A Mad Tree Party

FYI- My article for the Pune Tree Fest 2012, the original can be found here: A Mad Tree Party

I haven’t read the newspaper, not in a long time. I haven’t written, not in a long time. But yesterday, when after so many days, I picked up the Times of India lying on my couch, I had no idea why this tree festival article caught my eye, and made me read that page longer than any other, ultimately ending up in this tangled representation of a multitude of experiences. I was actually surprised, I mean, I have never been much of a strong idealist for plant-life, I love greenery and blossoming nature just like the next person, then why the pause?

And then suddenly, out of nowhere, a small scene flashed out. A little girl, sneaking chili seeds out from the potato sabzi in her lunch, just like every other day, only this time, not throwing them into the bin, but secretly putting them into a small white plastic Shikakai pot hastily filled up with damp mud, in the few minutes that her mother dozed off. Who watered it every day from her water bottle, fearing someone would discover if the water in the jug seemed lesser. Who looked at the tiny pot every day, and prayed that it grew enough chilies so her mother wouldn’t have to buy from the grumpy old vegetable lady. Who was terrified when her parents finally discovered it, fearing the worst, and jumped in ecstatic joy when they allowed her to keep it and gave it a nice, cozy place of its own in the window! Who looked in wonder at her pot after a few weeks, that contained a miraculous transformation from few seedlings to a handsome, swaying chili plant, and decorated it with stickers and glitter and chart paper and wrote in proud letters – My Tree. Who took it to her school and showed it to everyone and celebrated the plant. Who still has the white pot, although the plant, too big to grow in it now, had to be shifted to the park.

My relationship with plants has just been so natural that I don’t at all remember making a conscious effort to do anything in that regard. For no reason, I just choose them. More moments started flashing out in random order - I remembered caressing the jasmine plant when I plucked a flower, giving a long speech in front of the neem tree that always greeted me every morning when I looked out the window, reading tree chapters in my textbook with extra interest. I remember listening awestruck to stories of my grandfather tending to his neat vegetable garden in our village house backyard, I remember climbing onto the slanted rooftop to wave huge bumble bees off the bean-vines (even though I felt dead scared of them), I remember pleading excitedly to my mother to take me to the huge farm of her aunt where they used to grow everything that could be grown and who didn’t buy a single food item from outside except salt, I remember my great-uncle teaching me the names and the origins of different varieties of spices that he’d planted in his kitchen garden.

And the most splendid experience of all - spending the last four years of my life in companion with a tree that had become an inseparable part of me – The Banyan Tree of the CoEP campus. It was my spot for contemplation, its thick stem a hiding place for dodging professors who would walk by it to the next lecture classroom, dozing off beneath its cool aura as we waited for the next practical, to go so far as to conduct an entire club meeting underneath the natural canopy it provided! Every day included at least one trip to the tree, even if it had to be the only reason to walk to that side of the campus (well, not so much considering how lethargic I can be, but yeah, lots of trips :P). 

The countless moments spent beneath its benevolent branches, blink smilingly up at me now, as I can’t help thinking, trees are companionship. Trees understand. Trees soothe. But trees also rebel. Because trees, are life. And that is why, trees are memories. :)

My Little House

O dusty door of maple wood,

How more will you withstand?
Along you swing, your rusty hinge,
With a soft touch of my hand.

O window, of a set of five
You were target number one,
My catapult was on a roll,
Its aim had just begun.

O crackedy mirror on the wall,
O synth beside of it,
D'you remember my vanity?
Those hours of musical bliss?

And what about you, Mr. Nook?
Adorned with cobby webs,
Did you forget, those little tears
In times of loneliness?

Today I drive a Jag to work,
But when I listen to that song,
I find it's you, my little house,
It's you, where I belong.

