The Goal

I found this poem while digging into my desk today afternoon. I had written this one during the 3rd trimester, which is arguably the toughest term that I've had till now. Albeit I don't remember the exact instance when I wrote this poem, the stress of the term is visible in the verses, though with some amount of exaggeration. The poem is about the pains taken to accomplish our goals and what lies thereafter. Maybe the inspiration came from leaving a cozy IT job and plying to enter the corporate jungle through a struggle in a b-school.

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** The Goal ****** R a m a n u j a m ***
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The wait is about to end
Once more I stare at the bend
The way ahead is new
Fresh tracks to take, I see thru the dew

Looking back at the road that's about to end
I ask myself, "Is this what I intend?"
Struggle, pain, and raw grit
Few things I used to reach the summit

Are they worth the sequel?
Yes, I'm achieving my goal
To put-on the new role
So, what?
Then, what?
A new struggle? A new bout?
Taking pain for more pain is my plight
I've been fighting only for more fight

The life that I've missed
The stress that I've kissed
Days that never led to nights
Deadlines that never evaded the tights

All for what?
My brain cells are getting clot
Standing in the verge of success
I wonder, Is a goal really the goal?
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************** R a m a n u j a m *****
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JAMmed

There are times when you feel happy even after loosing. I'm currently in one of those times after participating in the game of JAM conducted in our college.
I went to the prelims yesterday just to see what this game is all about. But the excitement exhibited by the first group of participants, and a small amount of persuasion from my friend Arun were too compelling for me to resist. So I ended on the other side of the table as one of the participants. My reserved character didn't permit me to start off straight away. But then, I gained enough ground in the latter half to qualify for the finals.
The final today was as exciting as the prelims yesterday. With each round having something different from the previous one, it was a laugh-a-minute episode. I did pretty decent except for being unable to open my mouth in the round where we had to praise one of our professors before speaking
Overall it was about enjoyment rather than winning or loosing. I came 4th in the event without any prizes. But I can vouch that I am in no way feeling bad. I spent couple of hours without thinking about the exam that's coming up on Monday. But it was thoroughly worth it.
Oh, I nearly missed it. The host of the show Ashwin deserves a special mention for the humorous way in which he conducted the whole show. Also, I am still not clear how Ajay managed to maintain the scores when someone or the other was gaining or loosing few points every second.

Ad Astra Per Aspera

With some time to kill after the exams, I went through few random blogs today. One of them was named "ad astra per aspera", which means, "to the stars by hard ways". This reminded me of my under-graduation college which had this Latin (?) phrase as its motto.

With the excitement of discovering another alumni of the prestigious college (it had the prestige of having me as a student), I went through the blog in search of a reference to the good old BIST. My excitement turned into a smirk when I found this line in the blog I read this phrase "ad astra per aspera" sometime back... don’t remember where... hmm, that's it for the "find your lost friend" expedition.
Thinking about it, I still am in contact with quite a few of my friends of those engineering college days. All thanks to the World Wide Web with special mention to the yahoo groups and the yahoo messenger.
BTW, though the motto of my undergrad college was "to the stars by hard ways", I learnt true hardship only in my post-graduation. Who knows, the bar of hardship might be raised when I enter the corporate jungle.

Thoughts on the Republic day

There were years when I used to sit in front of the television and watch the republic day parade just because I felt patriotic that way. But then, those are yesteryears. Today I couldn't even get myself off the bed to go and attend the flag hoisting in my college. Though it doesn't make much of a difference to anyone if I attend the ceremony or not, I feel as if I have not done something that I ought to have. Reading the news about the tribal people of the tsunami-hit Car Nicobar Island attending the republic day celebrations is adding salt to my wounds.

There are only few things that most of us do as citizens of our country. I seem to be missing even those. I haven't cast my vote for the last couple of years owing to staying away from my constituency. I also don't remember doing any social service in these years. Memories of the Diwali eve 2 years back, when, with a group of colleagues, I distributed sweets and crackers to the deprived children in an orphanage and elders in an old age home, are still ripe in my mind. Maybe that was a more patriotic act than standing in front of our national flag and saluting it. Hope someone is carrying on that tradition that we started in my former office, and hope I will do better in the coming years then what I have done till now.

Return on Investment

The exams are over, atleast for the time being. This time, for a change, I approached the exams without much tension. Over the years I have spent my after-exam times being dejected over a performance that didn't do justice to my efforts. This time I'm not feeling bad, either because I have not done too badly, or because I didn't put in much effort. Anyways, the ROI (Return on Investment) for my time spent on studies will surely be better than before!!!

