Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds

That's the beauty of a title. It doesn't have to mean anything. Take the one above, for instance. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what I have written so far and what I am going to write in the rest of this post. But still, in the extremely unlikely event of these chronicles surviving for a century or two, some historian may well read into them deep and profound meaning and into the blog a commentary on the metaphysical state of the world at large.

The human mind is kind of strange that way. Right now, for instance, I am sleepy enough that I could write, "Bertie Wooster married Cleopatra and Hitler was their great-grandson" and not realize that anything was amiss. On Wednesday night, on the other hand, no matter how little sleep I have between now and then, I will be all set to sit up watching TV while reading a book and sending SMSes to friends in the intervals of prolonged chats on the cell phone... and all this juggling without dropping a single ball. (If this seems improbable, let me specify that right now refers to an instant of time when I am supposed to be studying Economics, and Wednesday night refers to an instant when I will, for good or ill, be done with ISLM graphs and long-run aggregate supply curves.)

Exam-time resolves are right up there with New Year's Day resolutions as things that aren't meant to last beyond the first week. In college every time I realized that I was eight hours away from my Number Theory paper, not entirely certain which textbook we were following, and in grave danger of being awarded zero marks, I decided that it was positively the last time I would find myself in such straitened circumstances. Every time.

Circumstances apart, it really is rather nice weather now. It's just cold enough to make snuggling into the blankets with a book a whole new kind of nirvana, but not cold enough to make you quiver like an aspen in a strong wind if you happen to forget your sweater in your desperate haste to reach wherever you're supposed to be going before the clock strikes whatever hour it shouldn't strike before you get there.

Is there anything else to say about the blackbirds? Nothing... except, to those who can afford time to enjoy it, Joyeux Noel. 'Tis the season to be jolly... But I daren't sing, even on paper. 'Tis hardly the season to offend the ears of all around. The first day, the partridge in the pear tree. By the time it is joined by the five golden rings I shall be home free.

EEP!

Twenty-Four Hours to Go

I just got back from class. I am tired. I am in no frame of mind to worry about the effect of an increase in US Government spending on the Forex reserves of Guatemala. And I have the entire afternoon, evening and night ahead of me in any case. There's no need to panic and fall over myself memorizing the textbook. I think I'll do the crossword.

Twenty-Two Hours to Go

I have done three sudokus and four crosswords. There's no getting away from it now. I have to open the textbook. Such a nice textbook, too... It seems a pity to spoil it by underlining and writing notes in the margins. But no, it has to be done - Wait a minute. It's time for tea. I can't be expected to study on an empty stomach. It's bad for the kidneys, or the liver, or... whatever. I'm sure it's bad for something. And while I'm at it I might as well shower too, and start afresh.

Twenty-One Hours to Go

Now is the time to get to work. I am warm, full, and refreshed. I am also... sleepy? No. Something wrong there. Time out. I can't be sleepy. I have to study. I have - where's the syllabus sheet? - yeah, I have... er... let me count... Five, is it? No... six... seven... uh-oh. I have a terrifying number of chapters to finish. I can't be sleepy... I can't be...

Twenty Hours to Go

The blankets are so comfortable. Do I need to get up? Damn, there goes the alarm clock. Hit it... It hasn't stopped. Oh, no wonder, it's the cell phone alarm. It won't stop unless I push the right button. I'll have to wake up properly.

Eighteen Hours to Go

Finally I have done something productive! I have finished a grand total of... umm... three and a half pages. Inspiring, really inspiring. But don't worry, it's still not time to panic. It's just eight o'clock. There'll be plenty of time after dinner.

Sixteen Hours to Go

Right. Now it's time to panic. I have done... ah... never mind. And how much do I have left? One, two... flip a whole bunch of pages... OK, never mind that either. Keep calm. Keep absolutely calm. There's only one remedy for a situation like this - candy bars. Call CT and ask for some... [Several expletives deleted.] He doesn't have any. How do I survive the night without chocolate?

Thirteen Hours to Go

I have done four chapters. That's decent. On number five now... I have consumed enough tea to keep the Darjeeling planters laughing all the way to the bank. But it's a losing battle against sleep. No. I must read.

