Category: Blog

I’m dreading writing this. I’ve been thinking about it for hours now, and it was all I could think about while sitting in class today – that there are these words and feelings that are bottled up inside of me that are begging to spill out, and I am unsure of whether I’ll say things correctly, or convey things appropriately, but they need to be said.

I was awake last night when news of Kobe Bryant’s death was first broken by TMZ. A friend of mine, a former basketball teammate sent me the news: and I broke. I couldn’t believe it at all. Earlier that evening, LeBron James had overtaken Kobe to go third in the all-time scoring chart, and Kobe had tweeted out a congratulatory message. I saw that tweet, and then saw LeBron’s post-match tweet and interview about the kind of player that Kobe was, and what Kobe represented to him, and to the game of basketball, and I was pleased. Kobe got to play a few seasons with people who picked up the game professionally because he inspired them, and I imagined, for some time, what that must be like. To be able to communicate with people who made life decisions because of you: without you knowing, without you trying to create that impact on them. In these circumstances, to hear he had passed away on his way to a basketball game was devastating. Then more details emerged, the fact that he was with his daughter, and that he was with another family, and with a basketball coach. Nobody can tell us what all of these people thought, or said in their final few minutes: but Kobe was with people who loved a game he lived. Before I say anything more, my thoughts and prayers are with his family – who have lost two people, and with all the other grieving individuals, who must cope and make it through life without people they loved truly, madly, deeply.

I first heard of Kobe Bryant in 2008. I had never taken an interest in basketball before that, and never really cared for the sport, or for the people that played it. I read the Sports section in the newspaper daily, but glossed over anything that wasn’t football. This was till I was introduced to basketball: a gradual introduction that took place in the worst of ways. I sucked at sports – all truth be told. I had no talent, no stamina in any sporting arena, just a lot of passion for sporting activities. My introduction to basketball first took place culturally. I was surrounded by American students who followed basketball, baseball, and American football, and I heard about these franchise sports – being able to compare it only to the IPL at the time (which was still young), and spent countless hours on Wikipedia trying to figure out how they worked. How were league databases maintained, who were the leading franchises in the history of the NBA? What was a “lockout”? Each time my classmates mentioned a new, unrecognizable name, I remember lodging it deep in my memory, only to retrieve it when I went home and had an opportunity to Google it without shame. I used to remain silent, not contribute too much to the conversation surrounding the sport – because I’d be mocked with “not being from the area”, or being a “glory hunting supporter”. These are not phrases I care for too much today, but they stung at some point in my life. I did my research, meticulously, and I understood what the Lakers franchise represented, and how odd it was that they were still going strong in 2008. I decided before the 2009 Finals that I wanted the Lakers to win, having followed them for the season. That’s how I became a Lakers supporter.

I still sucked at the sport though. Oh my goodness, I was woeful. I’d get hit on the head by the ball, fail to catch it, commit some violation or the other every time I received it, and genuinely, from under the rim, fail to make the ball go into the net. Naturally, I was picked last when we played, and I often lost in games of “Around the World” that we played during lunch. I still loved playing. My mom got wind of the fact that there was a coach coming to teach basketball in our community. As with every other time my mother has heard about any coaching facility, I was signed up. I was told that I was at a “developing” age, and that basketball would help me grow taller if I played regularly. While I didn’t care too much for that, I think I was really pleased that I would get to learn the game – from a Coach, my Coach. That I would be taught, not mocked for my inability. One particularly rough day, I remember thinking I’d be able to play competitively with my friends. I enjoyed that though.

My Coach taught me several things: skill-based especially. However, if my passion for the Lakers and for Kobe Bryant was at the surface, with him, my support of the franchise, of this individual became something innate, something visceral. I’d become super-defensive if anyone critiqued him. I watched the NBA YouTube channel religiously and tried to pick up how he thought about the game. One day, after Kobe had hit a buzzer-beater, I remember asking my coach how on Earth he had done it at the wire. It wasn’t that there weren’t great buzzer-beaters in basketball already, it was just that I couldn’t understand how people were gutsy enough to take the shot – and what happened if they missed. My coach told me Kobe had hit that shot enough times to know how to hit it in his sleep, and know that it would go in. I knew I wanted to be able to practice to a level that basketball became muscle-memory that day. It drove me through Grade 7. Kobe dropped 61 points at Madison Square Garden that year – a scoring record that blew my brains out at the time – before I learned that Kobe had an 81 point game too.

When I moved schools in Grade 8, I was surrounded by a crowd I was way more comfortable with. Basketball was something I carried with me, and it was pretty nice to see that my friends, my classmates, whom I spent 5 years with were people who were open to playing pretty much any sport on any given day. When we played basketball, it was all super fun, and we all had our own pockets of understanding of the sport – our own little ways in which we played. It was around this time I bought my first pair of basketball shoes. I asked my dad if I could have them, because I had begun playing a little more seriously – I was going for coaching twice a week, and playing every day at school. When we went to the store, I saw a pair of basketball shoes with the Laker purple and Gold, and an NBA logo on them. We couldn’t afford a pair of Kobe’s, or any of those signature shoes – but to be able to wear a franchise I supported on my footwear for 3 years made me incredibly happy. I wore those to my first tournament win, my first-ever interschool basketball tournament, and to pretty much every interhouse tournament game I played till I outgrew them.

Moving schools introduced me to another basketball fan – the same person who sent me the news of Kobe’s passing. I poked a lot of fun at him for several reasons, but him and I got along on the Court, and off the Court really well. Basketball helped us bond. He called himself Jordan, something we all laughed at. I laughed too. In my head though, if he was Jordan, I knew I wanted to be Kobe. I yelled “Kobe”, as did several of us, when we threw random things into the dustbin from afar. We kept talking about the “Mamba Mentality” in school, especially on the basketball court. We were a terrible school team, honestly: just a few talented individuals off of whom the rest of us piggy-backed our entire school careers, but we had SO much fun playing the game – loafing around the court calling each other Kobe whenever someone made a good shot. Everyone was Kobe. Except my friend, who was Jordan.