The next 5 days look pretty cool with just 3 classes scheduled in them. Ofcourse I have couple of projects to complete, and there will be many PPTs (Pre Placement Talks) to attend. But still I will take some time off to bask in the happiness of completing couple of exams.

hmmmm. I guess I have bored you enough with this exam talk. Let me see what happens for the republic day few hours from now and post something more interesting.

My Heart Goes On

My heart's desire did get satisfied. No, this is not about any love story. This is about one of my exams getting postponed. That too the toughest of the 3 got postponed indefinitely. Now I am "supposed" to have more time to concentrate on the other 2 exams for tomorrow.

On the other side of exams, the lectures of one more of my subjects got over today. I have always hated these moments of truth where you bid adieu to someone or something. Whenever a course ends, I get a bad feeling that I could have done better justice to the subject. To add to that, I feel strange towards loosing contact with another person - the professor. Visiting faculties (VF) always give a departing speech which makes you get senti. I have met VFs who don't teach well, and who can't teach well. Even for these people I feel the same way. Afterall, they put in the effort to come here and teach us. Consider the fact that teaching is not the source of living for most of these VFs, and that the monetary reward of teaching would be peanuts for them. I do feel bad that I'm loosing contact with a person who tried to enlighten us with his/her knowledge...... though I'm not sure if I got any closer to being enlightened.

Rumour or heart's desire?

With the slightest noise of the rumour that one of the 3 exams has been postponed, I stopped the little bit of studying that I had started. Today went off with some good concentration in the e-commerce classes, playing table tennis, badminton, working on a group project, and redesigning this blog site (hope the new colours are better than the previous dull outlook)
Everything looked greener till I came back to the real world.....just this moment. If an exam was indeed postponed, then I should have got an official mail by now. Though my heart still beats for expecting the mail tomorrow, I guess the only logical thing to do now is to get back to studying. Even if one exam gets postponed, I would still have 2 more to be content with.
Wish me luck; it is really difficult to concentrate on studies in the last term of my academic life.

Exams and Cribbing.....the saga continues

Popular belief is that the students who waste their time throughout the term will slog before the exams and so, will not have much time then. As in so many cases, I seem to be an exception here too. Look at this, I practically had just one assignment between Jan 16 and today, and I haven't updated this blog between the aforesaid dates. Now, am writing this blog just as the exams approach. For more on my exam eve predicament check out Exam Eve
Talking about exams, 3 of them are scheduled for Tuesday. Yes ladies and gentlemen, you heard me right.... the number is 3/three. Well, I've graduated from cribbing about back-to-back exams on consecutive days, to cribbing about 3 exams on a single day. Now that's what I call a post-graduation ;)
Cribbing aside, the one good thing about studying in an autonomous college is that you can raise your concerns easily. So have I done about the exams. Hoping that atleast (!) one of the exams gets postponed.

Yehi hai right choice baby, utsAHA!!!

There has been a buzz in campus throughout the past couple of days. It's the marketing fair conducted by IIM Indore called utsAHA. More details about the fair can be had from http://iimi-utsaha.com

My friends are working hard to make utsAHA a success. Well, yours truly is not one of those hard working guys. After last year's experience in a research team of Utsaha, I decided to rest this year, and help if and only if needed. That iff statement was satisfied only for few minutes yesterday when I had to assist some guys. Otherwise it has been a cool and lazy Utsaha for me - just being a witness to the events happening around.

I have been dearly lacking utsaha (the literal meaning and not the fair) over the past month. I don't know what has made me so lazy. Maybe the fact that my academic career is going to end in about a month from now? Or maybe coz I am not participating in the lateral placement process which is the center of attraction these days? Or maybe I have found too many ways to waste time? I don't know the reason and actually, don't wish to find out. The immediate action is to have a shift of gears and start moving. Laziness is not something that I am generally associated with and I don't wish to have new associations like these

Dark Wednesday?

