  It seems saying ‘I can, I must, I will’ everyday just after one gets up has a great impact on the person’s overall outlook to life and what he finally achieves.
I was happy I finally knew the secret to success in life. Just 6 words and I’ll have everything I wished for in life :) Not a bad bargain. I resolved to make this a habit and see the results. But the biggest problem is when I get up everyday usually my first words are “Oh shucks!!! Its already time to get up” or “Did I really sleep or was it just a wink with both my eyes? !” Till date I have never been able to say the mantra right after getting up!!!
Well, its true that there’s no substitute for hard work and that there are no shortcuts in life. All class and no play was making me a dull girl. It was time for some action. But when and where were the questions. After a little discussion with the gang we decided to go to the Kappad beach, which is hardly 25 kms from the campus.
Though I have been there once before, could not enjoy it properly as it was raining. This time I was all set for action. Camera?..........................check! Waterproof bag? …………check! Shades?...............................check! Mood for fun?........................CHECK!!!! We were all set. The journey to the beach was not very eventful. Maybe because we had stayed up late the last night doing almost nothing and were very tired. (that’s one thing that amazes me….I stay up till 3-4am every night, but I manage to do almost nothing and am back to square one the next day!
) Kappad beach has a historic significance; it was the beach where Vasco Da Gama’s ship anchored in the shores of India decades back. Was the beach more beautiful then? Already I was amazed by the beach…….the energy and size of the waves….it almost knocked off one of my friends who is ……….ahem….quite well built. And for a change, this beach in India was clean! Yes Clean! I could dig down into the sand and make a sand castle and not worry about getting my hands dirty with something that does not rightly belong there.
Most other beaches in India are not this well kept. Pondichery is an exception though……but only during the tourist season. Since I haven’t been to many beaches during my 24 years on this planet going to a beach is quite an exciting event. Something like seeing a camel (outside a zoo! ) or for any North Indian, seeing an elephant while its doing its Gajagamini style sexy walk!!!
Once at the beach, we played in the water for a while…….. let the waves caress our feet…..let the tiny crabs nibble on our toes……….and let the big waves give us a good shower so that there was not a single part of our body which did not have sand on it. Well…what’s the point going to the beach if you don’t have sand on your body!! It would be like a sunrise behind the clouds! Tired after all this…we sat on the rocks which was covered with molluscs and the molluscs were instantly inspected by my dear zoology-graduated friend.
He turned a murderer in this process too….but then I don’t know how many I may have killed by sitting on the rocks :( Sat there and had the amazing experience all over again. First the confusion in the mind……then the questions that come up…..then the blankness………….and then the peace. I went through it all while my friends were busy trying to break whatever trance I was in. Going to the beach has a real therapeutic effect on me. I completely transform when I am there…maybe it’s the vastness of the ocean that humbles me…..maybe it’s the proximity of mother nature where we all belong and finally will go back to …….or maybe its just all in my mind.
I can have the same experience sitting inside a room. But am not yogi enough to do that…..and I’ll stick to the beach :) Here's one great pic of the beach. urlLink Click here to see more Kappad beach photos. Today is a special day for me. Some people may not think that its very special. But to me it is. My darling brother called me up today on his own for the first time. He was angry that though I had a gmail account, he doesn’t have one yet.
Well I dint want blood relations to break over a mail account :) so I gave in and gifted him one. But then it was nice talking to you. H, if you are reading this, do call me again. When I landed at K, I never imagined that something as trivial as a LAN cable would upset me for days to come.
I dint think of carrying one in my luggage. But then if there was a scarcity for something at K, it was LAN cables. If you see a group of people discussing something I’d bet for whatever I have in my pocket right now that ‘miseries of not having a LAN cable yet’ would be one of the topics. Its true…it was very frustrating to have a laptop/a desktop and a connection socket right in the hostel room but no cable to connect the two.
And on top of that, LAN cables were being sold in black!!!! At double and triple their original prices! Used to the luxury of 24/7 internet and mail on fingertips this was an experience indeed! The day that I got the cable and got connected was such a peaceful and busy day. As part of our Communication class we were supposed to submit a one page write up about any topic under the sun. What do I write about? I was never really good at writing structured stuff. Yeah I can write equations and C programs……but one page to be written on something? What do I write about? Life at K? A tearful ode to Bangalore? The passion of indecisiveness?
My most embarrassing day? My wish list? :P ?????????????? Thought about it for one whole night and finally settled on Kappad beach. The experience I had there was still fresh in my mind and it would be an easy topic too to fill up a page. I started writing and it dint stop at a page. Finally had to stop myself at the end of 2 pages. I know 2 pages is not much but once I started typing, I was enjoying it and before I knew it, it was over. Since I had written it down without preparing any skeleton I was not very sure about the structure of the piece.
Since I dint have a LAN cable that day and the guy who oversees the taking of printouts in the CC is not available at 7 in the morning and I had to take this to my class by 8, I sat down to write it down by hand. Voila! It was tough cajoling my fingers to write each word on paper. When was the last I wrote down something more than my siggy on a paper?!!!
Memory fails me. Took me half an hour to write down just 2 pages. This way I am gonna have a great time during exams :) I submitted the assignment and forgot all about it for that day. Next day prof announces in the class that mine was one among 2 papers that he liked! Hallelujah! Mine? Really? How can this happen? Well maybe I really don’t have to worry about the placements?
Be a freelance writer……write whenever I wished to and laze around for the rest of the day. Very tempting. It became tempting after what the prof told me during the one to one session we had on the assignments. Though there were some minor sentence framing problems, he said that my style of writing resembled that of ......ahem................ Arundhati Roy?
!!!
“Sir, can you repeat that again please? I don’t think I heard you right.” Came back to my room all whoozy in the read and read my assignment again.
Is this some crazy camera game or something? Na…..cant be. He’s a reputed prof. Well thanks to all this now I am called Miss Roy by my dear friends here and now I don’t have to hit the streets even if I don’t get lucky in the placements. But tell me something……………… will you buy my book if I write one? :| 
