Academia Blues

(For all of the misery we've been put through all of these years...)

When you curse the apple that did fall
Wish Schrodinger's cat had better hit a wall
E doesn't equal M, C squared
Einstein had better only played the violin there

Yes, you're doing the academia blues
It isn’t a joking thing, isn’t easy to get through
We're talking nasty, we're talking academia blues
Beat you each time, like a hammer on the head
There isn't any 3-D path harder to tread

Each time you're put through a chain of Carboxylation
You feel it's bad as asphyxiation
Feel that carbon had better not exist?
Life would have been better, much better than this!

Math stopped being, numbers and signs
Long back, long back when science too was fine -
Simple and easy to comprehend
Minus the uncertainty, minus the Hamiltonian grand

Then bombed we were with fat boy and little man
Statistics, semiconductors, scientific slang
Observe, analyse, record – they ask us to do
And then to mug up formulae without a sound or two

For we're living through them, academia blues
From morning till the day is through.
You should for once try our shoes
It's the oldest and the latest news
The spited and the spiteful - Academia blues!

To you the periodic table was never nice
Neither the DNA, all of which you wished to splice
Couldn’t care less if copper salt was blue
Wondered Murphy’s Law couldn’t be more true!

When you're going roughage – oh, I meant bananas
Doing crazy vectors, or studying the wild Savanna
When you're going insane, going Academia nuts!
When the light at the tunnel end has clearly shut
You may give it a rest. Might want to cut loose
You can wait till they haunt you - come Monday, Academia blues!

Brand 'Love'

(Let me make clear at the outset that a person like me who's almost always certainly uncertain, never ever uses the words 'I believe'. Too much responsibility for someone who can go along easy saying 'I think'.)

Right from when you start talking you start to hear all the talk about love, to be more specific - the romantic kind of love. It's in the movies, in the songs, on your television set, the adverts - everywhere. Face it, you've grown up to cheesy romantic movies, heard a few thousand tacky cliched lines that people never get tired using. You've been the victim of a very smart propaganda. A propoganda so amazingly effective that the first image that comes to your mind when you hear the word 'heart' is not one of a pumping organ!

It's always played in my mind that Brand Love was created much the way Hallmark and the likes have always tried to popularise Valentine's Day in an antic that is rather obviously commercial. If loving is in fact caring and sharing, with an added bit (incentive, if you will) of pure brutish pleasure, need we fancy it up to the scale we always have?

Perpetuation of species is the answer you're looking for. Yes, that I think has always been a necessary need. If you don't make them believe, how the will cycle go on, the circle complete? Yes, Brand Love - funny the way it spells out, ain't it?

(Then again, if you ever hear me using a fancy line, know that I've only  been talking about what 'I think'... :D)

Hid-den-seek

What do you see when you look at me
Colour, face, chin or kin
Do you think to bother, bother to think
To go beyond my many skins
What do you hear when I speak
The tone, the pitch or the way in which
I have been taught to speak

As a picture hides the wall cracks, that just couldn't find their way in it
A story forgets to tell stories. Of many. They say,
A picture tells a beautiful lie, not so much an ugly truth
And that does go the other way
As you've been sold, as you've been told
As the adverts tell you to go - So you know
We live on things made to ‘struct
The power we crave, I'm sure we must

We've lost a certain significant right side
In a noisy dead end street
While our heart's been reduced to a mere
Pump that keeps us longer lest we stop to breathe
We seek comfort, we choose convenience
To write a critique than save the cause

And the pictures that our mind makes
We've trained it to hurry, to fasten its pace
Our one-tracked lives, they just can't wait
To hear a different song, to escape our fate
God, oh God, what did you end up to make
Tell me but anything, if not a rat race

A picture hides the wall cracks, that just couldn't find their way in it
As a story forgets to tell stories. Of many. They say,
A picture tells a beautiful lie, not so much an ugly truth
And that does go the other way
As you've been sold, as you've been told
As the adverts tell you to go - so you know
We need no more than listening to ourselves
While on screechy whistles the world around us, blows

IITs and BITS - Exchanging Places?

Until a few years back, the IITs were considered the place only for the exceptionally intelligent, that evident in their short but highly difficult entrance test, the IITJEE. On the other hand, BITS accepted students on the basis of their score in the boards - ensuring invariably, the student intake was some of the most hardworking and diligent students from across the country, maybe not with as much amount of grey matter (only according to the set measuring scale) as IITians.