"You will recall from the previous chapter."

I don't recall from the previous chapter. I don't even recall the name of the previous chapter. I am in so much trouble...

Nine Hours to Go

The wretched alarm again. Going on... and on... and making the pillow vibrate. I have to get up. I have to avoid an F. Poke one finger out of the blankets. This is patently not the weather to get up before the crack of dawn and study economics.

Six Hours to Go

Ethical dilemma: Do I go to class and not study Economics and feel guilty, or do I stay in my room, not go to class, not study Economics and feel guilty? On the whole I think I'll go for Option Number One. Not that it's going to make any difference at this late hour.

One Hour to Go

A morning spent surreptitiously leafing through the textbook during classes, and feverishly turning pages between them. Lunch has been aborted. I have to learn all about economic policy formulation in sixty minutes. It doesn't matter how. Somehow. This is when those Matrix-style information downloads would come in handy.

And then... the inevitable!

Perfect Peace

A commodity, I do not doubt, that is only slightly more common than fields of amaranth on this side of the grave. But if anything comes close to it, it is the feeling you get when you realize that there is now no need to step from the shower into a blazer and shoes that were never meant to be walked in.

I learnt one thing from the process though: the number of howlers you think you can perpetrate in the space of an hour is nothing to the number you actually can perpetrate if you put your mind to it. And I don't mean the kind that involve not knowing how many yuan traded to the dollar when the markets opened last Monday. I mean the kind that resemble wearing an "I love Rasputin" badge to an interview for the position of personal bodyguard to Nicholas II.

"So, tell me why you think you're the best person for the job."

That's a question that ought to be easy to answer. Exaggeration is required, yes; you will sound narcissistic, possibly; but it shouldn't be difficult. Unless, of course, you are thoroughly disorientated, dead tired, unbelievably hungry, and you aren't really sure which company the interviewer represents and what position he is offering.

I pitched myself as a financial analyst to a marketing firm that was looking to hire me for an IT position. I think that sums it up to a nicety. There was the interviewer, clearly wondering why understanding finance should qualify me to work with a systems design team, and there was I, wondering if his complete lack of reaction boded good or ill.

Some of the bloopers - not all mine - were more memorable, though...

Interviewer: I was at IIMA myself.
Student: Really? So am I!

Student: I'm in Section C.
Interviewer: Oh, really? So was I.
Student: Did you win T-Nite?
Interviewer: No.
Student: We did.

Interviewer: So, is there anything you'd like to ask me?
Student: Do you have those T-shirts in the Large size?

Interviewer: You want to apply to position X?
Student: Yes.
Interviewer: But you've filled in the form for position Y.
Student: Oh.

It just can't happen at any other time.

How Not to Get Shortlisted

What steps did you follow in deciding which XXXXXXXXXX firms to apply to?

I opened the list of companies visiting campus for summer placement and related my CV to all of them. But that’s just twenty words and I have to stretch this to ninety somehow, so let’s pretend there was deep thought and profound logic involved. I analyzed my strengths and weaknesses – nope, sorry, I’m not supposed to mention my weaknesses here – my strengths and skills relevant to the XXXXXXXXXX industry to arrive at this vital decision. That’s seventy-five words, and this sentence brings it to ninety, so here ends the story.

Why would you like to intern with AAAAA?

Let’s get one thing straight. I would not like to intern with anybody. I would like to spend next summer lounging on a sunny beach with a book, preferably in Majorca. But that would mean a long and arduous fight with the PGP office – not something a girl in her right mind would undertake.
So that’s why I want AAAAA; I have no information about whether AAAAA wants me. If they do I hope they will tell me so immediately; I can then stop distorting the truth six times daily.

What made you choose the BBBBBB position in the firm?

Does it matter? It’s just two months; nothing you do to me could possibly be more taxing than the first term at IIMA. Since you’re asking, though, it was eighth on the list and eight was listed as my lucky number today. Don’t ask me where. I’m sure it was somewhere.
Being of sound body and allegedly sound mind, I can guarantee that I will not set the building on fire. There’s no other damage I can do in eight weeks, so it’s not such a dusty proposition. I hope.

