Of Context and Timelessness - My College Diaries

I believe in context, in my approach towards everything in life. Nothing makes sense to me unless I understand the bigger picture. My actions, especially, must be in accordance to this philosophy. I apply the same logic while blogging.

What's the context of remembering college days, 5.5 years after graduation? It's almost three years since my Masters graduation as well. Life has changed. It no longer revolves around the Food Court, silly crushes and GPAs. What's there from my late teens to early twenties that I can relate to in my late twenties? As I sit back and introspect, I could see 2 very significant factors that make my college days relevant, even now.

The first and foremost is the relationships that I built there.

Over the years, I have come to realize that it's harder to make friends now. There was something in that age of 18 to 22 when making friends came naturally to us. May be it was the naivety, but it gave all of us some of the best people we have met in our lives.  My core group of friends, still remains the same. Distances, jobs, marriages, and even, not meeting each other for years,  has not affected that. These are the people I share my laughter, sorrows, successes and failures with.  They are, as I often call them, my circle of trust. None of us are overachievers or possess an extraordinary prowess in our respective fields. All of our struggles made us stronger and sharing them with each other made the successes sweeter and the failures easier to live through. That also kept us relevant in each others’ lives. So, whether it was a setback in USA or a roadblock in Hyderabad or a hiccup in Germany, it was shared. It also taught us how parallel our lives still remain despite of all that differs. The assurance to have people, who have known you for a decade, on speed dial, is priceless.

The other thing that  I attribute to my college days is my writing. The first opportunity, applause, feedback and motivation, all came from my college. Writing has also always been cathartic for me. It’s the best outlet for my emotions and opinions. When I left college, on May 19, 2009, I felt devastated and so did most my friends. I felt lost even though I had a roadmap for my future. And writing came to my rescue.

I struggled for a week and finally, on the night of May 25, 2009, sat down and penned a post to calm my inner self. I recounted my last days, the lessons learnt and a promise to move on. It was 1550 words of raw emotions. This contest made me go back in time and read through those words and I would like to share some excerpts –

“Lesson I – A Myth broken- Night of May 9, 2009 (when the first group of friends left)

Boys don't cry. The only occasions when boys do cry is their sister's wedding, that too in the end, hiding and wiping off the tears as fast as possible. However, that night was an exception. There were very few words exchanged but still no tears! The taxi arrived and we started to arrange the luggage. A strange silence surrounded us. Then something happened. 2 friends hugged each other and started crying. It was sudden, like opening the floodgates! I looked up to Naveen, the biggest and the most muscular guy of our group. He was off, totally. He couldn't hold back and dragged all us into a group hug. Strangely, it all felt good. Boys don't cry, alright, but boys can cry, and that’s alright too.

 “Lesson II – A Truth Realized- Night of May 17, 2009 (second last day of college)

In the middle of the night, myself and Udayan started talking of the past and soon we both became quite vulnerable and called up our mentor-Rishi Bhaiya. He made us realize that we will learn to be apart from each other. May be this separation from people, we have been with 24x7 for the past 4 years, is necessary for our growth as individuals.

There was nothing new that he told us. But it was the timing or the way he told us that it struck the right chord. We just looked at each other, shook hands and I left. On my way back, I was thinking about MS in USA, Stony Brook vs Rutgers etc, nothing of the past but every trivial thing of the future. The Rishi Magic had worked."

 " Lesson III-An Era Ended- May 19, 2009

All said and done, we were still leaving the place we loved to hate for four years. There were a lot of people leaving that day. Hence, a lot of goodbyes and hugs. There is no better feeling to be seen off by our best friends. It makes you feel that there are people who care, there are people who miss you and there are people who want to see you again. The train moved and VIT was left behind- a place we loved to hate."

Looking ahead, doesn't mean forgetting the past. My college life did shape me for the future. I have met some amazing people in the past 5 years and, I could build new memories with them, only because of my experiences in my formative years in college. For all that, and a lot more, I treasure my college days.

05BBT215 would always be significant.

In 5 years, one thing hasn't changed, my best friend , Ramya, still oozes the same energy!



The "Circle of Trust"- over the years- from left pic 2- Rohit, Siddharth, Swagat, Udayan and Pankaj



And we meet again. Naveen and I at Times Square, 2013

'This post is my entry for 'My College Diary' contest held by travel blog My Yatra Diary in collaboration with Collegedunia.com' 

I tag Rishikant (http://meetrishi.blogspot.com/),
Udayan (http://udayanzone.blogspot.com/) 
and Aseem (aseemrastogi2.wordpress.com) to write on this topic

Negative

Guest Post By: Manikandan Chandrasekharan (Minasco)

People say, “Be positive”. Why? Is negativity such a powerful thing? Is negativity a barrier? To succeed, must one always stay optimistic with positive energy surrounding him/ her? Do you find yourself as that individual who has faced negativity? Did that negativity make your life miserable? Didn’t you have anything to feel happy about? Didn’t you accomplish anything in the past?

I have attempted to write this article to answer these simple questions. Almost everyone who reads the first paragraph would have the answers in the form of opinions. But I am equally confident that people would still read the remaining part of the article. I am confident because of a simple fact that if everyone knew the answers then there wouldn't have been so many bestseller books on staying positive or optimism. I would just like to give my honest opinions.

People who have advised me to stay positive are ones who have been close to me. They say it because they mean it. My father, my Professors and my close friends have all said it to me. Why would they ask me to stay optimistic? The answer is simple. Every one of them faced negativity. No one can avoid it. It is very powerful. No barrier can stop it. To succeed is not about staying positive. Staying positive is like the color black. Just as the absence of white light is black, absence of negativity is positivity. To stay positive, rise above negativity.

Negativity is like the colors of the optical spectrum. The vibrant colors that I am talking about are the opinions from many people, situations faced by the individual, the time of occurrence, self-doubt, short of support, haunting images of past failures and the absence of a smile. Every individual faces any one of these striking factors at least once in their lifetime. These don’t make life miserable. They teach us something. The bottom-line of many movies like Rambo Balboa, The Pursuit of Happiness among many others also say the same thing. All they say is, “Believe in yourself and overcome negativity.” That’s all it takes to be positive and to succeed.

Let the negativity come, question your abilities and bring the negative energy along with it. You just have to believe in yourself and move forward. You have won in the past; you just have to repeat it. It takes a mammoth effort to earn the first dollar note, not thereafter. It takes a billion bucks to bring the first unit of drug into the market, not thereafter. The same way, it takes immense courage to overcome negativity once, not thereafter. And if you don’t remember a time when you succeeded, let me remind you the day when you were born. You succeeded in breathing and living on your own.

You can succeed if you have positive energy. But don’t forget, that positive energy is just the absence of negativity which you have prevailed over. This is my first blog. The grammar might not be great but I am sure it’s understandable. It took me 22 years of my life to write the first one, but I am sure the first step is always the most difficult one. I crossed this barrier today. Strangely, the moment I wrote the previous line, I had a thought of some other concept for my second blog. But I guess that’s not a surprise as I have already taken the first step.

-Minasco