The Mathematician

Today, I happened to come across a post about JVK ('the legendary pune engineering graphics guy', as the author says :D) as I was blog-hopping, and the only person who came to my mind when I read that last tribute-rendering line 'miss those classes' was another legendary coaching class guy, N.M. Kulkarni.
You wouldn't find a cutter Puneite who doesn't know about NM, and you'd rarely find people who haven't attended his classes, most of them would probably tell you with a regretful face how they couldn't be under the wing of the great NM because they stayed in some far flung area and couldn't find means of transport. And you thought you'd never see a day when you'd see students falling over each other to attend classes :|

The guy taught Mathematics. 11th and 12th grade. He didn't teach it, he literally etched it onto people's minds. His trademark ishtyle of pronouncing zero as jheero, his unique quality of seamlessly transforming complex calculus formulae into self-made tunes, the way he banged the front door (if you could call it front, it was more of in the middle of the room :P) on the faces of guys who came running in late, the dreaded pointer that fell like lightning on potent mischief-makers, all the memories mesmerise! All the back-benchers had 2 traditional brand names: 'chaavat', and 'dambrat', the closest word in English would be naughty, I suppose. Which doesn't come anywhere close to conveying the relish with which he used to utter the word, at least 7 times in every batch. I was lucky enough to be in the cream of batches, M*, which I later on realized contained the most scheming of people, it goes according to the ancient law which says, the more intelligent you are, the more the urge to do more cunning mischief :P

Probably the only guy on earth whom God grants more than 24 hours in a day. What else would you be inclined to think when you see someone managing six 12th batches and two 11th batches every day (with extra timings for almost every batch on Sundays) round the year, each batch that went on for a minimum of 1.5 hours, apart from online night coaching classes to enthusiastic students across the states? And this was 2 years ago, i don't have any idea to what 2 digit number it must have increased to today! The guy eats, drinks, walks, talks, plays and sleeps maths. Each of his dialogues are straight from Incredibleland; 'chaaaaavat!!', 'Khanvilkar, distance formula sang!', 'ata apan thode sundry sums sodvuya...they're not very difficult, but they're the sums examiners will ask in exam, so we'll call them sundry, kay bolnar apan tyanna? sundry!!' (this was our introduction to sundry sums :P), 'thiiiiiiikay!' (where we all used to yell along with him, the most awesome style of ending a lecture I've ever seen till date), Each batch contained a minimum of 200 people, every one in the class had fixed places, 10 people cramped onto every bench meant for, well, 10 if you sit the way we used to sit, 6 or 7 if you want to sit in a way so that you'd be able to recognize your body organs after 90 minutes. And then when Miss Electricity used to ditch us during the hottest part of the day, Namya defended the situation only the way he could: 'Tumhi ikde shiknyasathi alela ahaat mulanno, ani shikshan he kathin paristhititach hote, mi tumhala ithe mast AC ani basnyasathi sofa lavun devu shakto, pan mag upayog kaay??' The way we used to shout 'Walve, walve!!' (the guy who used to teach physics in the opposite building), and the booing at the feeble attempts of a meagre 50 people trying to shout back 'NM' from there, and then his mock-serious line 'asa nav nahi ghyaycha konacha...tya walvencha ani apala kahi sambandh ahe ka!'; to the occasional straddler, that affectionate 'tula sangu ka tu kasa ahes? goonda pravrutticha..' :P, the twinkle in his eyes after demonstrating how to solve a difficult sum, and then, 'hya sumchya pudhe tick mark karun liha, YENARACH!', 'ha sum khup sopa ahe, pan mi sangto, ha sum tumhi chukavnarach!' (lol), and then, when he's too much in the mood, 'Aaj apla xxx kay chan distoy nahi..', and then looking at some girl in the corner..'kay mhanata yyy..khara aahe ki nahi..' and then the mischievous laughter, and the class goes all oooh and aaah; 'mi roj midnight la yeun problems lihito boardvar', once he comes into the class and says 'I have two pet dogs', and while everyone is staring, he continues 'their names are derivation and integration' (!!), then during Diwali, 'When the world will celebrate the festival of lights, we shall celebrate the festival of I.N.T.E.G.R.A.T.I.O.N', his imaginative punishments, his sudden outbursts of philosophy, the outrageous anger on certain other (but rare) occasions, cracking non-veg jokes without blinking an eye in front of a 200 strong teenager crowd, followed by 'Majhya ani tumchyamadhe shevti farakach kay ahe!' in that laughing tone; the hours of standing beneath the building chitchatting with friends, till a frustrated NM shouts out from atop to vacate immediately; I miss all of it, ALL OF IT.