Discuss your Extra-Curricular Activities and Interests.

I doubt cursing myself for not keeping every certificate I ever won (I should have hyphenated that to save words) counts, so let’s stick with the usual… books literature drama poetry math. It would have been maths but for Microsoft Word. I have wasted enough time clicking “Ignore” to be willing to concede the point.
Something missing? Oh, yeah, proof that I’m not lying through my teeth because I think it matters to recruiters that I won a prize for reciting “Jack and Jill” at the age of three.
Er.

Not the best way to get a job offer, I concede, unless there are points for originality.

My Kingdom for a Verse

I haven't a kingdom, though. It's as easy to offer endless expanses of gold-bearing soil as it is to offer a square foot of barren and parched earth on the other side of nowhere if you have neither.

I'd very much like to say I would give anything, even unto half my kingdom, to anyone who can tell me the rest of this or even put a name to the "Anonymous" that I ought to stick in at the end of it:

A single word, a single page,
The remnants of a distant age;
Fair breezes touch a greener lea,
A brighter sun, a bluer sea –
Naught left to us but poetry.

But that wouldn't be fair when I possess as many kingdoms as I do kings to go with them.

Excuse the rambling. It's been a hectic week so far... Again with the CVs, the Statements of Purpose (beyond, "not flunking out of the course"), the assignments, the sundry other things that seem too minor to mention but somehow fill every free second of your day.

Need I even mention that there are now less than three weeks to midterms? It's become a fact of my life that there are eternally less than three weeks to something. Deadlines... you just have to love them. Or at least tolerate them, since whether or not you like it they're here to stay.

Because if the young Lord Paris goes before you, you really have no option but to follow.

How to Travel

With a salmon.

Umberto Eco should have written a book on how to spend a Sunday. I'm surprised that there have not been any particularly famous polls on the subject. They would probably turn up enough unexpected results to merit an inch or so on the front page of the Times of India.

I can guess what some of them would be... Lie in bed with a book... Loll on a sandy beach under a tropical/Mediterranean sun... Watch TV... Watch a movie... Play online chess against somebody in Honolulu...

OK, that last one is stretching it a bit. You get my point, though... The things that would feature high on the list would definitely not include, for instance, writing a paper about how reading four lines from Pygmalion filled one with the knowledge of how to be a better and more effective manager. A very edifying way to spend the holiday, no doubt, but not a particularly entertaining one.

With due apologies to HH Munro and Clovis Sangrail, what is needed at this moment is an Unrest Cure. I am now legally old enough to stand for a by-election in some out-of-the-way constituency, but somehow I do not believe that is quite the answer.

And whatever quiz there is tomorrow will certainly prove unrestful enough for anybody, up to and including Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, Fifth Earl of Ickenham, so I guess that's taken care of.

She Walks in Beauty

Three handsome aristocrats at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that was the end of any stereotype that ever existed of a poet as a tiny, sorry-looking specimen of humanity who used vicarious verse (which has an odd sound to it despite the alliteration, I know, but bear with me) to make up for the total lack of romanticism in his life. Nobody can accuse Byron of being boring any more than they can accuse him of wasting too much time polishing his poetry.

I tried to pick my personal favourite of his poems, but it was rather difficult. I can only name the ones that wouldn't figure: All is Vanity, Farewell! If Ever Fondest Prayer and When We Two Parted. It is not that I love Caesar less, but that I love Rome more... and I am now lost somewhere on the cobbled streets, and the day I can make up my mind where to go will be the day Wile E. Coyote turns vegan.

Well, it might happen.

On a slightly less illogical note, I think it would be a toss-up between Maid of Athens, The Isles of Greece and By the Rivers of Babylon, with The Destruction of the Sennacherib coming much higher on the list of Honourable Mentions than, I dare guess, most people would place it. Technically, I suppose, it is simply an exalted example of the misuse of metre, but it's the kind of thing that gives the impression that Byron himself had a very good time writing it.

One day, as I keep telling myself, I will know which I like best, whether the refrigerator light really goes off when you shut the door, the name of the person who commissioned the assassination of Philip of Macedon, and the exact value of pi. Until that day comes... There is, however little I like admitting it to myself, work to be done.

