Friends?

Love?

No!!

It's why we're students in the first place..! Studies!

I'm facing a horrible NEGTWIP attack right now (for those lost read this). Okay it kinda all started when yesterday I realized I was only 16 days away from exams and well, a million light-years away from my preparations. To top it all, I have a few pending reports and submissions and a big test due for next week. Also, not ignoring the fact that I'm involved in one of the most active extra-curricular clubs on campus, it well, lives up to its status, and keeps me active! The last time I slept peacefully for more than 5 hours at a stretch must've been like...oh wait, i don't remember!

Okay, now before you form this really messed-up-disorganized-sloth-like-lazy-bumpkin image of mine, let me tell you that I'm one of the most well-organised people among my friends. I usually have months planned in advance in my scheduler, and HENCE the above realization FREAKED ME OUT!!! (read: is freaking me out!)

Starting tomorrow, I have only 15 days left, and 6 subjects to prepare for my exams which are beautifully scheduled so as to not allow any prep time in between!

Even if I divide the 2 given quantities I still don't have enough time to allow myself a thorough revision. Ahh...another semester gone, another screwed-up GPA...another amusement over why I didn't achieve better grades when I clearly could and yet another resolution to do better next time..

Anyway, Its past midnight, and I reached my room 2o min ago from another ECA meeting, and another day full of fruitless attempts at studying! I feel dizzy from all the sleeplessness...Maybe I'll figure this out tom, maybe I'll see divine light in my dream guiding me through this evil world full of torturing electives and inhuman GPA systems into a land of peace and love and mango milkshakes..

Speaking of shakes, I recently tried this new drink called "dragon-fruit ice-blended"...it's amazing!! and apparently real good for your eyes...do check it out if you get a chance! :) Meanwhile, I'll get back to sulking :\

And I did, a week of casual stalking and I knew quite a lot about him..haha..Okay now, I'm not the only freak who does that okay? Remember the last time you checked out people on the internet, it is a convenient means, at our disposal so why not use it if it helps ;) Anyway, I realized he was from a different country, a different background, a totally different mindset but being friends doesn't really take all that into account does it? I befriended him.

And as fate had it, suddenly those coincidental-bumping-into-each-other meetings rose up in number and now, it's a slightly different story!

This semester has been such a new journey for me, it revealed to me so much about my own self, and so much about life in general.

Ever tried talking to a stranger for no reason?
Try it sometime!
Yes, there'll be awkward moments, yes, you might even be a subject of ridicule for that person after you leave but you never know, your next closest friend might just be that random girl you saw at the cafe the other day and though you were both without company, you just felt too "awkward" to make a move.


Sometimes, it helps if you "don't think" before doing something your heart asks you to do, just go for it, take a chance! talk to that stranger today! :)

What is so magical about the rain? Why do you feel like sitting and staring at it for hours? Why do all life reflections strike us when it rains? Why do raindrops sound so comforting?

Seated on the steps of my school, gazing at the rain, my mind drifts back in time...I see everything, times I won, times I lost...I see all my dreams. Dimensions change and I escape this moment and all the thoughts, worries accompanying it. I look at life as a whole, realizing something at once-life sure is exciting...! It's the best journey one can ever be a part of. Suddenly I'm filled with the urge to know what future holds, where I'm meant to be...

Quite lately I've started practising total surrender. Well, at least to every possible extent. I believe in the divine plan and I know that my fate has been written. I know that whatever happens, happens for the best. So if I lose I know I was meant to lose and something good is certainly associated with it. The best part--sooner or later, my belief in this theory is reinforced.

Life seems so vulnerable sometimes, like when you're aware of what you've lost, something that you'd thought was here to stay...like this rain...

Okay people. Another incident. Another major life-lesson.

But first, define "cool" for me?

Those of you who watch the "big-bang theory", might as well tell me that cool is something Sheldon, Leonard, Raj and Howard are sooo not. Point duly noted.

