Something's Changed

This was a post I had written a long time ago... dated 10/4/08 10:34 PM

Just decided to publish it because of all the effort I had taken to write it...

All the people I refer to in it.... please don't take it personally, they were only observations from my side.

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It's day 3 of the inter-hostel cultural-technical competition Zephyr.

It all started with an innocent IM message from a friend asking if I had even attended a single Zephyr program.....

Rewind.....
2 years back, in my first year, our enthusiasm was obviously very high so we had attended almost everything that had come our way... including Zephyr. It had been fun watching the various competitions in the Auditorium such as Mr n Miss Zephyr and Fash P.

1 year back.... I and all of my friends had gone home due to an electricity problem.... hence missing the entire Zephyr.....

So back to the present.

The IM message really got me thinking. This semester, till now atleast had been somewhat... no very different from the previous ones.....

The last two years in college, I had been practically jobless, doing whatever came to my mind, enjoying, watching a lot of anime, series, movies, etc... Nights meant hour long walks with my friends, talking about random stuff, picking on one another, pulling each other's leg now and then and all sort of fun stuff..... We used to discuss a lot of stuff, knocking on each other's doors a lot of the times, inventing new and crazy lingo, play carrom...... Basically spend a lot of time together..... We also had most of our subjects in common, allowing us to attend classes together.

This semester, things started out a lot differently than expected. Since I was CS, and most... no almost all of my friends were EEE or EnI.... we hardly had any subjects in common, and our timetables hardly matched.

We still had DECO classes together.... however the subject was quite interesting and the continual and incessant chatter and random comments kept irritating me and did not allow me to concentrate.... since then I chose a different place to sit during class.....

Mostly, the times we met were only during meals, that too very rarely..... All our late night walks had become extinct... It was as if there was a wall between me and all of them....

But then I saw that half of it or maybe more.....was also my fault.... Since it was the CS subjects I was studying, it somehow seemed to make me more confident and sure of myself, and maybe even arrogant to a certain degree. After all, I had been waiting for these since four whole years.... I sympathised with the fate of the EEE/EnI students who had almost double the workload we had..... Atleast that's what I felt seeing that their course work was calculus filled, and taking into consideration that calculus is my weak point..... God alone knows how I got through the Physics and Electrical Sciences courses.....

One evening, one of my friends was gonna treat all of us. I was invited, but I told him that as I had some work, I would be slightly late..... As the work was computers related, and as fate would have it, I totally forgot about it,..... (knowing me, as I am, I can live without food or water for a few days, as long as I have a computer with me.........) and remembered only late at night..... I was surprised that not one of my 'so-called' friends had even tried calling me to find out if I was gonna come or not...... So much for friendship....... I do not know if I had wronged any of them in the past.... If so, I'm really very sorry.....

I really don't know what went wrong and where.... I had always been one who did not like having too many friends, but the few I had were and are true gems.....

Anyway, these experiences taught what I had heard but not believed from people more times than one..... that school is a controlled environment, but the rest of the world, even college is a place where you have to fend for yourself.... you are alone, and will have no help whatsoever...... What you make of yourself is in your own hands.......

Jeez... I seem to have drifted off the topic....

Yeah, so there was a DJ night organised...... some of my friends had attended the Mr n Miss Zephyr in the Auditorium, and unfortunately, I had not been able to make it due to my tight and busy schedule......

After having dinner alone...... I was sort of bored and exhausted... but just coz DJ nite was being organised..... my feet carried me there..... I was hoping to meet atleast someone whom I knew.... who I could sit around and chat with.... it had been a long and tiresome day...... But as fate would have it, no one could be found..... and I walked away disheartened.....

However... because of that, I walked around the campus for almost an hour, treading on familiar ground like I had several times in the past..... but now alone, instead of with friends to chat with..... thinking..... pondering...... about various random things...... I finally had some time alone to myself.... to go where my feet took me..... wandering......

But you know what..... at the DJ night, and mostly at all other 'audi' events, I have had this pricking sensation inside..... It always felt that by attending these kind of programmes, I was wasting my precious time... which could have been invested in doing something much better.... as if there was something higher to achieve, which I would miss if I wasted time attending events that sometimes were quite boring and did not interest me...... and honestly, music and performances were entertaining but they did not really add to me or my experience or knowledge in any way whatsoever.....

Either way.....

Something had definitely changed........