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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Yessss

It was around 6:30 in the evening when my cell phone rang. Call 1. I got up from my desk, started moving towards the reception and picked up the phone. 

Is this Atish
Yes
Hi. This is ....... calling from the Darden School of Business. We are pleased to offer you admission to the Class of 2011 ......

Everything thereafter was a blur. And I remember saying nothing more than a 'Thank you so much' and 'It's as good as surprises come' to her 'Ya, we like to call people a day before the official announcement'

I let out a silent 'Yesssss', rang up my parents and sent out a mail to the five people who form my family here in Bangalore. A minute later there was another call. Call 1 again. My heart skipped a beat. It was a mistake. I have been waitlisted or worse, not offerred admission. So they are calling to apologize. I pressed the green button on my phone. It was my friend from Vancouver. 

I had played this scene so many times in my head that now when it had actually come, I found myself not reacting much. I wasn't restless. There was immense relief and the knowledge that I wouldn't have to start revising my data structures and algorithm fundas in search of another tech-job. But like most occasions for which you have waited a long time (and I mean really long), this one too left me a little numb. The long blog post talking about failures, success, balance and chance never happened and will most probably only remain in my head. The pumping of fists and the crying out really loud also didn't materialize.

There wasn't any celebration that Tuesday night. It started on Wednesday evening and got over on Monday morning with a minor break on Thursday. But more of that later. After the longest time, I'm happy in a very different way. In a way which tells me that I might finally have control over my life. It's a state of mind which somehow is not fundamentally transitory which has been the case with most things in the past 3 years. It gives me a chance to change a lot of things. And I had been waiting for this chance forever.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

A Wednesday Late Afternoon

Clips on the clothes line against the sky

Clips on the clothes line against the trees behind

A close up on the bunch of coconuts which keep falling every now and then on our terrace with a loud thud 

I realized that keeping your hands steady while holding the camera above your head is not very simple. But I guess my Canon has pretty good image stabilization, for this came out better than expected

Spotted this on the house next to us. Was wondering if there's a story behind it. Some sort of a guard? A watchman maybe?

Brightly colored electric wires. This one was taken from the balcony

Another one taken from the balcony. Again, had to hold the camera up. But this time had the support of the railings to steady my hands