Two thirty in the afternoon.

Lunch at the mess done, maybe a couple of games of TT to shake off the lingering sleepiness.

The long walk to the Insti, all the way from the hostel. Yeah, yeah, yeah... it isn't a long walk by any stretch of the imagination, but to a Gokhaleite, and that too a Gokhaleite in the afternoon, moving your right leg in front of your left is practically a trek up Mt. Everest, so there.

Or left in front of right. Either ways.

The climb up the flight of stairs that leads you to the Seminar Room. The mad rush for seats at the back. The curtains drawn, the fans switched on, and the AC kicks in.

And some poor misguided soul walks in to talk about

Y = C + I + G + X - M

Or something equally ghastly. The particulars matter little.

And the lecturer drones on and on and on and on and on.

And on.

Amaron battery and all.

You try half hearted games of Cross and Naughts. You try kicking the guy sitting in front of you. You whistle aimlessly. You sing, sotto voce. You grin, scratch your ear, tightly screw up your eyes, drum the armrest of your chair, fidget in your seat, yawn, burp and wiggle your toes. You try and think of what you plan to do on the weekend. You imagine yourself riding a Hayabusa with Pamela sitting behind you. She of the Anderson fame. Preferably with nothing on. You make clicking noises with your tongue. And then you finally look at your watch.




Something like that, yeah.

Despondency all round.

And then you straighten up, sit upright, and look around with purposeful look in eye. Spot Ruchi and her bottle of water.

Whisper out to her.

Get the bottle.

Stand up, stretch.

Slide your way past everybody, traipse down the stairs.

Out of the door, and out of the building.

Out onto the lawns. One cup of tea, heaven in a chipped glass at three rupees a pop.

The droning of the bees and the humming of the birds.

The gentle lull and the heavy eyelids.

The slow slide into the prone position.

The curling up and the blissful sigh.

The good night.

Umm.
Heh heh.
Reichenbach Falls and all that. Maaf kar dena, Doyle Sa'ab.
The scourge of all that is sane and normal at Gokhale is back, Ladies and Ledas.
And if you be complaining, you plis to be middle phingering off.
Yeah maan.
Damn, but it feels good to be back.
I'm taking guard, peoples. The second inning's under way.
Gokhale lives.



P.S. With special thanks to S.M. for more than a couple of well aimed kicks at my butt.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

This is going to be the last one for the foreseeable future. If there's one thing that Gokhale's taught me, it's to never say never. So hopefully, at some point in time, I'll be updating this space.
But right now, I don't want to.

Man treasures the most those parts of the world around him that resonate the most with what he holds dearest within himself.

Yes, yes, I know. Read it a couple of times. I suspect you'll find yourself in agreement.

And therefore, Gokhale has been the single greatest influence on my life. All that I am today is certainly not due to Gokhale alone, but all that I hold dearest within me has been shaped, irrevocably so, by that Institute in Deccan Gymkhana, Pune.

Most of the people dearest to me have been encountered in Gokhale, most of my fondest memories are centered around Gokhale, almost all of life's invaluable lessons, or whatever it is that self help books are calling bamboos up the ass nowadays, have been connected in some way or the other to Gokhale.

And leaving it all is the most painful thing that I've ever had to do. Letting go of something as dear as Gokhale has come to be… which essentially means letting go of people who've come to mean as much as they do… is no easy task.

But clinging on to the vestiges of the past, onto a memory that clouds the present is no solution. And therefore say adieu I must.

Coming back to life and all that.

To Mav, Boshu, GT, Soumya and Milind in the first year, and to Boshu, Jacob and Milind in the second: you guys in many ways, defined all that was Gokhale. You were there through thick and thin. You gave help whenever I asked, and you reprimanded me whenever I needed it, and there can be no greater compliment I can give.

To all of the others, you've become family in a way that I needn't describe. You've been there whenever I've asked of you, and I can only hope that I've been able to return the favour.

What's above isn't necessarily corny or overtly emotional. It is, I suspect, stuff that each of feels, but won't say until Bacchus rings in merry hell. If it isn't stuff that you feel, well, dude, sorry and all, but you're missing out on something here.

Maybe one day it won't pain quite as much. And maybe one day I'll write out here again. I hope so.

But I have my reasons, some of which all of you know, and all of which some of you know, to say au revoir for the moment.

In the fervent hope that I'm bullshitting,

Cheers,

Ashish.

Bhaisaab Phancy Dress!

People who keep themselves abreast with the postings on this blog, bright people that they are… bright because they keep coming back here… must have figured out by now that Gokhaleites are a somewhat different breed.
Darwin probably had us in mind when he spoke of the survival of the fittest.
Be that as it may, this posting is about language. All great civilizations have developed their own culture, their own rituals, their own traditions, and their own language. Enough has been said about the highly advanced rituals followed at Gokhale, but a word is now in order about our very own vernacular.
Like I said earlier, we Gokhaleites are made of stuff that is inherently different from the majority. We do things differently, and given we are who we are, we do them better.
So when we got around to figuring that we need to develop a language of our own, we went and plagiarized most of it.
The original committee that sat in on the deliberations whenever they happened in Gokhale… there is a committee for everything in Gokhale – I’m amazed we don’t have a Blog Committee yet… ran a couple of regressions, took a couple of surveys, drank a couple of bottles of beer each and decided that Gokhalese must have as it’s base a mixture of English and Hindi.
They quarreled after that, and didn’t speak to each other for two months, like all good committee members should, but they got that one bit right.
Ever since then, Gokhalese has been a loose mixture of English and Hindi.
Don’t, for even a nonce, think of ringing in a protest about how that is true of every place in India. We, dear reader, we do things differently.
You see, most of the people who make Gokhale their abode are admirably equipped in either one of the two languages that make up Gokhalese. Very rarely do you find somebody who can get by equally well in both tongues.
And that, in as insane a place as Gokhale, is a recipe for disaster.
Consider, for example, the following:
Anil Jacob Abraham, one of the stalwarts from my batch, was once reprimanded by somebody. He was told in no uncertain terms, sans a couple of expletives: “Jacobe, keede mat kar!”
All perfectly clear, right? We’re on the level here?
So somebody asks him to repeat whatever it was that was said to him.
In Hindi.
Big mistake.
The Good Lord, you see, has equipped Mals with most things in life. But the most rudimentary understanding of Hindi… that, somehow, cannot be retrofitted onto the Mal DNA code. So Jacob came up with the following:
“He said ‘Don’t do insects’”.
Be kind to him. Don’t laugh too hard. Factually, our man is on solid ground.
In a nutshell though, that is how we’ve built up our language here at Gokhale.
Words, phrases, idioms have been painstakingly collected over booze parties, quarrels, conversations and lectures, and over time, assimilated into the linguistic joy that is Gokhale.
Particular instances are too many to mention, and it pains to leave out some of them, so I won’t treat you to a linguistic tour-de-force of our tongue, but I must conclude with a word that has grown into a symbol here at Gokhale. I’ve heard of it’s usage in other places, and I do not claim originality, but it’s a word that is dear to me.
So balls.
Read on.
Because.
What a fantastic word. What an awesome reply. What a riposte.
It covers anything and everything. Whenever you’re confronted with an insurmountable problem, whenever bamboos start queuing up outside your derriere, whenever you seem to have the weight of the world upon your shoulders… all you do is shrug philosophically, smile a wintry smile and say in response to that painful “Why?”… “Because.”
It must be said properly, people. It must have an air of finality around it, and yet be without reproach. It can’t have cynicism, and it can’t sound bitter. Say it quietly, confidently, and the true meaning shall reveal itself.
“Because.”
The usual caveat applies.
The true meaning is revealed far quicker if a chilled pint of Mallya’s best is used in conjunction.