As I grew older, I started to read up more about Kobe Bryant – to understand why some people didn’t take to him the way I did. I learned about the complaint of sexual assault and adultery, the charges that were brought, and the apology that came about. I remember being uncertain of whether that was post-facto responsible behaviour or whether I anticipated more, and trying to figure out where I stood on the incident at large. I thought then, as I do now, that this man I had placed on a pedestal was still, human after all. That he had caused trauma, and that he would have to take responsibility for it in some way.

I learned about his bust-ups with Shaq, and prayed that they’d be friends again (something I was supremely pleased about). Reading about that bust-up taught me about what an “ego” was, and how competitive individuals thrived on building that. I wasn’t sure who I placed more blame on for the subsequent poor years the Lakers had, but I definitely knew Kobe was responsible for a lot of it, which made me sad.

When the Lakers began performing poorly after 2012, a lot of the news was centered around how Kobe needed to go. He was the perfect scapegoat in a lot of ways, ageing, becoming plagued with injuries, and preventing the rise of what the media labeled as precocious talent in a similar playing position. I could not care less. I wanted Kobe to play for longer, to have one more good season with the Lakers. To make it to the playoffs, to the Finals. Dwight Howard and him fought – which was upsetting because it affected the team. I remember seeing Howard & him make up at a game this year, and then seeing today that Howard wanted Kobe to help him out at the All-Star Weekend Slam Dunk contest – a public acknowledgment that the beef was all done with, that they had grown past that as individuals, as adults.

Howard is robbed of the opportunity to do that.

When Kobe announced his retirement through “Dear Basketball”, I cried. I cry quite often – or atleast have tears streaming down my face, or get choked up when I read things that affect me deeply, and you could see that it pained him to go. I couldn’t believe this man wrote poetry to say goodbye. Kobe allowed me to discover The Players’ Tribune: and so many stories since. His last game, those 60 points versus the Jazz? Peak Kobe. Beautiful.

I tried to follow Kobe post-retirement the way I had followed his career. We didn’t see him at Lakers games too much – he wanted to spend time with his family, with his daughters. His poem was animated into a beautiful short which won an Oscar, but whose greatest achievement will remain that it made me cry. The Oscar means that the Academy will feature Kobe in the In Memoriam section in a fortnight, and I’m not sure how people will respond. Last evening, at the Grammy’s, which took place at Staple Center, Alicia Keys said that they “were standing, heartbroken, in a home Kobe Bryant built”. She could not have said it better.

Kobe Bryant introduced me to Kobe beef, because I was a vegetarian who did not know that there were different grades or qualities that beef could have. Kobe spoke Italian and I was shocked that he had an upbringing where he was a foreigner: I wondered how he endured racism. Earlier this month, when racism in Serie A (the football league) was at a high, I remember reading an article where he called for education to combat the issue – and I agreed with him.

When LeBron moved to the Lakers, Kobe welcomed him. Kobe, post-retirement, just spent time coaching his daughters team – he was with her at a Lakers game, coaching her in a clip that went viral. He was supposed to go on to own a team, or become a General Manager, or coach a team in the NBA, or the WNBA. He was so fiercely proud of everything his daughters did, and it stood out every time he spoke about them in public.

I don’t play basketball as frequently anymore – not at all, in fact. I play when I go home, back to my home court, and when I’m asked to join in for the intramural competitions that happen at University.

This morning, I woke up really early. I had a disturbed sleep. I checked my phone first, and saw that everything had been confirmed, that last night wasn’t a dream – that Kobe was actually dead. I saw the outpouring of grief, the fact that players weren’t sure how to play, but knew that Kobe wanted them to play. My roommate was asleep, but I wore my shoes and I walked down to the basketball Court on my campus.

I stood in front of the Court, in the dark, just looking at the markings – replaying this one sequence I have of Kobe that’s absolutely stuck in my head from a game versus Toronto where he received the ball at the 3-point line, drove in, faked, and hit the perfect layup – right from the corner of the little square above the net. That epitome of what I was taught a layup needs to be. It’s one of the only things I can still do half-decently in basketball, and Kobe was, and always will be the yardstick I hold myself to.

I came back to my room today after classes, and before writing this, threw out some scrap paper, right from one end to my room to where the dustbin lay on the other end, instinctively yelling out “Kobe” like we did as kids. I felt like I channeled his spirit, but I missed the shot. That was when it hit me that he was gone.

Too soon, God. Too soon.

My grandparents and I have a weekly conversational schedule. We speak week-on-week, mostly on Sundays, and for the most part, this is how it’s been all of my life. International calling used to be expensive when I was a child, so calls were quite short, but I remember dialing their number on occassion and hearing the cheer in their voice that basically made the money immaterial. It was why we were so pleased when video calling over the internet became a possibility in our lives. I don’t recall communicating too frequently over Skype, or GTalk, but I do know that the possibility existing made for more real-time communication, and my maternal grandfather and I spoke on IM for quite a while.

Anyway, I’ve always spoken to my grandparents most weekends. As I’ve grown older though, I think there’s lesser I’ve spoken about: I’m not entirely sure why, but I don’t give away too much. Just the regular – I’m doing okay, I’ve eaten all my meals, and yes of course, I will dress appropriately for the weather and not allow myself to freeze. This is even when I am unwell. In fact, I genuinely believe that my grandparents have found out that I have been sick only through the blog. And then I’ve not heard the end of it on call over the weekends.

