First day of college

At around one fifteen I switched of the computer and went to sleep knowing that I had just four hours of sleep. Three hours later, I was drowsy, half-awake, and went back to sleep thinking I had another hour.
I woke up after two hours, which left me exactly one hour to go to the college, for my first lecture. I had overslept. There were no rickshaws available that early, and despite not catching a fast train, I managed to make it at seven twenty. I don’t know how I managed it – it usually takes an hour and fifteen minutes to travel that long – but I managed to do it.
Then this guy was already putting everyone to the grindstone, giving just five minutes grace, scolding the latecomers nonetheless, cracking good jokes, which we did not laugh at by principle. What made me the happiest right now is the eco lecture. I managed to wriggle out the first applause for this batch. I don’t think I will ever forget that. The economics Madam asked why she should not take the second lecture, one guy answered that it didn’t sound good, and another guy said something about being a little lax on the first day, and then I raised my hand and said “diminishing marginal utility” the class burst into both applause and laughter, and she said it was a good thing that someone was using economics in real life.
Yeahah…
Then there was an ice-breaking introduction sessions, where I was pretty intimidated because a couple of people were radio jockeys, choreographers, and stuff like that. I did not take part in that, but I was prepared with a nice introduction “I don’t sing, I don’t play any instrument, at least in a way remotely pleasing to human ears, I have not tried radio jockeying or choreography, I don’t want to start a rock band of my own…”
Pity I didn’t get the chance to go ahead and say it. Then there was this debate about the seventy five attendance limit, which I did not want to be a part of, and finally another debate that I said just one point, but it was a pretty strong point. The debate was about the ethics of sensationalizing news stories, and the radio jockey wanted to have one on “basically the same topic” which was somehow supposed to be the privacy of celebrities.
My point was that sensationalizing news gets the core issue into focus. Like no one cared much what happened to Aman Varma of Shakti Kapoor, but more about the casting couch itself. No one cared much about that particular rape in Marine drive, but the fact that the police are brutalized people not intent on protecting the public. The Shahid-kareena kiss, no matter how it was received, bought out the core issue of celebrity privacy into the limelight.
Again, pretty much a success there…

We weren’t ragged, which is a pity.
Went to a friend’s house, played NFS U2 there, because my comp is not endowed with enough RAM to do that, and I probably need a graphic card too. Then came home, and slept. Will have to wake up at five tomorrow no matter what. The proper lectures start tomorrow. Damn.