Places on Campus

The drums have started rolling and they're building up to the final crescendo. Less than a month to go, and the curtain has started falling on what have been the two most fantastic years of my life.

More as a bookmark for myself than for your perusal (although something tells me you aren't complaining either), this posting is about my favourite places in the campus.

As is always the case, there are far too many to mention, so I'll either write a sequel to this one, or… and this is far more likely, I'll end up mentioning only some of them for all time to come.

Close your eyes, and picture the campus of the Institute. Picture yourself walking in through the main gate, towards the old library building. Turn in at the small lane and climb the stairs that lead on to the verandah. Now take a left and go park yourself under the stairs that lead to the first floor.

Now for the ambience. Picture a dark gloomy sky at around four in the afternoon, the kind of weather that old English authors would have described as inclement. The trees look unnaturally green, people are hurrying along on the road, all too aware that its going to pour, leaves are being whirled along by an angry wind, leaving scurrying trails of dust in their wake. OK? Stay with the moment for a minute.

Now, you're under the stairs with a couple of friends of yours, with a laptop for company, when it begins to pour. Like the dickens. There's thunder, lightning, sheets of rain, and a cold wind that blows all around you. Little drops of water drip from the culvert of the building you're under, forming a transient curtain between you and the torrent outside. The laptop is playing all the monsoon songs it has. Please tell me you know what monsoon songs are.

And then the rain stops, first slowing to a drizzle, then stopping altogether. Little rivulets of water run down slopes that you hadn't noticed all around the campus.

The smell of wet earth, that wonderful, ravishing sensation, rises all around you.

A rainbow appears over the trees that border the road outside, and the temperature drops to a very, very comfortable degree of coolness.

And Shiva walks in with cups of hot steaming tea.

All to the good, yes?

All classes are, of course, conducted in the seminar room now. It's been done up very well, has air-conditioning, comfortable chairs, and all in all, is a very nice place. But I am in unabashed, permanent love with the last benches of the M.A. classroom.

The professor doesn't really matter. It could be anybody up there on the podium, talking about a subject that we shan't really focus on until three hours before the tutorial.

After the roll call has been taken, the class settles down for an hour or so of tedium. There are a select few, bless them, who shall listen, assimilate, and prepare notes. There are some who shall practice Zen Buddhism, the art of nothingness.

And there are those at the back, who shall look around, and carefully slide out Pune Times from the bags.

Folding a newspaper into a shape so that only the crossword is visible, under a bench in front of which you happen to be sitting, without making any noise at all is an art form that hasn't got the appreciation it deserves. It isn't easy at all, and if you think about it, doing that alone accounts for about five minutes in an hour that you must while away somehow.

And then you start in on the crosswords. There are around five or so of us cruciverbalists, who shall surreptitiously exchange answers, peer at each others squares, and in an hour's time manage to complete the crossword, leave a few clues here and there.

On that rare and wonderful occasion when one of us battle hardened veterans manage to complete the whole thing, we treat ourselves to chai from the tapri.

Of course, it's not as if we don't drink that chai on other days, but it used to taste better when the crossword was completed.

Hour over, battle won… and we live in the comfortable knowledge that tomorrow, another war must be fought.

All to the better, yes?

It's night time, and it happens to be a full moon night. We'll pick a night sometime in November, because we want a night that's cool without being cold, and a night that's still without being muggy. You've spent the evening in the hostel, either playing TT, or whiling away the hours in somebody's room.

Let's say it's Saturday. So you've gone out for dinner, had a good time, and without semblance of hurry, you've made your way back to the hostel. Spent time on the bench outside the Boy's Hostel, exchanging the odd word with everybody who comes back from wherever they've had dinner, and then gone on to the terrace. Sat there with your gang, at peace with the world, watching contentedly as some other people join you there, talking about nothing in particular.

After a couple of hours… and believe you me, those two hours are gone in a flash… the moon rises over the trees at the far end of the terrace, bathing the entire terrace in that wonderful soft moonlight. And then, without realizing it, you nod off.

Sometime later, somebody shakes you awake, and you stumble into your room, falling asleep on the bed as soon as you fall upon it.

All to the best, yes?

This posting is a contradiction in terms.

An oxymoron.

One of those deep meaningful paradoxes.

This posting is about indolence.

The brighter ones amongst you have spotted the incongruity already, and are nodding your heads wisely, realizing the stiff challenge that I've set myself.

Because, you see, if I write about it, I don't practice it. The longer this piece is, the more of a doler I become. And if there is one thing I treasure, it is my indolence quotient. Which, you see, is what we Gokhaleites mean when we say of someone in tones of hushed reverence: "Oh, him! He has such an high IQ!"

Not that we get to say something like that very often, because in Gokhale, everybody has a stratospheric IQ. A very primary condition for being a Gokhaleite, you see.

We'll accept brains, and we're ok with brawn. Beauty is always welcome, but the "Bzzz! Bee-in-my-bonnet-let's-do-something-guys!" attitude... ah! now that we abhor.

Doing nothing is at the core of a Gokhaleite. We practice the art with an enthusiasm that borders on the manic. There are occasions, of course, when the art heads for peak performance, such as at seminar-time, or lecture-time, but even as a norm, we're pretty good at the not doing bit.

The art can be practiced alone or in a group. You see examples on alone indolence in classrooms, or in corporate meetings. Watch out for the elbows on the desk, head resting in hands, staring vacantly into nothing, glazed look in eyes, I'll fall asleep any minute now pose. That, ladies and gentlemen, is an indoler who's on cruise control.

Group indolence, I'm afraid, cannot be explained. It can only be experienced. But if you have a wistful smile playing around your lips right now, you've experienced nirvana. That magical feeling when you look at the clock and realize that you've spent the last so many hours doing absolutely nothing. And after which you stretch, yawn, grimace and say that you have to go in a couple of minutes and spend the next few hours doing absolutely… you know what I mean, you lucky bums.

Indolence, painstaking research has shown, gives optimum result when accessorized with chilled beer.

Hard drinks give satisfactory results (the slightly lower ranking is due to the fact that hard core drinking often infuses rowdy enthusiasm in it's imbibers… certainly no bad thing in and of itself, but very detrimental to the concept of indolence), while total absence of alcohol does not hamper proceedings either.

But there is nothing that comes remotely close to a group of close friends practicing the art on a somewhat muggy afternoon, under a rickety fan, with a crate of ice-cold beer for company.

I sense we're in emphatic agreement, no?

This one's for you, Denny boy. Here's to hot muggy afternoons in Bangalore.

