Answering "about me" has always been a very difficult task for me. I had never actively tried to find a answer to it. Not because I couldn't answer it, but because I didn't have courage to answer it. I have never ever felt the urge or the compulsion to find an answer to it. I was living in a world created by myself, created by my imaginations, my presumptions, and my ideals.
There are many ways in which "about me" can be answered. There is a simple way to answer it. It is the way I would have answered to some stranger, or in a company interview. It my start from my name, birth/education history, achievements, accolades, experiences, hobbies and so on. But I am not interested in answering it in that way. I want to answer it as I would have answered it to "myself". Thats the aim of this post.
Answering to own is difficult due to "n" number of reasons. Firstly I know all the above information myself. So that can't be a part of the description. My name has been given by my parents, I didn't have any control on my DOB, and degrees, accomplishments are what has been given to me. My hobbies are just a description of my daily life. So these might be used to quantify my self. Finding what I am, why I am, might be a solution to this sort-of-identity crisis.
My life story has been quite similar to the post-independent India's history. It all begin with a big achievement, a high hope, a high aspiration (independent for India, getting into IIT for me). There were a hell a lot of expectations from all. I still remember one of my friend telling me about "my natural leadership quality" at my first year. Well, I have shown a leadership quality in class. In a class of 200-300 students, I used to ask questions, be active in the class-room while others were busy reading H2G2 and LOTR. India used to be top-ten industrialized country when it got independent!!! Many people got really surprised when I decided not to stand for the post of Hall President in my first year.
Well, both of us had a big baggage of past when we started our journey. India had its 200 years of British rule. It got its independence fighting with British. It inherited the british bureaucracy, the fabian model of economy (again from British). India hasn't been fully recovered from the ill-effect of the first. It has started moving away from the second after liberalization of 90's. I had a spend almost all of life before getting into IIT, in studing, doing things what I was told, what I had imagined right. Living in a world created by myself, far-from the reality was what I had become fond of myself in that period. While most of my batch-mates were engaged in books/movies/friends and gals, I decided to create a wall between their world and my own world. Well, it helped me immensely while preparing IIT, it throw me into the world call IIT. Sadly its utility ended there. It became a baggage for me for quite a long time at IIT.
Idealism was the arsenal for both. It was the way both of us started. There was a big problem with Idealism. One can never be 100% ideal with this real world. Hence idealist create there own world. They just assume there ideals to be 100% right, they don't damn care whether it is implementable or not. People intoxicated with idealism thought it is the boat that will transfer them to the heaven. They go on creating blunders after blunders. They only feel the pain of their blunders only when their sweet dreams breaks and wake up in a spiteful-state. India started its adoption of idealism by getting started with fabian socialism. Then it adds Non-aligned-movement (remember the poor of India were living with the wheat send by USA in those days), Non-performing-capital-intensive-PSUs, and the list continues ... its dream didn't broke till the date when its foreign reserve drains to such a level that it had to send cargo filled with gold to IMF as a collateral to get loans. It created the perfect magic. And the rest part of the story is fondly called "liberalization"
Life at IIT was in good way similar to the above. Life was pretty good at first year. It was the perfect honeymoon for me as there was no senior to help me get out of my self-created world. Thing started screwing up big time once i entered the arena of senior halls. I was a strictly against ragging at that time (I am still against the concept of ragging, but the intensity is nothing compared to those days). I took all the requests/orders/suggestions given by seniors to me as a part of ugly-world-of-ragging. I stopped believing the fact that knowing about seniors, my batch mates, about the world around me is actually beneficial to me in long run. No doubt I remembered them to some extend, but lack of belief in the action ends-up giving poorer results. I still vividly remember the days when I literally shouted to all my seniors at the cat-walk of Patel hall, when all my batch mates were standing in rows, practicing march past. When I remember that day, a melancholic feeling comes to my mind.
When most of my friends actively started participating in various hall activities, be it participating in sports, cultural activities, or standing hall elections, collecting fundas, learning how to get thing done, I opted to spend my time mostly a my room, spending time at learning some new stuff, or mugging for exams. Well they end up helping me getting strong in programming skills and getting good grades. But I ended up not learning the stuffs that I could have learned. I just opted to be good at one sport (swimming and water-polo) and one social activity (debating). I still vividly remember the day when I mercilessly rejected one of my senior, the offer of being a part of english dramatics team of Patel hall.
My screwing-up didn't ended there. I had more social short-comings which can be quantified as very very severe. I have no knowledge of the necessity of listening. So, when I was pointed by my friends, I just didn't listened to them. Lack of ability to understand why and what other people were saying or thinking resulted in decrease in the size of my friend circle. Well, there were few like-minded friends with whom I didn't face the same problem (I don't know why and how) with whom I developed good friendship. Life was a lone journey in the most of my IIT life.
Well, things weren't same for entire span of my IIT life. During the final year, I had a lots of fun with my batch bates. I think those were the best days of my life. Well, my friends have much more fun then me, leg-pulling me. I was little bit reserved, and by nature I am a short-tempered guy, who got offended quite easily and forgot it the next moment. So I was a perfect material for leg-pulling. I learned to get less offended, learned to control my temper. Still I have this problem, but they are less severe as compared to the the beginning.
Well, this post has become too long. So next part of it will be posted in the next post [:)]
