One more year...

A few days ago, we gave a farewell party to our senior batch. One thing was going through my mind back then. Next year it will be us going through this. Actually during the farewell, there was one more thing going through my mind. This is not how our farewell would be. It was one of the most boring farewell parties to be.

Three years into college, I felt like I was seeing almost half the faces present there for the first time. It was not just me, most of my batch mates were seeing them for the first time that day. It’s strange for us because we are the ones who stay back late in college almost everyday and do many more things other than attending lectures.

In the Conference room where the party was there, all I could see was clusters of people talking within themselves. Group-ism was very evident. There were just three speeches in the entire class, none of them very efficient, none with an impact. There was no feeling of nostalgia at all. It was more like a formal function.

Worse still, it lasted only for one and half hour, out of that we played music for them for like half hour and had designed a fun filled award ceremony for half an hour. Party was over at 4 pm and everyone was outta college by 4.30 pm. Come on people, have a life!! Reasons for leaving early, ‘Padhna hai bhai, Viva hai’. Four years in college, this is what they come up with !!!

I just feel that with us next year, it would be an entirely different story. Even the shyest student of the class will come up to the podium and speak about the experiences in college he/she had. Things they thought engineering would be and what it turned out to be. Speak about how different their lives would be waking up tomorrow and realizing that they don’t have to head toward college anymore. No more Cutting chai and Misal Pav in canteen.

I think we might stay up in college that night. If not all, atleast a few of us as we did during college festivals. Playing TT or Rounders(This is our class’s National Game, credit to Pratap) in the middle of the night. Have intense debates and discussions on the silliest topics on earth and loads of other crap. But it’s far isn’t it? One long year to go, let’s see what happens then. Only time will tell………..

Just When I Think I Am Done

A lot of things in our life are almost done, well almost! Life would have been great if they were actually complete. But life’s great other way too, why complain?

It’s like when we study for exams, coming early to college on the exam day, trying to revise stuff from start to end. It’s when you start reaching pages of the end chapters; you feel that you’ve forgotten the earlier chapters. When you take a glance back to do the first ones again, there’s the feeling that something at the end part is not done properly. This happens with me no matter how many times I flip back and forth. Never really think I can say that I’m done.

Then the same thing applies to Projects. They are always in the state of ‘Almost done’. Small thing here and there remaining, that’s it. When you go about completing that thing, you discover that another small task is remaining. Then when this task is complete, just when you feel like dancing around the room, something previously working stops to work. The big smile on your face vanishes. Somehow you get things right. Show it to your professor. He adds something more that he wants out of your circuit, and you’re back to work again.

I don’t ever like to use ‘almost done’ with submissions. At what stage you can be screwed can really not be determined. Almost done submissions for me are submissions not done. They can find mistakes in a perfectly errorfree file. Other way round, files with some experiments missing also sometimes go submitted with a A+. Face value, what else to say. Everybody of us have had so many wonderful submission tales all these years, no description is really needed.

Here’s another different avatar of this ‘almost done’ tag. Sleep..... God really thank the person who added ‘snooze’ to your mobile alarm. You say I’ll wake up in 10 minutes. Another 10 minutes, still sleeping, one more ‘snooze’. You think you are almost done with sleep, suddenly, another temptation and bang! Another ‘snooze’. You have taken a break from studies. 10 minutes you watch IPL, then say one more over and I’ll be back. Another over later, same story. Eventually finally end up watching entire match.

Phone conversation is on, debate on one of the topics has been heated up. Mom meanwhile calls you for dinner. Now the phone discussion is equally important for you. You can’t just cut it for now. You say to mom, ‘a minute please, I’m almost done’. And you’re stuck on the Phone right until everyone else has finished their Dinner.

Almost done reminds me of last year’s formula one. Felipe Massa, the Ferrari guys and trillions of fans all around the world thought they had won it, including the commentators. But some Timo Glock had slowed down and ruined the ‘Almost done’ party to ‘not quite done’ tune. How agonisingly close he was to the title. They say it right when they say; the game is not over until the whistle blows.

This topic is so much close to me. On every occasion when Liverpool is losing, my hand is set on the send button to send message to all my dear Liverpool fans. But some crap happens after 90 minutes, someone scores and I’m left with the message still in the draft mode. Just when I thought Job Done……