I spoke to them today evening. My paternal grandmother is with my parents at the moment so we speak more frequently, but I called home to Bangalore. It was a short call, but it clearly meant a lot to my grandmother that I had called at all. We hadn’t spoken for two weeks, and I had spent a little bit of time last week wondering what stopped them from calling me – before realizing communication works as a two-way street, and that I would take ownership to speak to them over the weekend. I didn’t really talk about anything special. My grandmother asked about my results and I deflected, refusing to answer anything marks-oriented. She asked about an internship stipend and I told her I wouldn’t be discussing anything financial with her. Finally, she told me about happenings from the extended family that I had followed on our family group: her gossip, and I acknowledged it. I didn’t crack any jokes or poke jibes at her. Yet, she chuckled in amusement anyway.

I spoke to my grandfather – him and I don’t speak and have long conversations unless he’s telling me a story or I’m telling him a story. We prefer texting or e-mailing to much else, and face-to-face interaction has always been the highlight of speaking to him (because of how expressive he is). I got to catch up on his health though, and then he relayed messages my grandmother wanted to relay (but knew that I’d get upset if she asked about them), which is always enjoyable.

I’m not sure what it is about these calls that make them special. There’s no khaas khabre, so to speak. They’re just ingrained in my routine and in my life: they always have been, and they always will be. Family, man, some things are just inexplicable with them.

Elsewhere on this blog, I’ve written about the kind of feelings seniors make me feel. I wrote that post as a first-year at this University, when the then fifth-years were always the people I looked at for inspiration when I felt low, or unhappy [which was rare]. It was comforting to know that there were people who had, at that point, gone through the journey that I was going to undertake, and turned out, quite okay. Everyone’s on their own journey and path in life, but when you’re faced with new surroundings that you feel uncertain in, it’s nice to know that there are people who have become comfortable in these surroundings over time. I loved my seniors. Across all batches, I do think that each batch that exits this University leaves this place with a little more life imparted to it. That isn’t only because of the fact that there are more people who live here in each batch. It’s because experience gets added on the past layers, like the rings in a tree-bark.

It also means there are always more people to reach out to for help. Chances are that someone in a senior batch will relate to what you are feeling at any given point of time. Seniors are that weird bridge between parents & friends. They really do care for you, atleast, my seniors did for me – in a way that is both parent-like, and friend-like; making my closest senior-friends, family to me.

For the last four years, I’ve become a senior student to some junior batch entering the University. I don’t want to comment on what or who I am as a senior: that is far too self-indulgent. What that journey has meant, however, is that I’ve always welcomed my seniors back to campus when they’ve become alumni. This weekend provided another opportunity to do that.

Last night I went out for dinner and spent time after that meal with two alumni. Just me  & one of my friends, and them. On that table, and throughout that period of time, I was the happiest I’ve been in quite some time. Nostalgia is a good friend who keeps you company when you’re around people you feel like you know from a past life, which is what these seniors feel like.

It’s weird to think that I’ll join them as alumni of this University in a couple of months. It’s also liberating in a lot of ways. My life here, on this campus, feels like a life I’ve lived to the fullest – and it’s an appropriate time to move forward. To seek fresher pastures, to open new chapters on that journey. I’m grateful that my University is trying to build an alumni culture, and I’m hopeful that it is a network that begins to become more interconnected as it grows. The value of people who share experiences is that they breed familiarity. Very often, that is enough to make someone feel comfortable in uncertainty.

Life’s always going to be filled with that uncertainty: so I’m always going to hope I have friends who are seniors, who are alumni, who are kind and willing to spend time with as we figure it out.

Naturally, this is a way of saying that seniors give gyaan very often. It all comes from a good place, and it’s often very helpful.

Yes, the title of this post comes from the Eiffel 65 song. Yes, I apologize in advance for getting the song stuck in your head again. No, I do not feel too terrible about it. In fact, because the song is stuck in your head, and before you read the rest of this piece, please watch this video – and the rest of the series explaining how viral songs have been made.

As always, I have a story to tell. However, I’m not fully sure about the shape it will take. You’ve chosen to embark on this journey with me though, so I am hopeful you will read this all the way through.

The first time I heard the word Oxford was actually in Grade 3, because one of the textbooks we used was published by Oxford University. I can recall looking at the typeface that said Oxford and pronouncing it, the word rolling off my tongue. I remember finding the same word in my School Diary, specifically on the pages that outlined the curriculum our school followed. I remember laughing at how odd the string of letters “GCSE” looked, and muddling it up as “GSCE” when I relocated to India and tried to explain to my friends that I too, had studied a foreign board prior to receiving education in India.

When I was in Grade 8, I was introduced to this idea in more concrete terms. I never really understood the connotations of curricula, or Oxford, or Cambridge, or what these boards meant. I do remember that my parents and I spent a long time discussing the value of pursuing an education with the Cambridge International Examinations board. When they took that decision, with a little bit of my own input, I spent a lot of time on different forums on the internet reading about whether I would be missing out on some learning that the Indian boards offered. My Science teachers in high school assured me that wouldn’t be the case, and I’d end up learning the same stuff, but in a different form – a form that meant I would retain and process the information given to me differently as well.

As Grade 9 and Grade 10 passed on, Oxford and Cambridge became a more frequent part of my vocabulary. Those were years I spent indulging myself in my education, but also trying to figure out what to latch on to next. When I decided I wanted to study either Law, or Economics, and I made the decision to pursue my A Levels, my parents and I had a bit of a sit-down, where we discussed what I could do next, and where I could study. Abroad, Oxford and Cambridge stood out in both disciplines. The London School of Economics featured highly as well. My academic ambitions at the end of Grade 10 were basically that I wanted to apply to these Universities, and do my very best to try to become the first person from my high school to go study there.

