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?