It wasn't just a coaching class, it was a place for refreshment. He could be as strict as a teacher should be, and at the same time could effortlessly extract humour out of any statement. True, he's a bit crazy, but then, all geniuses are :D Nothing deterred him, or his faithful students, neither the incessant complaints from the surrounding societywallahs, nor the threatening looks from his wife when she came to visit during 5 minute breaks between consecutive batches, neither holidays, nor diseases, nothing. He was a man for his students. The huge ever-increasing, never-ending queues for admission under his wing year after year stand testimony. I can go on and on and on forever about this guy (anyone who's been taught by him will!), and he's probably the only reason why I would want to go back to my 12th. Any student who gets into junior college and has Maths as a subject should definitely attend his classes; in fact, volunteer for the subject just so you can attend his classes. He'll breathe Maths into you as effortlessly as, well, breathing. It's something I just can't endeavour to put into words, you have to be there to experience it, it's the stuff of legend, the days that'll make you go 'Gosh!' when you recollect them.
Thank you, N.M. Sir.

The Name Game

I recently noticed that I automatically associated almost all names of people to a particular nature. Like, Nikita meant plump, Ameya meant full of attitude, Tejas meant fair. I didn't know where this came from, but coming across a girl named Nikita who was waif-thin made me feel surprised for a bit. Now, I realize that these preconceived associations come from long back, from my schooldays. School being the first platform where you start socialising and making friends, staying 12 years with the same people had sort of given their name an identity, rather than the other way round. I was so used to Nikita being fat that even after breaking out of school, the name Nikita always meant plumpness, and anything otherwise initially felt strange, if not outright impossible, just like thinking of a subdued Ameya was like thinking of Sachin Tendulkar without a bat.
Fortunately for my current friends, not many have the same names that my school friends had. But those who are unlucky enough, shall continue to be the silent butt of jokes in my mind! :P

MY HANDWRITING ROXXX! :D

Rocks full on!! Can't expect anything sleeker, sexier and more mature. And if I xerox..err, photocopy it, I would sit drooling over the print till it got dissolved. It's amazing how photocopies make even the most disgusting of handwritings look quite a bit decent. Maybe, it's the ‘printed’ effect. Or maybe, the pre-conceived idea that printed work looks more dignified and professional than handwritten ones. Whatever. I just pray I don't eat up my notebook one day! (On second thoughts, it won't matter much :P)

As a child, my parents used to sign my calendar or homework (always complete, the author would like to mention that she was a very obedient child, quite unlike her adult version), or write my class teacher a sick note, or a wrong-dabba (meaning anything other than poli bhaji) note, I always used to wonder how they succeeded in conceiving such a carefree, casual, half-the-time-unreadable-to-me-but-miraculously-interpretatory-to-the-teachers (or maybe they just faked it!) handwriting. Now, I know.

Curiously, my own handwriting used to change every time. Every minute. Every line. At the top of the notebook, it used to be geometrically at the middle of the two lines provided, but touching neither. And there, it used to be cursive. (The author claims that she still has her Geography notebook of grade 6, with neat little notes on Zulu dances and Assamese stilt houses and the snowy Taiga and Tundra regions, as a souvenir to her volatile handwriting.) Then, quarter-way through, I used to get a sudden inspiration to go print (the all separate letters style). The sentences used to stay exactly between the two lines, but the letters could get free and stretch their limbs a bit; the legs of the ‘p’s and ‘q’s lengthened, the ‘g’s and ‘y’s got their curled tails stiff and straightened (how about a dog? :P), the dot of the ‘i’ got hollowed out, the ‘o’ went from clockwise conception to anti-clockwise, and some completely cursive letters like ‘f’ and ‘k’ and ‘r’ got image makeovers.

