Thoughts from the toothbrush

For some strange reason, I don't feel like writing right up until that moment when I enter the auspices of the bathroom some time after midnight, intending to undertake the rather mundane act of brushing my teeth before hitting the sack after another tiresome day. And sadly, as Murphy would have it, on most of these occasions I'm already swaggering and dreary-eyed, loathing even the activity involved in rolling out my (rather thin) mattress, let alone sit up for another hour recording my thoughts on the vistas of life. But today being Valentine's Day and all that, I decided it was nothing less than my duty to pour out my views, etc. when I am in the mood to.

During today's instance of the perennial 'act' described above, I found floating in my mind thoughts so compelling that despite the fact that I need to be up quite early tomorrow (don't ask why), I'm still awake and keen on writing them down. But alas, by the time I found the bathroom door closing behind me and started wiping my feet dry, I found that these very thoughts had somehow fled my mind, as often occurs, leaving me desperately groping for some tiny detail of what they were about, in a disposition not too different from that in which you find yourself upon awakening from a particularly pleasant dream and finding that you can't, for all the blue barnacles in Arabia, remember any fact of whatsoever significance about the dream other than that it was particularly pleasant.

No big deal though- considering the fact that they made me quite happy, I believe those thoughts would have been mostly along the lines of what I have been talking to myself about frequently over the past few days. (Oh, and mind you, talking to yourself is by no means a definite indication of possessing a bee in your bonnet). The subject concerned in these monologues with myself happens to be the general goodness of the world around. I have noticed that these past few days, perhaps weeks, have been perhaps on the average the most pleasant ever for me.

I'm not able to put my finger on why this is so, but more often these days than ever before, I feel like going around with a smile, beaming at people I meet, generally feeling swell about stuff, and existence itself seems a tad more cheerful and fun than ever before. I don't know whether everyone goes through such a phase as they grow up, but these days I dread the very thought of wasting time, and my very definition of what passes as 'time well spent' has come to be refined by some kind of gradual paradigm shift over the past couple of months. Academics no longer occupy the top spot among my priorities, in fact I sometimes feel quite sorry that they once did. Active pursuit of what I find fun and interesting, be it the harmonica, artificial intelligence, or the continual efforts to understand the wirings of homo sapiens, seems quite more important than the grades some professor decides to assign me based on my knowledge of the synthesis and applications of arachnoboranes.

Of course, I am by no means implying that I don't care about grades or anything- when it comes to that, I want as much as any other ambitious chap in IIT Madras who has a life does, and perhaps a bit more :). Just that they are not all that important, and what I actually learn and do over here, most often outside of a classroom, is going to take me much farther than being a 10-pointer or anything ever could. (mind you, I am by no means implying that your humble narrator is, by any means, a 10-pointer)

I've been finding a lot of new interests lately, ranging from machine learning to sociology, and inexplicably, the very existence of so many interests along with the fact that I am actually working on all of them somewhat actively provides me a certain degree of what is best described as 'smugness'. And of course, I frequently find that I just don't have enough time to do all that I want to do. I'm trying to cut out as much wastage of time as I can, but when it comes to mid-sems and workshop homework (@#@$#$@!!@!@#!!!), not much seems to be in my hands. And I'm not doing too bad when you come to think of it- its been like a month since I played a computer game for any considerable amount of time, and I don't have a girlfriend to waste time on either. (lovebirds perched on park benches and coffee shops out there, spare my insolence).

Coming to Physics, I'm greatly looking forward to the NIUS programme this summer. I long for some active work in the king of the sciences, and am even currently working on a project "for fun", as my prof likes to call it, with a couple of friends.

Then there's also this wonderful feeling of constantly evolving ('growing up' would have been an understatement). Every once in a while I look back and find that I have changed so much from what I was even like two months ago, and for the most part, I find it to be for the better. Perhaps everyone finds themselves in situations like this once in a while, and everyone evolves, I don't know. I can tell you its an immensely gratifying feeling to acknowledge that you have actually done a few things right and have stood to learn from your past experiences, both pleasant and disastrous.

Finally, I'd like to mention what I believe to be the spark that ignited this spell of feel-goodness, that tipping point where bottled up emotions and treasured memories burst the banks of deprival, flooding the bleak landscape of the mind with the lukewarm waters of the wonderful sense of belonging and the essence of everlasting friendships. Oh, I could just go on and on about the joy of meeting old friends after such a long time- that one day with the alumni meeting at P.S. followed by what I will consider for many years to come as one of the  greatest evenings I have ever had, meeting so may of my friends at Vivekananda Vidyalaya, many of them after one whole year. And would you believe, the way we met again, you could never have guessed that some of us hadn't been in contact for a whole year, it was all as though we had just said goodbye the day before- such is the familiarity which I find with my friends from over there.

And yes, that evening just reinforced the strange reflection I had after a similar occasion an year ago- its worth losing touch with your friends for some time just to experience the immense pleasure obtained in getting back together.

P.S.: I've just picked up a copy of 'The Catcher in the Rye' by J.D.Salinger. After reading all those articles following his demise, I look forward to a wonderful time with the book.