No Problem Dear!

The mobile rang once and fell silent.

Maybe she'd accidentally dialled again. Ajay looked at the time; it was already 11.50 p.m. He was about to switch off the beside lamp and turn on the AC when the mobile rang again. This time persistently.

"Hello Diya...What's up?"

"Dear have you got a moment? I felt like talking. If you don't mind, that is..."

" Of course not, silly....fire away" He pretended to be nonchalant although the alarm bells were jangling horribly in his mind.

"It's just that I've been feeling lonely and depressed of late" she said.

So what else is new? He wanted to ask. But out loud he said," What is it dear? What happened?"

He knew the answer already but braced himself for the tirade nevertheless.

The fact was Ajay loved his girlfriend, all her zillion annoying little traits notwithstanding. She was certainly not as bad as some of his friends' girlfriends. All things considered he was sure she was the one for him and all that.But....

But Ajay was equally convinced, by now, that he had to make peace with the fact that his girlfriend was a Class 1 'Whiner'. Sure enough she did not 'always' whine...but that was a mere technicality. Three days out of seven she would crib and complain for hours. She put him through endless such sessions. During the early days of their relationship he had been all ears, for ever the patient listener, while she emptied her endless list of grievances . But over the time he had become tired of her mood swings and depressions and 'phases'. He would have liked to tell her all this outright, but he didn't want to hurt her. For he was a rather soft-hearted person and did not really enjoy confrontational situations with members of the opposite sex. Particularly ones with a predisposition to whine.

It was not that he did not want to be supportive or helpful. It was just that he found her problems rather silly and trivial. And not at all warranting the amount of energy that she expended to sulk/grieve about, as the case may be. Take last week for example. She had called him on his mobile thrice during 20 minutes while he was at the cinema. He didn't attend the calls until after the movie was over and by that time she had graduated to phase 2 of her 'whining cycle'- being cold and distant to him. As much as he would have preferred not to know the reason for her latest grievance, he knew he had to ask her. What more, he had to coax it out of her, all the time being treated to an ear-load of 'how insensitive and uncaring he has been' and blah blah blah. Apparently his reason that taking a call in a movie theatre would invite angry shushes from all sides was simply a pathetic one. He finally admitted that he could have simply gone out and taken her call since it was clearly an emergency. So he apologised to her profusely. After his winsome apology she deigned to tell him what the emergency was.

"Doodles has caught diarrhoea, the poor mite."

(For those of you who don't know Doodles is her annoying little poodle.) Ajay nearly put his fist through the wall.....!

"Are you there? Did you not hear what I asked you?"

Ajay was brought back to the present by her voice at the other end of the line. The pitch was up a few notches....which invariably meant that she was getting angry, well that was phase 3. Alarm bells started going off in his head again. Maybe he had forgotten to grunt or produce some noise, to let her know that he was still listening, for more than 2 minutes.

" Of course dear....I'm listening....I was just thinking why such bad things always happen to good people." Phew! That line was a safe bet. He had perfected a whole series of exit lines to extricate himself from sticky situations like these. And they almost always worked.

"Well yeah, that true...I seem to have to the hardest luck ever......for example, just the other day...." She droned on for what seemed like eons.

"Do you think I could really make it this time?"

"Huh...What? Oh yeah ! Definitely!'"

"Do you really think I've got what it takes?"

"Of course yes, dear."

"So how's whole idea what do you feel, Ajay?"

I feel like hitting you over the head with my shoe and hang myself on my tie. Out loud he said" Of course...I think its a wonderful idea." He had no clue what she was talking about.

"I hope I have not bored you with my problems dear...Its just that this time I felt I could not keep everything bottled up,like I always do. Hope you understand."

"I sure do! I shall always be there to listen to you. Anytime you have a problem, feel free to call me."

So that will be like till the next phone call I guess, he thought grimly.

The time-piece showed 3.00 a.m. Awwww man!

Some Sense Mostly Nonsense

Hey there!!!

1. Have you ever wondered where you are going getting your head crammed with all useful(?) information?
2. Have you ever wondered why you are always on the brink of a momentous nervous breakdown brought about by the aforesaid information overload?
3. Have you wondered why you cant stop stuffing yourself with knowledge no matter how close to bursting-the-seams your head is?

If the answer to all the above three questions are yes then probably you too are a victim...like me... no matter how much it bothers us we feel undeniably inevitably tied down to the process of gathering facts. Although for very different reasons. Some of you may feel it's only your job and hence your duty, others like zillions of students the world over are helpless martyrs and a nutty few like me are foolish enough to go for the craziest of reasons: For Cracking THE EXAM!

Now for the benefit of those few who have already not guessed what i am talking about.....

In India there is only exam which is referred to as The Exam, yeah capital T capital E and it is The Civil Services Examination held by the UPSC every year. It is a unique struggle, not unlike grappling with the mythical Minotaur, which tests your endurance skills along with more mundane things like knowledge. It's a slow, long drawn out torturous process extending over 3 arduous phases across 12 long months of toil. Imagine a particularly painful tooth extraction and couple it with a slow motion sequence and bingo! you can have a vague idea about what I am talking about.

OK, OK all kidding aside, it is indeed a tough exam but definitely NOT uncrackable! I think the secret to clear the exam is to enjoy the process. Now how exactly are you supposed to enjoy a tooth extraction you might ask me. A very valid question. The answer is that the process of preparation grows on you....you have to acquire a taste for it. Like caviar. Like bitter gourd. You have to acquire a taste for it without becoming nauseous! You have to learn to enjoy the preparation....like learning to ride a bike, you tend to get the balance one day which makes all those grazed knees worth having. Simply put, a few months into the preparation if you अरे really passionate about making it to the most prestigious services in the country you tend to gradually enjoy the process of acquiring information. Believe me.

Not that you never feel like you have taken more than you have bargained for, not that sometimes you don't feel that you have bitten off more than you can chew, not that you sometimes you don't get this uncanny feeling that your friends secretly think that you are slowly becoming a certified geek. But these feelings are momentary, they pass. And all things said and done preparing for the civils in a committed and orderly manner makes you gain more than mere textbook knowledge. You gain perspective. You tend to observe things, events, people, places and endless other 'nothings' which you have either been too busy to take notice of or have been taking for granted all the time.

Take my case for example...I used to always have this impression that politics is dirty and economics boring. Wrong on both counts. It has been my overwhelming ignorance which had me make all those snooty remarks about these two interesting fields. What I didn't know about economics could actually have filled several volumes of any self-respecting encyclopedia. I don't say that I have become Adam Smith himself or that I could give Amartya Sen a run for his money but at least I don't say 'duh-uh' when someone mentions bulls and bears anymore. Nor do I have to keep myself from yawning every time somebody mention cost-push inflation.

I appeared for my first civils in May 2007. I was lucky enough to clear the prelims,mains and reach the interview on my first attempt itself. And I was stupid enough to not clear the final to make it to The List. That's right, capital T,capital L.

I may have lost the battle but not the War. So here I am, preparing for my next attempt.

All the above mentioned stuff may seem to be useless banter to most. But those who have been where i have been will understand, i hope. All that was a thinly veiled attempt at ventilating my grievance . On a more serious note i intend to make use of this blog to recapitulate what i've aasimilated for the day. So if you are in luck this maybe my ration of nonsense for a long time to come since my next few posts will deal exclusively with Fact File.

Cheers!!

And good luck to all those who are preparing for the civils this year.