We had the farewell on the 21st of April, 2006.
And it sucked.
Big time. Hated it.
Despised it, despised the movie we made, the ride to the place, the place itself, hated the organizing (it really sucked, no effort put into it at all. At all), hated the Juniors, hated people in my batch, hated the booze, hated the food, hated my buddies, hated myself.
Horrible thing, all in all.
Really sucked.
Really.
Please, believe me.

There was once this guy, this hunter dude, who'd been like, you know, a complete hot shot guy back in the deserts of Northern Africa.
Or wherever it is that lions roam around in Africa, because what our man did was, he hunted lions.
Well anyways, so he'd finished his hunting career and all, hung up his boots (or whatever it is that hunters hang up, I wouldn't really know... trapping mosquitoes is a big deal where I'm concerned), and gotten around to living the good life, back home in England.
He'd gotten himself this large estate, where he'd entertain guests every now and then.
And it was at such a time (when he was regaling one and all with his stories) that somebody asked him if he'd thought that it was all over at any point back then. You know, whether he'd been caught up in a situation from which there was no way out. Move and your dead. Stay still and you're going to die anyways.
Our protaganist smiled.
"Yes", he said, with that far-away look in his eyes, you know, as if he was reliving that moment. "Yes, there was this one time when I had nothing with me, no gun, no rifle, no hunting knife, not even a toothpick. And I was in the middle of nowhere. There was desert all around me. Not a tree, not a shrub, not even a blade of grass. No rocks to hide behind, no stones to throw, no crevices to jump into. And then I saw this lion charging towards me, coming on to me with a speed that spelt sure death."
A collective gasp went up around the guests, you know, as they imagined the sheer helplessness of the situation.
"So what did you do?" asked one of the ladies present, a little breathlessly, as is their wont.
"Me? Well, there was nothing I could do. There is no way I could have escaped death. Rationally speaking, I shouldn't be here right now," said the hunter, a mischievous glint in his eye.
"Well then?", said the lady, looking at our man with big blue eyes.
"I climbed the tree," said the hunter.
"What tree?" said a young upstart, looking in some bemusement at the raconteur of the tale. " You just said there was no tree!"
" You don't understand," said the wise old hunter, walking away.
"There is always a tree."
This story can't be apocryphal, you see.
There is always a tree.

In about a week's time, we go for the farewell to Manas.

Non-Gokhaleites, and by that I mean people who have not attended these parties, bear up with me. Some parts of what follows may be a little confusing, and the whole piece will make you go green, but that can't be helped. Any posts that come up over the next two months are going to deal exclusively with what goes on within the confines of heaven as we know it.

Je ne suis pas desole about it either.

Over the last two or three years, there's this tradition that's built up at Gokhale.

This is how the process works.

Juniors join in August, by the first week or so. They're ragged… well, in a manner of speaking… for about three weeks, at the end of which they're taken to this place called Manas by their Seniors.

Manas, you see, is a bit of a misnomer. Manas is what lies off the road leading to Mulshi, on the left. Beyond Manas is a lake. At the other end of which lies a smaller place called Sarovar. Which (phew!) is where the action takes place.

It's a fairly secluded place, bordering on the lake, with a comfortably rustic lawn that leads on to what passes for a dance floor. Given that hardly anybody else comes to the place, it makes for a fantastic party venue.

Be as loud as you like, get as drunk as you want, eat as much as you can, and be escorted out of the place, ecstatically euphoric, and having fallen in love with all that is Gokhale , at around one in the morning.

Well, that, in a nutshell, is what happened to me.

Remind me to expand upon it sometime later. There are people who believe the tale is worth the telling.

And then you spend the rest of the year in a happy haze at Gokhale, dodging tutorials, bunking lectures, getting drunk on weekends, pretending to study for the sem-ends, giving and taking gyaan about fantastically irrelevant stuff, making pilgrimages to Apache (remind me to expand upon this as well), and generally speaking, living the good life until the time comes to bid adieu to your Seniors. Who, of course, have been praying long and hard for the tradition to continue.

So sometime in April, the proud successors of Attila the Hun make their way to Manas, pillage, loot and plunder, and make merry in much the same manner.

Towards the end though, reality knocks at the door.

Somebody, either a Senior or a Junior, looks around. Sees people he's fallen in love with over the last year. Sure, there have been quarrels, and there have been tiffs. But by and large, these guys have been there for each other, come what may. Life's been great, it's been fantastic.

And then it hits.

The reason this party is there, that person's brain tells him, through the alcoholic haze that it wallows in, is because all of what has been happening over the last year will cease to be in a month's time. Half the batch shall go their own way, occupied with whatever it is that they shall be doing in the next life, while the Juniors, although set to return to Gokhale, must renew their love affair with a new batch.

This, what is going on now, will go away forever.

And that person begins to cry.

It's been scientifically proven (well, I don't know whether it has. Seems to be a no-brainer.) that extreme emotions are contagious in times of utter inebriation.

Gokhalespeak: When drunk, if one laughs, all laugh. If one cries, all cry.

That leaves you with seventy people (by and large) who now decide to go about hugging everything that moves, and bawling their hearts out.

It ends with everybody left with their own memories, lying around on the dance floor, with Pink Floyd dishing out "Coming Back To Life" time and time again.

Finito.

There's a part of me that wants to go to Manas, and there's a part of me that'd rather not.

You know what I mean, surely.

I write this post on a Sunday night. It's 11.21, and I'm brain dead.
Yes, yes, I know, I know. Brain deader then, have it your way.
Be that as it may, I spent all (and when I say all, let's be clear here. ALL. Every single waking hour. And I'm not sure, but I probably dreamt about the damn thing as well) of today working on my thesis.
My thesis, ladies and gentlemen, is on Artificial Neural Networks. Yes, one of the reasons for me being single, thank you very much.
I'm not going to talk about what Artificial Neural Networks are, principally because I think they can go and get a bamboo up their rectum, the bleeding lot of 'em. Secondarily, I know my readership all too well. Half of them are convinced that econometrics is three times as tough as rocket science, and the other half haven't heard about econometrics, bless their ignorant souls.
What I am going to talk about is submission time.
Gokhale, you see, is big on rules.
And we students are big on breaking them. So when Gokhale told us that we had to submit our thesis by the 1st of April, come hell or high water, we said right ho! and bade welcome to hell and high water.
So Gokhale said fine, all right, you can now submit it on the 10th, but that's it. If you don't, well, we're not very clear about what we're going to do, but bad things will happen to you, of that we'll make sure. And this time, everybody took them very seriously, and worked on their thesis in right earnest.
They researched on the internet (read: Gokhale got addicted to Orkut), spent long hours in the library (read: Anna's son is going to Harvard), and read a great many books (read: buy ITC, it's gonna go through the roof). And before you knew it, they were all ready with their theses, neatly printed and binded.
You were waiting for the "Except..." bit, weren't you?
Me? I went to Bombay over the weekend, got piss drunk (bless you, Dennis), rode back on Saturday evening, went out for dinner with the family, and slept until 10 on Sunday morning.
And then I began work on the thesis.
In a misguided fit of enthusiasm, I'd changed my thesis topic in January. Originally, I was slated to talk about something else.
Locally currency Systems, if you must know.
It involved doing blah! blah! on a horrifying scale about this, that and the other. Something that was right up my alley. But I had booze in early Jan, woke up the next morning, and told myself that my thesis topic should be something to do with Artificial Neural Networks.
Don't you dare ask why. You're missing the entire point of it all if you do.
Artificial Neural Networks are, well, they do a lot of the mathematical equivalent of "Blunk! Khut! Khatak! Phwoooosh! Abracadabra!" and say "Aha! You should buy Reliance today at it's current price". You have loads of equations, and pretty little graphs, and other such intimidating stuff, and well, yes, it is a tad like rocket science.
What you should grasp here is, it is not stuff that can be done in a day.
But then what's the point of beginning on it when you have time. That way you miss the adrenaline, the rush, the fear, that magical feeling when you know your life is headed down the drain, and you cannot, logically speaking, save yourself. When you do come out of that little whirlpool unscathed, you feel like you've earned your booze party the next day.
And so by around 9 at night I'd finished the whole thing. I'd done the modelling, the writing, the graphs, the tables, the references, the index, I'd finished everything.
I call up Jacob to check about some niggling detail, and he tells me that there are about seven people in Gokhale who can submit their thesis later since their guide is out of town. Yes, of course I'm one of the seven.
It's a very deflating feeling.
I'm sure God is up there somewhere, chuckling away quietly, beer mug in hand.
Is God a Gokhaleite?

