‘The Argumentative MICAn’

MICA is a place where I have come to admire the ability of people to put anything forward with conviction. After all you need not be an expert on the subject to lay down a convincing argument which could even make the expert wince in pain of not much more than maybe a passing instant, but enough to disorient momentarily. Leaving remote ambitions aside, this is what we think of doing in this place, i.e. to be on the better side of the shave, be it shaving in the morning for guys, shaving unwanted hair for girls or having a close shave with a cryptic quantitative subject or for that matter accounts (not true for all MICAn). The bottom-line is that we all adore a good lick, as long as our hair doesn’t catch fire for rest assured the kind of knowledge stock we base our arguments on, is certainly not enough to put our teeth on fire just as good old Mathew used to say that we are no more than bacteria to whom MICA provides an outside chance of becoming a possible mould and then maybe a more developed life form thereon in.

So what do you do when you run short on actual fuel? You run the argumentative machine on what else? With what else but that oft used, over used and by now a word with the probability of occurrence of 60% in all b-school entrances, that golden word called “passion”, which when used as an undiluted substitute for strayed emotions leads the interviewer to push the eject button (the direct connection from which goes right under your seat) with enhanced swiftness, if you happened to be that “passionate one”, whose passion once inflamed doesn’t pacify until you have been kicked out of the interview room (don’t worry in the next interview you can always say that you have a passion for getting kicked out of interview rooms).

So what do you do when you run out of that actual fuel? Make a short comic film about interviews once destiny has lead you into the environs of MICA propelled by that stroke of coincident intelligence (not directed at you Ganty or me for that matter or to any other deserving MICAn), or you become the queen of PR, become an empathizing machine, or simply go on typing something on a blog whose credibility would be dealt an act of mercy if you rechristened it ‘Jumping the Gun’.

No matter what you do, one thing is for sure you do evolve here till you become one of those seven-eight personality types which MICAns can claim to produce (yeah-yeah we all are unique and different) and I don’t need Mathew’s backing here to say this (where is Mathew anyway?? PGP-1’s only hear fables about him). You can be that MICAn type who has that immaculate sense of timing to be there at the right moment to hog the limelight, to put up which the sweat and blood of many a fellow beings went into a power station of dreams, so that the mind of all MICAns were kept alight when they slept comfortable over loud rock music coming out of one of those unmistakable rooms which are miraculously found in each hostel. Someone somewhere is sick and thinking may be it’s ‘chiken-gunned-me-down’, but the music goes on playing propelled with the vision of ‘the show must go on’, it doesn’t matter if ‘chicken-gun-ya-down’ or ‘chicken-gun-me down’.

Now don’t even let me go into implicating the MICAn based on the implications which can be derived by juxtaposing the caustic spirit of this article alongside the celebrated book ‘The Argumentative Indian’, which by the stroke of hark luck I was also given the task or reviewing in the first year by that elusive creature of the bamboo jungles, now close to extinction but one definitely found in MICA and one who is a herbivore, has adjusted to the omnivorous nature of the food chain here, if you still haven’t got it, I suggest you shove your finger in a socket and switch it on, it might put you straight, and I mean this in the strictest of non-sexual sense, for we maybe anything but we are surely sexually liberated at MICA, aren’t we now?

Now before I go on about something else let me get over with what I started writing this …this…whatever this is… for…it was about ‘An Argument for Argument’.

Suddenly sitting in the library (what a place for realizations, very close to the loo in that respect) I remember when I was young, whenever I would have a standoff with my parents I was brutally crushed by saying that I was doing nothing but propounding the weakest of arguments and then blatantly defending it. This was so forcefully beaten into my psychology that when during the time of my dissertation I realize that a dissertation is nothing but an ‘argument’ (which may or may not end in your favour, but if pursued effectively will get you a good grade), I remember those days when I was discouraged to start my argument (dissertation) though it is not exactly charity which I was beginning at home…but still. I guess they were just being parents, tomorrow I have my dissertation defense… (Defense? sounds like a battle half lost)…like my parents, I guess the panelists will be just judges…and I will be just, as expected…a MICAn…going about trying to convert half-losts into winnables.

God bless.

Blackened Rose IV : 'The Broken Roses'

But as I like it
my sweet is not to disappoint
all the promises
that she hadn't promised
she broke them all
to be hung and then flung
like broken roses
and then she got back
at the habit again
now it's pleasantlness that reigns
I have more marks on my hands
and if I am anyone
my life though collectively insane
these are the ones
that keep it safe
from becoming
boring dry
mouldy muddy
and ofcourse
downright lame

Blackened Rose III : 'A Rose not Red'

And so it happened that
she said enough marks
I know it too well
too give you any more
so expect only roses
and this is not a promise
for it will be broken
now that's a promise
I looked at my hand
it was a rose
red and bright
textured right
but nothing compared to those
marks that screamed on my hand
which collectively were
almost there
almost there
to be a rose of their own
a rose not red
but a blackened one

'Blackened Rose II: 'The Rose of Thornes'

So did my sweet give me day to day
until today
a blackened finger everyday
so many thornes that would have gone
into something else
went on going into them
but one day when my sweet arrived
in a mood to brood
and showing it
she had in her hand
a red-red rose
and I extended my hand
even knowing it
another black spot on my hand
another instance to know her by
she has given me another mark
is what I would like to think
but instead when I looked at my hand
there is a rose without a thorne
and my blackened fingers holding it

Blackened Rose I : 'My Sweet’s So Sweet'

My sweet’s so sweet that she gave me a rose
She gave me a rose so that the thorn could prick me
But I knew what was up my sweet’s sleeve
So I stopped my hand from grabbing the rose
At least that’s what I would like to think
These days whenever I look at my finger
I just ignore the blackened thing