My high school offered minimal college counselling. In Bangalore, this whole college counselling business is a very serious affair, with high school students spending large sums of money to ensure their applications are prepared in advance, but also meticulously to ensure they get into the University of their choice. Naturally this places individuals who have financial backing at a competitive advantage, but financial backing doesn’t mean everything. Those college counsellors eventually end up telling you the same stuff, academically: the kind of track record you have in high school matters to the University, and thus, in your final two years, keeping up good scores matter. Given that my high school was young, we had few alumni abroad, and we were figuring things out for ourselves. I was particularly fortunate to have a mentor at school who had awareness about education systems in the UK. That, coupled with my own research skills meant that at the end of Grade 11, I had figured out I was going to apply to Oxford to study Law.

You see, the UCAS undergraduate system forces you to “pick” between Oxford and Cambridge (at least, it did at the time I applied). You are not allowed to apply to both Universities in the same admissions cycle. I subsequently did a ton of research, and after sitting with my parents, felt like I wanted to study at Oxford a little more than I wanted to study at Cambridge – hence the decision. Nothing personal. I honestly wish I could have applied to both Universities. I loved the opportunities they represented equally. However, having elected to apply to Oxford, and a set of 4 other institutions, I began to tailor my application – my statements, my reference, toward the requirements of that University. At the end of Grade 11, I felt like I was in with a shout. My high school support structure felt that way too. Everyone was incredibly encouraging and supportive of my application endeavours, and I felt really privileged to have that support around me at the time. I look back now with fond memories of that time – and not without reason. My teachers got my predicted grades ready on time, my administration was super efficient in helping me figure out documentation. It was all very, very lovely.

Now the A Level system my school followed made us take board examinations in 11th and 12th Grades. This was where I hit my first snafu. I had scored really well in Grade 10, but come Grade 11, my Physics grades began to plummet. While my results were great elsewhere, my Physics grade was a “C”, and I received this result in August 2014, when my Oxford application was due in October 2014. It was nerve-wracking. I broke down tremendously on the day I received that result. I was really upset with myself: because the grade sucked, but also because I felt I had screwed up all my chances at Oxford. By this point, I had become obsessed with the University. I spent ages on forums finding out details about the University and its constituent colleges. I went to sleep dreaming about waking up in one of the locations the Harry Potter movies were filmed, and I daydreamed about attending bops.  I was super excited to potentially study there, something I felt I had lost all hopes of.

I applied nonetheless. I secured an interview, which I attended via Skype. Then I got rejected by Oxford. The day I got rejected is vivid in my memory. I had seen on an undergraduate forum that applications had been sent out, so I was quite certain I had not gotten in as yet. The delay sucked. I couldn’t take it anymore so I called up the admissions officer for my particular college and asked him about the status of my application. He asked me to wait for 30 minutes as he was e-mailing out decisions as we spoke. I asked him “does that mean I didn’t get in?”, and he responded with “please wait for your e-mail”. I was certain I hadn’t made it. I got confirmation of this within 5 minutes of putting the phone down – when I was downstairs with my mother. I read the decision on my phone, and then I went and bawled my eyes out for about 20 minutes. I cried into my beanbag. I was distraught. It was very messy. My mom tried consoling me but she couldn’t, really.

About 20 minutes later I decided I’d apply to do my postgraduate studies at Oxford, when the time came. I also decided I would apply to become a Rhodes Scholar – another prestigious award I had been introduced to through my research. All of this happened on January 10th, 2015.

I had received some offers of admission by that time, but having been declined a place by Oxford, I was more convinced of pursuing legal education in India. I was preparing for the Common Law Admissions Test, and I poured in all my energy into that and my board exams – to ensure I met my conditional offer from other Universities. That entire period, I watched the Oxvlog project, discovered SimonOxfPhys, and religiously watched Jake Wright’s videos – all with the sole intention of becoming more determined to get into these Universities in the future.

That determination, at that age, came from a place of anger. I was upset that I did not get a seat at Oxford, and I felt deprived of a learning opportunity I felt I merited.

This year, 2020, is the year I apply for postgraduate education. I am older now than I was then, but my dreams remain quite similar. I want to learn at these institutions: this Oxford, this Cambridge, these venerable institutions that have rich histories and legacies. I want the opportunity to learn what it is about them that makes them special. I don’t want to merely look at them from the outside, or hear from others how being educated there is an experience unlike any other. I wish to go there, to for example, spend an evening walking past the Radcliffe Camera, or in the halls of the Lauterpacht Center.

I want to eat at the Spoon’s in Cambridge one day, and visit all of these places I’ve seen in Jake’s vlogs.

I fulfilled my childhood dream of applying for the Rhodes Scholarship this year. I didn’t get it, which made me sad for a few minutes again. One of my University batchmates did, which made me incredibly pleased for him, as did one of juniors from high school – and I was so happy she did. They are both, as I am sure the other Scholars are too – worthy recipients.

Today, I submitted an application to the University of Oxford. Thankfully, postgraduate applications do not require you to sit and select between Oxford and Cambridge. I clicked submit, and I felt lighter in my heart. I fulfilled another childhood promise I had made to myself. My anger, my disgust, from when I was 16 – I had fuelled and channeled into being determined to give the application another shot later in my life, and I was pleased that I had not let any of that go.

Being rejected by Oxford at the time was the bluest I had been. I didn’t go to school for two days after my rejection letter came, choosing instead to spend time at a friend’s house playing FIFA. He was bunking school too, and we played FIFA the entire day. It felt like it was the end of everything at the time. Remarkably, in a lot of ways, that was just the start.