Such Stuff as Dreams are Made of

Our little lives really ought to be rounded with a sleep. Will said so, and to suggest that Will was wrong about it is like saying Einstein never really understood Physics - not something the normal person would do.

I've clocked in very few hours for the past couple of days. People said the second term at IIMA was lighter than the first, and I'm starting to think it was just to make the fall harder. Free time, they said. Plenty of time to wander around the campus, they said. What I have to say to that is... but, in the interests of propriety, I'll censor it.

I've spent several hours trying to make my CV. It's not that it's a time-consuming process; how long does it take to calculate a few percentages? It just seems extremely absurd, when I haven't the faintest clue how to run my own life, to try to persuade HR managers that I know how to run projects for them. I mean, it's just been a year since people stopped commenting, "Teenagers!" with an accompanying shake of the head when I did something particularly foolish, and now I'm sitting in an air-conditioned classroom in a swivel chair passing judgement on Microsoft's accounting policy.

Does it make any sense at all?

My point exactly.

But I have work to do... a CV to write... another ridiculous attempt to prove that I actually know what I'm doing here...

Inferno

After a week of freedom, a week dedicated exclusively to pretending that I never heard the word "B-School" in my life, being back on campus is rather like descending, one by one, through the circles of Hell. The countdown, which touched zero just seven days ago, is now excrutiatingly close to the three-digit-number. The last page of the previous term's schedule just went the way of the dodo, but tomorrow there's going to be a brand new schedule for a brand new term full of working Saturdays.

I don't want to say lasciate ogne speranza, I really don't. It would not be very optimistic; furthermore, it would not be strictly true. There is some hope, and not just that the six days in December will ultimately come. If rumour is to be believed - and nobody ever accused the Hydra of lying, after all - the circle of ice is behind us, from the Caina to the Judecca. One could say Malebolge is behind us as well.

For that matter, one could say all the circles are behind us; the next two terms are Purgatorio more than Inferno. And once we have suffered for all the pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust of our lives... Well, what comes next ought to be worth all the trouble.

Sometimes Dante's logic is slightly bewildering. Poor Virgil is left in Limbo because he did not follow a religion that did not even exist during his lifetime, but Dante himself, having set his allegorical stage with such pagan props as the Styx, and populated it with Minos, Cerberus and Antaeus, among others, is raised not just to the highest sphere of Paradiso, but to the Empyrean beyond.

I suppose he knew what he was about. And I will be satisfied if even the Sphere of the Moon is at the end of the terraces.

O, Courage, Courage, Princes!

There are two things I've always wished I'd seen. One is Alexander standing... well, suppliant is hardly the right word under the circumstances, so I'll just say standing... before the Oracle. Alexander's reputation for being remarkably easy on the eye has nothing to do with it - or so I claim. What I really want to see is the expression on her face, the most powerful person, without exception, in all Hellas, the voice of Apollo, at whose word kings were wont to tremble...

Yeah. Right.

The other thing is Achilles riding out after the fiasco with Patroclus. The Iliad builds to that, in the end; all the grandeur and savage beauty of twenty-four books lead up to that one passage. The fall of Ilion may have dropped the curtain on the Greek mythic pantheon, but Troy fell when Hector fell.

That's the trouble with the Iliad - with all books and plays about the Trojan War, for that matter. You don't know, at the end, whose side you were supposed to have been on.

At some point in the past four paragraphs I should possibly have mentioned that I have end-of-term exams from Monday. That is easily remedied; I'll mention it now: I have end-of-term exams from Monday. Last night my situation was dire, but it has now become so bad that it's actually funny... And I have no choice but to put all my faith in my guiding star.

And that's enough about exams. There's no reason to devote these fifteen minutes to them as well.

It's at times like this that I wish my knowledge of Greek extended beyond, "Phobos kai Deimos," which, incidentally, is what I'm feeling now. They're a nice pair to be the constant companions of the warlord. You don't even need a battle; the briefest hint of a skirmish is enough to make them pop up unpleasantly.

I know what Plum would have said. He would have said I should go through the next six days brandishing my pen like it's a banner with the strange device Excelsior. The only problem is that, brandish I never so well, I will not have Longfellow to write my epitaph.

