.

The GNLU Debate is an opportunity for everyone to be a part of debating culture. And that’s probably what I love the most.

This year’s tournament was the largest one we have had, with over 170 participants. As a member from the senior-half of Law school, I think a huge responsibility we had as seniors this year was to show the first years how fun the debate weekend can get. Objectively, I think we did a good job.

More importantly though, I think we showed people what being a part of GNLU was about. A strong sense of community. And that makes me very happy.

This hasn’t turned out as sentimental as I wanted it to be – but that’s possibly exactly what the DebSoc is. No frills, no nonsense. To the point, and matter-of-fact.

It is September!

Hark, for we now have only 4 months left in the year. Also, this post marks 1/3rd of the writing journey I am attempting to go on. Which I think is quite the milestone. I’m not sure what your feelings are about this. Let me know (if you have feelings at all).

Things I’m looking forward to this month:

1. The GNLU Debate 2018
2. The GNLU Moot on Securities & Investment Law 2018
3. Sleep
4. Reading Books
5. Watching Cartoons
6. Playing the Piano
7. Getting back to the gym
8. Actually publishing some research.

Let’s see how far along I get with these goals.

You know what the greatest feeling in the world is?

Receiving an unexpected parcel at University.

This could have been a tweet. Instead, it is a blogpost.

I think being away from home, gifts and surprises start actually surprising you a lot more than people can anticipate. Our University has a mailing thread that tells us when parcels have arrived for us – so we can go and collect them. Seeing my name on that makes me incredibly excited. For no reason whatsoever.

Actually there is reason.

You see, I really like food. And gifts. So every time I get a parcel, I imagine somebody has responded to a tweet where I request for (a) Cup Noodles, (b) Biscuits, or (c) Books. I make the walk to the warden’s office anticipating one of these three things.

Except I am met with an internship certificate.

 

Laundry is getting increasingly difficult to do.

Personally, I maintain two bags of laundry. One, where I store laundry for the room – stuff that needs low maintenance that I need to think about a lot less. Two, where I store high maintenance laundry – those clothes that are so comfortable and nice that they demand you to wear them to class every morning when you see them in your cupboard. The clothes expect to be ironed and washed with fabric softener. And to be honest, they’re very comfortable so I’d do anything to extend the shelf-life.

I’m speaking from a position of privilege, and I’d like you to filter for that when I complain about things like having to do laundry on this blog.

Anyway, so laundry is becoming difficult to do because I’ve decided I have enough undergarments to last me two weeks (I understand this is tmi), and therefore I should put laundry cycles only once in 14 days.

Except, the irregularity of a 14 day cycle (in that you don’t really think about it until it rolls around), is that you end up without “nice” clothes at some point and end up going to class in a teeshirt that was given to you in Grade 9 where you were tiny (in comparison to now) and a pair of jeans.

Also, a vaster problem is that the bags begin to pile up.

Which takes up space in my room.

 

 

I’ve learnt that being organized is a skill that is either highly underrated, or overvalued based on whom you interact with. And eventually, that it’s time to understand that every person works differently.

Now, granted, working in a team with people who work differently is difficult. That’s the point at which you need to come up with a middle-ground and a set of principles you can agree to work with. Communication with respect to what works for people can often make the experience easier.

But it’s a lot more hurtful to chide someone who works differently and has a different attitude to their work than you do.

It’s useful in a way, because you can figure out what kind of people you’ll never be able to work with ever again. But not in any other manner.

Basically:
Let people live their lives if they’re not harming you with their work ethic. If they are, try to figure out middle-grounds.

 

I think Law school/Residential campuses have a phenomenal way of putting you in your place. And more often than not they do that by informing you, subtly, through societal interactions that there’s far more for you to learn than the information you are already aware of. Other times it’s by showing you that there’s a lot more to life than the view you possess – there are perspectives for you to consider, and alternate ways of spending your time, several different things to enjoy.

Now that I reconsider that terribly abstract statement I have written, it’s pretty fair to say that it’s applicable for every place in the world. Just, your general existence – at some point if you’re open-minded and curious, you’ll figure out that the world is just full of stuff waiting to be learnt.

On this premise, I think we often forget, with how busy our lives are, what the value of reading actually is. And it’s difficult – but there’s so much out there to read and re-read and learn from.

It’s fantastic.

