A small town boy...

I've enjoyed my time in Mumbai till now, I really have. I might say I haven't at times, but now, looking back at it, yes I have.
It is really the first time I've been on my own. Starting afresh, no ties.

Free.
More than ever.

It has been hard, yes, and it still is, most of the times, remembering the comforts and the pleasures of home, and the people I've always known - my family, and my friends - the people I grew up with, and my hometown.

It's a wonderful place to live in, you know... Patiala. Indisputably magical.

Although I'm sure everyone has that to say for their hometown. But I've had this opinion confirmed by a lot of my friends who came from a whole lot of other places, to study in Thapar.
I have had a ton of batch-mates who miss Patiala more than they miss the places they grew up in.

This may be me being nostalgic, or home-sick...or whatever.
Veterans of living in hostels may scoff here. You're quite right to. But this is not me missing my home. This is me missing a city.
A greater home.
A place that is now a home for every generation of graduate that passes through Thapar every year.
However much they might hate it, or feel frustrated with it during their stay there.

When I was still in class 12, I had convinced myself that whatever happened, I would not attend engineering college at Thapar.
Because my father graduated from there.
How pathetically juvenile was that thought...
I would even go to some place less reputed, but I wouldn't stay for four years in Patiala, I could not!
It was unthinkable.
I needed to go to a fucking 'metro'!
I needed to see the world! There is so much more out there! I would get stuck in Patiala if I stayed there.

How passionately I hate that version of me now.
How pathetically...juvenile.



'A Metro'.
What an illusion.
Sure, I can go to a huge fucking mall whenever I want to, and shop!
When I want to go out with friends and go crazy, sure there are these supposedly 'hot' and amazing places we can go to, splurge on overpriced shit, hang out with a lot of fat-walleted and tiny-brained people. Where the topic of discussion is more often than not the latest iPad, or the new uber-expensive restaurant in *insert posh area reference here*.

But do you remember where we used to hang out?
The canal? That 'Khansama' truck outside of Columbia Asia?
I want a canal, man!
I want that serenity.

Whenever I go home, I make sure I spend at least one evening with friends at that unbelievably sacred place.
Ironically, it is where we once saw a bloated corpse floating along the way, and then panicked.
Ha! Where else?
It's weird I know, reminiscing about something like that, but every memory acquires a romantic feel to it, given time.

It had everything, man, it did, that city. It does.
Short of an airport.
I never had to think to myself, oh hey, I'll have to go to such and such place to buy that. Or to do that.
It has everything. It does.

I go back now, and I never want to leave.

It's been a while since I went into Thapar itself. A small town in its own right.
Remember the lawns?
There was a time, I think in the beginning of my second year, during the monsoon, when the chemistry lab gardens were flooded because of the rain.
Half a foot of water perhaps, engulfing the entire lawn.
A group of friends and I came up with a contest, with each of us putting in twenty rupees in a plastic bag, sealing it and then throwing it way into the lake that had become of the chemistry lab lawns.
Whoever got to the plastic bag first would win the 160 rupees in the plastic bag.
I got to be the guy who threw the plastic bag into the lawn, unwilling to jump into the lake myself.
I did it, and five guys wrestled through the water and mud to get to the plastic bag, shoving themselves into the water along the way, and in the end wrestling for the money. The winner found that I had secretly pocketed the cash before throwing it out, and a memorable controversy ensued.

...What am I even talking about?

Nostalgia is a drug.

“I felt a pang -- a strange and inexplicable pang that I had never felt before.

It was homesickness.

Now, even more than I had earlier when I'd first glimpsed it, I longed to be transported into that quiet little landscape, to walk up the path, to take a key from my pocket and open the cottage door, to sit down by the fireplace, to wrap my arms around myself, and to stay there forever and ever.”

― Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

Go back...

Kings of Convenience - The Weight of My Words (Four Tet Remix) by BallgameTracks

You're light headed.
What a day!
She looked at you!

You met your friends afterwards.

You went back in time.

...

You talked back to that professor today.

You bunked that class, even though you know you're short on attendance.

...

Today, you worked at something you don't really like.
You feel like you don't want to work like this anymore.
You need a break.

But she looked at you!

You met your friends after work, though.

It was like you went back in time.

...

You're light headed.

You'll be more light headed soon!
You're looking forward to a good evening; the decadence of youth.

...

Time.
Machine.

You're going to think about those halls.
It will be like going back in time.

...

The laughter!

It's infectious.
So...much...hope!

...

Go...back.
Any...possible -
way.

That one time.
Five o' clock?
That one place.
Everyone.

The noise!
So much...fucking noise.

The momentary awkwardness when the girl you asked out that one stupid time walks past.

Did she just look at you?

Wait, did you just go back in time?
Wait, what?

Oh...
That round was on you.
You love the people you're around right now.
If only you could go back in time.
...
Get excited about juvenile things.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
So...much....love!

Oh and you know what?

She looked at you!

...

Or...

Schrödinger's Relationship

Pursuant to my earlier requests, or think of them as 'directions for use', please allow for the uninterrupted playback of the song below, and I suggest you put in your earphones.
Also, in the beginning the song may seem not all that good, believe me it gets so much better, and it enhances this reading experience.



Oh and this article is not about physics. The next two paragraphs are simply necessary in order to explain the title of this post.


Schrödinger was a physicist in the early 20th century. He is most famously known for his thought experiment, popularly known as 'Schrödinger's Cat'.
While a full explanation of this experiment, and it's underlying mechanics would take a much longer and a much more boring and more uninteresting post (however so much you might find this one to be).

