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My not so dear roomie,

I interrupt my very hectic preparation schedule to bring you a very important bulletin.

1] Learn a little hygiene. Like bathing once a day. Deo's are meant to prevent body odour; they are not meant to replace a bath.

2] Close the frigging shower knob when you use it. Not because i dont like the sound, but because half the planet cannot afford water for a bath, even if they want to.

3] Flush after you pee. Because it can save your life. Coz one of these days i am going to get so pissed off about it, i might blow your fucking head off.

4] Dont talk with your mouth full. If i wanted food particles all over the dining table, i would arrange for it myself.

5] Lower your phone volume. You do not want to find your phone in the toilet, unflushed. Do you ?

6] Stop looking at me every time someone cracks a joke in the movie. I can fucking recognize a joke when i see one, unlike you i am not half-autistic.

7] Stop touching food, especially when you are notorious for scratching your private parts half of your waking time. I pay to eat the same food and i will not hesitate to spare a few bucks for rat poison if i see it happen again.

8] Stop buying unneccasary stuff just because the cost is shared by all roommates. I will otherwise buy the aforesaid rat poison with room money.

9] Deal with a problematic roommate whichever way you want to but if you pace about our room angrily uttering cuss words, i will demonstrate on you what you say should be done to him.

10] Close the door behind you when i am studying. If i wanted to watch a movie, i would come to the hall.

11] Lower the TV volume. Not all of us are members of Deaf Anonymous.

12] In Kolkota, you guys prepare Gulab Jamun the size of a closed fist !! Oh wow, you should try shoving it up your a** some time. I bet they dont do that in Kolkota.

13] Shut up when i am asleep. Self-explanatory.

I know you are thick skinned and i empathize, but there's one last point i want you to know in case you have not taken the above suggestions seriously. The most frequently visited webpage in my browser history is that of serial killers.

That is all.

Thank you.

iInspired

From the month of June, my mother would start nagging about not using hot water for bathing. So on one of the not so particularly hot days at about 8 pm, i would be standing in the bathroom beside a bucket of unheated water contemplating on pouring the first mug of it over my body. After a full 5 minutes of deep thought that usually ended when i realised i had stuff to do after my bath, i would grab the mug and pour the water over myself before i lost the guts for it. The feeling that struck me at that instant and ran at lighting speed across my body was my first encounter with inspiration.

As i grew up, i also found other better ways of getting inspired. Today, i was reading a [pdf]book that was about some guys who had cracked CAT. And it presented me with my moment of truth. Each one of us is good at something in life. We might take years to discover it and some of us may give up the search altogether. I deem it as my fortune that i did find it in college. All through my early years of education, i had no idea of what the next step was. For example, until i was in 10th class, i didn't know that i had to do my intermediate next. Consequentially, when i joined in Engg., i had no idea of what i was "supposed to do" once i completed it.

Some guys started talking about GRE and GATE in 3rd year. I found out what they were and got dejected that this was all life had to offer after everything. And then, one day Roopa mentioned something about our First year English giving her some material to help her with CAT. CAT? now what was that. After getting to know something about, i let it slip to the back of my mind. Later, after discussing it with industry bigwigs of the time, i realised that this was what i had to do. "this was what i had to do" in the sense that i couldn't do anything else. There began my journey.

I joined TIME and gave my first test just like that. The result said that i got 96%ile. 96 looked good to me. And then the centre director told me that that was only the good part. The bad part was that i couldn't attempt only English and get 96. I "had to" attempt other sections and be good at them too. That was my first turning point. To cut a long year short, i ended up with 97.99%ile in the actual exam. However GD,PI and lack of interest [some might call it knowledge] in my Engg. subjects proved to be my downfall.

To put it short, my next years of life were spent being a weathercock turning in whichever direction the wind blew. At the end of 4 such eventful fruitless years spiced with some face off with adversity and spattered with a year of live-in with imbeciles, i realised that i had to find a direction. The only direction i knew was .. .. you guessed it right. So i put my foot down, in this land that is, and started off, on the right track supposedly.

