Vacation Time

It's that time of the year again; the air is fresh with excitement, the mood is enchanting, cute birds chirrup all day, and you wake up at your own sweet will. It's vacation time! After the onslaught of the exams, these 7 days come along as a welcome break.

The running joke among us "Engineers" is that we pick up our books only when we are in the dangerous vicinity of the exams. And believe me, those days are truly an enriching experience. We get to know an incredible amount of things that were hitherto safe in the custody of those untouched books. This is also the period when most cases of eye-infection are reported, as cleaning the thick layer of dust on those huge books is not as easy as it seems. I would advise you to hire someone to periodically dust the books to be on the safer side...

A word of caution to the faint-hearted : Never ever look at the entire syllabus at one go. Such unfounded risks will require you to pay a huge penalty of either suffering a stroke or going soft in the head. You might then be prompted to ask one of your studious friends - "Is this really the book we have to study from? Are you sure we have so much on our hands?", to which he will coolly reply, "Yes, didn't you know? You can also check out the missing portions in the reference books X,Y,Z,etc." and hang up the phone. "Reference Books?", you laugh out loud. "Did you hear that? He just asked me to go through reference books...", you soliloquize, partly in amusement but more so since your heart is sinking reeling under the shock you have just been subjected to.

Recouping from this condition after a couple of hours, you realize you just have half a day to memorize half a 1000 pages. Seems a very simple equation at first, but then you realize that the 2 halves on either side of it are not quite equitable. With no other choice, you sit down with the collosal book.

Almost instantly, your cell phone beeps - an SMS, your saviour. "IPL T20 Mania. Guduvancherry Guns Vs Kilpauk Kings. Dial 121212 from free updates. Subscription Charges Rs.30 per month." You are tempted to wonder how a service that charges Rs.30 call itself free? But thankfully this SMS seems better than the other regular ones. Sample this - "Will you be a Doctor, Engineer or an Architect? Send your name to 1111 to find your career." So does this mean that everyone with a common name ends up in that profession? Who are they kidding?

Brushing those thoughts aside, you go through the message again, and an invisible force within you makes you get up. "How could I forget? Today Guduvancherry plays against Kilpauk in the crucial match. I just can't miss it." But another glance at your books pricks your conscience. "You should be studying", the better side of your soul suggests. And you are faced with Robert Frost's situation, so beautifully described in his poem:

"Two Roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I, I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference."

Thankfully, your choice is a no-brainer. Differing with Frost, you barge out of your room to catch up with the LIVE action on TV. After all, a paper can be written again, but the match happens only once right?