Being 26

I am 26 and a half. It is a really difficult age to be. I mean your wild years are behind you. Now all you can look forward to is maturity. All your friends are getting married or engaged. Your facebook timeline looks like a Wedding album and Engagement proclamation combined.

Everywhere you look, you will find people just waiting to get married. All your exes are getting married and driving into the sunset with their knight in shining armour.  You are working real hard because you want to be worthwhile. There’s no time to be wasted. You lose touch with your close friends with whom you thought you would always be in touch. You come to know about their marriages via status updates and photo updates. You can’t drink as much alcohol as you used to. Now it takes a whole day just to recover from the hangover. You start getting a tummy. All the girls you see are too young for you. All the girls your age are in a steady relationship. God forbid if you are single at the age of 26, you will find a single girl when hell freezes over.

These symptoms were not even the worse ones. The worst side effect of being a 26 year old guy in India is your family relatives asking you the dreaded question: “When are you getting married?” Why the hell is everyone all of a sudden interested in me getting married! Do I think I am ready? Let me tell you the answer to that one “NO!!” Every family function or get together you attend this topic raises its ugly head! I feel as if I should stick a note on my head saying “Not ready”. Everyone is curious if you are seeing someone. Even if you are not, there are a lot of nosey people who would try to dig out information about it. You really can’t run away from all this. How long can you say no to attending family functions?!

Ahh well.. what can one do? I guess as we go towards the later half of the 20s, this all is expected. But, why god why? I thought we had a deal. I wouldn’t age more than 25!! Whatever happened to that one??

Memoirs of an Engineer

I graduated in engineering way back in 2008. This is just a look back on those 4 years of, how do I put it delicately “suffering”. Well, I started attending an engineering college in 2004 (nearly 10 years ago, time does fly by!!) and for the next 4 years I went through all the ups and downs an engineer is supposed to go through especially if that engineer is doing his engineering from Mumbai University.

The fight is to get to the magical figure of 40. Everyone apart from the really bright, genious ones looked at 40 as a milestone. An engineer knows the true power of the number 40. It can make or break your semester depending which side of 40 you fall on. 40 for me was the begin all and end all of exams. During each and every paper of my engineering life, I counted my marks till I was sure I would somehow get to the magical number. After that, whatever I got was just a bonus for me! I was a reluctant engineer, just doing engineering because I couldn’t think of doing anything else and also, all my school friends were on their way to becoming one. So for me, getting 40 was all that mattered.

Another interesting aspect of doiing engineering from Mumbai University was the “Vivas”. That was always fun. Sample this: 3 guys sitting facing an unknown face in most cases.

Unknown face: What do you mean by blah blah?

Guy 1: (with an really intense look on his face) Sir, I have not read that chapter.

Guy 2: (with a look that says he is trying to remember) Blah blah I think sir is ahhh..uhhhh..mmmm..

The Unknown face looks at the 3^rd guy

Guy 3: I don’t know sir!

Unknown face: You guys have not prepared anything at all. Anyways what is the equation for a circle?

Guy 1: (draws a circle and trying to deduce the equation)

Guy 2: It’s x2/a2 + y2/b2 = r2

The unknown face looks impressed and turns to guy 3.

Guy 3: Sir, as guy 2 said!

I was nearly always guy 3 in the vivas. And it was always fun. The crowding of people who just came out after giving their vivas, asking them questions as the paparazzi would have asked them. “what questions did he ask you?” “which chapter is this shit from?” “is the external strict?” “what the fuck?!” etc etc. And God forbid, if the profs go for their lunch break before taking your viva. The choicest of words were then used to describe the situation! It was always fun these vivas!! The amounting tension. The what if question about what if the external tells us to go, study and come back to give the vivas. That was always dreaded.

Moving on to the practicals! Ahhhh…praticals! 2 hours wasted standing in some lab or other with faulty machinary to give you company. The most productive work of the viva happened in the last 10 mins where readings were smartly copied from the one group of geniouses who actually managed to get the reading somehow. Praticals were the time when people caught up with each other. Tales were exchanged. Gossip was circulated etc etc.

Then there were the assignents! I mean I still don’t understand the use of assignments in egineering. Same questions were given to the whole class on the pretext that the students will not copy from each other. Everyone used to wait till someone finished the assignment and then it was a mad scramble to get the photocopy (xerox in popular lingo) of that elusive solution set. People spent days trying to copy and decipher what the other person has written. That mad rush was really special!

I admit I could never bring myself to love engineering but there were these moments which made it nearly worth it. I got my first job just because I was an engineer and I could talk properly. I am ever grateful to my college for getting me a job at the height of the 2008 recession.  The friends I made, the hostel life, becoming an independent person, falling in and out of love, and many other things! It’s true I am not very proud of being an engineer but as I look back now, it was the best thing that could have happened to me at that point of time to me. It played a big role in making me what I am today! So thank you Engineering for teaching me so many valuable lessons.

P.S: The most important thing which engineering taught me was to procastinate till the very last moment and still get the work done at the very last moment!