Roorkee Chapters: "Impressions"

Neither external manifestations of love,,,nor the external materialistic energies…but it is the passion which we extract from our own soul is what binds our mind,body and soul together…

December 2011

I began my second reading of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, the story of Esther, a fine,young woman and her ascent into depression,at the same time, I was fighting an internal battle between my hopelessness and my zeal to survive in architecture, There was a time when I used to get 3 migraine attacks a week,,, and I lived on doses of combiflam and stemetil tablets, but always I convinced myself, through my poetry, through my Hope that good times are around the corner, the silver lining on the dark clouds of gloom…!!

"I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."

Sure, bad times didn’t last for long, but I realized that the gap between me and Architecture was increasing, it was alarming for me, it was a career, for which I went against everyone else’s wishes..!!one has to be brutally selfish at times, but anyway,…here I am, and it’s a pleasure to begin writing again, and washing away all those negating thoughts and all the suffocating air and aura.

March arrived with a new opportunity to work, in New Delhi…there was a certain comfort factor in my new office, in fact, which I loved, but gradually, everything began deteriorating at a rapid rate, I could not wait to get out of that empty corporate life, where I had nothing but a 14” bulging screen to my eyes.

That was when I made a revelation:

I break apart from this Dual life…

A perturbation…

I am adamant to get out…

Not sure of what gets in….

This hard shell crushing beneath….

An admonition…

I am vertical…

Propped up over there….

Enchanting verses by the midnight…

A Stupid idiot box throughout the day…

An incarceration….

Chained and Blindfolded….

I would go back if I can…

An Ambition…

One erratic ladder….

I tear apart these shackles….

A  24 year old cargo boat….

An Illusion….

I want to be complete….

And this is a

Revelation.

I was adamant, stubborn, determined to explore,,,,to exploit myself, to get beyond my shackles of blank verses and seeing the world through “my” eyes,,,,,I just wanted to be me!! And there was a long way to go…there is still a long way to go…I need to explore and extract my mind inside out. But in the end, a sudden calm superimposes you after a period of strife, and that is what happened in my case, a sudden calm , a sudden swell in energy, and a promise to sustain for long, to write, to love, to eat, to run, to realize the beauty of all the mundane things in my life.

A new life has certainly begun on a good note, all I can want is to be content with the sea of knowledge. Working hard is my job and everything has been just thrown before me just like sacred flagpoles thrown pell mell after a festival. And it is upto me, how I want to “Live” J

As Shakespeare said-

“If you can look into the seeds of time,

And tell which grain will grow and which will not,

Speak then to me”

I can only wait and watch what Roorkee has to offer me J

Roorkee Chapters...!!

17^th August,2012, 2:26am, Roorkee

Well…feeling beautiful …a peaceful night..alone in my hostel room, and just typing pieces of verse after verse of poetry and prose.I would begin this with some of my favourite lines from Sylvia Plath’s Kindness.

“And here you come,with a cup of tea,

Wreathed in steam,the blood jet is poetry,

There is no stopping it”

It is said that you make friends by your choice, or by destiny, or by circumstances…or it just happens and you don’t realize it.

While I write this, I just came back an hour ago from one of my friend’s room, where we were having a chit chat session since 11pm…!!Balu Joseph..or simply called as Balu ..happened to be the first person whom I met at the IIT campus, well..Incidentally, I met him in SPA…when we were waiting for our interview in that hot and humid cubicles called classrooms… I heard some people talking in Malayalam,

So I grew curious ..one happens to be curious when one hears their native language, just that in my case, I call myself “Customized” J

Born and brought up in Ghaziabad, parents from Kerela…actually only geographically, where our village had tamil immigrants, so our tamil is quite influenced by the Malayalam vocabulary, so..i can understand Malayalam but cant speak it..(as Balu says.. “You don’t understand..but only pretend to understand”.

This year, IIT has been quite partial to keralites ..hehe…a total of 7 keralites..if you include me…!!

The first night, I entered IIT hostel, Jawahar bhawan, I couldn’t get the hostel room keys and had to spend the night in the shabby waiting room, It was Balu who came to my aid ,and talked to the security guard, and I had to play the part time job of a translator, because Balu found it difficult to catch up with the pure hindi which that guard spoke…!!

So…a variety of languages…variety of people…!!Thank god, man invented English..which has a universal appeal…!!

Well..well…The second Mallu “Dibin Rasool” seems to be the “soft target” (as I named him) for most of our jokes…!!Shy…and if one listens to his hindi…then one cannot believe that he was a hindi Topper in school… (I hope Dibin..you don’t kill me for that one)

So..Balu is the studious one..and Dibin is the soft target.