I hold all these educational institutions in high regard. All of them, every single one. Not just the Oxfords and the Cambridges – which have an air of elitism to them today, but Open Universities too. They perform a vital public function of imparting education to individuals interested in learning, and making people feel enthusiastic about learning things. While I’ve applied to all of these institutions today, at the core of my application, and at the core of everything I want at this point in my life, is the opportunity to learn more. To read more. To get access to knowledge that I feel I will get access to if I attend these institutions. To gain exposure to a network that will give me that access. To unlock my own intellectual capacity, because I know that being in a new academic environment will challenge me – for I have spent 5 years in one academic environment now.

I do not have a preference among these institutions. I know that I will be happy to be given the opportunity to learn if any of the institutions I have applied to deem that my application matches what they are looking for. Completing the Oxford application gave me a ton of closure though. It enabled me to let go of some residual anger and sadness from when I was younger. To look at that entire experience as being so formative, and kick-starting this entire sequence of events that led me to where I am today.

When admission decisions come this time, I will not be letting myself feel too blue. After all, I still have oxygenated blood pumping through my system (this was a bad joke, excuse me).

I’ll just be looking out for more opportunities to learn new things – things I’m interested in learning.

And learn them I shall.

The art of sampling music has fascinated me for a very long time. It makes music feel like an art form that builds upon its own history, and samples help to track the evolution of the art form in more concrete terms, so to speak. I remember first hearing the word when I began learning how to use FL Studio to make music, and downloaded a ton of these freely available sample packs and sounds to listen to the kind of nuances in sound that helped produce a song. Eventually, I learned how to use tools within that software that helped me create my own samples. One of the nicest things I remember doing was taking a sample from Myon & Shane 54’s Summer of Love remix of Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” and saving it for repurposing in one of the piano tracks I recorded. But those are tales for another day.

Music samples split people into camps quite frequently: one camp who believe that sampling should not be permitted because it takes away originality and discredits effort very frequently, because the creator of the original sample never gets due credit for inspiring another song. The flipside to this is the argument that sampling should be permitted, because once music is out there, it belongs to the creative commons.

Mark Ronson has an excellent TED talk on this that I’d urge you check out. Quite frequently, most songs that you end up enjoying on the radio on most days, or that become chart-toppers, contain samples or pieces of inspiration from prior music.

I was listening to the Vampire Weekend album, Father of the Bride on repeat yesterday. It’s an album that I took to quite quickly and absolutely fell in love with. There’s this song on the album called “Hold You Now”, which I adore – because it introduced me to Haim, but also because it begins the narrative arc of the entire album. In a lot of ways, Father of the Bride, as an album, reminds me of Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown. However, I digress.

That song, “Hold You Now”, contains this crazy sequence that sounds like gospel choir music in the middle. I wanted to figure out what that sequence was, and found out it was indeed a sample of gospel music called God Yu Tekkem Laef Blong Mi. That confused me: I couldn’t recognize the words, although I was quite certain I knew their meaning. Turns out this is a language called Pidgin English. What made things even crazier is that this sample they used is a Hans Zimmer sample.

I’m on the side that samples should enable creative growth. It’s weird if a sample is used to make a note-for-note version of another song. Sometimes, however, the result can be beautiful, as it was here.

I’ve always lived in an era with telecast and televised matches. My stories of cricket commentary coming on the radio, and tuning in to hear people’s voices as they called ball-by-ball are therefore limited by the experience of my parents and my grandparents. What excellent stories they are, though. Television provides the visual experience: of actually being on the ground while a match takes place, and new technology, including the spider-cam, enables you to see the size of the ground, pitch conditions, and everything in between. Thanks to excellent audio mixing, the atmosphere from the stadium isn’t lost on you either. You’ll always hear the crowd’s chants, cheers, and jeers in the background. It makes for lovely viewing. To think, therefore, that some individuals in the pre-telecast era had the burden to ensure that all of this got through to the tuned-in audience just through their vocabulary and the power of their voice – and that they succeeded (because cricket didn’t just become popular overnight) is wonderful.

Yesterday I listened to an episode of the 22 Yarns podcast with Harsha Bhogle. First, I have to commend Gaurav Kapur for a couple of things. The man really knows how to diversify his personal brand, and go crossplatform. His YouTube show Breakfast with Champions is excellent – although it’s inspired a bunch of copycats, it’s ability to retain originality in format and unstructured conversation is delightful. Now, this podcast? Even better.

The entire Harsha Bhogle episode was devoted to understanding cricket commentary better. It provided some lovely insight into how commentary partnerships are cultivated, how feeds are so-well curated and ready-to-go, and what goes on behind the madness of the entire production. There were nuggets of nostalgia, where Bhogle speaks about his start in commentary: after IIM, commentating on a Ranji Trophy game in Hyderabad. It got me thinking about how much of my life has been shaped by some brilliant cricket commentary.

The earliest cricket I remember watching, in vivid detail, is the 2003/04 India-Pakistan series. Shoaib Akhtar was at his peak, being the Rawalpindi Express that he was, the entire series was being telecast on Ten Sports, and Cyrus Broacha hosted the show during the innings break providing for comic relief and grand prizes, including a car. I can’t remember specific phrases, but I remember being introduced to successful Pakistani cricketers through the commentary rotations: these include individuals like Ramiz Raja. Very soon, I picked up on cricketing history purely because I heard people’s voices in the commentary box, or saw their career statistics being pulled up on screen in order to reference their personality. Quite often when this happened, you could see how they tried to deflect attention away from these statistics. When doing live commentary, especially on a Test match day, it almost appeared that the Days played, gone by, they didn’t matter anymore, and all that mattered was the Days of cricket that lay ahead – session after session.

