Arriving at the End

A 'Grand Viva' is supposed to span all 42 subjects taught in the past 4 years.
A panel of 4 or more Professors from one's Dept. is supposed to supervise this process of covert humiliation with a considerable amount of pleasure, trying to impress upon you every moment how you have wasted their (and your own of course) 4 long years by just being 'there'.

Our seniors had defined Grand Viva for us in exactly those terms. It is
'The Ultimate Ordeal' known to any final year Engineering student.

Expectedly, I handled the prospect of facing such an 'encounter' with the attitude that characterizes the 'Spirit of Denial'. (One cannot possibly attempt to do anything otherwise due to the sheer bulk of the task. Even the mention of it is pure intimidation)

"Duck at every fiery bouncer and pretend that it never was".

- And it worked.

All questions were negotiated with logically interpreted 'attempts' and as a result there were not invectives or assaults aimed at us but pleasantries which were exchanged while leaving the room.

With that college had come to an end for us. For me.

Four years, which at the start of the 1st semester had looked like a lifetime were now complete. 4 years which were spent in making friends and keeping friendships, meeting people and greeting lessons, clearing stances and fearing supplementaries were now over. Life will never be the same for any of us. Workplace has its own set of values and own pace of proceedings. The easygoing life of college which was only partially disturbed by the advent of the Semesters will forever be missed. Everyone now feels "time just flew". But in retrospect it glided in its own sweet pace, ferrying life, colliding with every little hindrance in the way, disturbed at every little curb where momentum of languor was broken to the need for change and instilling in its own ancient language of silence the lesson of evolution, if only to the observant.


I, characteristically, am not the sort of person who wears his heart on his sleeves. Emoting is not my forte. I believe somethings are just too private. Yet, I cannot help but wonder at how life with all its uncertainties unleashes itself once in a while and everything around you transforms. The people who you grow to be so familiar with and fond of disappear, the backdrop of events shift and again you are just a character, just a number or just a name suspended in the turbulent waters of uncertainty sculpting the face of future. Then again you start afresh, with new tools and zeal. To build a new family of familiars around you and lose yourself in handling present pressures while the contours of the past is slowly washed away into a bleak semblance of forgotten intimacies.

Life will be a prolonged lull for most of us now, before again the spark of vitality enthuses us to action. But then this fallow too is a necessary requisite, I feel. To sit down and ponder once in a while where life's heading is not such a fruitless exercise after all. It won't make philosophers out of us or change the course of our lives or anything. But if it serves the basic purpose of inspiring introspection and answering the 'Why-s' that have till date fashioned our choices it would be a brief session of enlightenment not many would be averse to.



p.s - With an indefinite period of joblessness staring starkly at me at this moment of time I am of the intention of populating my blogspace with more such random posts. I am also deliberating on a different blog for all the poems. A poem a day might just keep the vacuum away.