The new scheme of things, seems to me, to have BITS assume the place of the IITs and vice versa. The reason - the current IIT-JEE paper requires a vast knowledge of details and trivial information, especially in the Chemistry and Physics sections, thus ensuring a place for the industrious. Add to that the fact that the percentage of reservations in the IITs has gone up considerably and you'd be forced to rethink. BITSAT - the online admission test for BITS, accepted a few years back, focuses on skills such as language and analytical thinking (apart from PCM) - which one would be safe to say, have more to do with gray cells rather than sheer hard work. 

A good number of my friends who came out with flying colours in IITJEE achieved scores in BITSAT, modest for their JEE scores. One wonders if that was because of their carefreeness after JEE, or reflective of what I've mentioned above.

PS - Admittedly, an inspiration for this article may be some of the most exceptional people I've encountered in my life after coming to BITS Pilani.

Paradox

(The more I see the less I know for sure... John Lennon)

I try so hard not to objectify

But each time I do, I try

Covering it all up, one by one

Saying everyone's been objectifying everyone

And I realise

I just did.

I look at you and your innocent flight

Your simple and one-minded sight

And I see how and I see why

I'm left down here to see you up there, so high

It's easy, it's plain

Why here I remain

So black bird, winged one

Do you see birds the way I see a human?

Dear black bird

Do you realise I just called you black?

Really, Mr. Freedom

Do you see my slack?

When not busy making depressed chatter

Or took up by some wise clatter

While my thoughts are plain as my space

While my thoughts don't prick this haze

This haze that does surround

This haze that never fails to come around

For black or white or dark or gray

We lost a lot, we pride ourselves - child's play!

But they say you don't gain if you don't lose

Seems I gave up my answers for questions, for turbulence, truce.

Still I hope when I look at them there

I feel some feel, I feel some care

(And wait, I do)

So black bird, winged one

Do you see birds the way I see a human?

Dear black bird

Do you realise I just called you black?

Really, Mr. Freedom

Do you see my track?

So black bird, winged one

Do you see birds the way I see a human?

Dear black bird

Do you realise I just called you black?

Now, Mr. Freedom

Do you see my slack?

Too Good For This Life

(Not cynicism. Just expression. Read without prejudice..)


Came back from a walk

With a friend and his mellow talk

He'll talk friendly, he'll talk nice

When I turn around I see it's lies

I feel too good for this life

Cry-monging, havoc rife

I feel too good for this life

To take it all at the point of a knife

Quit a job and my office room

And their funny circus costume

Felt tired working days

In a rat race, it's a hopeless case

I got a girl, no I had her once

She's gone, she's gone since months

She couldn't, no she couldn't know

That love's just an empty show

I feel too good for this life

To take it all at the point of a knife

But you're born and you pay the price

You're too old when you get wise

I see them fight, I see them hate

Over colour, religion and other bait

These fools, no they don't see

What was before this came to be?

I feel too good to just complain

So I'll go out soak the rain

I feel too good to hear you swear

Throw off that pride you wear

I feel too good for this life

To take it all at the point of a knife

And I'll leave for a different place

When memories, dreams can replace

And on the beach, the summer glows

In the heat of the chilly snow

I could really use getting lost

Taking easy, listening soft

I'm too good for your lies

I'm too big for my size

I'm too young to survive

The hate dropping off your eyes

And I feel too good for this life

I feel too good for this life

Jangle Pop

Few of us would have ever heard of this not-so popular name for a kind of music that has made music what it is today. Fewer still, will appreciate the kind of class artistes like R.E.M. and Tom Petty brought to the music scene of the 80s.


From the bright cheerful 'Shiny Happy People' to the cool-as-a-cucumber adult sounds that featured on albums like Wild Flower. But where did it start?

The Beatles would be a safe guess, for obvious reasons! And you had The Byrds who quickly became a sensation - made a Bob Dylan song more popular than he himself could (need I say more?)! Talking of sensations, The Beach Boys sure had their day! Snazzy sound, peppy rhythms and lyrics that made quite a lot of sense for their sound. And that essentially characterized and led to the Jangle Sound.

Dug up works of a few artistes of the kind a few months back and underrated is one word I have for the genre.

Just the idea of letting loose and going erratic without becoming screechy like the Metal bands of our day and holding it together and sounding good gives me a feel of what the Beatles were in essence with the music before their time.

Here's to the jingle-jangle sounds this morning!