But then... I will hopefully be alive and kicking on Thursday afternoon, all set to board that flight to freedom.

The Mome Raths Outgrabe

I've forgotten exactly how Humpty-Dumpty defined the words mome, raths and outgrabe, if indeed he did. But I do know that, had Lewis Carroll been a part of our week so far, he would have compared the experience to being bitten by the frumious Bandersnatch and clawed by the Jubjub bird, before falling afoul of the Jabberwock.

The week began with a Monday; need I say more? And this was a Monday that followed a weekend that was, for all practical purposes, nonexistent; furthermore, it ended with an Operations Management quiz. The thing about OM quizzes is that you're never quite sure to do with the preparation time. You think you know things. Two minutes before the TA starts handing out the paper, you stop thinking and start hoping you know things.

Then, of course, all illusions end.

Our HR project presentation was scheduled for Wednesday, which naturally put paid to all thoughts of sleep on Tuesday. And then there was the fact that we had been under the impression that the presentation would be next week... Anyway, we sat up till the wee hours of Wednesday morning, reducing twenty-page articles to twenty words to go on a powerpoint slide, and not preparing for the quiz we knew we would have.

I would feel slightly less aggrieved about that, and about the grade that I know will be on that quiz paper, if we had actually been called to present on Wednesday.

Wednesday's quiz... I'm not going to pretend I would have aced it under other circumstances, but I might have done marginally better - written in at least one correct entry - if our professor had not kept us in twenty minutes past time, giving us a recap of revenue recognition. (To add insult to inury, I thought that meant the quiz would have at least one question on revenue recognition, which it did not, and spent precious pre-quiz preparation time revising it.)

Today, though, was the icing on the cake. At 1240 hours, we were sure we would have an IC quiz at 2:30 pm. At 1325 hours, one of the TAs told us we had a quiz in Individual Dynamics at 2:00 pm. Since it was the first ID quiz (with ten days to go for the term), and since "Quizzes and Assignments" are worth 20% of our grade for the course, we were understandably alarmed, and we bolted.

At 1330 hours, we came to a screeching halt in front of a Quiz Notice Board that was... empty. There we were, ready to glower hatefully at the slip of paper announcing our doom, and there was the Notice Board, smug, omniscient, and irrefutably vacant.

"Nope," said we. "That can't be. We know we have a quiz. Ergo, the Notice Board must be wrong."

Never believe that. The Notice Board is always right, and we didn't have a quiz. But it was still five minutes of unnecessary tension followed by ten minutes of agonizing uncertainty. People who skipped lunch and ran straight to their rooms to mug might take a sterner view of the situation, but now I think it was all a bit funny. And I ask myself, what does the PGP system gain - other than seeing a classroom empty itself out in fifteen seconds, which is hardly an event worthy of the Olympic games - by making us think there's going to be a quiz when there isn't?

Will would put it down to Ariel - or possibly Puck. But to add Puck to the mix is not comforting.

Gnothi se Auton

Know thyself.

Transliteration aside (for which I trust Apollo will forgive me; I'm not quite ready for the inside of a padded cell yet, and it would make my life very complicated if people thought I was) it's a very useful thing to keep in mind when you're hoping for ESP. There are people who, knowing what is to come, will arm themselves beforehand. There are people who won't. And then there are people (like me) who will convince themselves that nobody can really interpret what the Oracle says until after the event, so it doesn't matter in any case.

I hope the previous paragraph hasn't been taken as confirmation that some concerned person should start looking for a good psychiatrist. It's just the effect of a very crazy week. Gnothi se Auton.

The campus is going to be rather on the empty side next week, with half the students off on term break. That doesn't mean we won't have quizzes, though. If anything, since we've not been burdened with too many of them this week, next week is going to be an occasion for all the professors to revenge themselves for all the lack of preparation during T-Nite and after.

I think it's the "after" part that really bugs them. The trouble is that once you've got through T-Nite, devoting, at the very most, an hour a day to mugging, it's very difficult to get back into the pre-midterm routine. The profs look at it differently; they probably think that with T-Nite out of the way, you should attack your books with twice the enthusiasm. The policy of the Delphic Council doesn't quite work here.