Anjali Ma'am is leaving on the 16th of May.

God, for some unfathomable reason, has decided to foist us Seniors with a whole host of troubles as Gokhale draws to an end.

We have the Juniors, who've mutated into this fantastic political outfit that'll give any national party worth it's name sleepless nights. We have issues at the administrative level that no one, including the administration, has any clue about. We have/ may not have a farewell party at Manas/ maybe not at Manas, where booze may be/ may not be included for which all the Juniors will/ may not contribute and for which all the Seniors will/ may not turn up. We have a Thanksgiving party to plan that promises to turn into a right royal humdinger. Let's not talk about the Placement Cell. Please.

But the other day, the lady brought all other trifling issues into perspective when she told me that post the 16th of May, she'll no longer be around. She'll return by the time Gokhale reopens, but a fat lot of comfort that is for me.

Anjali Ma'am, for those who came in late, is the person who runs Gokhale. I mean, she runs Gokhale. There are people who, you know, are there… but if you take Anjali Ma'am out of the equation, Gokhale just ceases to be. Zilch. Zero. Null Set.

Quiet, efficient, able, calm, cool, collected, and with just the right touch of humor, she defuses every potential catastrophe at Gokhale with a charm that needs to be seen to be believed.
That's no reason for me to put up a blog about her though. If that was all there was to her, we'd be appreciative, and that'd be the end of the matter.

No, what's so wonderfully special about her is the fact that she love all of us with a zest that borders on the manic. God help the unfortunate soul who decides to trespass our bounds, for he must then confront an angry Anjali Ma'am. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is not a pretty sight. Think gladiatorial, multiplied a zillion fold.

At any given point of time, she knows everything there is to know about our lives. Our marks, our assignments, our reputation (if that's the word I'm looking for) where the faculty is concerned, our love lives (or lack of the same, in certain unnamed cases), the last time booze happened at the hostel; everything that goes in Gokhale, she keeps a tab on it.

And she's there to help out every single time you need it.

You need an exam rescheduled? Done. You want a lecture postponed? OK. You need certificates that you gave her ten years ago? Not a problem.

We've, all of us, been there, done that. Taken her help at some stage of our Gokhale lives. And I can say with surety that it's been given, every single time.

For me, personally, she is what makes Gokhale a wonderful place to be in, because she's one of those gems who loves no matter what.

Because she's there. Always.

And post the 16th of May, she won't be. Sigh.

Ah well, what to do? Life is like that only. You're going to be missed those last six days, and the rest of our lives.

Would you consider managing Genpact?

Please?

Cheers, Anjali Ma'am.

How many of you have read Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?" I ask because what's coming up is (somewhat tangentially) related to Adams.

Douglas Adams, and people, this story is not apocryphal, was once lying in a hedge somewhere in England, just a little drunk. Up until this stage, I suppose my readership is in a spirit of complete understanding and kinsmanship. Brothers in arms, if you will.

So he's lying there, our man, staring up at the sky, thinking of nothing in particular, and probably wishing that he'd picked up a couple of beer cans for company, when he suddenly has an epiphany. In Gokhalespeak, that translates into "Douglas Adams had a 'Bhaisaab, fancy dress!!!' moment."

He thought to himself, what if aliens destroyed the earth beause they had to build a hyperglalactic highway? And that's how the entire book was born. People who've read the book and didn't know this are going to go "Oh... like that!". People who haven't read the book are going to want to go buy it.

Well, the point of that little tale was to give you an idea of what a fantastic man our Douglas Adams was. One of us, so to speak. Maybe with a tad more willingness to put in that little bit extra to back up his outrageous schemes. A little less enthusiasm for drudgery, and he'd have been a Gokhaleite for sure.

So, anyways, Douglas Adams, large, jovial, sharp as a knife, inquisitive, curious, genuinely funny, and all in all, the kind of man that you and I would have loved to have known, and maybe shared a beer with.

He came up with the following:
"I love deadlines. I especially love the whooshing sound they make as they go by."

I can see him sitting in a large recliner, a bowl of potato chips by his side, a small bowl of an extremely calorie ridden dip for company, and a large cold beer to round off things. A seraphic smile on his face, and he dishing out that quote.

"I love deadlines. I especially love the whooshing sound they make as they go by."

The point of all this?
Seven days to go, and I don't want to work on my thesis.

Less than two month to go now, and these kind of countdowns are the ones that suck the most. I know exactly how poor old Damocles felt now.

It's not as if a million people are waiting out there with bated breath, praying and hoping against hope that I come up with an update on the blog, but I'm an economist, and I'm trained to think about sustainability. Well, they try to train me. It's not their fault that I fail to learn.

What I'm trying to get at is the fact that in two months time, I shall be punching numbers about obscure credit card transactions in Bangalore, far and away from the magical mystical land that is GIPE. And then how do I continue a blog that is titled lifeatgokhale?

So there were two alternatives facing me. One, shut down the blog altogether. Make no new posts, and leave it out to dry. Maybe 15 years down the line we could visit the digital ruins of the beautiful fortres that was GIPE. You get the (fairly melodramatic) picture.

Another alternative was to get a junior to continue the good work. All those who raise an eyebrow upon reading the adjective in the last sentence may kindly hit the "Back" button on their browsers, thank you very much.

But that would entail thinking of a junior who leads the kind of life that I have at Gokhale (on the edge, cirrhosis-of-the-liver-types-perenially-drunk, "attendance? what's that?" kind of philosophy, "work?! gasp! What on EARTH is that?" kind of belief system. You know what I mean?), and then convincing him/her to be reasonably regular with the postings. Therefore impossible. If they fulfilled the first criterion, they couldn't fulfill the second. And the people who'd have passed the second criterion have no bleeding clue about the first, so you know, basically, not happening.