But, again, all this held on just for another 7 lines. My pen remained dissatisfied. The last few lines were a mixture of cursive and print. The most user-friendly handwriting till date. Efficient and time-saving. The haven of a lazy person :D Depending upon the word, the ‘s’ would sometimes be print, sometimes cursive, at other times, a cursive version of print. The ‘t’ would sometimes have its cross extended, sometimes it’s a**. And after all of this, ultimately, the next page of my notebook never used to resemble any other page in it! My mum used to say, I’d be caught one day under charges of forgery. My ready retort: I’d show them such mind-boggling on-the-spot samples of multiple handwritings that they’d pull their pen out! (Bad pun, I guess. Err…sorry. Pen. :P)

But all the same, my writing used to be elaborate and pearly and rotund and neat. Y’know. A different sort of neat. Meaning, it looked manipulated sometimes. Carefully planned out and scrutinized handwriting. Although it was not. And I hated that illusion.

Then, in an effort to make it seem more natural, there came a stage where I became too lazy to write. The writing became too short and stubby. The necks of long letters became so short that the ‘h’ started resembling ‘n’ and ‘d’ got mistaken for ‘a’. For the first time in history, I lost marks in my English examination for SPELLING MISTAKES!! I was so scandalized, I came home and cried. :|

I decided, that’s that. Time for some serious business. I needed to shut out all the namby-pamby wishy washy nonsense of neat, clean, scratch-free handwriting (Although the author does not expect anyone who knows her to believe, she wants to make known that she used to religiously tear out pages that contained as much as a single scratch with a slide-rule, and write them all over again. Forget assignments or projects, normal class-work notebooks got that sort of treatment :| ), and be natural. A few cuts won’t take your life. And neither can you afford to write every alphabet so flowery and grandiloquent every time. It would only be so much before it started deteriorating or I lost patience. And it was seriously coming in the way of my speed factor. So, I let it go. Let my inhibitions go. Break free. And I realized something wonderful.

That when you do something without worry, and unnecessary tension, you probably do it the best way you can do it. My scratches dramatically decreased! To almost one in ten pages! I stopped worrying about completing journal questions and assignment essays in draft form before making them fair. I inked them in directly. And fared out top every where. Around 9th grade, I realized that I wrote more comfortably with a ball-point pen. Fountain pens always left patches of ink round my nails. And my fingers looked permanently painted. And the Headmistress found it the perfect time to reveal (although reluctantly; she believed in water-based liquid ink and only water-based liquid ink) that we were allowed to give our Boards in non water-based liquid ink. So I switched to balls. Eeks, pens, I meant. Erm, never mind. :D

Professors always swore by my writing. Now, they went berserk! In fact, our Hindi miss, Miss Sonali, even went to the extent of tagging it prernadayak (inspirational). I was embarrassed. [Note: If you’ve actually got through till this point and such level of self-centered naïveté, then the author strongly recommends you to plough on.]

Experimentations led to the conclusion that black ink suited my writing more. Lent it quality, and a kind of sleekiness. Or maybe it was my mindset and there was nothing of the sort. But I’d learnt not to worry about that, just do what my mind says is right. I never looked back.

Nowadays, almost all my notes are in black, though I have one blue Parker refill as a keepsake. (more so, for emergency situations like exams!) My writing has a sort of casual messiness to it. Joint somewhere, crooked somewhere, completely random. The way it suits me best. People say, a person’s handwriting reflects his/her personality, among so many other things. People also say my handwriting is lovely. I don’t know what exactly to make of those two statements (since I don’t think I’m that lovely in person), but I feel that, every aspect of a person (may it be as small as his way of tying his shoelaces or as big as giving a presentation) that makes others stop and think (even for a second), is worth nurturing and developing. It might not make an inch worth of difference, but who knows? Maybe, tomorrow, the ill-informed author might just get preferred for a PR post in Siemens (at which point, she rushes forward to assure that she has no personal contacts or relatives or friends or friends' friends or grudges in relation to the said organization), just because the interviewer was a person who believed that handwriting reflects personality and who found her writing lovely. :)

Knock on wood.

Memories

Did I ever tell you?

