Sunday, May 13, 2007

When life resembles fiction...almost...

There is a rather popular publication (very popular in hostels of engineering colleges and other predominantly male bastions) that compiles together communication between the editorial team of a popular (though expensive) magazine and the general populace and presents it in the form of blue-bound book with frequent re-prints. Generally, the veracity of the contents of this tome is extremely suspect, but as strongly true is the inherent readability and eye-catching style of writing employed in these. This genre of books, apart from being extremely popular with adolescent/young readers, also does a good job of igniting the imagination of the readers wherein they tend to day-dream a lot even when they are engaged in the rather regular and mundane activities of normal existence.

However, as time passes, the day dreams die a slow death, not painful or particularly troublesome, but just a slow death - after all, the readers are reasonably rational people with the innate ability to differentiate between fact and fiction.

And then, sometimes, years after the day dreams have whimpered out of existence, facts and fiction re-engage in the agonising turmoil that makes you think - was there any truth in all the blue books that you've ever read? Afterall, if I can be faced with a prospect like this, i'm sure sufficient such incidents would be happening the world over to fill up hundreds of such books.

I don't want to reveal more here. I just want to say that it was a rather scary, hopeful, nervous, expectant, moral-battling, going-with-the-flow type of oxy-moronic scenario. And when it fizzled out, I wasn't sure if there was more relief or more disappointment.

A few things that I got out of this (as an advisor closely related to the 'incident' said- "there's no downside!")

* I realised that for all the chest thumping I do, when the crux of a game changing phenomenon approaches, I'm about as confident as I was before the Social Sciences board exam in class 10. Which is not at all.

* My value system is quite strongly ingrained. It makes me think, for the first time, that certain things I haven't done till now may have been because I, at a sub-conscious level, did not want to do them, rather than a lack of opportunity.

* My moral scheme is nowhere as strong as my parents/immediate family may want it to be.

* I bought something I've never bought before for the first time in my life. And it was not even close to how tough/weird I thought it would be. It was actually a lot of fun!!

PS: People who know more details about this incident; I would really appreciate it if you could desist any comments with specifics. I'll be forced to delete those comments. (yes, I mean you PS!)

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