So what to do? How shall this proud legacy of nothingness carry itself forward? Picture me deep in thought, pondering about the deeper and true meaning of life. Now picture me with a lit light bulb over my head, and a little conversation balloon by my right that says "Aha! ...Bingo!"

You see, lifeatgokhale isn't so much about lifeatGOKHALE as it is about LIFEatgokhale.

There are those of us who've made Gokhale (our Gokhale) the wonderful madness that it is, and we, dear lunatics, shall carry that proud insane legacy with us. And so the posts shall continue, because what I talk about and describe out here isn't dictated by the geographical confines of the Insti and the Hostel. It's something that lives with all of us, and therefore continue it shall.

Don't you feel a surge of pity for Genpact? I certainly do.

Quite a few amongst you have asked me to write about what happened yesterday in the Institute. Primarily because we are a little exasperated by it, a little saddened by it, and in tried and tested fashion, have chosen to laugh about it.
Humor, unfortunately, does not have an independent existence. It is what you choose to make of a situation. If what I'm saying is not clear, read Soumya's blog about the Toni Da Dhaba episode, and then read mine (available on this page itself).
We, in the Senior batch, are for the most part, pretty lucky, in that we choose to respond with laughter to almost all that happens around us. But every now and then comes along an occasion when we need to question ourselves about whether humor is the appropriate response, and the sad part is, as far as yesterday's episodes were concerned, it isn't.
For various reasons, all of which I will not enunciate here. Which is why there won't be a post about it.
But there is a select audience out there, one that has laughed together for all these many months, and will laugh over the next two months as well. Sometimes, as happened yesterday, without an immediately obvious reason.
But there is a deeper, more poignant reason. And that is the fact that we've had the time of our lives here. We've quarreled, gotten along afterwards, had our tiffs, organized programmes, gotten drunk, gone on drives, gone together for dinner, been completely stupid, and have grown the wiser for it. And at some level, we do not want to let that part of our life go sour. We treasure these moments, because we've lived life to the full here. And that's why we stand together, and laugh about it.
Not so much at anything, but for the purpose of laughing together. Which is why you don't really need to read my blog to laugh at what happened yesterday, because you wouldn't have been doing it anyway.
To all those among you who could identify even marginally with whats written above, Cheers. To those of you who couldn't, now what to do? I write for a secluded audience.

I was surfing on the net today afternoon. Which, as you might have guessed, happens pretty much every single day. Today, though, I had a purpose in life, a call to arms and a tryst with destiny.
I was working on my thesis.
So five minutes into the research, I started searching for Calvin and Hobbes strips online. (There are two sets of people reading this blog. One set, who knows me in passing, as mere acquaintances, or not at all; who'll chuckle in quaint amusement thinking to themselves about how short an attention span I possess. And then there's this other set of people, who'll gasp, clutch their throats, come close to passing out, and generally fall out of their seats. "Five minutes?!" they'll think. "He lasted all that long?")
Well anyways, that honest assessment of the creeps who call themselves my friends aside, there's this quote by the most precocious six year old who ever lived, that I think epitomises all that is Gokhale:

"There never is enough time to do all the nothing you want to"

If, upon reading that, visions of the bench immediately outside the boy's hostel flashes on the minds inner eye, on balmy evenings at around four p.m. with lazy thoughts of chai, then you know what I'm talking about. Well, to be fair to you guys, it doesn't have to be the bench in particular. But you know what I' talking about.

A long time ago, in Greece, when all the guys in that country were hell bent on being Spartan and noble, and finding out that which was real and Good, and heavy duty philosophical stuff like that, there was this bunch of guys who locked themselves up in a society and dedicated themselves to living the good life.

"Balls!" , they said, bravely and in defiance "Great big balls!"

"We don't know the true meaning of life, and we don't care if change is permanent, or not. Pythagoras can keep his triangle to himself, thank you very much, and Socrates should have been fed that bowl of hemlock when he was a brat in nappies. As for Plato, he can put his Republic right where it deserves to be."

The other Greeks jeered at them, and sneered condescendingly. They thought that these decadent people were the very nadir of all that was wrong with their wonderul democracy. But that didn't deter our brave clan, who fought with tenacity, and passed their legacy on, so that future generations could carry the burning torch.

So long as they (the future generations, that is) had the time and energy to light the torch, and carry it.

We're all Epicureans, people. Make no mistake.

