Hey.

Its 2009. Finally, truly 2009. 2008 is gone. Dead, and over. And I guess, the better is yet to come. (See, I can sound optimistic, if I really try. And I am trying to live up to those New Year Resolutions. I really am.)

I am not supposed to be blogging now. I'm at my internship, supposed to be drafting an RTI (which I didn't know how to, until a few minutes ago). I guess this is the benefit of sitting before a computer with internet, and no one checking in on me. I can blog, go on orkut, facebook, even chat a bit, and stuff, without being noticed. I know, it's horrible of me to do this during internship hours, but I don't really have much work here, and it does get boring reading pages and pages about the Right to Education model bill. So, when I feel that my pea-sized brain needs well, a bit of rest, I go online. I vaguely remember a concept propounded by Henry Fayol, called fatigue study. (This, I remember mugging in Business Studies, one of the useless papers I had to write in XII std). This concept said something about needing to refresh after long hours of work, as excessive working could only slow down the speeed and efficiency of work. Like we didn't already know that.

Isn't it ironic that when you're in school, you yearn to be in college. You want to get rid of the hideous uniform that makes you look fat, you want to pick your own trendy clothes, you want freedom. A ton of freedom. Freedom to go where you want, eat what you want, freedom to make your own choices and decisions. You yearn to be in University.

Once you get there, you realize how much of school you miss. I've realized it. It's at this moment that I choose to recollect a couple of those 'school moments' that I just can't forget.

On a Sunday afternoon, a few friends and I, who were engaged in backstage organizing of the play put up by our school theatre (which is an official theatre group now, by the way), went to this big, fancy mall, wearing hideous unisex T-shirts of our school theatre group, to advertise and do promos of the play. Anyway, we went to Landmark and kept our bags at the counter there, and the security guard gave us a token, which I took. We spent the whole afternoon and evening engaged in promos, till we decided to go and grab a bite for dinner.

We went to one of those swanky coffee-pubs in the mall, surrounded by well-dressed people, and we felt incredibly foolish in a T-shirt three times our sizes. We looked like those salespeople trying to dispose off a battered product (which is what we were, basically. Salespeople. But our product wasn't battered). Anyway, after we stuffed our faces, our tables were cleared, when suddenly, my friend pointed out the Landmark token had disappeared along with the trays.

We asked the servers there, but they had no clue. "Must be in the dustbin, along with the leftover food. That's where we dump the junk on the trays." One of them said. I cringed, and looked at my friend.

"Don't look at me. The token was your responsibility. I gave it to you, and well, you very intelligently put it on the tray to be disposed, instead of in your pocket, which is where normal people put stuff in."

I looked at the server with imploring eyes, but he only pointed to a huge, ugly orange bin that was near the door, and very much within the view of everyone in the pub, and a lot of people outside as well, who decided to cross the transparent glass doors.
My friends, just then, decided to be not-so-supportive. "You put the token there. You get it out. You had better get it out. Our bags are in there as well."

And then, I had to do it. I crouched down, in front of a million people, and stuck my hand inside the dustbin. My fingers encountered half-eaten hamburgers, a piece of cake, something cold and mushy that I don't wish to further imagine, before finally closing in on the token, which was covered in ketchup. As I extracted the token from the dustbin, I realized that the whole coffee-pub had been silent, watching. Then, they erupted into laughter. Yep. I was the girl-who-stuck-her-hand-inside-the-dustbin.

I laughed too, after washing my hands. It was funny. Hilarious, actually. And now, I make sure that I never leave anything on the trays. A lesson, well-learned, I must say.

But well, garnering publicity for the play was oodles of fun. I remember cruising down the traffic-jammed streets of the city, with a friend, in the Headmistress's car, with the windows rolled down and blasting loud rock music (which we played on the stereo...we gave her driver quite a headache, mind you. But he was a sweetheart. He never ratted on us, and allowed the good-girl impression my friend and I had, to remain). We visited Barista frequently, in-between meetings with those snooty bigwigs, (we even had a meeting with Kareena Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Suniel Shetty, and Neha Dhupia, when they were in Chennai at that time, shooting for their movie Chup Chup Ke. Not that it mattered much. I do not go crazy at the sight of Bollywood stars, like some people I know, would) and well, gorged on chocolate excess cakes and brownies and frappes with chocolate sauce, ice-cream and whipped cream--get this--all on school money. The school funded our eating sprees at other expensive joints too (but they had no clue about this, mind you). Was just a token we took for ourselves, for all our hardwork. We officially bunked classes. We smart-talked our way out of the school and toured the city, nearly every day, for two whole months.

We've done other wild stuff too. In X std, I remember, a friend and I bunked our English Pre-board exams and went to the cinema to watch a movie. It was this chick-flick called 'In Her Shoes'. (I was into not-very-substantial boy-meets-girl romantic comedies back then, and movies like In Her Shoes were a delight to my idealistic visions of life where important things were lost in clouds of oblivion, or, never existed, in my case). Anyway, I did tell my parents this, only after the board results were out (two months later) and they were appalled. To think that I was gutsy enough to bunk an exam and watch a movie.

Well, that's me. I used to do things like this all the time. And then, XII std happened. This whole you-need-to-think-about-your career thing. Its amusing how one's career can completely transform a person and turn them into someone who scorns at those who don't have things figured out, or who have absolutely no clue as to what they want to do.

Anyway, I'll go back and delve into those good ol' school memories. University is fun too. In some ways. Very few ways, but yes, fun.