Sigh. College is ending. Looking back a flood of emotions come forth. There were moments of joy, sadness, anxiety, fear, nausea, mirth, expectation, glee, procrastination, togetherness, loneliness, homesickness, collegesickness....

Tomorrow is the last day of the last vacation of these four years I will always remember as my coccoon. Why coccoon? Well, beacuse to me, its a near perfect analogy. I was someone before I came to this place. I spent time here, learning and changing. Now that I am leaving it behind, I will miss its protection. Warm and cosy memories of this place will linger for a long time till the tides of time will wash away those etchings from my mind. Alas! My coccoon has given way! I am drying my wings... and will fly away soon, never to return. You get the connection, si?

The vacations were hardly eventful. I spent the week I had on campus, whereas most of the people around had gone home. Things were not so bad, though, I had my roommate and her mother for company. We saw a few movies, ate out a couple of times, and did a teeny bit of shopping. I was trying to read some stuff as well, since one last interview is pending still. Not a planned vacation obviously :(

Today was spent chasing hospital staff for my pre-employment medical checkup for my company. Even there, nothing interesting happened! Every blood count, xray, and sonography was normal... I must have bored the doctors to death. Well at least I know my lungs are clear, my haemoglobin is great, my ...eww, forget it. Im trying to feel richer for the knowledge, it isnt happening.

So what do I do tomorrow that will turn this vacation around and make it the most swinging, rocking, hep and hip vacation I ever took? Zilch. Its going to be a quiet end to a quiet week. But I have a feeling I will remember these days...

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Have you read anything on ethical dilemmas? Rushworth M Kidder's book makes for a gripping read. You will soon find yourself in the book. It talks of ethical dilemmas of the worst kind : when both the choices you are facing turn out to "right" in some way, and not doing either of them is "wrong" in some way. Sadly, the choices are mutually exclusive. This happens when two of your core values clash. Pretty grim situation.

The title of this post was taken from an anonymous commenter on the last post. That comment of course cannot be seen on the weblog because it happens to be unethical to write anonymously, especially when one wants to be critical.[yeah yeah, the same dope we got about how not to be a coward when we were kids... I just happened to believe it :)].

I was wondering why I moderated out that comment. It was critical, yes, but was that the reason? I was wondering for a long time, and I came to the conclusion that I would have let the comment stay, if it had come with a name tag on it. I am sure I would have [no, this is not a subtle message to my dear anonymous friend]. I really wish the commenter had left a name, anyway. Thats because the content was really interesting. It was, co-incidentally, a paradox in itself(more on that in a moment), and it may have been amusing to analyse it. It alluded to events in my life sometime ago, I assumed. It accused me of doing something unethical (which by the way I have strong notions about) and it just might have been interesting to talk to the bloke about it. Simply because, the person talked of the ethics of "right" and "wrong" wherein his (wilfully perhaps) concept of "right" was incomplete.

Have I been suitably vague till now? Well, I'm obviously trying to avoid mentioning the exact incident :). Privacy is one reason, but a more compelling reason is that it is immaterial. The incident was, at its core, the proverbial ethical dilemma. It was a time when I had to make an extremely difficult choice. I had my reasons. I had been wronged. What I was about to do, was a drastic step. Therefore I had spent a good few months thinking about it. It was not an easy decision, but I took a the step. The result... total chaos. For a while. After the dust settled (is the analogy too dramatic? Perhaps)with each and every passing day I realised that I had done right. For a while, there was a guilt conscience that made life difficult. But then due to other unfortunate events (which I now see as extremely fortunate) I saw that I did not need to feel guilty.

The point of the matter, the core dilemma I talked, about essentially boiled down to this : Someone was being extermely mean to me. Over a long period of time. So much so that it is impossible to live normally. Normally being the scenario where you are at peace with yourself. You can ignore it for a while, because you think the other person is your friend. The shocker actually comes when you realise that they are not. So now you are left facing two choices...be a silent sufferer or do something about it, which essentially involves being mean to the other person. I, being brought up in an environment where there is stress on individualism and liberty, chose the latter. A different person may have done differently.

Anyway, coming back to the paradox of the comment : It focused on the mean behaviour on my part only. The anonymous person left out the events which had gone by before the event he was refering to. Perhaps its not his fault. Perhaps because he does not know them. Perhaps because I respected the dignity and privacy of the other individual involved by not publicising my "side"(this is sounding more and more like a war :P). Which by the way, the other individual did not. Maybe their ethics are different (or absent?). I do not know.