Gokhale always has been, and always will be, full of people who are, well, Gokhaleites. It is a term that escapes definition, and you only know what I'm talking about when you've met a Gokhaleite. For all outward appearances, they (Gokhaleites) are normal, easygoing, friendly, extroverted people. Look carefully and you'll notice the well hidden, yet omnipresent signs of complete, deranged and terrifying lunacy.
A shining example of this tribe is the remarkable Abhinav Kumar Rastogi, known to his fellow inmates by the sobriquet Chaman. Avid readers of these pages will recall that the undersigned had set off on a trip to Goa with Chaman about a couple of weeks back. This post is not about that trip, although that was the scheduled update. Nor is it about the football matches, which were catastrophic enough to make us pretend that they never happened. They didn't, by the way, so everybody, quit asking about them.
This is about a trip to Toni da Dhaba.
Toni da Dhaba is, well, a dhaba about 40 kilometers away from Pune on the Mumbai Pune Highway. It's a nice enough place, serving decent food, and slightly expensive booze, with a very whacky menu. Since the mess is closed on Saturday nights, six people set off for Toni da Dhaba on Saturday evening. Three of them didn't belong to the hostel, but what's your point?
Gautam Tamhane (a.k.a GT): Freak. Freakishly thin, freakishly funny, freakishly sarcastic, and all in all, well, an outstanding example of Gokhaleness. Some people maintain that the last quality resides in him a wee bit too much, especially at five in the morning, but well, you got to take the rough with the smooth.
Soumya Mahapatra: Sharp tongue. Friend. Buddy. Hair-raising sight when drunk. Hair-raising sight otherwise.
Vasundhara Sen: Refer above.
Bhavana Verma: Sweet girl. Friend. Buddy. Reluctant drinker (in our tribe, that's a foul, but we're working on it. The disease, we maintain, is curable)
Ashish Kulkarni: Tall, dark, and handsome.
Abhinav Kumar Rastogi (a.k.a Chaman): Read on.
MH-12-AT-422: Hero Honda Splendor No. 1. Owned by GT, and played an incidental role in the drama.
MH-12-BE-8015: Hero Honda Splendor No. 2. Owned by Shoan Joshi, whose patience has now been stretched beyond all appreciable limits. Driven by yours truly.
MH-12-G-4780: Yamaha RX-100. The lead actor.
The trip to Toni da Dhaba is sheer pleasure. One takes any road leading out of the University Circle, hooks up with NH-4, and motors along it up until and beyond the Expressway, beyond Talegaon, beyond Somatne, and just before Kamshet, on the right, lies Toni da Dhaba. It's a road that has been widened recently, is smooth, fast and all in all, a fun experience. Up until just before Toni da Dhaba, that is. Work is still going on for about a couple of kilometers out there, so the traffic piles onto one side of the road, and speeds are excruciatingly slow. Which, as it turns out, is a good thing.
In time honored Gokhale tradition, we set off for the place bang on time, exactly two hours behind schedule. The drive up to the place was uneventful, save for a loose nut on the Yamaha. The threading on the front mudguard had come loose, and the nut could not be fixed properly. So the front mudguard was a little unhinged, much like its rider, and well, since I'm brutally honest, much like its owner as well.
Oh yeah, as an aside, I must talk about the rumblers. About five kilometers or so before Toni da Dhaba, lies a thing that should be a source of revenue for the Tourism Department. There's a school just off the road, that is protected on its either side by the most fantastic speed-breakers ever. Ever. I exaggerate not. There's a wide bending curve leading up to the speed breakers, and then, in succession, there are about ten wide tall and handsome breakers on the road, about half a foot from each other. They shake the body and soul, rape the spinal cord, rob the rider off any lingering sleepiness, throw the pillion rider into the wilderness (that last statement doesn't apply to me. Boshu was behind me. They're seriously good speed breakers, but they ain't miracles), and generally announce their presence in a manner that stays with you for days to come.
So we reached Toni Da Dhaba, and had a good time during dinner, ably aided by the hilarious menu (they serve the Hakka Bakka Akha Bakra Biryani. I'm serious. And that's not the funniest bit. It's for 1400 bucks.) and the world's most talented burper. Oh boy, that man could burp. Really burp. I mean, to put things in perspective, Sumedh and Darshan wouldn't even make the cut when this champ started in with his tummy recitals. Yes, even Darshan.
I know he'll want me to put this up on record, and I suppose he's got a point. Just before we went in for dinner, Chaman said that the nut had come loose, really loose, and we should tie up the mudguard with some rope. I said (or maybe it was GT, you know my memory, now don't you?) that it could be done after dinner as well. There, posted for everybody to read, happy? Come to think of it, it was GT who said that we should do it after dinner. And of course, after dinner, we plain forgot.
It was about midnight by the time we set off for the return leg of the journey. GT, on the first bike drove ahead, I was in the middle, with Chaman bringing up the rear. About a couple of kilometers ahead, we got a call from Bhavna, saying that they'd fallen down.
So I go ahead, and yell out to GT that Chaman's down, and we turn back.
About a kilometer or so behind, there's a bit of a jam on the road, with Chaman standing beside the Yamaha, Bhavana sitting on the shoulder of the road, head in her hands, and concerned people standing all around. Just a tad scary, but there's this huge sigh of relief when you see that both are seemingly OK. Alive, man. We can take it from there.
Turns out the mudguard had come off, putting the bike into a skid. Chaman's got scratched, and pretty badly, on his knee and elbow, while Bhavna has got hurt, though not as badly, on her ankle. All on the left.
Now, with truck drivers all around, we figured, GT and I, that is, we couldn't leave Boshu and Soumya out there. I mean, yeah, Boshu and Soumya, sure, but still and all. Think about all those poor truck drivers. They wouldn't know what hit them.
So while Chaman and Bhavana waited, we went and dropped the girls at Toni da Dhaba. They were to find out if any cars were going back to Pune, and ask if Chaman and Bhavana could accompany them. And also pick up some first aid stuff from an adjoining store. We went back and picked up Chaman and Bhavana, and came back to the restaurant.
Turns out there was no car going back to Pune that night. Murphy, of course.
By the time we got back to the dhaba, Boshu and Soumya has gotten a pack of some antiseptic cream, along with some gauze.
Bhavna, ladies and gentlemen, is a freak when it comes to dressing wounds. Woe betide the poor soul who approaches her wounds armed with nothing more than some harmless cotton. Me, I'd recommend a Bazooka and a couple of large cannons. And valid life insurance policies. Two.
Chaman on the other hand. What a man. By the time the girls had finished dressing his wounds, it was clear that the damage was nothing very serious. The man, who'd up until that point of time been uncharacteristically quiet, got back to his chirpy old self with typical speed. First off, he suggested that, you know, now that everything is OK, and nobody's dead and all, well, seeing as we're all here, how about a bottle of beer? No? Well, OK, fine, I'll settle for a cigarette then.
The only solution that presented itself to us was to call up Malavika from the hostel, and ask her and GP to get their car to Toni da Dhaba, and get the two supposed victims back to the hostel. So Boshu calls them up and tells them that this accident has happened, and that they should come along. Gokhaleites. Of course they'd come.
Meanwhile, GT and I went back to the scene of the carnage to pick up the bike. The leg guard on the left was pretty much mangled, there was obviously no front mudguard, the left handle-grip was, well, there' no other word for it, screwed. The gear would work only if given a firm kick on either side. So we decided that it was pretty risky to drive it, and asked the guys at a nearby petrol pump if they'd consider keeping it. Those towering intellects refused, saying that the police would come and ask whose bike it was. (Objection to Insane Objection: Why would the police go around asking whose bike it was? Not only where the Yamaha was concerned. Do the police come to your place asking whose bike is parked down below? Not to my place they don't. Another Objection to Insane Objection: Tell them it's mine, you crazy ape. I'm giving you my address, my phone number, and my college address. What more do you need?)
So we decided that that it wasn't all that risky to drive it, and that's what I proceeded to do.
So we go back, and wait for the knights in the Daewoo Matiz. Who call up in about half an hour and say that they've reached the petrol pump, where they wanted to fill fuel. They've forgotten to get money, so they'll go back a distance of about ten kilometers, get money from an ATM, and then come back. Sigh.
They reach aforementioned petrol pump, where the attendant casually mentions that there was an ATM about a couple of buildings away. SIGH.
So we wait at the dhaba, which has emptied out by now (approximately 2 in the morning). We eat paan, caramel lollipop, and strawberry lollipop. I drop my strawberry lollipop. Chaman tries to take Soumya's strawberry lollipop and drops it on the gravel in the drive-in. He picks up the lollipop and proceeds to finish it. I say it so matter-of-factly because he did it so matter-of-factly. Meet him now and ask him about it. He'll still maintain that air of bemused puzzlement.
About half an hour later, we get a call from Josie, who is also in the car (oh, late in the day, but for what it's worth, some of you might not know who Malavika, Josie, GP, Sumedh, Darshan etc. are. Well, too bad, man.) saying that they're almost there. We tell them that since Toni da Dhaba is a little off the road, and since the lights are all turned off, we'll stand on the road, waiting for them. GT and I, that is.
So we go there, armed with nothing more than a packet of biscuits, and begin the vigil, munching contentedly on the packet. Five minutes into this watch, it suddenly hits me that the two of us must be scaring the holy s**t out of anybody driving our way. It's nearly three in the morning, its pitch dark and bitterly cold, and there are two guys standing out on the road, eating biscuits. Picture it, you're half sleepy, nice and warm in that heater equipped car of yours, thinking alternately of the wonderful dinner you had, and your bed at home, when suddenly you spot two guys on the road. Standing there with no aim in life. Looking closely at you and your car. Eating biscuits.
You see what I mean about we looking normal but being complete lunatics. Wodehouse thought he was writing fiction when he wrote novels with plots as outrageous as this. At Gokhale, we call 'em Saturday nights.
Then Murphy goes into overdrive. GP calls to say that they're stuck in a huge traffic jam, and that there's no way to go ahead. If we could drop Chaman and Bhavan at the pace where they're stuck, they just might be able to turn back.
Like we have a choice.
So we set off, GT and I, with those two behind us, and head into a traffic jam of monolithic proportions. Why it was there, we never could figure out. It just was. Long and messy and noisy and chaotic. On both sides of a road of which only one was complete. With these two behind us at three in the morning. Searching for a car that might be on either side of the road, possibly hidden behind trucks. You know, child's play.
Find the car we did, and put them in. Drove back and got those two. Reached Joshi hospital at four thirty, found that it was nothing major, went to Naani House and slept. At five in the morning, bravely fighting off a concentrated assault from GT, who insisted that we go get ourselves a bottle of booze. Just to round the night off, sort of.
You know, I studied like mad to get into DSE. For two years. Didn't come close. Complained like mad back then. He moves in mysterious ways, but he does perform his wonders, the guy up there. That much I'll give him.

