In Hope, we dwell.... We, the students!

Hope, they say, is a rope that swings you through life. Hope can make wonders happen. "Ummeed pe duniya kaayam hai" has become the order of the day. But sans any intention of delving into the philosophical depths and viewing hope from an emotional tangent, we provide to you the practical functions that hope performs in a student's life, leading him/her to say each second:

So, here's a glimpse of the extent to which a student's life is replete with hope.

Beginning of the session:

The session begins with much pomp and show. Okay, not really but then that is what each student would like to believe: that his/her life is a movie (or worthy of one based on it). Reality, as it happens to be, is quite different. Almost contradicting. No one gives a damn whether its your first day in a new session, if you have promised to re-invent yourself or if you are trying to get out of a cocoon or you are stepping out of your comfort zone. Hope, my dear friend is all you have. Also, you harbour hope of making new and true friends, of becoming the apple of your teachers' eyes, of becoming popular, of being conferred a position in the school Prefectorial board/college union.

With bucket loads of hope, and truckloads of regret manifesting itself in motivation, a student is all set to take on the new semester. Alas, the renewed hope and zeal die an early death, for the student had never perceived the difficulties that would come his way. Hope becomes a fodder for your existence and endeavours. Facing the trials and tribulations of settling in new environs is a daunting task and it is hope that keeps you going. HOPE is the word

During the session:

When troubles come into sight, all hopes are abandoned for the pursuit of comfort is much more tempting. With all hope of burning the midnight oil and studying meticulously gone, the student embraces his old ways.
Such is the sad but true story of the gain and loss of hope.
Still, somewhere in your heart, it is hope which makes it possible for you to believe that you will be able to emerge victorious over the enemies of laziness, tardiness and foolishness

The shy student, who isn't much of a verbose, imagines being more forthcoming, making new friends. He lingers on to the hope of metamorphosing n becoming popular. He extends his hand four beginning a camaraderie, but after that finds himself at a loss of words. Unaware of the right thing to say or the right joke to crack, he reverts to his old ways

Hope of being noticed by your crush:

This crush of yours you can't just get over. But sadly, you are just another member of the crowd to him. You want to catch his eye, you want him to recognize you and you do all within your power to achieve it. Right from sending a request on Facebook, to liking all his display pics, to coming up with excuses to go to his class, to stealing glances while walking down the corridor, you don't leave any stone unturned. Yet when he doesn't poke you back on Facebook, when that love meter software just shows your love percentage at a meagre 35 percent, and when he doesn't' even bother to nod at you to acknowledge your presence, all hope, like your heart, lies broken in fragments.

Exam times:

So, exams time is called the testing time. True to the status it has been accorded, it does test everything from one's caliber to our friendships to our consistency in collection of notes. This is perhaps that time where we cling to hope the most. We begin by hoping that we get enough time and concentration and mental abilities and resources to study well.  Talking of resources, one also hopes to amass all the notes, photocopies and scribbled sheets of paper (amass, because it is no less than wealth, right) and then one hopes, direly so, that our friends be in the same boat as us.

As pointed out before, it is a testing time for friendships too and many friendships fall out due to conflict of priorities among friends. One just hopes that either his friend has also studied only as much, or if he has studied complete then the friendship which always attracted abhorrence of teacher will accrue its benefits in the form of the learned friend prompting all answers.

Results:

Results, the most dreaded part of this examination system, the culmination of it all. While a majority of hopes are not difficult to decipher: they are simple hopes to "pass" the exam, there are others who hope for miracles to happen. Ridicule commits suicide when a student who attempted the paper for 50 marks HOPES to score a 70. And hope is a big word, mind that. The scholar is hoping for a century in all subjects, while surreptitiously an average student hopes to have broken his own record, and many a times, that of the scholar too. In the aftermath of results, marked by an incessant shower of consolations and congratulations, hope becomes the most instrumental weapon.

The anticipation of the sudden appearance of Santa in times of need is pretty ludicrous, for you have to wage your own battles.
To quote a line from The Fault in Our Stars, "The world is not a wish granting factory."

P.S. The writers here HOPE that you liked reading the article. We also HOPE that you will leave comments in the section below.

An Experiment to decode a Fangirl

Just saw The Vampire Diaries and can't help but swoon over Ian Somerhalder?
Getting green with envy because Harry Styles might be dating Kendall?
Do you shoot your friends death glares when they wryly tell you that you're headed towards OCD?

You, my friend, are a fan girl. Welcome to the world of fandoms.
Here's a little experiment we've done on the clan of fangirls.

