Strawberry Fields: A tribute

There is something about Strawberry Fields. Half of my euphoria about getting into law school stemmed from the fact that my college organized Strawberry Fields, India’s largest competition for bands, a three day festival where people would play rock music, live. I had never seen a concert where rock music was played, Allahabad wasn’t that kind of place.

Did it live up to my expectations? Yes, it has, without question. The four SF’s that I have seen have been my favourite times of the year they were held in. The music has ranged from terrible to great, but whatever is being played, when I’m standing on a field listening to the music coming from the amazing system, I feel inner happiness at the beauty of it all. My first year, I ran from the acad, where I was doing work for LeGala, to the field at least twenty times per day. The music at Strawberry Fields has always had a huge quantity of really bad metal. Even that has a bunch of fans who talk about how broootal the previous band was. But one can always find the good bands who entertain you with their awesomeness. Strawberry Fields is where I first learnt to appreciate metal, especially the more extreme forms of it. I listen to a few metal bands but they’re kind of progressive or alternative metal like Opeth or Baroness. Full on loud sonic assault metal is however, I think best appreciated live. The rush of headbanging and the enthusiasm of the crowd can make you appreciate the skill and virtuosity of the band that’s playing, and the music grows on you.

However, Strawberry Fields is not just about the music, it is about the sheer epicness of it all. On the days of the prelims, there is music from morning till night and you can chill right there, with a beer in your hand, while the bands keep coming. It feels almost as good as sitting on the beach with a beer. You can hang out with great people, you listen to fun music, you can get super happy if a great band plays, and later you can head bang as much as you want. You’ll eat a Nizam’s roll or a Hungry Hogs hot dog for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You can sit in the field till late at night, talking and drinking. If you’ve been working at organizing all day, you can have the satisfaction of a job well done. My first memory of SF is walking towards the field and upon hearing a band play an Avial cover, ‘Nada, Nada’, running like hell to get there as soon as possible. It was glorious.

The prelude to the final day has always been the same. I go for the NLS open quiz, first thing in the morning, doing progressively better over the years but always just falling short of how well we wanted to do. And then, the field. The first band, almost invariably, not metal, plays at around 5:30-6:00 and the crowd is much better than previous days but it’s still relatively sparse. I always feel a little bad for the first band, they’re the only ones to play in daylight and to a relatively smaller crowd. Then, happiness. Because as soon as they start playing, the next 4-5 hours are pandemonium. Lights, lasers, smoke, loud ear shattering music, it feels a lot more intense than the previous two days. The lawschoolites are all in their enclosure but that is also very crowded. One sings along, screams, applauds, headbangs and by the end you’ve had a terrific time. Inebriation helps, of course but is not compulsory and it is the music which alters your consciousness to make you happy. The headliners which for me were Pentagram, Parikrama, Raghu Dixit and Rudra respectively always play a short but stunning set and when it ends, an emptiness sets in, because you know the next one’s twelve months away. I can ramble on and on, but the last SF just ended two days ago, and I miss it. Next year’s the last one, and whatever else happened in college, I’ll always miss these three days a lot.

Another Rant?

This was written in class the day before I finally submitted my projects. Reflects my mood at that time.

The weirdest daydreams are helping me pass the time. This is not me in a happy daydream which involves me in situations which are ideal and where life is awesome. They help me escape my current existence which is hell. A time where I sleep all day and then waste time playing games or on the internet and get 50 to 100 words done of a 3000 word project done every night. Then I get up for breakfast, waking up as if from a dream which is what the past 10 hours have been. I am daydreaming( in the night) as I play FIFA, read a lot of stuff on sports news websites, band profiles, country profiles, city profiles, album profiles, movie profiles on Wikipedia, videos on YouTube, movies stored on the laptop, ebooks etc. While I am doing this, there is a small dim recess of my mind which knows I am in even more trouble if I keep going, then I look at the clock, only 11:00 pm, before I know it it’s 3:30, 5:00 and dawn starts breaking and this is when I get the work done (those 50 to 100 words).

Then that shameful walk to breakfast, that horrible sinking feeling. Depending on when I’ve slept, either I feel the need to sleep immediately or I don’t. Then comes the biggest problem, to go or not to go to class. When I make that decision not to go to class, I know that I am not going to do anything at all, but I’m so fucking angry with myself I will then want to continue reading or watching the nonsense I am until I’m too sleepy to think before I fall asleep. If I go to class, I act super depressed for the first hour but eventually get over it and I think about better things and talk to people and feel better. I hate and love the computer. It is the reason I feel like I live in hell right now but it is an amazing thing, and the desire I have to know more and more random stuff is well-satisfied. It feels even more incredible especially when I have projects or exams. When I don’t have the load over my head, then it’s the desire to meet people, go out, have fun which somehow overpowers this.

