Week 2 - whoooosh!

Hell, the last week went by really fast... it flashed by in a flurry of group meetings and quizzes and assignments and unsolvable accounting problems.

I'm really beginning to love this place, the lifestyle here, the customs and the oddities and challenges. I feel I'm growing in many ways. Learning to fend for myself, having to decide my priorities, trying to stay afloat in a tidal wave of intense competition and mindblowing intelligence... Finding new depths to myself I didn't know existed, pushing myself beyond boundaries I had assumed could never be breached... I take up an assignment and think, "What the hell am I doing in this place? I can't do stuff like this!" and then, three hours later, "Whoa! Did I really do that myself? I rock!"

Of course, it helps that we have totally GODlevel professors, who confront us and challenge us and coax us and bully us into coming with up answers to our own questions, and throw up streams of thought and debate that we would otherwise never have considered. They aren't called teachers - they're 'instructors'. And we aren't students, we're 'participants' in the programme. All of which makes for a very unique and stimulating learning environment, worlds removed from the pedantic boredom and pointlessness of engineering. And classes can actually be a lot of fun, as this post of Oka's indicates...

The only major downside of life here is that one has to sacrifice sleep in the interests of passing the course. A very reasonable sacrifice to expect, of course. I slept a sum total of 8 hours over the nights of the 6th, 7th and 8th of this month. And didn't catch up on much in the weekend coz there's just so much happening on campus! Like last night's (this morning's!) dance party that I was at from 2 a.m. till 4 a.m... and the rain dance where we got totally drenched and threw ourselves about madly, glad to let loose all the pent up energy... and last weekends dorm party that lasted a whole five and a half hours, till 3:30 in the morning...

Such nights out are usually capped by a visit to Cafe TANSTAAFL (non-WIMWIans, guess the funda!) on the campus for a soothing cup of hot chai or a sandwich... nice food, but it totally pales in comparison to our mess.

Let me state this loud and clear - the mess here ROCKS. So much so that when we went out for dinner to a popular local restaurant, I found myself thinking, "So what? Our mess is just as good!" Here's a sample menu...

Menu for Sunday, July 10 2005

Breakfast:

Rava Dosa with Sambar

Boiled eggs

Omlette

Bread with Jam

Bread with butter

Cornflakes

Tea/Coffee/Milk

Fruit

Lunch:

Giloda Masala

Mushroom Paneer Masala

Dal Masoor

Curd

Dudi Ka Raita

Onion rings

Aloo salad

Roti

Fruit

High Tea:

Aloo vada

Tea/Coffee

Dinner:

Cabbage Dry

Dum Aloo

Curd

Onion raita

Rice

Dal Arhar

Veg salad

Moong salad

Roti

Ice cream

We sometimes have awesome naans and baturas, apart from jalebis, gulab jamun and a host of other sweets... and we're allowed as many helpings as we want! My hopes of losing a little weight by the end of the term have been dashed by my tendency to hog on all this good food...

And one of the best things about the mess is the music. Beautiful music, lots of old Hindi songs, a very pleasant accompaniment to dinner. In fact, there's music everywhere, at the Cafe, in the admin office, even in the bank!

Music has actually become quite an important part of my life here. I finally got myself a pair of speakers a few days back (woohoo!) and my comp's been playing practically nonstop since. And nice, peaceful music, not the overdose of Bunty aur Babli (grrrr) that the other dorms seem to be pumping out all day long.

There's just so much happening, so much to keep track of. In times like this - running to submit an assignment, tearing your hair out over an Economics problem, cursing a balance sheet that doesn't tally, wondering why a company doesn't just sack all its employees instead of discussing HR issues with them, frustrated that your Excel Sheet cell keeps showing #!REF - small pleasures take on added beauty. Sharing a joke with a complete stranger, trading a smile with a cute girl, raiding a well-stocked pantry at one in the morning, putting up a Juice on DBabble in a friend's name, giving people bumps for arbit reasons, eating icecream at night all alone in the vast expanse of Louis Kahn Plaza...

It feels like a whole new life.