Category: 2019

First exam down. Aww yeah.

Today wasn’t an excellent paper by any stretch of the imagination. However, it marked the start of exams, and the culmination of 1/6th of them. Also, it led to the revival of the whiteboard tradition in my room – where I write the entire schedule of examinations, and our plans for the day the exams end, and my roommate erases them one by one, as we destroy each paper and power through this entire set.

It brings the simplest kind of joy to our lives.

Today’s also the 1st of March! It’s pretty amazing how quickly time has flown by this year. GloPoWriMo is merely one month away now, which is rather exciting. And my summer holidays are closer as well.

There’s one day left to the first exam of this year’s mid-semester examination cycle. I’ve spoken earlier about how disenchanted I’ve become with the teaching-learning system at University, and with the entire mechanism of testing that we have over here, but as a student, irrespective of my criticism, the system is one that I must abide by. So here I am, scavenging for notes, and attempting to understand 60 days worth of lectures in one night. Welcome, to one week of an erratic sleep cycle, unhealthy binge eating, and loud music. If the electricity dies, welcome to one week of frustrated yelling loudly into the abyss (this applies throughout the year in the Boys Hostel, but especially so during exams).

So of course all I can think about today is Spotify. I first heard about the service back in 2010, when I discovered that Americans paid for their music, and bought the songs that they listened to on their iPod. Much unlike the piracy I was used to, and accustomed to surviving off. Spotify caught my imagination because it offered streaming, and soon, I installed it, using a VPN, and then realizing my technological prowess would lead me to paying way too much for the service.

Thankfully my friend Bhukkad moved to America, leading to 3.5 years of mooching off his Spotify Premium account. It’s been great – I’ve had unlimited access to excellent music, no advertisements, and the ability to annoy him by changing the music he’s listening to. I also had the power to make music play in his earphones even though he didn’t want it, and once, caused him public embarrassment, I think, by making music play over his speakerphones.

It was great.

But Spotify launched in India, and I expressed my desire to buy an account. This is a departure from me being cheap, and I’m glad my parents supported it, because now I’ve got access to unlimited streaming for myself – and artists are being paid for their art as a result.

The only thing I’m sad about is that I can no longer annoy Bhukkad.

There’s something homely about cheese Maggi. It’s nostalgic, delicious, and gives you a textural difference that is enjoyable and palatable. The Maggi purists claim that Maggi ought to be eaten without such additions, but I say, what is Maggi as a brand if not adaptable? The strength of the nations unhealthiness lies in our ability to take 2 minute Maggi and make it the most wholesome meal one has consumed.

As evidenced below:

What genuinely sucks is the remnants of illness. You know, the kind where you’re definitely not sick, but you still feel the bits of an illness that has just passed. Basically, having the taste and breath of phlegm every morning –  because it takes time for phlegm to pass out of your system is perhaps one of the worst feelings in the world.

This is also because there is no pleasant way of describing this irritation to people around you.

And no amount of throat clearing helps.

If there’s one thing you need to gift yourself when you’re away from a place that you’re more comfortable calling home, it’s the opportunity to explore the place you reside in.

It’s rare that we give ourselves these opportunities as workaholic, University students. I speak for myself. So having people here who you have to show around is a fabulous way to do some getting around yourself.

Ahmedabad has history – as does every place, but it’s allowed it’s historical culture to survive and interact with the way the city has grown, which is worth admiring. And admire it we did.

In this light, cool video below:

Today was a real day of reckoning. Everyone had something to prove. I needed to prove to my family that my mess food’s quality had deteriorated, my grandparents needed to be satisfied and enthralled with where I study, my parents wanted to chill, and my aunt wanted to impress my friends.

Safe to say, everyone succeeded. Barring me. They loved my mess food.

This morning I had to skip out on activities because, of course, I chose to do my intra moot court competition at University and procrastinate on my memorial submission. As always, a nap I had planned to take ended up in me going to sleep and leaving citations to do the entire morning. Skipping on that sucked. Especially because they went to the Vintage Auto Museum and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Exhibition – two things that are so up my alley.

When I met them for lunch, they told me how much they missed having me there – and I knew then that I would have enjoyed both these exhibitions a ton.

But, I think we’re all very happy that we got to spend every moment in the day together. Lunch was fabulous, at ISKCON, and then we went to the Riverfront, shopping at Law Garden, and eating at Manekchowk. True family bonding experiences.

Missed my Uncle a lot today – especially when we pulled my grandmother’s leg and ate at Manekchowk.

Everyone is here! Okay, not everyone. But everyone who had planned to visit Ahmedabad is here, which is fantastic news for us all, and me, especially.

Today I had the opportunity to lounge with my family and introduce them to the IIM-Ahmedabad campus. We’re a family of nerds (even the cool ones like my aunt, my grandfather, and myself) – so visiting educational campuses gives us a real sense of happiness. I think it definitely did for all of them who visited – because we got to see cool architecture, but also enjoy the vibe of being in a top institution in the country (or perceived top institution).