I am addicted and I need help but sometimes doing this feels so involuntary that I wonder if I need help of the pill-popping and talking to a shrink kind. But I know I need to find it within myself to do something about this. This is getting insane and giving me a lot of unhappiness. And there is nothing at all in the world which gives me any indication that things will change at all. I hope I become slightly better , and this vicious cycle gets over a little earlier when it is time to write a law school project again.

The Blues

As I listen to OK Computer, the typical background music for these sad, contemplative moments I cannot figure out what I am meant to do in life. The desire to be good at something, to be smart, not really to show the world how smart I am but to create that sense of self worth is really strong right now. That desire manifests itself sometimes in wanting to be other people but mostly it is about doing the things that they do. To be a stud in law school is not the simple goal. The simple excuse I give for not being the most successful, or at least relatively successful be it in academics or in things like mooting, debating and all the other things that people do is that I don’t apply myself, the day I do it I’ll be as good as them. But right now the scarier thought is maybe I am just not good enough at this, that I have come from another thing which I was bad at which was science to here. I have forgotten how to really apply myself, or maybe I have never done it in the first place. Why don’t I work hard at all is the scary question I have asked myself for a long time.

But today even in situations where I know I will be totally screwed if I don’t buck up or apply myself I don’t. I have not even worked reasonably hard for an exam the day before it for a long time now. It’s a stifling web I find myself being caught in. When I see people going to different countries, to moot or to present papers it actually hurts as to what the hell am I doing here in the first place. I don’t think I have ever done anything I have done well in which has not been at least passively enjoyable. I just cannot work hard in courses where teachers are totally incompetent and which consequently I hate and barely pass or do badly in. A little hard work before the day of the exam or a few days before would make me do well but I can’t bring myself to mug up resolutely like anybody else and hence suffer. Every time I finish a project (which I do on the last last day) I shudder to think of the way I was suffering trying to finish in those last few hours and the shit I did all those days before and every time I do that run from my room to the exam department where I have no idea if I will actually manage to submit it this time.

The worst however is that there are other parts of my life where I will continue to be relatively unhappy whatever I do unless something drastic out of my control happens. Here I can change this and feel better about this aspect of my life but I don’t. The question of why I still can’t answer. Do I want this? Yes, I do. It’s important enough to take away my sense of well being and affect my happiness. Every time I tell myself I will do better next time and screw up I feel worse and worse. Is it that the relative comfort that I get from sitting in front of a laptop to browse Wikipedia(obsessively), Facebook and play FIFA is too hard to give up? I’m sure objectively I know what’s better for me not just in the long run but also what will keep me happier .But, pushing myself and controlling my willpower are things that are so alien right now. Maybe the problem is that these are not emotions that I always feel or thought that I always think. I genuinely have fun for a good part of my life and don’t think about these things.

But, overall I am desperate to create some sense of order in my life. I chase happiness in awesome moments that exhilarate me. Getting drunk at a quad party in the happiest, funnest way, the trippy madness of a Strawberry Fields concert, sitting in a shack in Goa by the sea, the most intimate conversations about life with people, these are the memories I live on. That happiness is beautiful but fleeting, and my amazing highs take me to even worse lows. What I need now is a sense of contentment in life which will not come unless I do the things I am supposed to do in college. The problem with law school is that even though you are putting in little effort academically, you are still not chilling. The rude checks of project submission, repeats make your life even more distressingly hectic and painful. It is time to change and I hope I can. The other problems in my life are no less painful but far more difficult to solve and in this case if not a complete change, maybe an articulation and awareness of this desire will make things relatively better.