At its most trivial, although do read this carefully carefully, think of it simply as follows -
There is a cat. It is kept in an opaque, steel chamber. In that chamber, in a setup that insulates it from any interference from the cat, is a tiny amount of radioactive material - so tiny that in the course of an hour, there is equal probability of the radioactive substance releasing a single atom because of decay as there is of it not releasing it. This radioactivity, if present, is to be detected by a Geiger counter (essentially a device which detects nuclear radiation). On detecting radiation, the geiger counter is to initiate a mechanism that releases deadly hydrocyanic gas in the chamber, which would kill the cat.
Now at any given moment, without observation, the living status of the cat, is a smeared function. Smeared as in, it is a superposition of the cat's states of being either living or dead because of the probabilistic nature of the atom's decay inside the chamber. It is a simultaneously decreasing and increasing function of the probability of the cat's being alive or dead, respectively.
In pure layman's terms, theoretically, at any given moment, Schrödinger's cat is both alive and dead, at the same time.
Again, purely theoretically.

Of course, on observation, the cat's status of being either dead or alive can be determined.
This is simply one of the many seeming absurdities and parodoxes in quantum mechanics.

Moving on, as part of my increasingly absurd insights into human relationships, I propose 'Schrödinger's Relationship'.

When I was very young, there were husbands and wives, and there were other, single men and women who were friends.
It was a purely deterministic environment. You were either married, or you were friends.
I wasn't mature enough then perhaps, to know too much about love, its infinite traps and its own fallacies; or aware of attraction - physical, sexual or otherwise.
But alas, I did become aware eventually and bam! Four states - friends, love interests, girl/boy friends and spouses.
Later, as I became older and lost some of that little boy innocence, the interests category was infused with the first real probabilistic uncertainty - degrees of attraction. Of course, around this time, I was beginning to see the signs that friendships sometimes turned into attraction, which sometimes turned into girl/boy friend relationships, which had the potential to turn into marriage.

Lines were starting to get blurred everywhere. You get the idea.

This is all of course, quite general, and not really the subject of my post. The subject of my post is 'Schrödinger's Relationship'. This special little bugger is a real bitch.

Now, remember 'Schrödinger's Cat' -

There is a boy and a girl. They are kept in relative proximity, say they spend a period of time together, perhaps school, perhaps college, or work...perhaps chance brings them together. In that proximity, there are lots of stimuli - there are biological stimuli, psychological, spatial, visual, fuck even olfactory stimuli. There is an equal probability that these stimuli, in the course of these two individuals' interaction will cause them to engage in a blatantly obvious sexual relationship, and please do not misunderstand me, by sexual I do not mean the physical aspect of it, I use the term merely to distinguish it from the platonic alternative. And by blatantly obvious, I mean that everyone is aware of it's existence, including the participants. There is an equal probability of this happening, and that of it not happening.
But here in lies the rub.
This is still a probabilistic setup, and the relationship status of these two damned souls is smeared.
In pure layman's terms, theoretically, these two people are both just friends and dating at the same time.
Again, purely theoretically, the poor bastards.
Of course, on observation -

Wait...
This here is the real bitch of the matter.
Observation.

What if these two people, unaware, blissfully unaware, unobservant and innocent, carry on like this - smeared. Neither here, nor there.

In...limbo...oh.

Observation.
Here is where you have to make a choice. Here is where the beauty of a probabilistic function is forced into becoming a draconian deterministic choice. Either here, or there.
When one of the two decides to observe their relationship, casts an observant but critical look over it, it cannot exist in that glorious smeared state any more. It has to choose to either exist in one state or the other.

But to observe it or not to observe it, that, there, is the god-damned question.

To make it blatantly obvious, or not to. That, there, wins you the million dollars.

Thapar! Now that I'm out... Le premier poste

There are people from Thapar you never met, or seldom ever... never talked or very seldom talked to.
These people who you feel a weird camaraderie with...

Acquaintances that never really turned into friendships...

Buckethead - Sail on Soothsayer by XEn 

Sure those friendships were something else entirely, but that's stuff for another, different post. This one, this post is about the people who you kind of knew, but really didn't...

It's a strangely comforting feeling that there are people like you in the world, hopeless romantics, repressed artists, people you think you would've been great friends with, but just weren't...

In Thapar I say, because I have a feeling that Thapar is a sort of place which (in my time atleast), attracted these people (not all mind you, but many)...these people who were always, in the true sense of the word, brilliant...brilliant as fuck.
Not the academic IIT kind of brilliant, nor the social LSR kind of brilliant, a very generic brilliance...
A very well rounded brilliance, if you will...

You all can relate with this post, you from Thapar who're reading this, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
A very repressed brilliance perhaps...

So okay, half the people I know in Thapar could've gone to an IIT, had we slaved for a few more months... So of course there were people there who were painfully aware of this and spent the next four years of their lives trying to desperately compensate for this fact. They compensated for this in various ways (including dating people from IITs...)
I'm not talking about these sorry fucks.

I'm talking about the people who made peace with the fact that this was where they were going to spend the next four years of their lives and they spent these four years being awesome as hell.
And they made those four years awesome.
In very different ways.
A very varied brilliance infact...

A brilliance that made a narcissistic man like me feel mediocre at times...
Only at times though...
I jest!

I'm talking about that amazing guitar player, that guy with the amazing voice, the girl who, when she danced silenced entire auditoriums... the football player who still trolls football forums not giving a fuck about what anyone says, the guy who got into microsoft and still had ten times more fun in four years than most people around him...that poetess, that guy who started out as a compensating could-be-IITian, but met wonderful people who made sure that when he left, there was no place in the entire world he would rather have spent the last four years in...
X-men who made entire hostels laugh and talk!
A very unusual brilliance...

These people, most of them you never really got to know, or not as well as you would have liked to.

But you share with them something sacred. You share with them years of shared experience, you share with them tradition. At the heart of it, you share with them a badge of honour!

It's a good feeling...
It's a hopeful feeling.