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.