Cut to the creation of the IPL, and the entire frenzy of Twenty20 cricket leading to innovation in commentary generally: the capitalistic and entrepreneurial attitude that has invaded the sport has led to sponsored segments for everything, including Sixes and Fours. Always begs the question: how do commentators remember which sponsor to call out when? Do they make mistakes? How are these rectified? Bhogle provides answers to all of these, and you realize, only then, that so much more happens behind-the-scenes in order to ensure that your cricketing experience at home retains the appearance of glitch-free seamlessness.

Since I’ve joined University, I’ve been following more matches on ESPNCricinfo than watching them live. There’s no voice there, but the commentary retains liveliness. I wonder how they do it: the reporters and scorers ensuring updates ball-by-ball, staying ahead of all of their competitors. What keeps them going?

It’s clear pretty quickly that it’s their love for the game. Nothing will ever come close to sitting and watching a day of cricket – aside from perhaps playing the sport for an entire day. I remember thinking in high school that we needed to open up commentary as an inter-house competition: to allow students from each house to do commentary on the games that were taking place on that day. Even if people didn’t enjoy it, and the commentators weren’t top-notch (none of us would ever have been on our first try), it would provide a record of games gone by. An archive of every moment.

Commentators breathe live into that archive with their words: capturing what everyone observes, but nobody really notices. That’s the essence of their job, and it’s people like Harsha Bhogle who have done that for several moments in the cricket I’ve watched and enjoyed.

For most of the last four years, I sat on the same desk, with the same two friends next to me at University. I didn’t speak much; I’m not really much of a class conversation-person because it’s difficult for me to speak in hushed tones and have a meaningful conversation. In my first year I paid attention to classes, in my second year, I slowly moved toward reading, in my third, I slept, and in my fourth year, I began reading. Last semester I ended up moving desks to sitting on a different corner of the classroom. This semester, I’ve been away from those friends and that desk as a result of a split in divisions. It’s weird what that does to you. Now my roommate and I say bye to each other in the morning and don’t see each other till we get back post-classes; when earlier, we said “I’ll see you in class”, and he ensured I attended the classes necessary to keep attendance in order.  It’s not that my surroundings are unfamiliar to me: the new section consists of half the population from my old class, but it is a change – a change I’m not entirely convinced we needed in our final semester.

In any case, it means I now sit with different people. Like I said earlier, I didn’t speak too much in class. I did speak with my deskmates from time to time, and have been called out for speaking too much by one professor in particular, but other than I that, I mostly kept to myself while class was underway.

Today, however, presented the chance to catch up with a friend I’ve been trying to catch up with since I got back – but whose schedule is so distinct from mine that we’ve not found a slot to meet. So we sat and caught up on our winters, on the things we read, the things we did, the things we saw. I’ve become close to this friend because his background is so different from mine that I love the perspective he brings to my life. He was the first person from University to ever visit my home – despite not being from Bangalore, the first friend from campus that my mother got to properly meet. In catching up, the one thing that became apparent to me really quickly is that we had very, very different winters.

Both of us stayed with family, but he stayed without the internet. The impact of the internet on our everyday lives is something I’ve been acutely aware of for a while now, but it is only interacting with individuals whose internet supply is cut-off by the State that you recognize the kind of liberty the internet allows you to exercise. I’m not entirely sure what you can do in rebellion, but there are organizations working to figure out that internet access in this country goes unrestricted, and they deserve all the support they can get.

Naturally this meant two professors (of three) called us out for talking. In one period I was asked to switch spots, so as to not disturb the professor at all. I would, in my first year, have been scared about the repercussions of this – the kind of impression this incident leaves on the professor, etc. Today, however, I’m glad I took the opportunity to catch up with my friend. This professor won’t remember my face tomorrow anyway. Desk conversations are worth having when you can have them. They’re a quiet rebellion. Like the paquetas in Cuba which ensure the internet reaches every individual through an informal market.

I hadn’t eaten Subway cookies prior to University. I do believe they have always been on the menu, but I know I never dared to try them. I didn’t actually eat out at Subway too much either. There was no Subway close to home, and I think even when it did open, I only went there because a friend of mine thought it was the only place we could hang out on our side of town. Plus, it was the only thing near our house at the time that qualified as “fast food”. With a Sub of the Day option that cost only Rs. 100 for a 6 inches Sub, I didn’t think you could really go wrong with it.

I had heard a lot about Subway generally. My aunt had told me how when she went to America and the UK for the first time, it was one of the only affordable, consistently-good, Western, vegetarian meals available. Given my recent visit to America, and looking at portion sizes over there – the number of vegetables they put in your order means that you can save up your lunch Sub and have the rest for dinner as well, making it even more economical.

So naturally, I come to University and I find out that Subway is one of the closest fast food outlets we have to campus. In my first semester though, I didn’t have a card (I was a minor then, and we weren’t fully informed of how minor debit cards worked). So for the duration of that entire semester, my mother had given me cash – and I kept accounts and track of that cash to manage through. I made one trip home that semester, and my mother generously gave me more cash, but the fact that it was all liquid money and I wasn’t sure when an emergency may arise, meant that I spent very little.

I came back in my second semester wielding a debit card, but because of an overload of work, I didn’t really go out too much that semester. In fact, my mother visited me just after my mid-semester exams that year, just before I had a moot memorial submission. We stayed next door to the Subway, and while my mum revelled in eating from all the other restaurants in the vicinity, I asked her to treat me to a Sub in the room one day.

My third semester was when I actually began going out. I visited Subway more frequently, and developed a bit of a rapport with the owner of the Subway franchise near campus (he’s still there). I eventually rounded up on my standard order of a footlong per meal (one I’ve cut down this semester to a six inch Sub), but stumbled upon the cookies because of his sales technique. He had literally baked a fresh batch when I walked in and the chocolate chunks smelled delightful wafting through the air.