Here’s a post I wrote for Jury’s Out, the GNLU Magazine, called Night Mess Nostalgia:

Everyone associates phrases with things – “sadness and rage” with exam season, “happiness” with an e-mail that postpones exams owing to a National holiday in light of mourning. The phrase I best associate with the night mess is a sharp yell which, if listened to carefully, is “ANDA RAICE TEJAAAAS”, but from afar, is an obfuscation in a cacophony of sound.

I first visited the Holy Grail on my first day at University. A senior politely inquired for me, asked me if I had any tests, and when I responded in the negative, sent me on my way with Rs. 150 in my pocket to collect a very specific order:

“4 Cheese Paranthas in 2 plates, one plate with the red sauce and curd, one plate with red sauce and butter.”

I was amused. What is a Cheese Parantha? Being a kid from Bangalore, a multicultural, cosmopolitan city, I was quite certain I had experienced a fair amount of “North Indian” food. Cheese Parantha did not feature on the list. My curiosity knew no bounds – and I was thrilled to be sent on the assignment with an extra 30 Rupees with the meek: “Tujhe kuch chaihiye, tho lele.” My broken Hindi meant I nodded along and smiled without any knowledge of what was said to me.

But I went forth.

I didn’t really know where I was heading, I’ll be honest. Having joined GNLU 3 weeks late, I wasn’t up to speed with where things were or what random phrases meant (it would be 2 years before I understood KLPD, for example), so I had to ask for directions from my roommate, who smiled and accompanied me – because he was given Rs. 60 by another Senior.

As we chatted about what the “night mess” represented – my roommate explained that it was where Seniors devoured copious amounts of food and gained their supply of Caffeine for the night – my brain began to wonder about the Economics of it all. When I discovered that it was run by Mohani, I went into overdrive about how hilarious the Gujarati businessman trope was turning out to be. First loot the kids for mess food, and then operate a night mess where kids pay extra money to make more profits? Amazing.

That’s when we reached the stairs.

I’ll confess. I have this massive fear of heights, so even today, I’m bloody hesitant while climbing up the night mess stairs. My worst fear, and this is something I’ve almost experienced, is that, one day, when it is raining, I will slip while carrying food, and slide my way down to my death, clunking my head across the metal steps. But on that day, the fear of disappointing a senior and becoming publicly humiliated won over, and I trudged on.

In my first month, I was solely responsible for the collection of Rs. 3420 by Mohani Caterers. I made 41 trips to the night mess for seniors – and I have an Excel sheet tracking this (because I’m weird like that), with 23 Plates of Cheese Parantha ordered.

By the end of the month, Gopal knew my name.

In that month, I met every single batchmate of mine and got to know them over the question “Kiske liye hai yeh?” and “Kaunsa room jaa raha hai, bro?”

My identification of kind souls changed from those who had a smile on their faces and made warm conversation to those who offered to get your order along with theirs. While I came to Law School with the understanding that a lot of multitasking was necessary, I learnt that the biggest asset, in that first month, was your ability to juggle orders and remember personalized plate requests.

I hold nothing against those seniors, because my world has not been the same since.

Soon it was intra-season, and being caught up in the business of making an intra-memorial that would look nice (because Ctrl+Shift+K is so fun to do), I skipped dinner one evening. The hidden agenda was to eat Cheese Parantha myself, and understand what these seniors enjoyed about it. When I dined that evening with my friends, I learnt that it was possible to be rendered speechless by a singular food item.

As first year dwindled on, the night mess became my source of comfort. I stopped there everyday on my way back from the library at 12AM with my fellow enthu first-years, and had Hot Chocolate, and dabbled with tasting every item on the menu, before settling for 2 Aloo Onion Cheese Paranthas as my favourite (at the time).

But that’s enough about the food.

The night mess is a GNLU institution. It has belonged to us, the students, far longer than Aura has, and it has supplied us with a co-working space for more time than our “Students Lounge” has. The night mess is the facilitator of terrible lifestyle choices: late night calorie and caffeine consumption, and messing up your sleep cycle by guaranteeing you carbohydrates at 1:30AM. It’s the meeting point of every Committee (sans faculty), and the sole place on campus where you can attempt to understand what GNLU culture truly is.

The next time you’re at the night mess, stand bang-in-the middle and take a look around you. You’ll see an orderly queue for food, people chilling, people working, people playing board games, reading books, chatting about life, submitting a moot memorial. That’s what GNLU nurtures, right? Our lives here have flaws, granted, but you can’t deny that the University gives you the freedom to say, “Who cares, I’d like to do my own thing” and execute that thing.