And then somewhere along the way i lost it again. Until today. Given my experiences, What i get easily never interests me. If it is something i have to strive to achieve, i end up savouring it. And now the biggest secret of all revealed. CAT is a marathon. Not a sprint. You have to be good at everything, practise daily, keep a cool head, learn from every small detail and be consistent. Marathons are not won in the last lap, they are won in each lap. If you stumble in one lap, it is ok to keep on going. you can regain your lead in the next one. Seeing all those achievers struggle so much to get where they are, i feel ashamed for being lackadaisical. Some of them spent years coming back in spite of setbacks. And i have become a defeatist after what ? one attempt ! pathetic.

And speak of coincidence. What a day to take a resolve. Today the CAT notification has come out. The countdown has officially started so to speak.

paschima ponchi undi ravini mingu asura sandhya okka naadu negga ledu ra
gutaka padani aggi unda sagara eedukunta toorupinta telutundi ra
nisha vilasam entha sepu ra
ushodayanni evaddaapu ra
ragultunna gunde kooda surya gola vantidenu ra

God i asked you for a sign. Thank you. I promise.

Fortune favours the brave

4 IIMs are supposed to start next year on. This has to be the single most good news i have heard this entire year. Why ? Coz it gives hope. Coz hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

71 more days to go. Just when i was hitting a rough patch, i did this test awesomely. lets see how the scores turn out. If i am not wrong, i am not as bad as i thought.

3 things : Strategy, strategy, strategy.

86

Tried out the 5-8 slot. What use is it if the exam is as tough as it gets? Need to experiment on other slots as well. Getting badly bruised at the cutoff of one section whichever it happens to be. Immediate aim is consistency. Sleeping is interfering with preparation !! Gotta take care of it.

Performance so far is not bad. Take heart. Focus. Meet Sai/Kranthi and discuss which exams to take and AIMCAT strategy cutomizedly. Aim to finish Verbal and DI by this month 20th and move on to Quant. Need to work on only full fledged tests from Oct.

Most impotrantly : Hammer Away.

89

Mission half accomplished. My roommate's got a new laptop and my disturbance has been cut down by half. It's too early to comment, but then he still has to get his internet connection. So, there's hope for the better.

Done a couple of DI online tests. I am able to do individual sets of questions well. I do not fear it, so why is it that i am consistently missing out on this particular section's cutoff ? Speed is probably one reason. Need to focus on it.

Getting an Economic Times on Saturday is not making sense. I should probably switch it to Monday or let go.

91

24 hrs and one test paper review later, i feel a little better. It is impossible to keep swimming in an ocean with no sense of direction and view of land. So i've decided a small compass of a plan to guide through the marathon. That is all it can do though, guide, the rest will still be upto me.

Today, we had a Grammar basics class. Somehow when it comes to English, i have this inbuilt superiority complex. To an extent it is ok, but it has burgeoned to a stage where i find it difficult to even listen to English teachers and many a time find faults with the key for tests. In a rare moment of enlightenment, i realised today that it is this very complex that is keeping me from achieving my very best in the Verbal section. It's time i acknowledged that i still have a lot to learn and pave the way to better scores in the section.

On a side note, got to know about this site. Gotta check it out.

92

6 months ago i was pleading, no, begging, no, grovelling to be given a chance. 1 chance. i promised to make the best out of it and get my life on track again. As always, thankfully I got what i asked for. And now what am i doing. Wasting it all away. If God was a friend like i think and not God, i would have had my ass whupped a long time now.

If each day i can wake up with the fire like i had earlier in my belly, my scores would go through the roof. But no, i've become so complacent, i've even convinced myself that reading the newspaper is part of the preparation. To adjust for the no.of hours that i prepare daily.

The only silver lining i can see in all this is that i need to hit ground zero before taking off. If this is not zero, i dont know what is.

92 days. 3 months. Time to man up.

Why so long

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