So there's two Tuts coming up on Thursday and Friday, and I'm supposed to be making notes for one of them. As in the study group that I'm in (tears of laughter, please) has decided that I should prepare notes on something to do with Keynes and Business Cycles. Expect a lot of updates on the blog this week.
As the crow flies, Goa is roughly 400 kilometres from Pune. And while there are a whole host of roads that one can choose from Gokhale to reach Goa, Chaman and I decided that we would take one of the longer ones while going. Which meant that we would go via Chandni Chowk, past Mulshi lake, into the Tamhini Ghat, and from there on down onto NH 17.
On the bike, a 2001 Hero Honda Splendor (MH-12-BE-8015), were two guys, one of them slightly on the heavier side of things, two helmets, one extremely large haversack and a smaller bag containing a first aid kit, a towel, tissue paper, and other odds and ends.
Life's Little Lesson No. 1: Pack your bag for a trip like this, and then throw out 80% of the clothes, and 50% of the other stuff. Unless you have a member of the fairer sex accompanying you. Only in that case is carrying all of what we carried understandable, and maybe not even then.
You see, thing is, the Splendor was designed to ferry two reasonably thin people around, strictly within city limits, and even in those undemanding conditions, it isn't exactly the most comfrotable joy ride around. On a trip that's going to take the better part of a day, lugging a haversack that's as big as you are is no fun.
When we left Pune, the odometer read 14,007 kilometres. By the way, that is privileged information, since that (the odometer) was one of the very few functioning parts on the Splendor. The horn was non-existent, the indicators were not working, we did not have the registration papers or the insurance papers, or the PUC, and I certainly did not have my licence, having lost it last March. It was one of those carefully planned campaigns.
At the outset, taking the route we took seemed to be a rather bad idea, since it was narrow, pot-hole infested, under construction and generally a pain in the butt.
Life's Little Lesson No. 2: Always, always remove the helmet lock that all bikes in Pune have on the rear before you leave on as long a trip as this. That last sentence ends with the phrase "pain in the butt". Very literally.
But conditions improved drastically as we reached Mulshi lake, with the road becoming better, the air appreciably cooler and the scenery taking an undoubted turn for the better. A little beyond the lake we stopped for our first pee break of the day. A little word of advise for the uninitiated. Bike rides, and the breaks in between them, can be measured in terms of pee-breaks, or in terms of cigarette breaks. I plump for the latter, since smokers seem to have developed this in built clock that times breaks to perfection. Not only the duration between breaks, but the breaks themselves are measured out very nicely by the time it takes to smoke one cigarette. Always travel with a smoker.
And then owards into the Tamhini Ghat. Starting a little below Bombay, and stretching all the way down into Goa, strung out in a long proud line, are the Sahyadri mountains. Adjoining these mountains on one side and the Arabian Sea on the other, is that part of Maharashtra which is known as the Konkan. There are a number of ghats winding their way down the Sahyadri, prinicipal among them being the Tamhini Ghat, the Poladpur Ghat, the Amba Ghat, the Radhanagari Ghat and the Amboli Ghat. There are others as well, but we'll leave those for another day.
The Tamhini Ghat leads downwards into Madgaon, which is where one hooks up with NH17. Wooded, tall, imposing, winding, scenic, and quiet.
Quiet. When you turn off your bike and stop to smoke a cigarette, you hear the sound of nothing. No vehicles, no hum-drum, no horns, no twittering of the birds, nothing. Quiet.
I know you're not going to do it, I know I wouldn't do it myself, principally because Newton was talking about more than Physics when he dreamt up inertia, but its worth a ride to a place like the Tamhini Ghat just to be able to savour the true meaning of the word quiet.
Well, it's 12.30 in the night here, and Keynes beckons. I'll be up with the second post in about half an hour or so, I suppose. Sigh.

Back from Goa, and no matter what you say, or what I think, leaving Goa is a tough thing, so there. All the more so when the Gokhale you care about isn't back in Gokhale. Which should make eminent sense to all the equally schizophrenic Gokhaleites I know.
So yeah, the Goa trip. Expect (rather optimistically, since today was supposed to be the first installment) regular postings here about the trip, and small lessons in life gleaned during the duration (I'm sure that's phrased incorrectly, but its two in the morning and I'm not going to play editor) of the trip.
As a teaser, consider this first piece of wisdom, straight from Sage Chaman: "Goa is, like, so balanced, man! There's sand and there's beer. So you drink beer, and then you walk in the sand. Walking in the sand is tough, man. So you, like, get tired man! And that makes you thirsty. And so you drink more beer. Balanced. I mean... yeah, balanced"
There's a poet lurking within all of us. Some of us compose sonnets, and most Gokhaleites make the haiku look like an obvious art form, but there certainly is a poet inside all of us.

Three tuts in a week and a fourth one coming up tomorrow. I've memorized more stuff in the past week than I did in the last three semesters put together. I've uncharitable friends and acquaintances in Gokhale who're going to claim that the above is not ALL that noteworthy a feat, but we, dear reader of gentle sensibilities, shall ignore such snide comments for what they are. Bull.
Now to the more exciting part. Although the past week has been hell for the grey cells, they are about to recieve a bracing respite in a matter of days. I and a friend of mine from our Junior batch, called Chaman, are off to Goa, beginning Saturday, the 25th of Feb.
We shall be back when we have only Rs. 500 left with us, enabling us to ride back to Pune. Oh yeah, that too. We're going by bike.
No posting until a couple of days after we come back from heaven, and none after that as well if I decide to leave Gokhale and stay for good in Goa.
There aren't too many places in the world that qualify as being better than Gokhale, but I'd put Goa in that list.
Actually no. Expect a posting sometime in March.

