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Song : All Izz Well | 3 Idiots |

https://youtu.be/5xxsRPSeGNs

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19 | Dear Diary (04/05/2011)

May 4, 2011

Wednesday,

11:55 p.m.

Dear Diary,

Whoever said that civil engineering and architecture were two much easier domains of engineering, I would respectfully request them all to consume a bowl of cow dung each.

Forget about architecture; civil engineering alone has forty-five subjects of its own. And then there are the tests, vivas, theses, projects, and the main exams of both programs combined, each carrying a word of death from Lord Yama himself. By the time I reach the solution to a question, my overly intelligent brain decides to forget what the initial question was all about, and by the time I am done with my project, I seem to experience an amnestic attack, trying to recollect what the concept behind the project was all about.

I swear, if ever the cooks in our hostel mess decide to write a cook book, I can bet that will be the last day when people will find Gordon Ramsey and Sanjeev Kapoor alive on the face of Earth. Not that my mother cooks anything great herself, but damn! Even her non-existent culinary skills put the cooking prowess of the cooks in our hostel mess to shame.

The washrooms in the university hostels seem less like washrooms and more like production sets from low-budget B-grade Bollywood horror films, each corner sporting the habitat of a different species of rodents and bugs. By now, I am myself confused about whether I walk into the sets of 'Man Vs. Wild' or into the sets of an Indian horror movie every morning. As it turns out, I walk into a terrific combination of both.

Moreover, I can guarantee you that if ever the City Municipal Administration decides to conduct a study on the amount of water supplied to our university, they will definitely declare ICE as the Sahara desert of South India. Can't blame either because there is just 'so much' water here.

I sometimes suspect that the cooks of our hostel mess usurp all the water supplied to our university and then pour it into the yellow plasma-like fluid served to us as Daal in the mess.

And then there is the Hitler of my life—--my grandfather. That old man thinks of himself as Chanakya and myself as his disciple, Chandragupta Maurya, from 320 BCE. He is hellbent on molding me into the perfect head of his perfect Dogra Group. I might as well not poop tomorrow, and I am sure the day after tomorrow he'll place a call the first thing in the morning to ask me just one question: "Why didn't you poop yesterday, you brat?! An ideal Dogra man poops everyday in the morning."

Nosy Ancient Codger!

My roommate, whose own laptop had broken down a few days ago, borrowed mine the day before yesterday to complete an important soil mechanics assignment of his; at least that's what he told me. It turns out that that really important assignment of his didn't revolve around soil mechanics. Rather, it revolved around hearing grown gentlemen grunting and groaning like wild dogs and respectable young ladies moaning and screaming like abandoned blue whales.

'How unladylike.'

No, not me; this is what my grandfather would have said.

It was not exactly the most insightful sight to witness, and on top of that, suddenly Professor Vyomitra's shouts felt so much more euphonious to my ears.

Nevertheless, I inserted two pieces of cotton swabs into both of my earholes and tried to fall asleep, only to find my roommate flashing all thirty-two of his 'extremely hygienic' teeth at me sheepishly this morning, with my malware-infected laptop in his hand.

Curbing down the homicidal urges in my mind, I smiled at him. He grinned back. And then I wondered how he would look with two of his incisors gone.

Handsome, perhaps?

Who cares anyway?

Without brushing my teeth, I quickly rushed to our local computer repair technician, Guna, short for Gundeshwar Trichipelli, a fourth-year fellow from the mechanical department. The way he passed those side-eyed smirks at me while checking the internet history of my laptop—as if I were the one watching scantily dressed people wildly banging each other in the middle of the night—made me want to bang his own watermelon-sized head on his study table.

But did I have a choice? No.

With the last few pieces of coins jingling in my pocket, I could have easily passed for a roadside beggar, if not the legitimate heir of the multi-billion-dollar Dogra Conglomerate. My oh-so-sorry derriere couldn't even afford a banana, let alone the charges of repairing my laptop at a computer repair shop. I always wondered the reasons behind my grandfather hiding the beautiful faces of me and my good-for-nothing siblings from the outside world and from the scrutiny of the media until I entered university. Only after I entered this place did I realize that, all along, he was paving a path of security for us. Thanks to him, no one really knew me here; no one gave two flying ducks about my undisclosed identity. And now, I have grown to like this fact. For once, I am not Mahadevan Dogra; I am just Mahadevan.

So, when I started my job hunt in the first semester itself, in order to spare the price of my hostel and mess fee and also my day-to-day expenditure, I got through the face-to-face interrogations with my supposed employers without much scrutiny. I work two part-time jobs after university now, first as a waiter and dishwasher for a community bakery and then as the tuition teacher to a bunch of four-foot-something twelve-year-old nutcases, all of whom dream about studying at the same mental asylum I wreck my overly-brilliant brain every day at.

And this makes me discover another mind-blowing fact about my personality: I HATE children.

After paying the mess and hostel fees this month, I only had air to pass out from the wallet inside my pants pocket. But getting my laptop repaired was a really important need of mine as well, for that godforsaken device contained the only three pictures of her that I had captured from my DSLR camera two years ago, the last time I saw her.

So, having no other alternative on hand, I was compelled to avail myself of the extremely 'costumer-friendly' services of Gundeshwar 'the-Watermelon-head' Trichipelli. Rumors say that half of that man's body fat is stored around his head and face, which I know is biologically not possible.

I always muse if little Miss Pigtails has grown taller, if her wavy black hair has grown longer, or if her facial features have gone through certain transformations in the course of the last two years. Does she still scratch her head like a lice-infested monkey in case she comes across a question whose solution she is unable to get through? And most importantly, does she still sit under that same Gulmohar tree—the one she used to sit under every afternoon two years ago?

I hope she does.

A lot of things have changed in me in the last two years. I am about to enter my third year of university. I have learned to bargain with the local street vendors. I have learned to value each and every penny that I earn. I have learned to shop for my clothes at the town flea market at reasonably cheap prices after growing out of the branded outfits I was once accustomed to. Most importantly, I have learned to adjust to my parents' blatant lack of interest in my life.

But one thing that still remains unchanged at the core of my heart is the fact that—I miss her.

And I want to see her.

Desperately.

I want to see her scrape her pencil and pen on her notebook like the genius monkey that she is. 

Just this afternoon, I called Karim to inquire about the Gulmohar tree growing in the grove behind the manor. Dear diary, I have a really gladdening piece of news to share with you. Karim said that my Gulmohar tree might experience its first blooming season exactly two years later since it has grown from a seed and not from cuttings.

Happy news.

Signing Off,

Dev. D

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