Aim: To define the inexplicable terms fan-girl and fangirling, to decipher the properties of the constituents of a fan-girl, to examine the stages in which a fan-girl develops, to get a sneak peek into the life of a fan girl and to find out how she survives, what she feeds on, how she uncovers her hidden armour at the sight of a person of an enemy fandom. All in all to dive into the minds of this apparently alien species so as to form a concrete conclusion (or try to, at least)

Procedure : Our main ploys were naturalistic and participant observation. Donning our black shades and black robes, we set out to investigate the properties of fangirls a la James Bond style. Our lives were precariously perched, for we were dealing with spontaneously combustible fangirls

Properties : 

• Devoted: Fangirls are seen to heart their fandoms. They have pledged their souls to devotion and if they ever were to betray their fandoms, they wish to cross their hearts and die.
• Envious: They tend to spend nights bawling their eyes out when their objects of devotion take an avid interest in another member of the opposite sex and start showing up with them in public, resulting in envy and murderous thoughts creeping up in the mind of the fangirl.
• Loyal: Now, you must be thinking "whoa! perhaps fangirling makes girls go all murderous and boisterous", but scratch the surface and you will know that their obsession goes on to exhibit their loyalty towards their object of obsession.
• Persuasive: They make it a point to find friends within their fandom, and when some of their comrades turn out to be not-so-crazy about their demi-gods, they take it upon themselves to bombard them with their pictures, videos, and what not. To them, they are showing their friends the path to enlightenment, bringing them close to nirvana.
• Awkward in public: Stepping out in public with a fangirl might turn out to be hazardous. Upon sighting a poster of her OOO (object of obsession henceforth), a fan-girl might explode into ear piercing screaming, chanting and happy dancing, which could result in you being politely escorted out of the place, or in more dire situations, being kicked out by the security.
• Violent: Fan-girls can sense criticism against their OOO from a mile away, so you better beware before she comes and showers you with witty comebacks and expletives. This may result in a crisis commonly known as a 'catfight', which may require external aid to douse.

Observations: 

1. Mood swings: Fangirling makes the girls high on expressing themselves explicitly, so you can find them laughing maniacally when their OOO succeeds, and in uncontrollable sobs when their OOO is tried by destiny. 
2. Self-professed obsession: A fangirl is unabashed to admit her infatuation and addiction with her OOO, not just the fact of obsession but also its magnitude, so much so that when people address her as a psychopath, she doesn't mind. 
3. Kleptomaniac tendencies: A fangirl also has a habit of sweeping the shelves of their OOO franchise stores, squeaky clean, sometimes even cutting down on grocery budgets just to have that coveted 100 dollar lamp. So next time a franchise store is robbed, you know exactly who to look for! 
4. OOO Couture: Fangirls tend to spend startling amounts of money on covering themselves with OOO objects. So, an extreme fangirl could look something like this: OOO cap, hoodies, necklace, shoes. and every inch of her room will be plastered with OOO posters. Right from her pen box to her eraser, everything will be OOO adorned. Some even go to the extent of getting OOO soap cases. 
5. Vocabulary: Fangirls also possess a limited vocabulary. While squealing and squirming 'OMG, Why is he so cute, So perf,' fangirls are also prone to cyber-stalking their OOOs, where their reaction to newly uploaded pictures goes like this: asdfghjkl. Yeah, no kidding!

Stages:

Stage1: Discovery

Yes, that moment when you realise that you just don't have control on your senses anymore because He is your OOO. Your raging hormones back the discovery for confirmation there is also a clan of the species: the shy fangirls, who are scared to admit their obsession initially, but ultimately one day all their feelings find platform after a couple glasses of vodka(no, just kidding). In reality they themselves puke out everything one day in a fit of uncontrollable urge and excitement to take part in those highly covert discussions of the fangirls' club.

Stage2: Research stage: 

You take advantage of the ease of access to Internet and newspapers et al. And congrats you have crossed a stage successfully. So, now you are researching about him as though he is the topic of your PhD thesis. The probable questions you probe for: his present relationship status, past relationships, career, age, interests, pastimes...and your most likely reactions "OMG! We have such a lot in common!"

Stage 3: Submission

In the last stage, fangirls immerse themselves in the sea of devotion, where all symptoms of denial simply evaporate as fangirls feel they just found the purpose of their existence.

Statutory warning: This post is based on personal experience of the authors. Any resemblance to real life is totally intended. If there is anyone who is offended by the post, well, too bad.

P.S. You won't find any photos of the One Direction Boys, especially Zayn Malik, because my fellow blogger couldn't coax me into liking her OOO, and although it means that I would not walk any closer to nirvana, I didn't give into her requests. :-P

Good Ol' Days

As I de-board the Metro to undertake the journey back home on foot, I pass this school. I see something I know so closely. Tiny tots sliding hither and thither, the slightly older ones chatting about the homework given by teachers, anxiety writ large on their faces, but not larger than the bags they have on their shoulders, which makes their frame look even more petite than it really is . Then there are the senior students, who are well aware of this fact. They must have been scolded by the teachers as to the kind of role model they are becoming for their juniors, how soon they will have to leave the confines of school, but till then they should learn to behave, learn to tuck in their shirts and get those hair pointing in every direction fixed.