To my dear anonymous disgruntled commenter : Do come up for an enlightening discussion sometime. Maybe we can learn from each other. Like they say, its not a zero-sum game (Im using that expression more and more by the way :P). From what you said, you have drawn a conclusion from incomplete information. If it bothers you so much that you cast your identity aside(bad bad thing!), maybe I should put your anxiety to rest. And you can re-evaluate the situation :)

To general audience: Do go through the link I provided, if you have not read this book ever before. The link generously provides a preview of the book, in the form of the complete reproduction of Chapter One, which is enough to get you thinking.

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I like this college. Living in this veritable jungle has its advantages. We get to see the random crows-chasing-cat scene or grasshopper-in-my-room-help! situation quite often. Simply because, they are not so random in these parts. Even so, excuse me for being interested when i came across a bunch of ants eating a live (yes, LIVE!) butterfly. It was weak, granted, but nevertheless, alive. I thought of helping it, but a closer look brought the realisation that this would be futile. The creature was too feeble to survive now. The only "life" in it was the random flutter, understandably, of pain.

So out came my camera and here are the results, in the form of the steadfast strip again. The "flutter" one is my favourite...it seemed as if the wretched creature tried to shake the ants for a minute. In vain, it turned out, because the next minute it dropped dead. As if that flutter took the last bit of life force out of it...sigh.

I am not sure why, but I was sad for a while.

*8* replies

I was sitting at home, as usual on the computer. It was my mini-vacation away from college. The kind of vacation where you fly home for a couple of days, eat some good food for a bit, walk around the city for a bit and give a couple of B-school GDPIs while you are at it.

So anyway, here I am, looking to while away a boring evening when absolutely nothings happening...when suddenly... CRASH-BANG-BOOM. Out of the blue, there is thunder, lightening and blinding(yes, blinding!) rain, to say nothing of the grape-sized hail stones pelting down. Ah nature! How wonderful to see the winds nearly breaking the backs of trees ( I said "nearly"), when the sky had been cloudless a minute ago. Talk about flash storms.

The next day was out of this world. Clean, and green.
How lovely. Sigh, Its springtime anyway, and all the trees and flowers along central/south Delhi's avenues are in full bloom. People passing through Delhi at times like these could mistake it for a gentle, peaceful, enchanting garden spread over tens of kilometers.

Speaking of garden, out came my camera and I immediately ran outside for some pretty pictures. The ones shown here were taken in central delhi, in and around Nehru Park, Chanakyapuri. Alas, i did not have time, I would have gone to Lodhi Gardens otherwise. I had a train to catch. The pictures came out nicely though. I put some of them in a photobucket strip here. A memorable day in the end. Delhi does not see many days where one would go outside because of the weather, be it summer, winter or monsoon .

Edit: Prasoon's comment refers to the date stamp on the pics... wont happen again, prasoon. I have now worked out a watermark to be used henceforth :)

*2* replies

I just love taking the morning flight(6am) from Delhi (home) to Ahmedabad(college). Wonderful, uplifting experience(pun unintended). The airline being as busy as Jet is, has 6 or 7 flights around that time. So I have to get up at 3 am, leave home by 4 am, reach airport at 4.45am, to be able to make it to the check in counters by the time they start announcing "This is the last and final call for passengers travelling by....". Bah. Six counters open and still the queues exist to define phlegmatic.

I could mistake the area for a religious monument. The long queues, entry tickets, the security, my unease. Yes, I could make that mistake.

Lots of fun it is, standing outside the terminal 1B (domestic departure) at IGI airport, peering into the morning twilight for the courstesy coaches to arrive... They do arrive of course, just that the first ten are not for my flight. Dashing hopes to the ground, i call it.

The coach arrives. Whoo Hoo! As its ferrying me past the "oodles" of aircraft, something funny strikes me. Im passing by the Indian (formerly, Indian Airlines) row of aircraft...and they've got this big, cheerful message plastered across the body of the plane. Now, I'm no CR expert, but I do not think pasting "50 years of flying" in huge orange letters across the side of an anyway tattered looking plane is such a good idea. But then, who knows. Psychology is not my major.

I reach Ahmedabad right on time. Reach my room somehow and fall asleep.

*3* replies