My balcony and bedroom windows are magical. They serve as timeless time machines. Whenever I look through them (which is quite a lot always, considering that I’m inevitably jobless for 364 days of the non-leap year and oh no! the 365th day is not my birthday! It’s just a random day on which I feel like working :) ), I don’t see the beautiful lotus-encased temple that peaks right up to it. I don’t see the unique mischiefs the brilliant boys come up with in the garden. Sad, in a sense. It would’ve reminded me of my younger days; those chaos-triggering, window-smashing football and dodge-ball sessions, spectacle-splintering appa rappi with a tennis ball, those bashes, climbing trees, stealing tamarind, playing cards all night long....and I used to be the Queen of Challenge!( For those of you who're unaware (sod you!), it's a card game where people play their cards wrong-side up with a declaration and you can challenge their cards' worth upon your discretion. And the guy who loses all his cards first wins! ) I could stack six cards beneath my topmost one and pass it off as ONE card! And I would do it again and again and again! And no one's got wind of it till now. :D *sigh* I don’t see corduroys, I’m hard put noticing Mercs [yes, the ones which have Benz for a last name] making inexplicable appearances in our humble society; in fact, I once shooed a rare cormorant off our sill, mistaking it to be a common sparrow, and I still had the blessed notion till my bro next-room came bawling his head off that he was just trying to keep the creature still enough to take a pic, when yours truly, in all kindness, frightened it out of its feathers. So much for his bird dropping. Errr, watching. ;)

What I notice, instead, are only memories. An avalanche of them. Each one leads to another, and I have absolutely no idea as to where I might’ve landed within the next 15 minutes! I might be in my fifth grade, whispering frantically into tanny’s ears in english class, for all I know. :D

Fascinating how a window for looking out into the world inevitably turned into a window for looking inside myself. Countless are the times I recollect standing there, contemplating on lost times, on future prospects, on pre-examination blues, on impending assignments and intricate (the-ones-i-know-are-materialisable-only-in-the-wildest-of-my-dreams sort of) plans on how to deal with them; on friends, and friendship, and the rough crew that it tows on deck! With amazing delicacy. Those grills know the clutch of my nails when I'm angry; the continuous string of punches and my own inevitable retaliatory 'ow's when I'm vehement; the washing silence of solemnity when I'm trying to indulge in crude astronomy; the warmth of my tears when I'm totally down; the caress, the tenderness of a kiss when I'm oh-so-happy; the tragedy of supporting my weight when I'm exultant and completely over-excited and out of control. So much so, that I just can't help smiling fondly at the window when I pass by it. It feels more than a framework of metal. More..alive.

Countless are the conversations I’ve had with God, with nothing in between him and myself but the iron bars of my window. Pouring my heart out to that paramount helper and sympathizer, raving and raging, whining, apologizing, promising, wishing earnestly, asking for just-one-more-time opportunities, but ultimately, being immensely grateful that I am NOT an atheist. That I have such a being (whether or not for real, doesn’t matter) with whom I can behave any damn which way I want. It's not as much the existence, as the belief, and the faith, that fuels things.

And rain assists going down memory lane. Gives it concomitance. There’s no smell so sweet and rejuvenating as the one that rises from wet, raw mud! The essence of life when the soft pitter-patter of water soaks the parched earth. The mien of water gradually seeping through the loam, as it drinks it up thirstily, as the dried-up cracks fill up and coalesce; as the plants, fresh and green from the first rains, sway jubilantly, rebelliously. As the earth celebrates. As life begets life.

For some reason, or for no reason at all, it talks of freedom, and happiness, of a sudden spurt of unexpectant generosity; of contentment, emanating within and without, and a thrill of joy, of a whole new reason to live! And most inviting of all, memories. Just like soulful music. If your eyes and ears lead you down memory lane, your smell and touch lead you down more so, but with the realization, the cognizance, that you are fortunate enough to be passing through your memories, to be reliving them, not once, not twice, but as many times as you wish to!

Isn’t the ability God-given?!!