I’ve fallen in love ever since. It is now physically impossible for me to eat at Subway without ordering cookies. Even one cookie (although I have been known to eat three). They are delightful. They’re quite large, so there’s value for money, there are a lot of chocolate chips in every bite, and man, they heat it in front of you so the chips/chunks melt to gooey perfection. This one time I remember I ordered everything for takeaway and consumed 3 cookies on a 10-minute autoride from the Subway back to my campus because I couldn’t control myself.

In all honesty, they are extremely unhealthy when consumed in such amounts and frequency, which is why I have had to cut back on my consumption of them. However, they are remarkably consistent. I ate Subway in Switzerland, and in the Netherlands, and in Dubai: ordering the same cookies in all three Subways. They tasted exactly the same (the Swiss ones were better because they had a “dark” chocolate chip cookie), but my oh my. Wow.

I have forged friendships based on a mutual love for the cookie. One of my close friends in third year had accompanied me on a rainy day to collect laundry from infocity (where the Subway is located), and I remember making a pact with her that we’d take a trip to the Subway every semester. Unfortunately, circumstances have meant that neither of us have lived up to the pact, although for a while we ensured we bought each other cookies from Subway whenever we visited. Circumstances now mean that that pact will require a lot of resurrection.

Thankfully though, there is no shortage of individuals on my campus who revel in Subway cookies as much as I do. Today, I was able to make one of my friends’ afternoons, by gifting them, as a surprise, some fresh maal (if you will). His joy is not something you can put into words easily. The true test was yet to come though, and upon a physical inspection of the cookie, he accessed the microwave in the hostel, heating the cookie up to gooey perfection before consuming it in front of my own eyes.

I’m not a strong proponent of having strong brand preferences, or becoming a brand salesman. It’s why I avoid buying t-shirts that have company graphics on them (like Supreme, or Levi’s). Truth be told though, it’s impossible for me not to advocate that everybody consumes a Subway cookie today.

The chocolate in the cookie is not too sweet, yet sweet enough to tingle your tastebuds into desiring the chocolate chip. The chocolate chips are heavenly. The cookie’s texture when at room temperature is crumbly perfection. When warm, you will be transported to another land.

Try one today.

The word routine always reminds me of the French-Canadian dish Poutine. I’ve read so much about it and watched so many incredible videos about its origins, that I’m really keen to experience eating vegetarian poutine one day. I love fries, so I’m fairly certain that I will enjoy the dish, but what I couldn’t relate to in all of this information is the kind of warmth the dish is said to exude and spread across your body. I’d really like that, especially on a cold day like today where my broken window is giving me particular troubles.

This past week was my first actual week back at University. It’s been good, I’ve mostly been running errands everyday after classes and trying to get stuff done so I can go back to living normally here, but it’s been particularly difficult to get back into a routine of some kind. I end up having random things to do and as much as I try to plan things around a geographical location I’m at at any given point of the day, something seems to pop up. Or I get distracted, mindlessly, on YouTube. I love that website a lot, but I am telling you, it is the worst rabbit hole in the world. I was watching interviews with the cast of The Office, and somehow found myself watching clips of how you could loop Alexa, Siri and Google Home in an infinite loop of asking each other to do tasks till their battery ran out. That is not particularly interesting, or of interest to me, nor is it entertaining. Yet here I am watching it. How we got here, I am not entirely sure. Yet here we are.

Naturally, therefore, I wanted to use my weekend to get things in order. My roommate’s gone for a trip to Gir Forest with his friends, which is pretty awesome for him, so I’ve got the entire room to myself for the weekend. I organized my stuff and ran room-wide errands on Saturday, and today, I’ve just been trying to figure out what I want to spend my time doing over the course of this semester, each day.

Somehow I’ve ended up with more things to do than hours I can find, which means a rearrangement of somethings to accommodate my new sleep schedule of 8 hours (which I have religiously followed every single day since I’ve been back). Tomorrow will actually be my first test. Although only time will tell if I’m able to adhere to any schedule of any kind at all, it’s interesting to think about how to slot in stuff into my day.

This last semester of University is beginning to become a fascinating concept to me. The last couple of months of high school, before I moved out of my house, I spent on preparing my mother for the fact that I’d be leaving soon. I took breaks from chores on occasion. A little bit of this was me being a sloth and wanting to get pampered for a couple of months longer before I had to do all my chores. It wasn’t all very bleak though, I overcompensated a fair amount by spending as much time with my mom as I could, and she did likewise, taking time off work to be at home when I was on my study holidays for two months. It was awesome. We watched loads of TV and movies together, hung out a lot, spoke about our various concerns, and genuinely, bonded to the extent that we became friends. It was that time in my life where I was certain that some of the best friends in my world were my parents – it really changed the dynamic between us. I spent a lot of time also mentally preparing for University. There was a lot of uncertainty about what my next steps were: where exactly I’d be studying, and such, and I hated that so much, I spent time reading and thinking about all the stuff University would bring.

This last semester feels a little bit like that. The uncertainty is real. I’m just a little less insecure about it because I’ve been through this entire rigmarole before so it’s a little less scary to me this time around. The world outside of this University is going to be super different – and I know I’ve been protected inside this campus and on this University space. I also know that the things I’ve seen and done here are things that I’ve thought about and have shaped everything about who I want to be when I leave here.

I really want to use this last semester to ensure I prepare myself for a life outside this campus. Where, I don’t really need to stay awake late to get things done, or there aren’t actually commitments to keep very often. Where often, the only company you will have is yourself – and you’re likely to have to make the most of it. I want to get back to pursuing things I did when I was in high school that I enjoyed: things that I claimed I had no time for at University. This is, like a friend quipped: the most unstructured time I have – and I honestly plan to make the most of it.

Unfortunately that involves some amount of structuring in itself.

