It’s interesting to compare a writer’s block with a nose block. While the latter implies your nose is full, the former relates to vacuum. While one is cured by an inhaler, the other wants an outlet. But why am I writing this? Am I too in this lean patch? While my blog seems to be rollicking along (41 posts, as Anand Kashyap thoughtfully counted), I haven’t written an article for months. This literary inactivity is more like the nose block. Important, boring issues like metallurgy, CAT, placements, etc. occupy more headspace than I want them to. Peer pressure doesn’t help either. When I sit down determined to write something, I hear people talking about the composition of pig iron, or the merits of Object Oriented Programming, and crash goes my plan of a quiet afternoon with my thoughts and keyboard. The cruel realization that writing is not a ‘useful’ activity dawns on me. I once stopped to list the campus-defined must dos that I haven’t done, including not watching must-watch movies, not playing must-play games, and not reading must-read books. I fell short of fingers and toes.
It’s quite tough, the kind of stuff college life expects you to do.
• You’re supposed to not study, and even if you do, it should be on the sly.
• If caught studying a month before the exam, mix disinfectant in the Ganges and take a dip.
• If caught studying 2 months before, cut out the disinfectant.
If you are a CAT aspirant -or are desperate to be a cross between Siddhartha Basu and Narayana Murthy- you are expected to read newspaper editorials, know what GDP means, debate about India and China, know why Israel is pounding Lebanon, etc. Even reading novels becomes a Reading Comprehension exercise. In many cases, novels are read to justify Reading as a hobby in CVs. This reduction of leisure to mere drill is a signature of campus life.
It is 11pm right now. My friend will bang my door any time for our midnight cuppa. It’s a cruel reminder again, that I’ve wasted enough time on this non-profit venture. It’s time to write a Mock CAT- “The following pie chart shows the region wise distribution of sales of Mehta and Mehta Textile mills. The table shows…”- Sigh.
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This is a page where I shall take the liberty of scribbling tonnes of crap. Whether it is the mark of a genius or the ramblings of a fool, is for you to decide.
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6 comments:
Exasperations of a generic engineering student would be a nice title.
Yeah, it's sad that some of us have to do thins to mention them in CVs and not because we love them or love doing them in that much coveted leisure.
Converting regular mundane work into soemthing we cherish always remains a challenge. Sometimes, you need to give up a part of your 'success'. But, in the end, it doesn't matter. You 'll be more successful and much more balanced.
@giri
You'll definitely be more balanced. But ideally, it should be out of interest and not compulsion. It's a tough ask, but then, I said 'ideal'.
for some reason I kept thinking you had already graduated..."mah baad"..
well if you blog is good enough ( in my opinion almost all your articles are absolutely hilarious and also very well written), the recruiter who stumbles on it while googling your name might hire you for your literary/artistic talents...so keep writing!!!
@ preeti
Thanks for the compliment. But I doubt if we are in the time where recruiters google on prospective employees' names.
Yeah...I do know that recruiters/HR ppl in the US do that all the time before they finally hire someone..am not sure if the trend has caught on in India yet, especially in campus recruiting.
@preeti
Recruiters expect you to be on indexed web pages! Here they only check if you say honesty with the h silent. I'm exaggerating, but they pick you if you can talk.
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