That execution? Half of it is at the night mess. The identity you have is intertwined with your experience of the night mess. Are you a debater? You can’t get through 5 years without 1 debate, 1 motion breakdown, and 1 feedback session at the night mess. You’re a mooter? You would have finished draft discussions, and potentially constructed your memorial there. You’re a part of the Theatre/Music/Dinner Clubs? You’ve finished a performance and had a late-night dinner with everyone else from the club. You’re a Quizzer? Someone’s run through a quiz set there. Are you a GNLU Student? You’ve eaten at the night mess.

That’s what I love about the place the most.

Which is why it becomes so difficult to adapt to change, especially when any change to the night mess is a discredit to the years of regular service we have received.

There was a period I hated the night mess because of how uneconomical it had become and how tiny the portion sizes were. Paranthas were reduced from the large plate monstrosities we gobbled on, to these tiny things that could fit on disposables. We complained daily. Mohani relented, large paranthas were back.

In my second year, an attempt was made to shut the night mess earlier, at 1a.m. or so. Not much would have changed in 30 minutes. But we complained. And the night mess is open till today till 1:30 a.m..

The University attempted to ban us from bringing night mess food into the hostels for a while, a ban I refer to as “Five Days In Hell”. But that, as you can see, did not last very long.

My grouse today is twofold, starting with the coloured lighting.

It has been a month, and I cannot understand why we have blue, yellow, and red lighting at the night mess. Sources inform me that it is to ward off flies and mosquitoes, but I’ve been bitten and annoyed by both those creatures on my visits there.

To me, it’s also very weird that there is water on the table and cups which are readily available. It’s also super weird that the tables are aligned the way they are. I derived this simple joy at the night mess from picking an aerated drink because I had to walk further for water.

But I can adapt to that.

I’m getting used to the TV also. Because I think TV’s are useful for mass screenings, and such.

The lighting though, is not up my alley. White light is just more pleasant to look at, and makes work a lot easier. There is less squinting involved in understanding text when the light is white. This is a Scientific fact.

I also think that coloured lighting ruins the aesthetic of the night mess. I’m not sure how, but the night mess is suddenly less attractive to me as a location. While that is excellent for my waistline, my pocket, and my overall physical health, it’s very troubling for my emotional balance and well-being.

The second thing I find super weird is that people serve us at the night mess now. It’s made it so much more formal, like a restaurant, almost. I dislike that. A huge part of the night mess experience is the false hope that comes with someone screaming out your exact order, followed by a different person’s name, and the subsequent joy when your name is called out and you can sprint to claim what is yours.

That element of surprise is now gone, because you can see when the person is getting the food toward your table.

That is deeply disappointing. I’m hopeful that there is some discourse on this post or elsewhere that helps to make the night mess great again.

It is 4:30AM in the morning as I type this. To fully appreciate how much I love the night mess, you must understand that I have been unable to sleep because of two reasons:

1. The night mess was shut today and I therefore missed out on anda rice.
2. I’m thinking about how terrible tomorrow night’s dinner is so I have an excuse to eat anda rice.

I think it’s far more accurate to label this as a weekly blog where I decide to post 7 things at one go, rather than a daily blog where I’m consistently posting things. Either way, writing is something (a) I’m still enjoying a fair amount, and (b) People are still reading. While the latter has never mattered to me, the fact that it happens is always nice. I will never get used to responding to people who tell me about my blog in person, but that’s for another day.

Examination schedules really need to ensure exams end on a Friday, and not on a Monday. This is for a variety of reasons.

1. Kids who end exams on a Friday get the weekend to chill.
2. Nobody has the motivation or the energy to study for 2 whole days for a midsemester examination when it’s the weekend.
3. Everyone’s sleep cycle is messed up during exams, so providing them with a weekend to recover is excellent.
4. Students will not waste one set of black & white formals for 2 hours of a written examination.
5. Monday blues will not hit students.
6. Nobody will have to go to class immediately the day after finishing exams.
7. People can go home if they so desire.

As you can tell, my grouse is predominantly that I didn’t get a weekend after the exam ended. And this isn’t the exam department’s fault. Things were out of their control.

That doesn’t mean I can’t rant about it.

In other news it’s been almost 15 days since I last went to the gym.

The amount of information that is available in the world today that we are unaware of is a phenomenon that astounds me so much, it’s difficult for me to find the words to express the sentiment.

New person has followed blog.

And is unknown to me. Such a nice feels.

Found this joke of an article: https://thewire.in/government/ugc-wants-all-universities-to-ban-the-sale-of-junk-food-on-campuses

I am currently eating Cup Noodles and some Lays. Why does UGC care about all this now? Funny business.