I’m a sucker for cheap, high-quality items. I love a good deal, and I’m happy to wait for longer on an investment in any item if I’m going to get it for less. It’s fun knowing that I’ve saved some money – and it’s particularly enjoyable when it is something that I need and will use on a daily basis.

Such as my spectacles.

I last purchased spectacles (after years of my mother trying to convince me I needed new ones) in the summer of 2017. I was back home with my parents for a couple of weeks, interning in what was then my home city, and I decided that would be an opportune time to get things like glasses and licenses done. Lenskart had just launched in India around that time, so one evening after dinner, my mother and I devoted ourselves to the task of trying out all the various frames that lenskart had to offer on my face (because they have cool technology) and then pick 2 pairs to buy. This was also because they ran a buy one get one free offer at the time – something I was absolutely crazy about.

Those spectacles are spectacles I still wear today, 3 years later. I know that isn’t a crazy long period of time or anything, but in terms of how frequently I used to get glasses made (because I played basketball and have an oddly shaped head), it’s a fair amount of time. In fact, I didn’t visit an ophthalmologist between 2017 and 2019 end, all out of sheer laziness, and the strong sense that my power would change, necessitating a change in my spectacles in some shape or form.

I was right. Visiting the ophthalmologist now, we found out my power had definitely increased. Back on campus I started experiencing headaches, so after my dad reminded me that I needed to get spectacles done, I decided to go to the optician store.

Now, you see: I was faced with a choice. I could buy a new pair of spectacles, or I could just replace the lenses on one of my old Lenskart pairs.

Of course, I chose to replace the lenses on the Lenskart pair. I was so happy with the decision because it meant that I could wear this pair of glasses that has genuinely seen so many of the happiest and saddest times I’ve spent on this campus till I leave. I was also happy that I did not have to take any decisions on the kind of frame that suited my face. I do not have the sharpest sense of fashion or trends, so any opportunity to delay independent decision-making in that regard is something that I will always, always seize.

To give him credit where credit is due, the optician did not make this decision quick, easy, or painless for me. He brought out a whole chart, an Excel sheet almost, showing me exactly what the cost points were. I didn’t even know so many types of lenses existed for glasses. The choices scared me, more than anything else. I just want to be able to see things clearly – nothing too fancy.

Of course, I tried making the best decision I could with all the information he provided with me.

And now my lenses have a blue tint on them sometimes because of some blue-light filter.

It almost makes me feel like I’m wearing some special sunglasses. What a joy.

I’m in love with technology. I love new devices and upgrades to existing technology, and reading and watching reviews of technology. I don’t purchase technology often: it’s always after a rigorous research process – it’s always been that way. The idea is to essentially ensure that any piece of technology I invest in is something that’ll give me returns for a couple of years, or atleast stay stable for as long as possible. This is something I’ve developed over the course of time: I would rather spend my money in something that’s durable and longlasting rather than something that’ll go kaput in a few months.

My Acer Laptop is a Nitro V Aspire. It’s a gaming laptop. I purchased it before I came to University, and it was the second-ever laptop my parents bought for me, after a Toshiba I had for 5 years. We bought it because the Toshiba began to slow down, and University definitely demanded a laptop of adequate speed, one that could handle multiple processes at the same time. Naturally, I thought we’d be doing a lot of research for it, but it took lesser time than anticipated to settle on the Acer. We got a really good deal and the laptop had everything I was looking for at the time.

3 years into University, however, the laptop began to act up, and slow down. That wasn’t too much of trouble, but then it began crashing – and losing files, which I found frustrating, but my dad found frustrating too. That led to the purchase of a different laptop, and then when that began acting up, we exchanged it for what I currently use. The Acer, therefore, has been on standby as a back-up laptop that crashes frequently for quite a while.

It’s actually been in a really comfortable bag in storage for the past year and a half, inside my cupboard on campus. I’ve taken it out a couple of times to use when my old laptop acted up, but it failed me then. I even loaned it out for a bit to a junior when their laptop was acting up. It’s seen a lot, clearly. But it’s old, and rusty, and as with old things, it’s got its fair share of issues.

I’ve seen a lot. On this campus, I’m a dinosaur. I’m old, and rusty. I’ve got my fair share of issues. Given, however, that this laptop is a gaming laptop, and that I’m in my last semester – with some free time and a desire to unwind, I thought it would be fair to try extracting as much as I could out of it – entertainment-wise. So I’ve dropped it off to the hardware technician, paid for a full servicing, and I am incredibly hopeful that when it returns, I’ll be able to game atleast for about 30 minutes to 1 hour everyday.

Gaming actually became a bit of a hobby only in the last semester. When I used the Acer laptop as my daily laptop, I didn’t really use it for gaming per se. I’m keen to see what it ends up functioning like, but most of all, I’m keen to relive the nostalgia of this massive machine I used to carry with me everywhere on campus when everyone had sleek, smaller machines.

If all goes well, this is going to be an exciting semester (as if it already wasn’t).

I feel like my reading productivity has slowed down. I’m not entirely sure why it’s happened, but it has – ever since I came back to campus. The next couple of days are likely to be devoted to getting my reading productivity back up.

It’s tricky to be at odds with yourself for not reading continuously, or as vociferously as you usually do – after all, reading is a hobby for me. It isn’t stressful or anything of the sort, and it isn’t something I log-in time for. I’m usually just pleased reading how much ever I can read at any given point of time – which, given the fact that the hobby has become a sustained habit, is a fair amount. I think, however, that when the habit disappears, perhaps the only way to bring it back, and revive the hobby – even if it’s been on the slowdown just for a few days, is to push yourself to go ahead and actually do it. Read.

That’s what the weekend’s going to be about. Hopefully next week is a lot better reading-wise.