My highlight of today was seeing the happiness on my father’s face – because I had access to such a great institution, and seeing him purchase a hoodie which had the IIM-A varsity logo on it. It reminds me that I inherit several traits from my dad – a love for memorabilia, is one of them.

I predicted correctly. I didn’t blog for an entire week. For a few reasons which I predicted earlier as well. So it’s time to catch up.

The anticipation that fills your body when people whose company you enjoy are about to arrive, is a feeling that is incomparable to much else. For me, the arrival of my friends, or my family, in a place where I reside, fills me with that feeling, right to the brim of my body’s capacity. It’s an anticipation that keeps me happy for a few days before their arrival, and keeps me awake enough to go pick them up from the airport at 3AM. It’s an anticipation that is mixed with a feeling of comfort, of home, and of voices that fill the atmosphere around me with conversation in the tongue I am most comfortable in.

It’s also an anticipation I never understood I would grow to love – for my complacency in enjoying their presence at my disposal: attending family gatherings only when it was convenient for me, visiting them and speaking to them only when I was in the mood to do so, basically, being a petulant teenager. I didn’t think I’d be in a position where I missed the company of my family – because I always had the opportunity to feel their presence at my whims and fancies.

I’ve grown to love the anticipation. From the first and second year, when I found it “inconvenient to my schedule at college”, but managed to find a way to spend time with them – to now, when I will drop everything for when they visit – as best as I can, a lot has changed.

I can’t wait.

Sometimes the environment that I reside in can get particularly toxic. It’s something I’ve been speaking to several juniors on campus about – and I’m not sure what we can do to improve on that. There’s several things that come to mind when you use the word “toxic”, but the specific problem I’d like to focus some part of this post on is the problem of comparison.

Competition is natural – it’s primal in human beings. We’ve always competed for resources, so applying that to daily life is not something I would take away from our species. It exists on the macro level – countries want to be the foremost, the best, and the micro level – with individuals wanting to be better than others. There’s a lot of positives to competition generally, insofar as it informs you – informing you about available opportunities and things available in the world, but also, informing you about the sort of stuff people find interesting. It arguably helps you become better yourself – and apply yourself to your maximum potential (assuming that this application is important), by giving you access and a comparative benchmark, because it asks you “if they’re doing it, why can’t I?”

But in an enclosed campus with grey walls that are like an echo chamber, I think more often than not, all of these positives become overwhelmingly negative. Instead of information about available opportunities, people look at competitors having achieved something more than them: a missed opportunity. People compare across batches, to look at what someone has done more than them, or better than them – instead of creating value systems they’re comfortable with for themselves, people adopt value systems they see in other individuals to gain positions of moral superiority. An enclosed space offers massive misconceptions of what “capital” is – in terms of social influence, and it appears that people grab at it really fast.

It begs the question about whether historically, institutions that do well are institutions that put too much pressure on the next generation merely because they achieve things.

It also begs the question: do achievements matter at all?

Damn, we went fifty days without missing posts. That’s a milestone worth celebrating.

How?

Here. John Oliver has made a THIRD video about Brexit. It’s an intriguing watch that gives you a lot to think about, the first question being: How is there enough problematic material for a THIRD video on the same YouTube channel?

This week has a bunch of awesome things happening, but also has the potential to wind me down tremendously. I’m unsure which way it’ll go. I’m excited, but don’t want to burn out, especially because I’m still sort of recovering from an illness, and exams are coming up.

My parents are coming to town along with my aunt and my grandparents – which is a rather exciting time in our household. It means that all the readers of this blog will at the same place at the same time – which should certainly mean more content for this blog, and fewer views. It also gives me an opportunity to do something I’m really really looking forward to: seeing more of Ahmedabad.

My relationship with Ahmedabad is a strange one. I’ve visited it often, but only visited certain parts, as one does. Specifically, because all I’ve been to Ahmedabad for is food, a food festival, and two internships. So while I’ve gotten an idea of the vibe of the city, there’s several parts of it I’ve missed out on. Ahmedabad’s done a pretty good job of maintaining it’s cultural history and heritage, so while capitalizing family time, I’m most excited to see how much of the cultural history we’ll manage to explore.

The joy of spending time away from campus is also the joy of escaping campus food. Which, the less said about the better, especially considering I’ll get hungry writing this post otherwise.

Finally, seeing my dad. My dad and I are very tight in a sense I cannot explain to several people – especially those who see us out in public. As I’ve grown older, I’ve begun to understand my father on more levels, and understand several things I didn’t as a child. A direct consequence of this has been changing my behaviour and my relationship with my family on the whole, but a more indirect consequence is how happy I am in general when they’re around. I haven’t seen my dad in eight months now, which is a rather long time. The last I met him was when I was in Dubai – and I was scheduled to go there till the entire passport fiasco played out. In my memory, this is the longest I’ve gone without seeing him – and strangely enough it’s happened in two consecutive years now, 2018, and 2019.

Last time I went to Kenya. This time they’re coming to Ahmedabad.

The only commonality apart from family time: Gujaratis.