      

And yet, some must have giggled, others guffawed; others must have mimicked the teacher after she left, immediately pulling lose their ties in an attempt to look "cool".

A surge of nostalgia overpowers me. I remember I was there, just a few months back.

It feels as if it was just yesterday, and then it feels like it’s been ages.

Yes, now throughout my plodding, I am thinking of school days. The walk to the threshold of the school is marked with eagerness and anticipation, wondering whether everything has remained the same, or has the passage of time left its mark. Will I still be welcomed with open arms? Will I still be able to call this place my own?

It is so ironical that these are the same four walls i couldn’t bear any longer, and wanted to escape from so eagerly. And within a matter of months I have realised what those figurative four walls stood for. They stood for the security of those confines, the love of teachers who cared enough to remember our names, to chide us for our misdemeanour, the guard who would let us in if we got late by 5 minutes (okay, more often than not, he didn’t, but now everything looks twice as precious).

I long for that security like a toddler longing for milk. Every day when I enter college, why don’t I feel the same feeling of belonging there, as i did each day of school?

Its funny how when we are living the moment, we tend to be indifferent to its significance. We fail to realize that one day, you will suddenly get a whiff of what has transpired over the past few months, that your life has taken a turn, that you are no longer known by your school, you are no longer a part of the place you've relished being at for 14 years of your life. One fine day, it just hits you, and you'll be rendered nostalgic by the forces of time. The reminiscence overcame me today, and here I am penning down the recurring moments and instances which have come to define school life, at least for me.

1. Never used ‘Use Me’- Whenever a teacher scolded about class cleanliness, we used to slyly slide the garbage beneath our desks to the back ones. Unfortunately, by the time we reached class12, the teacher knew who the culprit was, not to mention his punishment of cleaning up all the chits and bits from class.

2. Spirituality in our eyes, or not-Whenever we were asked to close our eyes and meditate, we would check whether our partner has opened his/ her eyes or not. We secretly pined for the assembly to be held in class on test days, so as to cram up snippets enough to let us pass. And we prayed for a special assembly downstairs when the first period happened to be of a cranky teacher.

3. Excuse me- And when it came to excuses, we were one hell of a repository of excuses. From bunking school, to not studying when in class, to learning the modern way (read PowerPoint presentations in computer labs) just to get air-conditioned environs!

4. Substitutions- Well, it was as common a topic of discussion as air in atmosphere. It all began with a surmise that a teacher might not turn up. Soon, it would have escalated from a conjecture to a rumour and became a source of unalloyed joy for the entire class. Each teacher entering before the rumoured-to-be-absent teacher was pestered whether the teacher has turned up, or if she is going away for some workshop and the teachers would also keep us hanging by the hook, unwilling to reveal the secret to every students’ happiness.

 It would be the most heart-breaking moment when we learnt that some teacher had decided to hijack our free period by making a "setting" with the substitution in charge, so as to be able to finish the course in time, an exercise which was just meant to maintain a tremendous scope for those abhorrent revision tests. All our hopes of whiling away those 45 minutes playing 'truth or dare' would be deviously crushed on hearing that news. With half a heart, we would slowly draw out our notebooks and books, while mentally praying for some zombie attack or apocalypse to save us from relenting the 'free' period.

5. Monitors/ Man-eaters- Another dimension of substitutions was sending the monitor/prefect to the staff room to take a note of all the "free" periods and the assignments for them. Now, the monitor, if bribed in a proper fashion, could take light years to reach the staff room and come back, in the process, wasting the entire period. But if monitors turned into man-eaters, each kid would have to endure the backlash of doing assignments.

Befriending the monitor could save you mammoth trouble during the school year, so you knew exactly on whose bad side you don’t want to be at.

6. Faking sick- Remember that one time you forgot to carry your homework to school, and you instantly knew that the particularly strict teacher wouldn’t let you get away with the ‘left it at home, after toiling hard the entire previous night’ excuse. And then you knew exactly what to do. Clutching your stomach, you would make a trip to the school medical room. The doctor would gauge your pain and see through your antics, but still hand over a tablet just to get rid of you.

7. Lunch that would never make it till lunch period- Lunch period- those twenty minutes of the day when everything except eating lunch happened. As you made a mad dash to run after your teacher and submit your assignment, by the time you are back, for all you know, your lunch had been gobbled down by your friends and was being converted into bile by their gall bladders. Remind me, why were you friends with them, again?

