Procrastinate Later !

Ever since i was young, one thing thats been with me all through-out my life (much like my shadow - only more faithful for it has been with me even at times when my shadow would let me survive in this world alone!). That thing is ofcourse my laziness and the indegenous habit of procrastinating things for later. So much so that my friends and family got into a soup because of this 'heavenly' habit of mine. I can distinctly remember when i was young and i used to get assignments for my vacation and all through the vacation i kept telling me, "Relax, your vacation has just begun." And on the evening before the school re-opened, "Oh God! I had assignments to do!!" The saying with my family was - "A Family That Stays Together Does The Assignment Together" This carried till the time i was in my third standard (My family helping me out i.e., not the delay - how i wish it was!).
About six years ago on my birthday, a friend of mine gifted me a book. One of the many quotes in it was the 'truth'.... "Today is the tomorrow you talked about yesterday" I recall it was in the evening of that very day (16th Dec.) when i was going through that very book that i had made up my mind and the word 'procrastination', 'delay', 'put-off' and the like would be not only deleted but shift+deleted (so i have no second thoughts of restoring the items from my recycle bin). I really felt like i was going somewhere from there. With the other quotes in the book that were very much written and printed so as to bring out the 'winner' in everyone who read it -- i thought that was the end of the days of mediocrity! No longer will i be one of the guys who'd just end up scrapping through to the top 10 in my class. I saw in me the future topper of my class (and he did look pretty since it was the man (boy rather) in the mirror). After having had such awe-inspiring thoughts all of the evening, there was nothing it seemed that could stop me. "Watch out everyone, Here I come!!" Oops too late, for now i was feeling sleepy! But what about the home-work? Turned out - the never procrastinate was procrastinate for later in practice. Oh! Was up nearly till mid-night doing what i ought to have done by the evening itself! It was then that it dawned upon me - Procrastination was not just a file that i could delete from my computer, it was the memory resident virus that had infected me since i was a child. I'm only glad this virus hasnt showed up for a long time now!! Else?? I guess this blog would have been up on blogger a good month or so into 2005! [Ah! no difference it would have made - still would have been a pain in the ***, isnt it?]

When Mankind Has Enough Helicoptors To Shoot Down Mosquitoes!!!

Well atleast that is possible when guys with absolutely nothing to think of try and kill time because that is the only reasonable thing they can think of doing!
Still feels like a day or two ago (and it still makes my jaws ache when i think how very frustrated we'd get). Back in the hostel when we had absolutely no pressure (usually the beginning of the semester of people & almost the whole of the semester for guys like me ;)) our mind was like a horse that had no tethers (fortunately or unfortunately that state of mind would invariably carry forward to till the very end - even on nights before the exams). Oops, sorry i've been constantly using the word we/us and the likes and i havent 'introduced' him to you - Meet my room-mate, Amit (better known as Time pass - T.P. for short). . I don't know if i'm authorised to say this but i guess i brought out the best in him!! Together we were the most notorious room-mates in our hostel, so much so that our room had messages written on the door warning trespassers to watch out or they'd be sucked into the eye of the storm (or something vaguely implying that atleast)!!! The other members of the discussion were generally people who did get sucked in the eye of the storm! Anyway lets get our helicoptors back on the 'mission route' ;)
At night when we would just go to our beds to doze off (or during times when we got really frustrated after having spent all our patience on trying to comprehend some abstruse subject that we had to study in order to get through with our engineering!) we'd suddenly realise the place was a 'jungle' with mosquitoes prowling all over the place. And the T.P that Amit was, he'd suddenly blurt out, "i wish i could shoot them with missiles!" and i would join in like the Chemical Engineer that i was soon to be, "we could shoot them with sodium needles! and just before they were on the collision course, we'll spray a little water so the explosion is fatal!!" But after further mulling over we ask of the other, "but how can we track them down??" "I guess we'll just have to have helicoptors chasing them all over the room." We'd discuss the 'battle plan' for a good 45 minutes or till the time one of us would think it was time we got back to slogging it out for the exams again.

One particular syndrome that we'd infected during the 3rd year of our engineering was to make the worlds most sophisticated (paper) Fighter Plane. All care was taken to make the 'lift', wings and tail perfect - which infact improved with each new attempt. From where would we find such large volumes of paper? (i'm sure you'll find yourself asking this). What use were the journals - it would hardly be of any use once the oral exams were over (as was the case here!). We (me and my roomies) would make around 5-6 planes a minute! (Lockheed-Martin are you listening??). The test 'air-strip' would be from our room's window to the road leading to the canteen (our room was on the 1st floor then and later on the 2nd floor). (Too many brackets here - don't you think..??) We had tried all the available models from the MiG-21s to the Su-30MKIs, MiG-27s to the Jaguars! (atleast in speech, if not practice). One piece of machine (or paper should i say) that we were really proud of was our very own production - The "kick'em ass" planes! They were designed to conquer enemy territory and return back - ofcourse they never made it. Damn those stupid japanese kamikazi pilots!
And the funniest part was we would'nt give a damn who was walking on the road - professors, teachers, students -- we would just make them take-off on their 'scheduled time'. During these days we got a high by doing a very strange thing - passing a 'comment' (if it qualifies as one) to all the girls (all the 'local' (ghaati) girls i.e.) "Oh Local Ladkiyon!" we would shout at the top of our voices and then take shelter behind the curtains
Oh what great days we had back then...
Why can't we go back in time and relive these moments all over again??
Oh Life seems so cruel (specially when you got nothing to do all day long!!)