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****** Dark Wednesday? ****** R a m a n u j a m***
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Today started off with an exam that gave me the creep
Though, for this, I had sacrified yesterday's sleep
When I had analysed the options for my future
Somehow took this elective on financial options and future
Because of the exam's peculiar Nature
In the exam hall, I was left being a head scratcher

It was like moving from the frying pan into the fire
when the marketing class came so near
Just when I thought, for the day, this is the end of showbiz,
the marketing prof shocked me with a surprise quiz
In no mood, I still made a few guesses
Which were good only to be called close misses

By the time the next class started rolling
My brain had stopped functioning
Without much interest I made my physical presence
Though my mental condition was a deep trance

Frustu with all these, I decided to sleep early today
So that tomorrow will turn out to be a better day
I would have succeeded in my resolution
Had the badminton court not fallen into my line of vision

After few(!) hours of baddy
I got engaged in a friend's birthday party
Other friends were acting naughty
But the b'day chap was really sporty
With all happiness, I wished him Hearty

Now at 3:00am I am recollecting the day's events
And put them in paper without any dents
So that I can look back at this later
And feel happy about these moments that matter

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******************* R a m a n u j a m ************
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Je m'appelle Ramanujam

If you were a shrewd person, you would have noticed by now that this blog has different names of me in different places - the blog itself has the name "Ramanuj", the posts are signed "Jammy", one post says "Ram, ki jaana maen kaun", and the headers of the poems say "Ramanujam".

Ofcourse except Jammy, every other name is an integral part of Ramanujam. Jammy is what some of my friends in undergraduation used to call me because my name ends with "Jam" and the Dravid ad "Jam, Jam, Jammy" was pretty famous during that time.

My name has been dissected in so many ways that I've lost count. It seems my name is more than a mouthful for quite a few. I am called Ram/Rama in NorthIndia and abroad as the name is not superfluous in these places. But whenever I'm addressed by people from the South, its one of the many forms including Jam, Jammy, Ramjam and Anuj.

Well, who cares. I would respond to whichever form you might use to call me, and more than that, I really like my name :) Hope both mathematician Ramanujan and Acharyan Ramanujacharyar don't mind.

Ram, ki jaana maen kaun

I heard the punjabi song "Bulla, ki jaana maen kaun" recently and have since then become a fan of it. One of my friends explained to me that it has a very good meaning. Its about a person wondering who he is. The first line literally translates to "Bulla, who knows who I am?". Well, that ain't the problem of this poet alone. Few months back I wrote a poem trying to describe myself. After couple of stanzas, the poem took a different path and ended up stating the obvious...Ram, ki jaana maen kaun

Not many of my friends understood the underlying meaning of this poem. But then, I myself am not too sure of it:D

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** What Am I ****** R a m a n u j a m **
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Whenever someone asks for my introduction
I endup giving my qualification
Are my degrees my only identification?
Well, time to get away from the usual recitation
And get into some introspection

I love the trees, the flowers,
the rains and the plains
I like solving puzzles
and to have a few giggles

I like those who are humble
and detest those who mumble
I like the peace in silence
and the makeups after some distance

I like the excitement in sports
but not the allegations that go to courts
I like to eat food thats hot
But nonveg, its definitely not

Deciding that my introspection is enough
I asked ppl to opine on me, I know that's tough

To some I am humorous
To some I am too serious
Some say I am too silent
Some say I can't even keep a secret

I am the star,
I am the scar
I am Everyone's friend
But still in loneliness I trend

How I wish I could solve
the puzzles that from me do evolve

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*************** R a m a n u j a m ****
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Exam Eve

I wrote this poem on the eve of an exam. No prizes for guessing that I wasn't in the mood of reading on that day.
I have always wondered why we study subjects that we don't like. The idea seems to be of gaining a basic amount of knowledge in all fields. But then, do we really remember these not-so-liked subjects lateron? Beats me

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**Exam Eve *** R a m a n u j a m **
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Book in my hand
Thoughts in wonderland
in this state of quander
I begin to wonder
no time in life to play
is this the way?
constant goading by a knife
that people call the wonderful(?) life
no time to stand and...
to stand itself is a luxury I can't
Ah! the time is moving
exam hour is nearing
To hell with this stupid poem
gotto go back to the study mayhem

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******** R a m a n u j a m ******
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Here we go

Ha ha ha. Its so funny that I'm having my own blog site just few minutes after thinking that blogging is not for me. Then why am I starting? Well, I wanted to put a comment on a friend's blog and the silly software wouldn't allow me to do so unless I create my own blog:))

So here we go with my first blog which says that I am not a blogger;)
But who knows, as it has been throughout my life, I might adapt to one more new thing. Check out, this place might be flooded with lots of (no)things :D