8. Facebook display pictures- Don’t even get me started on that one. Every possible nook and corner of the school building was utilized in order to get those picture perfect profile pictures. Be it hanging deliriously from the railings or popping our heads out of the windows, nothing was out of consideration. And no, not even the washroom was spared.

Shah Rukh Khan has beautifully surmised his feelings in the following lines: “Apne Chhote Dosto Se Mai Ak Baat Jarur Kahna Chahunga. Bachcho Tumhare Ye Bachpan Ke Din Jindagi Ke Sabse Khubsurat Aur Behtrin Din Hai................Haan Bachcho, Mai Tumhe Yakin Dilata Hu Ki, Yahi Sabse Khubsurat Din Hai, Kyoki Jab Tum... Bade Hoge, Tab Tum Tarsoge In Dino Ke Liye, Lekin Tab Ye Din, Ye Lamhe Waapas Nahi Aayenge. aaj Aapka Dil Sachcha Hai, Pak Hai, Damkta sona Hai, Aaj Is Dil Se jo Rishte Kayam Karoge, Jo Dost Tum Log Banaoge, Aise Dost Aise Rishte Jindagi Mai Phir Kabhi Nahi Milenge”

What the fudge is wrong with us?

Over-speeding and saw a cop? There go a string of cuss words. 

Accidently walked into someone while whatsapping your girlfriend? Here come more such words your way, sire! 

The shlokas and quotes which were revered and taught to the kids by the elders, extolling patience and pure speech, have just been murdered by the present generations. You are cordially invited to its burial.

So why is beep becoming the new buzz word? What the fudge is wrong with us?

Because we love throwing up a volley of expletives, we love Sholay and Delhi Belly because of their expletives-ridden dialogues. So next time while travelling in the metro, when you get f*** up because the aunty sitting next to you is a b****, or worse, if you don’t get a seat and the driver just couldn’t drive better, don’t be amazed if the girl/boy next to u screams words like **** to show angst as if that’s patriotism. 

Today, we live in a world, where people are more proficient in sarcasm and profanity, than the language itself. While I'm not so much against rhetoric sarcasm, scratch that, I worship it, but the usage of the latter spells serious trouble.

Swearing has become like second nature to us. It flows as unintentionally and smoothly out of our mouths as once the words of the Morning Prayer used to. While, in our defence, we grew up in such a 'culture', it still doesn't justify the verbal vomit we subject others to.

These words and phrases have become as ubiquitous as once plastic was, and we can’t help but imagine that these phrases would deem plastic bags their role models, and would soon be wiped out, meeting the same fate as them Only, that would remain a far-fetched dream, for, even if we try to rid ourselves of them, they would only come back crawling into our lives via others, just like the plastic bags did.

Oh crap! damnit! f*** ! Bugging $h!T!!!!! So how do we handle such a sordid state of affairs? Let us begin by peeping into the causes, the instigators, which provoke us into this apparently unscrupulous habit.

1. The virtue of patience, has become virtually non-existent amongst the Gen Y. Speaking five sentences sans any profanity is a like a tremendous feat for people our age. Whenever you are stuck in a traffic snarl, it isn’t an uncommon sight to see people hurling abuses at each other, as if each swear word would miraculously eliminate the long rows of vehicles in front of you. We forgot, in a way it does too, because after your skirmish turns into a brawl and you end up injured, you get a special treatment, far above from the crowd, the swarm of people who did not give in to the temptation, because everyone gives way to a police van, you know.

2. While swearing catches on with the teens as a sign of how 'kewl' they are, may I politely remind you that your definition of 'kewl' is severely distorted and delusional?

So, if you are travelling with your friends, it is absolutely undesirable of you to remain quiet when you should actually have bathed the person in front of you with a bout of expletives if for no other reason than to gain popular approval you know. Swearing is somewhat in trend, much like the prêt fashion. It’s the "in thing" these days.

Let’s take a moment of silence to commemorate the long forgotten use of etiquettes and formal language. RIP. Or now, we might just think of it as 'Rest in profanity’.

Given that it is such a despicable, abhorrent practice is no ground to dismiss it, because hilarious as it may sound, this trend is here to stay, and just like the changing fashions each spring, the words might change, however just like yellow colour would forever continue to be associated with spring, this profanity is not abandoning this cursed (or cussed) land anytime soon.

We, the Gen Y, are the fire-fighters. But mind you, we don’t fight fire, we fight with fire as a weapon, fire of hot as hell words coming out from our hot-heads

And while everyone gets engulfed in this fire, there is a rising need to develop a liquid which can help douse it. But we need to make sure, the liquid is not itself a repository of bittersweet words, which we have come to "accept" and are "fine" with.