Trip to Vellore

Before coming back home early because of Swine Flu, I decided to go to Vellore and visit two of my best friends from school, both of them studying in VIT ( Vellore Institute of Technology).
A long weekend ie. a two day holiday coupled with project submission just two days before the holidays presented itself with a perfect opportunity. I talked to my friends and apparently if I reached after 9 30 pm they couldn’t get me inside their hostel so I decided to either leave early on Friday so as to reach before 9 30 or Saturday morning.
With no bus leaving before 4 30 and Vellore being approx 4 and a half hrs away, I had to chuck the option of a bus and went looking for trains. Again a train at 2 30 or otherwise too late. With classes ending at 1 30 and possible attendance problems, I decided Saturday was the day. However, Lizzie was ill and the VC took a class and let us off and I found myself free at 12 20. I made haste to catch the 2 30 train and grabbed some clothes and ran to get an auto. I was there at 1 30 and went to the counter to get a ticket. “No Seat free, all reserved”, replied the old man at the counter .
Wondering whether to go without seats again( Recent Train journey did the same thing), after all I could stand for some 3 and a half hrs and the weather would be awesome( unlike my recent train journey which was also the most terrible train journey in my life).
But then he said, “ I can get you a ticket , give Rs. 100 to the TT and you’ll get a seat”. That old man also circumvented the line, got me a ticket from the back of the office ( I paid him extra for that) and I had a seat in a full train by paying some Rs. 200 extra. And then I realized money talks everywhere, and though I bribed somebody I felt incredibly street smart rather than guilty.
The train journey after that to Katpadi Jn.( Vellore’s station) was awesome. The weather was brilliant and it was raining softly and I could feel he spray on my face. Most of the time I read war and peace( which is pretty good actually), and when i looked outside I saw some weird rocky hills, they were hills as large as the Shivalik hills in Uttarakhand made entirely of rock with no vegetation on them. The people around me were mostly talking in a language( I’m assuming Kannada or Tamil) I couldn’t understand. I ate some nice Mirchi Vadas and soon I reached there without incident ( apart from the odd encounter with eunuchs). Met my friend at the station, and soon I was there.
VIT is well.... huge! It has some 15,000 people. The hostel I was living in had seven floors and around a thousand people. And there are some 10 boys hostels like that, or more. And only 3 girls hostels, yes engineering is sad that way. Of course, I wasn’t allowed there and was technically staying there illegally, but it’s pretty difficult to get caught, because there were so many people. It’s easy to blend within the crowd. In fact, when my friends introduced me to some of their friends, they asked me what branch I’m studying, assuming I’m an engineering student at their college. Another interesting thing was the blank looks I got from people on hearing the name NLS. My friend introduced me to them, saying , “ He’s from NLS, Bangalore, the best law college in the country.” And I’d prepare to give them the, “Oh, that’s nothing much” look. However, nobody had heard of NLS, so they weren’t remotely awed, and anyway I was an arts student, the lowest of the low to them. That didn’t mean that they weren’t friendly, however.
The room both my friends occupied was a little, or maybe not so little smaller than my 3 seater room with separate cubicles in my hostel. But there were four people in the room, with two bunk beds, not even a shred of privacy, and I realized having one’s own cubicle, and I was marvelling at how little space each one of them had. Then their rules had me shocked. Hostels closed, ie. locked from outside at 9 30 with guards at the door. At 9:30 the warden will come to take attendance in each room, and that goes for everyone, including seniors.
Apparently, for girls this was 8:30. On a Saturday, they are allowed to be out till 11 30. But for girls, it is 5 pm perm time on a Saturday just because the guys have it off till 11 30. The rules seem slightly perverted to me, as the administration seems to assume that the guys and girls can’t control themselves together if they’re allowed out at night!
During my 2 night stay, I had fun, talked a lot, played a lot of FIFA with them, watched a lot of CS being played. Apparently, gaming is ‘the’ pastime there as the WI FI is payment only, and all these guys do in their free time( they have weekends off) is play. I went out for dinner as one of them was giving a birthday treat, had really sweet butter chicken( South Indian can’t seem to make decent butter chicken) and generally had a great time. But the rest of my meals, I ate in their mess, where again I masqueraded as a VIT student, and nobody gave a damn.
So it was a really fun trip, but made me appreciate law school a lot more. The rules reminded me of how comparatively lenient our rules are, and that SDGM is great( Students should discipline themselves ) . Another thing was, how people in law school, are of the same kind, everybody here( almost) was a debater/ quizzer in school, has similar interests. Many people read(fiction). Here I remembered that maybe I’m doing something I’m good at and how much i hated studying science( which I was horrible at). Another very interesting thing, most of those kids at VIT were from small towns, for example my friends’ roommates were from Patna and Jaipur respectively. People were from Kanpur, Lucknow, Varanasi, Sikar and many other small towns across India. Most people were not really English speaking. In fact they were the kind of people I also knew in Allahabad. When i mentioned this to my roommate, he said, “that is real India, man, the kind of people we have in law school are the elite, English speaking crowd from public school with a few exceptions.” I also realized one thing, that i was actually a little happy to turn away from that real India to the place i was currently in. A place where they preferred to listen to English music as opposed to Hindi, where I wouldn’t be called ‘angrez’ because I spoke English well etc. I’m grounded in reality thanks to studying in Army School and living in that place for a long time but I wouldn’t want to go back. I feel a little guilty for thinking so, but at least now I am a snob and thus law school is perfect for me.