Friday, November 30, 2007

CAT hangover.

Your best friend tells you horrible things about yourself. You realize that all those mean things may have been said in a rage but they're true and you had hoped that no one else had noticed.

Mr Douglas Adams' The Total Perspective Vortex shows its victim the entire unimaginable infinity of the universe with a very tiny marker that says "You Are Here" which points to a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot.

CAT is worse.

Even the most carefree, "Im just taking it for the heck of it", "I had no other plans for the 3rd Sunday of November so .." person who does not remember a single mensuration formula* entertains a secret hope that he has a chance. That he will get The Call. If one is really honest, The Calls.


Come Sunday. The lucky pen which helped pass that atrocious System Security paper is carefully put into the pencil box where it will lie unused. The pencils are examined for that HB mark and pointiness of the writing end. Tea/Coffee is gulped. Prayers are said. The examination centre is reached 1 hour before reporting time. Because you never know with traffic. So what if its 8 a.m. on a lazy Sunday morning? You never know. Seating arrangements are checked. And the wait begins. If you are lucky you have a chatty benchmate or someone around you has a chatty benchmate. Else all you will hear is the sound of old fans whirring. And tall people constantly trying to adjust to the fifth grader's bench.

You wait for the bell. Then you wait for the answer sheet. 15 minutes is spent in filling in your details in those little circles. And then resume waiting. The question paper is distibuted. Safe inside a plastic cover that you are not allowed to open unless they tell you to. You read the instructions. Some people try to squint through the first and last papers to get a glimpse of the questions inside, hoping, perhaps, to gain that crucial edge over others.

The invigilators calmly inform you, " You may open the question paper". You open the page to the section you decided to start with, as part of your strategy. whhaaaaaat? You turn the pages hoping to find a familiar type of question. Panic sets in. You dive in. Before you know it 40 minutes are up. Switch to the next section. They've got to be playing a prank! Lift up the chin n do the best you can. Whhooosh. It's time for the next section. Whooooaaa! 10 minutes left. You look at your answer sheet for a 'holistic view'. The shaded circles are like pathetic flotsam and jetsam in the vast ocean of non-coloured circles, mocking your effort, intelligence and foolish hopes. You bravely try to ensure that the ones you have filled in are like the one with the approving tick mark beside it in the sample answer sheet. Time's up.

My advice to CAT '08 takers: Prepare. Start now! Think out of the box. Colour inside the circles!

* I'm sure the people who did not learn Geometry formulae for CAT '07 are all smug!

Saturday, November 10, 2007

This is a Diwali story. Warning : it has a moral

I've been making rangolis for the last 6 years. Over the years, I thought I'd become pretty good at it. This illusion was fostered by neighbours' and family's compliments. [ I intentionally put neighbours first because they do not have an obligation to be kind and that makes their compliments a little more credible. No offense, mom and dad. I realize it must have taken a lot of effort to appear astounded and terribly interested when I first performed the feat of rhyming love with above.] I didnt think I was professional and never entered in any competition but I still thought I was..you know pretty good at it.

Come Diwali time at the Office and project managers are very busy in the very serious game of one-upmanship of decoration. There cant be too much crepe paper or too many gaudy lanterns. And then of cuorse..there has to be a ...rangoli.So, my PM is in my cubicle [my cubiclemates having fled to their hometowns] conferring with other leads. He's calling the other girls in my team and asking if they know how to make rangoli. He is shouting across the office to ask women. He doesn't even think to turn around and ask me.
Which is why I was compelled, the next day, to volunteer my services to the girl who was in charge of making the Rangoli. Just to stick it to my bosses. Mistake. She really knew what she was doing. She didnt even use chalk to make the outline! I am someone who uses a chalk and duster to make the design. For me, the duster is a very important part in making the design. She, on the other hand, just took the white powder and made the design. It was a beautiful design. Just like that. And then started discussing colour combinations. I usually choose the colour depending on what I have left over from the previous year factoring in the surface to be covered and quantity of colour left. She was talking about brightness and contrast! And then she started filling it in. Fast. I thought, "thats ok..even If I am slow.. mine will be even and ..better". The coloured sand fell obediantly from her fingers, smoothly filling up her part. I looked at my part. It looked more like a frickin landscape in yellow with hills, valleys and the odd crater. She very sweetly did not say anything. But the illusion was shattered. I smiled weakly and went back to work.

The next day, I debated whether to make one outside our home. I had been doing it for 6 years. My sister had been making it before that. Traditions are funny things. They sometimes make you do things you do not particularly want to. Thats not always a bad thing. I brought out the colours, chalk and my trusty duster.
Two hours of listening to Pearl Jam and Pink Floyd later, I was done.
My neighbours came in and complimented it. I smiled artificially. Then some more neigbours complimented. And I wondered why. I saw the rangoli again. I saw the lumps, splotches, the place where my headphones' wire had dipped into the rangoli and which I had tried to cover up. I saw the lack of symmetry, different shades of yellow in the opposite parts which I had hoped to pass off as shading but was actually the yellow colour getting over and being diluted with white. It was certainly not the best. Hardly even good. I wondered why they did it. Compliment it. I went around the building. There were maybe one or two other rangolis. That's it. And I think thats why they did it. To appreciate that someone had made one. To encourage someone to make another one next year. It didnt have to be amazing or colourful or perfect. It was enough that it was *there*.
[This is where I drive in the point if you skipped the previous paragraph] The next time you think "Oh, I could make a better movie than that" or "I can code more efficiently" or " I can do that with my eyes closed" or "I can writter better than that" or "I can sing better than Enrique" : What are you waiting for? Go ahead, do it. Because that other guy? He's actually doing it, making something.

P.S : Here's a pic of my Rangoli :




P.P.S: I *can* sing better than Enrique.