Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Mean reversion

My previous two posts have been more like diary entries than anything else. Why did I get this urge to post these entries over the last few days? My feeling is that I needed to find an outlet to my 'misery' (only a comic misery mind you - exams don't really matter in the second year:-p).

Of course, other people are there in campus with whom I can share my experiences, but then during exam time, everyone is busy mugging away and there is a natural urge to cut to size something that is looming large over me. Writing provided a natural outlet for me. Once the exam fever has passed, I am back to wanting to write on things more abstract and not related to mundane day-to-day life. Still, I want to get back to writing on some things that I think about.

Once in a CRI (Careers, roles and identity is the actual expansion, though many people call it "Child Relief and I" :-)) Class, I professed a desire to be a writer of comic fiction a la my idol PG Wodehouse. Of course, any idea of comparison is blasphemous. But the thought that one could give happiness to others by providing them a world of fantasy and escape from the drudgery of life was an appealing one. Others soon asked me whether I really meant it as I often come across a person who is serious and incapable of cracking jokes.

My favourite means of expression is written and spoken english and my attempts at humour generally originate from the use of words in a rather literal sense. Still, people tend to label my attempts as Dry jokes or Poor jokes or, as one would put it concisely in Tamil, "Kadi" jokes. Well, I really can't help it. It makes me happy to keep cracking such jokes :-).

What is it about humour that is so appealing? Is it the escapism that it provides? Maybe yes. But fundamentally, it seems to stem from the need for humans to feel good about something. Also, there is nothing better than bringing smiles to people's faces and making jokes is one way of doing that. So what if my jokes are 'kadi' jokes?

English, by the way, is a language which seems to be ideally suited for comic twisting of ordinary words and situations. Of course, I don't know the nuances of most other languages to say whether they are better or not. Still, it can be very elegantly used to represent many comic ideas.

Anyway, enough on language. Here is a line from one of PGW's books - "Ring for Jeeves", if I am not mistaken, that goes like this...

" It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A.B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't."

Can it get better than this?
PG Wodehouse rocks!

Blogging off,
Ranga

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

God save me!

One end term exam till date and this is without doubt the worst I have ever done inside an exam hall. I mean, this is even worse than some of the utterly miserable performances I put up in drawing class in school (not that I am bad at drawing, by the way. I can draw sketches and cartoons as good as if not better than the next man :-))
...the saddest part is that I can't even say I have learnt something from the course. Still, there are four more exams and three more submissions to go in the next three days. Time to pull up my socks and start fighting again!

After all, I would not have come to this place if I had not fought tooth and nail for the things that mattered to me the most. Guess this is one more time that I have to go to the trenches...

I really wish I were more mathematically oriented though...

Blogging off in a very very sombre mood...

Ranga

PS: I have deliberately omitted to mention the name of the course, though more than 2/3rd of the WIMWIans would know what I am talking about...

Saturday, August 20, 2005

When will the term get over?

ugggggghhhhhh!

Life in the fourth term has been one never ending series of submissions. I remember reading somwhere that if one unravels the DNA o f one's body and lays it out end to end, it would be long enough to encircle the world thirty times or something. Well, if I started laying out all the waste paper I have churned out in the name of submissions, I am sure I can do the same thing as well!

Our seniors had warned us that 4th term is not as easy as it seems and that we may have to put in a lot of hard work. But we dismissed them thinking it was all bunkum... we were sadly mistaken.

Still, this term has provided some learning opportunities, for which I am grateful. What I am more grateful for, however is that the term is coming to an end in around 5 days and I will be seeing home sweet home again soon!

I pray to God to give me the strength to last out the last few days of this nightmare term...

Blogging off
Ranga