This is simply to announce to the world at large that even after giving the Macro -II tut, I still have absolutely no clue about New Keynesian Economics. Socrates once said that he knew that he did not know, and that was most important of all, or words to that effect. I'm willing to bet he'd just stepped out of a Gokhale Tut.
All said and done though, it is fun sitting for papers that you have absolutely no clue about. The questions look vaguley familiar, as if you've seen them somewhere before, but for the life of you can't remember where. Half remembered formulae flit fleetingly through your mind, tantalisingly providing you glimpses of a pass grade, and then float away into eternal obscurity, leaving you with a Reynolds pen, its end chewed off.
You know what's coming next, don't you? That searing urge that refuses to be quelled, to take that pen and fill in a large diagonal streak of blue across the answer sheet, look up hopefully at Anjali Ma'am, who gives you an exasperated shrug, and then the nonchalant walk away from the scene of the carnage. Paper scratched.
Two more tuts to go, hope swings eternal in the human breast.
I must be off now, Apache beckons.

Well, tomorrow happens to be the day when Gokhale realises, once and for all, that I'm not too hot at Macroeconomics -II. There are a variety of reasons for my depressing ineptitude, ranging from "Studying is boring"... (All Pandurangis, please bear up with this, the other 99.99% of my readers are in vehemenent agreement.) to "What the F&*k is New Keynesian Economics, anyway?" The more alert among my perusers, please note, we shall be dealing with NKE in some tedious detail below.
So anyways, given a choice between studying for a subject that resolutely beats all ostriches at burynig its head in the sand and typing away for a blog that thus far, no one has read, well, I mean, come on!
Big news for the month, we had the Convo party last weekend. As usual, there were people who wondered about why a party was necessary, why the contributions were so huge, about why the moon looked green if looked at from certain angles, and other equally relevant stuff. But again, as usual, there were those who refused to sway, to buckle down, to give in so easily. And they came through again, as Gokhaleites so often have. Fifty people turned up for the party and consumed 12 bottles of liquor. The party lives on...
But that, for the nonce, isn't so very important. What is a matter of pressing urgency is a question that has bothering me all day.
What on EARTH is New Keynesian Economics?
Any student of economics, serious or otherwise (and the Gokhale I know is filled with the latter), knows that there were the Classical economists. Then came the Keynesians, then the Neoclassicals, then the Rational Expectations guys, then the Real Business Cycle Theory, then the Neo Keynesians. So who, oh pray tell who, are the New Keynesian Economists? And where were they until Smriti Ma'am decided to foist them upon us? And for the love of a God who must have abandoned Economists a long time back, what is the difference between the NeO Keynesians, and the NeW Keynesians? Sigh.
Oh, big story. A thief entered the hostel a couple of days back. Well, whether or not he was a theif is another story, since he never got around to actually flicking anything. This was due, in no small measure, to Choti, our Hostel Secretary, catching him and generally pinning him down until half the hostel and all the faculty quarters were up and about. Half the hostel because the other half was too drunk to care - but then that's a given on any day. The only good thing to come out of the whole imbroglio - the thief, who's since been taken to the nearby police station - managed to leave behind an old beat up Sunny in the hostel. Now, if it is his, he might as well give up on it... it's been used in ways that Bajaj's engineers simply could not have foreseen. And if he's stolen it, the owner is welcome to come and take it back. Give us a couple of days notice though - and a toolbox while you're at it.

The Lord alone knows where this shall lead to. Well, on second thoughts, given that this has to do with Gokhale, I doubt He has much of a clue either.
But the attempt is to chronicle the madness that is Gokhale. How does one go about attempting to recreate the magic that is Gokhale, online, is a little puzzling to me too. But in my defense, the primary reason I'm doing this is because the other option is to study for the upcoming Trix Tut. And since I expect readers of this blog to empathise with my choice, I expect them to be intelligent enough to figure out that postings on this blog will coincide with the Tuts schedule at the Insti.
Well to come back to the point at hand... This blog describes the current ongoings at the Insti. This first post shall merely lay down the broad rules that shall be followed. You know how it is... If it's anything to do with Gokhale, there has to be a set of rules. Give me a week and we'll have a committee about this at the Insti. Another week should see the first resignation. Ceteris Paribus, naturally.
No gossip about the current batch. I mean, if a Gokhaleite from the batch of '86 were to read that, for example, the party in Milind's room the other day had a lot of the guys in the hostel really really pissed off, would his life change? Apart from wishing that he was there at the party that is. You see? That's why this blog shall (hopefully!) not disseminate information about who's going out with whom, and who made out with whom at the last cycling party. For those who came in late, no, cycling is not literally pedalling across the streets of Pune. Christ, no! It's just boozing.
Well, actually, that's the only rule I can think of right now. As and when I develop a love for bureaucracy, I shall add more to the list.
Everybody's welcome out here, naturally. Ex-Gokhaleites get the warmest welcome, au naturel, as do those fortunate ones who pursue their postgraduate degrees at the time of writing. That's the focus group, but if you're one of those unfortunate many who have not experienced the joy that is Gokhale, fret not, and jump right in. And if you belong to the fairer sex, please! Keep jumping.
Since this is the first effort in this direction, we'll take it slow and easy. A little bit of info about the Institute, it's current rules, people who matter in Gokhale and so on and so forth.
The Insti received a massive face-lift last year, being roused from it's dogmatic slumbers by Prof. Sinha, who went about the Insti, magic wand in hand, turning it from a rustic, extremely idyllic setting into a thing of some pretty impressive beauty.
I'm too lazy to put up pictures of the done-up campus here right now, so I don't know, Google us if you choose to not believe whats written here. A little aside in that regard... one of the plus points of that beautification drive was that the ground floor of the Boy's hostel got smooth shiny flooring. (Yes, we have a separate hostel for the girls now. If you didn't know that... well, you're kind of old now, aren't you?) Yeah, about the floor... not that it's all that pretty to look at, but if you sit on your haunches on that floor, hands extended, some guy can grab them and pull you all across the corridor, running all the way. Pretty cool fun. And naturally, we have contests about who can run the fastest. And naturally they happen one day before some Tut or the other. And yes, naturally, none of the participants are sober.
Apart from the shiny floor, the biggest news to hit us this year (brace yourselves, old-timers. "Old Timers" being defined as anybody who passed out earlier than 2005) was that Mama was finally thrown out of the Mess. Yes, it's true.
He's been replaced by a guy called Joshi, who's admittedly, doing a fine job of running the mess. Far fewer complaints now, and the quality of the food has improved noticeably. You still need both hands to break the chapati, but you can do without the little finger on the left hand. And he (Joshi, that is) has promised that it'll only get better.
People who matter at Gokhale? Well, we have Hostel Secretaries, Mess Secretaries, Class Representatives, Film Club Committees, Placement Coordinators (round of applause, please), Library Secretaries... and yeah, a couple of dozen more. Expect these guys to feature prominently out here in the days to come.
Well, that should give you a flavour of what to expect out here. Stuff like this, sometimes maybe in greater detail, and certainly with many embellishments. Like for example, that day when we decided to throw, from the first floor of the Boy's Hostel, an iron bedstead onto the groundfloor. I can see myself writing a post about something like that. That's what this is about, then... life at Gokhale.
P.S. Oh, why did we throw that bedstead down? It seemed like a good idea at the time. Because.