Remember, Remember...the End of the Semester! ({c}) a friend of mine)

It has been a strange semester.

And when I use the word strange, I don't mean Micheal Jackson's lawn having a tricycle parked outside kind of strange or Dick Cheney shooting a hunting partner with a shotgun kind of strange or even millions of people turning out in the numbers with knives and swords to kill people over a cartoon kind of strange.

But you know what really makes me think a lot. It's that given the strangeness of my life at present, I am completely puzzled at my absolute indifference and apathy towards it (the strangeness). I think it comes with the territory you know, BMM and all. Even before I began this course, I was warned, that my life would never be the same again. And it wasnt.

The first year ended yesterday. As in, we had our last day of college, which would be followed by a week and a half of study leave for our exams. AsI look back over the last eight or nine months, I'm completely dumbstruck at the kind of "education" that I have recieved. Don't get me wrong, I have learnt fuckloads with this course in a very short span of time. I can't believe how fast this year flew. I think Im going to write abt the kind of stuff I was doing. I need a record of it to show to somebody years from now. They might not believe you know, that this was part of our education system.

So here we go. Random tidbits and Achievements of my Activity from FYBMM Wilson College 2005-06 (I've always wondered whether its tid or tit.)

• In the first month of college, turned into the most accidental prone person in class. Managed to get thrown out of a moving train at Kurla station, hurt my knee, reach college where I was run over by a cab and fell on the same knee, and inside college knock the same knee into a desk on my way out of class.

• During my Fundamentals of Mass Communications project presentation, I stripped down to shorts and a vest, painted my face with Poster colours in quick finger designs, grabbed a couple of tribal sticks that I picked up from Kalyan awhile ago, and I went on a duel with another classmate similarly dressed, with the music of Duel of the Fates playing in the background. We were supposed to be studying communications history, of tribes of Arunachal Pradesh. We might have missed the point a *tad* but then we did well in the project, tied in second place! Crowd loved it too.

• Performed in a real street play for another project of the same subject later, towards the end of the year. Did well there as well. I actually didn't know how tough it was going to have to be and I was surprised. I had done a few plays in school and all, but this was totally different. The best/worst thing was that we were judged not by the audience we pulled, but the number of people that stayed and watched the entire play. Not easy to do, let me tell you.

• During Effective Communications Class, we were supposed to do a presentation on anything we liked. I chose Star Wars. Hardly any surprised there. Star Wars is one of the reasons I'm in Wilson College. (A story for another day) So I was not under much stress from other projects at the time. With a little bit of Google Images combine with some Windows Movie Maker, I made my own scrolling yellow text at the beginning of my presentation complete with the theme song. It's the little things in life you know.

• Ran into a very well known personality in Wilson College, Professor Sam Skariah. This man usually hangs around the college gate, trying to catch people without their Identity cards. He got hold of me early into the first semester when they hadnt issued our Icards yet. I had no idea who he was and didn't like the kind of look in his eyes. So I asked him rather bluntly, "Who are you.." The reply? "I am Sam!" Tried hard not to laugh in his face for that one.

• I finally found out why Industrial Visits were so much fun. Well, the parts I remember right now were certainly enjoyable. I also learnt a thing or two about the opposite sex and what happens to them at aforementioned trips. To put it mildly, in one word, everything. It felt something like Level 1 towards AXN Late Night Wild On. And thanfully that's the level it stayed at. You know hwat I really thought though. It felt as a guy, like that episode of South Park with Paris Hilton where all the little girls at SouthPark go crazy. There were the usual ups and downs on this trip. It was a "trip"! Quite literally! We had a bus breakdown but even that was a lot of fun! I really got to know a lot of people on this visit. And to quote Bilbo Baggins, "I don’t know half of you half as well as I’d liked to; and I like half of you half as well as you deserve."

• Just recently, (two days ago) I got so friggin hammered, that on my way back home in the night, I bought a DVD off a salesman (aka lukkha pappu) at the Bandra train station for a hundred bucks. Not only did I *not* see which one it was, I didnt even bargain with him. So I enter the train, relatively less high as I was five minuted earlier, probably because of the crowds and all. And Im like.."What the fuck did you do just now Darius..." I open my bag and for five seconds Im just staring at the fuckign thing. There were not two, not three, but 5 movies on this Dvd! Which meant that at least two wouldnt work. But that did not bother me. What *did* bother me that the films were American Pie, American Pie 2, American Pie 3, some unknown Elizabeth Taylor movie and *sigh*...Herbie: Fully Loaded a Lindsay Lohan film. I had purchased a Linday Lohan Dvd. Whats worse is when I got home and checked it, ONLY that movie worked! @%&$%@#$%!!!! Whats *even* worse is that I tried to sell/hock it off the next day in class, and NO one bought it, (at TEN bucks) not even the girly women!

So yeah, thats been the highlights of my year. There is so much more I could add to this of course. The night I hypnotised a dog to fall asleep with my umbrella, or the time I went for a 3 am walk in the middle of Satara only to realise that I needed to shit and ran back to the lodge we were staying, or the grafitti around Wilson college that I found including some of the coolest vatage points in the place to view Marine Drive from. I might complain a lot about how this college has been lousy in terms of rules, regulations, canteen food etc. But at the end of the day, I find myself smiling in the fact that I've never really hd it all that bad here. Im also smiling because I realise at this point, that there are still two more years of this to go for me. Two more years of this mess known as "mass communication". Two more years of drunken debauchery and projects, and submissions and Harvard Business Review handouts and festivals and whatnot. Friends and classmates shall never be forgotten whatever happens to them. As much as this has been over used in previous posts, We ride together....we die together....Bad Boys for Life!

Bring it on! :)

-Darius