Enter our Gold medalist,,,Mr.Nitish Chandra Sharma from Patna…!!Lethargic…!!Lazy…Sleepy…Dumbhead….but nevertheless…good at heart…!!!

We nicknamed him “Gold” ….!!

Then the third Mallu… Mr.Sangeeth Sudarshanan Pillai….!! A Devil in Disguise…Noise personified….But mind you…he has got brains….!! Added to my agony…always making fun of me being a half-mallu…!! “The Devil wears red rims” is what he remarked on me…!!

But the devil wears a “Michigan Cap” and sometimes a veshti …!! Well..Mr.Pillai?? :P:P

Mr.Debadutta Parida…!!From Orissa….well..discplined…studious….Our very own Central Library is like a “Somras” …the immortal nectar for him…he can skip dinner in the mess,,,but  a daily trip to the central Library is a must in his routine…

Mr.Manjul Pratap Singh…!! “Manju didi” My smoking partner…!!:)Turning the empty cigarette packs into ashtrays….!!His day isn’t complete without paying homage to the CBRI canteen,,,!!And a Classic regular with a tea…!! And quite fond of Sherlock Holmes series ..glued to his laptop…!!I call him the gadget freak of Jawahar Bhawan…!!As I don’t get a word when he comes to explaining complicated and fearful sounding things about laptops and phones and data cards…!!

People say that the first friends you make at a place…stay with you forever…Perhaps I am lucky to have found that comfort factor away from my home….!!in my second home..for two years…!!

I believe that there is more to come…more 1am trips to canteen,,,,forcing Dibin and Balu to come with me…!!Or cracking jokes at Nitish every possible minute…!! J

And yes… our very own CBRI smoking trips….

For they are the ones…who are with me…in this home away from home…!!

And ashtrays of time,…and memories…!!

“And here you come..with a cup of tea,,,

Wreathed in Steam,,,the blood jet is poetry..”

You hand me some friends..some  verses…!!”

The Beginning at Roorkee...

3^rd June,2012

Well…well…well…

The moment I entered the interview room at IIT Roorkee..for my Masters course, I was null..and blank…and added to that a deafening silence prevailed in the room.

The first question I was asked,after finishing the basic formalities of asking one one’s whereabouts and other stuff, I was asked by the lady interviewer, “Why did you think of masters after 2 years”

Without a slightest hesitation , I replied “Because I want to end this monotonous office life”. The rest of the interview was spent discussing about everything except Architecture, I guess  I already had enough of it in 7 years since I got into it in 2005, and that Every other thing included discussions about my poetry,writing skills, my favorite poet and things like that…

One day later, 5^th June, 2012 

We were given an interview rank in which I was placed at number 53, although I didn’t expect much from the interview, but nevertheless, I could not make it through first counseling.

It was a sheer disappointment at that time,for I prayed never to return to that 14” computer screen for making some irritating cad drawings, staircase details, core details and things like that…But I had to return, empty handed, In class X we read a story called “God sees the Truth but Waits” .God saw that how willing I was to get through this, back to my academic life, but he waited..waited till 30^th of July, to fulfill what I intended for.

2^nd August,2012,Roorkee

Intrigued,shocked,surprised and finally having made it into IIT Roorkee, I was elated, as well as a little scared, what if I have lost my patience to go through all those rigorous submissions, night outs, presentations…and many things..i felt dizzy …my whole bus ride was a little frenzy, having left home for the first time in my life, I would be staying in the hostel for two years, that felt good ,because I could smell my freedom and embrace it with both hands J

"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls."

“I embrace this new world,

Gifted to me wrapped and treasured..

I unfold that paper and pen..

To write a new verse in my Book..”

Well..two years and I have a lot to explore, I loved the campus, quite…serene…away from that hustle bustle of NCR…which made me sick every time I travelled two hours for office..

Settling in hostel was quite easy…courtesy my new friends.. “Devils in disguise”…!! J On Sunday evening I attended the evening mass at the campus church and loved it there, the melodious choirs, the chimes promised a time that is blessed, and good.

The next few days were spent sleepless,owing to those “Ivory Demons”…Surface development blocks which we had to make with ivory sheets, and that is a mammoth task for someone who hasn’t been in touch with all this cutting and pasting for 2 long years, and the icing on the cake,,,just today all our blocks were remarked as “poor” by our professor…<sigh>..but that’s another story..nevertheless..we managed to make them…!!And as I write this…my eyes are bloodshot due to lack of sleep…!!

The sleepless nights were followed by tedious …long lectures today ,which have added to my exhaustion, but I am falling in love with this place…the charm…the closeness to serenity, and a silence ,which one can never get in a city like Ghaziabad.

I can’t wait for writing page after page of verses in this serenity..and this is just the beginning.