Yesterday was my first day back at the university after a 4-month long hiatus. It was an easy ride till Singapore. I had a batch-mate and a senior to accompany me, and they were both nice! Remember I told you guys about the major struggle I had to undertake in order to find myself an off-campus accommodation? Well, that's not totally true, I mean, heck! it's the tech-age! I had to write a few mails, click a few buttons and bang! I had a room booked for myself at a youth-hostel two stops away from my uni. Easy.

What was difficult was what hit me when I reached the airport! Damn! I was all on my own. Usually it's something I enjoy. Really. While some people would kill for company, I've spent a major part of my life alone at home and I'm pretty good at keeping myself engaged. So yeah, managing things on my own is never an issue for me, but still, all through my previous semesters, I was spoilt to the T by my now-no-longer-in-existence friends. So, my arrival at the Singapore airport with me having nil expectations of coming across a single face awaiting my arrival, it was a major heads-up on what I was supposed to get used to.

Though a lot happened between my leaving the airport in a cab with the senior, and my arrival at the youth hostel, I'll skip that lot. What matters lies ahead. So at 10 am in the morning, I find myself at the general office of yo:HA (short for "your habitat"), the youth hostel I had booked myself a triple-sharing room in. Another 1.5 hours and I'm looking for my room on the 8th floor of the same block. I open the door. Lo! and behold..! The place was not even close to the pictures they'd put up on the internet. There was a living room, 2 bedrooms (3 girls in each), an OTS and attached bath. Squeeze everything to half the size you're imagining right now and that's yo:HA for you! There was only one other girl when I moved in, she belonged to the other bedroom, so she was a "housemate", there wasn't a word, no friendly hi! nothing! But, nothing felt awkward. You know when everything starts happening the wrong way, things actually seem like making sense. So something good happening thereafter takes you by surprise. And that's what was about to happen.

I entered my mouse-hole sized room to find a bunk bed and a separate single bed along with 2 tables and 3 cupboards. There was already some luggage there, and adding my own to that, it took up the whole space. Brilliant. My own little pigpen!

Okay so settling, changing, settling, and heading for college. What did I have in mind...? Simple! Go there, pay the 4-month overdue phone bill, withraw cash from the atm, attend the internship fair and collect all of my luggage from various places and bring it back to yo:HA. Task 1,2,3 check! Now I was at the internship fair, lost in the crowd, looking for one friendly face that may have a "hey-sure-i'll-help-you-with-the-luggage" look about him. Mission impossible.

So okay, everyone I used to be so close to, now felt worse than strangers. Sad. Yeah. I gave up. Heading for the exit, trying to zeal myself upto believing that I could manage transfering the luggage on my own (who was i kidding?), i heard someone..."hey priyanka!" I knew that voice...Hmm...I'd say this was the 3rd or the 4th time perhaps we'd met at a public occasion and exchanged these hi's. He always seemed like a nice genuine fellow, but no, not cool. He was the exact replica of Sheldon on the big-bang theory. So I never really took the conversation any further. But this time, I was desperate, it didn't make much difference either so I took a shot, "hey! if you're free, could help me out with my luggage?"

The job at hand was tedious, there was a suitcase, a handbag, a guitar, to be collected from one room, carried all the way to another place, from where i had to collect two large cartons, each weighing a ton, and finally puttin it all in a cab and to my place off campus, straight to the 8th floor and into my appartment. But an hour or so later, it was all done and the guy was drenched in sweat. I duly thanked him and treated him with dinner later.

So, what was the lesson?

Never go for looks. What's the point in being all cool and ultra-popular when you can't even help out someone in need? It's what inside that counts. Don't ever undermine or snub someone just because he's not cool. He may turn out to be your only saviour sometime! ;)

Time...a great healer, a great teacher, a great friend...well, only if you manage to keep up with it. Now, I'm not gonna preach about how time fades away in a jiffy and you're left behind clutching the remains of what you've lost. I just wanna share what I felt this morning. It was a moment's work. I was on my terrace. It had been raining a lot for the past few days, and there was something in the air, something inspiring, something that puts a stop to your chain of worries and forces you to think, to reason out your whole life and in those few moments of bliss, everything seems like a part of a great plan, everything seems okay.