My mum begs to differ. She says that wallowing in the past isn’t worth it. Ruffling up old memories, spending hours of precious time ruminating on them, bursting your head open upon how life would’ve been if I’d done a particular thing in a particular different way, and stuff is goose-stuff. Only losers do it. Those who can’t, and don’t know how to move on, those who are miserably stuck in the quagmire of their past and do not wish to rise out of it. And naturally, she’s always on a lookout to tell me off whenever she catches me anywhere within a metre of the window, with a glazed look in my eyes and an out-of-the-context expression on my face. :l

Actually, I’ve sincerely tried putting myself in two minds about the point in question, in an attempt to do full justice to my mum’s point of view, but I’ve never quite even sustained the argument, let alone overcome my own self! I mean, however demoralizing they might be, what would a human be without his memories?? Every person has moments in life that he cherishes. Moments so purifyingly delightful and fulfilling that he just wants them be. Forever. No one has had sadness and failure at every point of life. Sure, NO ONE. Even the saddest, most depressed person in the world, (if you are close enough, and if you appear interested enough,) would tell you the most lovely moments of his life. Probably with that long-lost, hungry look in his eyes.

And that’s what makes memories worth it.

Wallowing in self-pity and losing confidence due to old remembrances doesn’t do. Deriving courage from them, from the very fact that you are strong enough to pass through the leanest phases of your life unscathed, and moving on, does. After all, memories are, inadvertently, a mark of your existence. Evidence of your very being. Your life. Your history.

They are cunningly double-edged though. Make sure that, if, ever, they blow you off your feet, into the past, it is only and only for strengthening your foothold in the present!

As for me, I still keep on discovering newer faces to reflection! [bad pun, I know!] And if anyone has any qualms, to them: Cogito ergo sum! :P

Oh, and actually, I just cannot keep from grinning broadly (whooping, to be more precise :D ) now that dad’s scrapped his grand plans of amplifying the drawing room by bringing down the wall separating it from the balcony, and full credits go to some fictitious (purely rumour-spread) blessed leakages that it might invoke in the plumbing!

I still have my window, all to myself !!! :) :) :)

P.S.: Forgive me, mum.

Uhmmm...

Well, this time round, I'm just gonna give my messed-up mind a holiday, and my puffed-up fingers some exercise!

What with mid-sems over[Comments on this particular part of the post shall be considered nothing short of moral intrusion :P], and what with the sports fest and Regatta coming up[in which I play a very negligible role], I've landed up doing so many wild sort of things [of which bathing at half-past in the night(that was unplanned) and pilfering food 13 times in a day(that was planned! :P) are the menial ones, to say the least!] that nothing's gonna be very suspiciously startling for me, at least for some days to come.

So, right, yesterday, scouting around for something to do, I happened, by pure absent-mindedness, to open my overflowing spare cupboard! By mutual consent, none of my folk dares to open it...on apprehension of an imminent threat of an avalanche of junk..which is precisely what happened! I won't go into further details of what I was subjected to[let your imagination run askew :D]; the only interesting thing that happened was I discovered one of my ol'write-ups. One corresponding to my 10th life. 3 months for the board exams to go, and me scribbling away frantically, as if THAT somehow would make the difference I desperately hoped to be made. Going through it made me relive all those times as vividly as if they had happened right yesterday! Made me pine for those irreplaceable schooldays...made me see them in a whole new light...plus, I unconsciously got round to introspecting my writing too!

But all that for the next post. Right now, mind goes into dream mode, as I type away one of my monologues with God during one of the most intriguing phases of my life....a bit childish...a bit immature...a bit insecure...a bit dramatic...somewhat inquisitive...somewhat archaic...oh what the heck! The only disclaimer I would like to make before commencing is that the random incidents convoked below have been long since come-to-terms-with and it doesn't in the least matter if this post gets published even in the TOI[I wish! ;) ] coz the ones to whom it'll really matter already know. So I ain't even gonna bother editing it. It's ME laid bare.

