A Letter to all my friends at MBICEM

A few confessions as we bid adieu to our three years of togetherness...

Hello doston,

The urge to write a lot but having no words to start with- that’s the precise thing happening to me right now. It’s almost 3 AM and I am having a completely sleepless night. No, this time it has got nothing to do with any ‘work’ I am doing. I am done with all work. For three years, that’s solely what I have been doing and I think I have had enough of that. Right now, even the utterance of the word ‘work’ seems to irritate me to the core. So why this sleepless night? Well, with college life at the verge of approaching the doomsday, I think I might not be the only one facing this trouble right now.

27.08.2010: The first ever photo that I clicked at MBICEM

We had an amazing ‘Retro-themed’ farewell at college last week. On returning home as I opened my facebook account, I had an unread message from a junior:

“Antarik! I m waiting fo ur blog abt today.... hw u felt... plssss”

I knew I was going to right about it. Sooner or later. Non-completion of my final project film was what got me delayed. I kept telling everyone, the very fact that college is over has not sunk in yet! When it does, you can expect an array of blog entries from me!

The wish-versus-do list when you are ill

When

1. You are suffering from food poisoning, have been on bed rest for four days and are restricted to a diet of boiled rice and fruits
2. You get the entire 24 hours of the day for things that solely you want to do
3. You sleep for 12 of the 24 hours because that feels like the easiest thing to do
4. You want to go out, meet your best friend who is in town, but can’t because you are too weak to even move and your kidneys wouldn’t obey you if they decide to let go of the motion
5. You want people to call you up, may be meet you too, but you smile with the once a day WhatsApp message or text you receive from them, because you feel at least there are some people who have you in their thoughts at some times
6. You use your smartphone for the only smart job it does in the absence of a good network connection- setting the alarm
7. You want to see Bombay Talkies, a film you have heard so much about, attended discussions about, but can’t because you are too weak for that too
8. You want to have all the amazing food available in the world and kill that bug in the stomach which is restricting you from doing that
9. You have to produce a radio show, prepare a production book, make your film’s trailer and poster and submit it immediately for your final college project or be prepared for an extra year at college
10. You want to kill your laptop because the film that you are editing (your first one as a director) wouldn’t get exported out of Adobe Premier Pro since the last 24 hours due to technical reasons that are beyond your understanding
11. You want to show your edited film to someone who might actually have interest in it, but find no audience
12. You have a 200-mark exam coming up in two days for which you need to re-study 23 subjects that you have studied over the three whole years of college

Probably what you can do is

1. Switch on the TV for some entertainment, accidentally start watching the National Film Awards, switch the channel to Arnab’s Newshour Debate and ultimately let your young cousin snatch the remote from you to watch Doraemon, Ninja Hattori or some other stupid cartoon
2. Talk on the phone with some of your friends but alas, Airtel signals do not seem to be able to penetrate the walls of your residence except that one square metre area beside the TV in the drawing room
3. Browse through facebook and find it the most boring job to do and browse through facebook a little more
4. Start a conversation with that random friend who you have not bothered to talk in months because you had no time
5. Think how your last week of college is going to be and wonder if your health and work would allow you to enjoy that
6. Pray for your fast recovery and think what could compensate the time you have lost in completion of the tasks you have and how to get rid of the pile up of work in the short time left
7. Write a blog entry, think that it would while away some time, realize that what you are writing is sheer stupidity but still post it and expect people to read it and comment on it

Or probably, the best thing to do, when you are ill is to just let go off all work, all worries and rest as the king, come what may!

Damn this Code F2 Fever!

Truly, this is a fever. A serious fever. A fever without any possibility of complete cure. A fever that is probably not medically known but has deeply affected me. A fever which has changed the way I think. A fever that till a few days back, I was proud to have, and now I just want to run away from. This is the Code F2 Fever!

Photoshop is fun if you know how to use it. Else, simple editing like this one can take 40 minutes and give you a real fever!

I wake up late. I brush and get ready and feel like doing nothing. My stomach demands food and I forcibly have some. I sit in front of my laptop, switch on the internet, open facebook to check the notifications, keep refreshing various pages, close the internet thinking that I should be doing something more useful, stare around and find nothing, switch the internet back on, spend hours wishing for time to fly.

4 months with First Frame 2013…It’s a long period…

Two days back, for the first time in 4 months, I thought of changing my laptop’s wallpaper. 4 months… it’s a long period…

First Frame 2013- Core Team. Photo Courtesy: One of my good photographer friends at college

I am sitting here in front of my laptop and am staring stupidly at this blank word document. For the past 4 days, the only thing that I have done when I have switched on my laptop is opening facebook, checking my email, making innumerable Google searches for the same keywords and that is it. And this happened to kill the time that was left after I slept for 12 hours a day, met friends and spent hours chatting at the DLF Place Eat Food Lounge each day and waiting for some kind of update on Whatsapp. Suddenly there still is so much time left…

Confessions...eh?

The past few weeks have seen a new trend rising on facebook. Every college and school now has a ‘Confessions and Compliments’ page where the students of the particular institution anonymously spill their hearts out in public. Seeing the trend, I wanted to start one of these awesomely interesting pages for my college as well but thanks to all the work relating to the upcoming film festival- First Frame 2013, I didn’t want to over spill my plate. So the other day when some anoynmous college mate of mine made a similar page for our college, I was glad. And so was born the MBICEM Confession and Compliments page. Undoubtedly, the page became an overnight hit with every student taking a dig on all possible people in college.

That’s not the end of the story. And this is not the point of writing this post.

“Let me tell a story…”

This article was first published in Jhankaar 2012, the annual printed literature of MBICEM in February 2012. The reason for this being put up on the blog today? Well, today is Steve Jobs's birthday and a year ago on this day, the crazy achievement called Jhankaar 2012, had been successfully achieved by the inspiration of the late Apple co-founder.

On October 5th 2011 when Steve Jobs, one of the most iconic men in the field of technology, breathed last, I was busy preparing my own broadsheet as a part of my college assignment. Influenced by the gravity of the big news that took the world by storm, my team-mate inquired, “Shouldn’t we take Steve Jobs news as our lead story?” I did not take a second to turn down her suggestion. I responded, “Every other team would be doing the same thing with their newspapers, and so let’s not do it. It would set us apart”. What I didn’t know then was, two months later I would be looking for a chance to preach this icon’s ideas and his ‘Think Different’ thought-processes to an extent that all my talks would begin with something or the other from the life of ‘my’ icon.

The ferro printed copy of the Steve Jobs article page on Jhankaar 2012

When I gave a presentation in my class recently, I was dumbstruck at the fact that only few were aware of the wonderfully inspirational life of Steve Jobs. Adding woe to it was the fact that although we all are so familiar with some of the Apple products- the iPhone, iPod and iPad- we know almost nothing about the creation of these magical products; starting right from the full-form of the small italicized ‘i’!

Inside the President's House

When I returned from my college trip a few days back, my uncle and aunt had a surprise waiting for me- A visit to the interiors of the Rashtrapati Bhawan. I have seen pictures of a couple of friends of mine in the media who have visited the place and seeing their photos has always been a mark of envy. I had never imagined that a ‘tourist’ visit like this to the Rashtrapati Bhawan is allowed or even possible. I desperately looked forward to the D-day.

Rashtrapati Bhawan Visit: Forecourt Area (1)

When I met a few friends of mine a day before the big day and gave them this news, the reaction I got was expected: Aaj se tu mera dost nahi! Haha… I convinced them that we can make a plan, get the permission and visit the place anytime over the coming weeks, but they had the obvious feeling of envy.