Lately there has been a lot on my mind. With only 5 days left for me to resume college, I've been trying so much to lay my hands on the best possible off-campus accommodation deal, for the past fortnight. I have no idea when I shall be alloted a room inside the campus, maybe a month, maybe two...maybe never. It's scary. Being on your own, away from home, so many expectations, your own standards to meet. You know, in the course of life, you're often made to face the greatest of your fears. Mine is 'uncertainty'. I hate not knowing what's gonna happen. Strangely, I also love the unpredictability of life and yet thats the thing I always run away from. I mean, I do realize there's no fun in reading a novel or watching a movie if you already know the end, and more often than not, ignorance is bliss! Still, we all plan, think about the future, and work towards building it in a sort of way that we want it to be. We want to know what the future holds but also want to be the ones to create it. We want it all to be pre-written by fate and yet we want to be in control of things. Maybe it's just human nature and I'm no exception.

In short, I was going crazy over the way things are and that brings me back to that special moment on the terrace. So there I stood, surrounded by that breathtaking beauty of nature, wondering where life was gonna take me, five years from now. Just then, I heard someone crying...crying hard like its the end of the world. I tried ignoring the noise and even considered moving in-doors, but curiosity got the better of me and I looked over the railing. There, I saw the source of all that wailing--a little school girl, pulling the edge of her mother's kurti and producing gallons of tears every second. Her mother looked helpless, bargaining with a vegetable seller and trying to soothe her daughter at the same time--a modern day multi-tasking mom, impressive. I shifted my gaze back to the little girl and that's when I saw it! The resemblance! She was me! I mean, she looked just like me-twelve years back from now...It was spooky!

So no doubt I had a flashback of my own past, my school days, everything reeled across my mind, everything, all the great times I had with friends, all the times I'd gotten into trouble, all the times I'd cried, just like this little girl, cried as if the world was gonna end, but each time, I realized, the world had managed to keep itself together.

There was no difference between me and that girl, I realized, we had different reasons and different ways of expressing it, but we were both complaining, complaining about our lives, something that we weren't happy about--not realizing that sooner or later, everything will work out. Time will go on and before I know it I shall be looking back and laughing at myself for ever having bothered, maybe regretting that I could've made those moments really special by spending quality time with my parents, having a hearty chat with a friend, or even doing something constructive for my own self, instead of just standing there and worrying so much.

Was it just me or had someone pressed the mute button to this world? Everything was so silent. I looked down again. The girl had stopped crying. Maybe it was time that I should too.

Smart people have come up with theories like the big-bang to explain how the universe was created, the oparin-haldane concept to explain the origin of life, but does anybody understand why a certain female leopard after having caught and killed a deer, continues to look after its new born, instead of eating it? Does anyone know why there are so many people, so many races, and yet, a whole new story to go with each face? How our paths cross, how people just enter and leave our lives? How does everything always fall into place in the end...no matter how full of hardships your life is, everything begins to make sense in your last few minutes on this earth. Who keeps a track of each of our good or bad deeds? Who makes sure that sooner or later, justice prevails? Is there anything like destiny, or is man a creator of his own fate? What is it that all the religions of the world are pointing at, but no man alive is able to catch that hint?

So many questions... The quest is on. These thoughts often visit our minds in those fleeting moments when we're at one with nature. Otherwise who has the time? We're too busy loading our pockets with money and gains in every way possible. It maybe beyond our capacity to know the mystery of life and death and the purpose of our existence, but being the sanest of all creatures, it should be our duty to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of life, and you don't have to go to a charming hill-resort for that...

Beauty exists so much in a country landscape,

as it does in the smile of an 80-year old,

or in the touch of a new born.

I'm sure the points were dully noted :) Have fun using them to your own advantage.