09/12/2004

12:10 am

"Well, looking through, I guess I've written my last[or is it the first ?] supposed-to-be-diary entry more than 1 month ago. And u bet! The two days couldn't have been any more drastically different! My mood might be worse, but mom's definitely in one of her philosophical-cry-blame-sarcastic-depressed myriad of moods. It started off with me refusing to share half of my pizza[Anti-Pasto] with Vinod, my silly small bro [I mean, you people dined royally at Pancard's, mom, and bought me parcels AND still, U expect me to sacrifice away half of my food to that gluttonous imp!!! :( ]; the usual fight, which turned into nasty battleground fight[with bits of spaghetti flying round the gallery!]; and finally into EAT-or-DIE fight; I won the food but lost my mom! [The li'l devil won her all over again, as he always does!]

Anyways, one of the greatest differences between last entry-day & today is -

ONE SEMESTER OF MY 10TH CAREER IS OVER!!

And can u believe it GOD! The one with which I hoped to re-start my legendary string of standing-first-in-class times, turned out to be one of the worst! I came out 14th in the prelims, in a class of 60, going down badly in the subject I revere above all. MATH. And u know god, the worst thing of all, and i KNOW it, it is entirely, entirely 1001% my own fault [although I'll never admit it to mom, or dad, or for that matter, to anyone, EXCEPT YOU]. I am the world's biggest duffer, saddest person for letting this happen to me; happen to me when I WAS in charge, in full control of the bull, and I let it bound away while still telling myself I can control it! How pathetically stupid, how blindingly foolish can I turn! I hate myself for this! :(

But god, I am not gonna lose that wonderful touch. Optimism. NEVER! I've lost count of the number of times I've leaned on U for support! Instead, this time again, I'm gonna shamelessly ask you to pull me out of this mess, somehow, leaving me ultimately "spotless"; bringing the entire episode of my miserable preliminaries to such a cathartic conclusion that it leaves a ZERO[not even 'negligible'] bad impression on my score-card and certificates. Plus, somehow, try to achieve this formidable task without letting mom n dad know that I've gone through such procedures. Please. PLEASE, both for my sake, and for theirs. It will break their hearts. But that brings me to an altogether another chapter-My Behaviour towards them. Inexcusable. There's no other word. I know I've been the worst daughter to them the last one month. In the excitement of getting together with some of my dearest friends, I took my parents utterly for granted! They would've gotten accustomed to "getting their hearts broken" I s'pose. I promise god, I'll try my best to make it up to them, be a daughter that they can be proud of! [And maybe, I'll try to take a bit more care of my bro too. MAYBE! :D]

Coming back to academics, one more favour GOD. Apart from my parents, there are 2 other people in my life, and it is tremendously important that they remain ignorant of my miserable predicament! You know who they are [No names here, too risky!]; and one of them has enormous probability of coming to know about it as he's my pracs-partner[not to mention my on-campus partner-in-crime! cheers for the title dude! ;) ], and a damn intuitive guy[rare, those! ], so I don't exactly need to elaborate, do I ?? Please, let my friends support me at this crucial juncture. These 2 people mean soo much to me... I hope the daunting stand of this turning-point phase doesn't end up overwhelming our good-hearted throw plays, thereby engineering a forever-gaping hole in our blossoming friendship. And please, make sure the final boards DON'T GET postponed! The extra intermediate 15 days would be unbearable torture!!

Please. please. pleeease. U seem to have become an alternate anu's wish list haven't you ?!![knock on wood!] But what else CAN I DO ??? I have got so much to say, but my thoughts are lightning! Before I can even begin to compose them, a new string bounces forward. But you are faster than lightning-Grasp them from my mind and PLEASE help me!!!

[Maybe I'll put in that rant i scribbled to you in desperation here!]

In short, I badly need YOU! Be with me! I can do without anyone else, but not without you God! Let the New Year bring joy with it; joy for me, a signal of my uphill trudge! YESSSS! And i assure you, I myself will be 99% instrumental in bringing it about.

Alright, handwriting gradually turning into noodles, so I s'pose I should stop writing...Dunno when I shall be writing again.....hoping the next musing would be during a more cheerful phase of life.

Yours shamelessly,

But Yours nevertheless (GOD) always,

Anu."

Dissection later.