Having said that, I suppose they knew it was coming. Some of them, at least, told us so in the first week. That makes me feel slightly better about myself and my present disinclination to spend hours with cases... That may change as endterms approach. I certainly hope it does.

But it's the Pierian spring I'm after as far as that's concerned.

The Brief Chronicles of Time

Drama seems to be everywhere right now. I don't mean drama as defined by Jacques sitting in the forest of Arden being wise; that's always there in any case. I mean drama in the more usual sense of the word.

The final show of Kamala was last night. Somehow people generally seem to perform best on the final night. I've never been able to figure out why it works that way. In any case, last night was good. I rather think Will would have enjoyed it if he had seen it, although he would probably have written a different ending.

One of my old classmates is doubling as Oberon and Theseus in Dream. You would have thought he'd be happy, with two leading ladies. But apparently he gets slapped by one and kicked by the other, so it isn't as pleasing a prospect as it seems. I can only feel sorry for him; to double in one of Will's plays and still have to count yourself lucky if you get so much as a smile from your counterparts...

This is my first relatively free weekend in a very long time. First it was midterms, then it was T-Nite... But I suppose a few weeks of not having time to think, leave alone eat and sleep, makes you far more appreciative of that time when you get it.

We predicted our quizzes with remarkable accuracy this week. That doesn't mean I studied for them very much; it just means I knew in the morning what iniquities were going to happen in the afternoon, and so the slip of paper behind the glass came as no major surprise.

While I'm on the subject, I have come to the conclusion, after much deliberation, that Hamlet was sane. That I'll probably change my mind in two days is immaterial; at the moment I am decided. He was just brilliant, and a far better actor than the abstracts he had in Mousetrap.

I've always wondered if Agatha Christie had Hamlet in mind when she wrote that play. Being Christie, she may have done, even if only as a decoy. And maybe not that much of a decoy, at that; if you stretch your imagination a bit, there's something in the concept of revenge and dead brothers that may have seemed familiar to the Elizabethan court.

And now, if I can keep my mind made up about Hamlet, and decide once and for all whether Macbeth would have killed Duncan even without the witches teaching him to know himself - both highly unlikely propositions - I will be somewhere.

Taste Not the Pierian Spring

The title doesn't mean anything. Really. It's just the effect of having functioned on three hours of sleep a night for a week, then having slept very nearly round the clock yesterday, and finally having topped it off by trying to make sense of Microsoft's accounting policy and decide whether stock options really motivate CEOs. All I have to say for myself is that I didn't get sozzled - not on alcohol, anyway.

T-Nite is over. In retrospect and with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight, it was fun, although going to bed at four in the morning is not something I would recommend as a lifelong policy. Some things are best left to Gally Threepwood.

So now it's back to business as usual. That's a rather depressing thought. During T-Nite I had enough to do that I didn't have time to worry about EA and QM backlog, or give more than a passing thought to midterm results. Now that I have the leisure to sit and work out what they're going to do to my grades for the term... But why think of that when I needn't?

One of my friends is playing Titania. They're putting up the show in the middle of September; I'll be very sorry to miss it - not least because I want to see her kiss Bottom with the ass's head. Still, maybe I'll have someone take photographs for me. I could do with some fun.

Less than a month now, until endterms. At this point I'm not too worried. When you're deluged in tests and quizzes as numerous as - well, as anything that anybody ever called numerous; I can't think of a simile right now - they all boil down, as one of my professors is wont to say, to punctuation marks in an essay being written by somebody with a warped sense of humour. (He just mentioned the punctuation marks; the rest is my own.)

It's raining again. So I'll just listen to the drizzle and let the Alps arise as they will.

If Music be the Food of Love

Play on!

When you read the line by itself it sounds remarkably cheerful, as though whoever said it had drunk just enough to be in a benevolent, expansive mood. You can almost see him raising his wine cup to an imaginary orchestra.

Then you read the rest of the passage, and you wonder why Will insisted on hamartia for his comic heroes. Macbeth does not come across as manic depressive, nor does Othello, nor even Hamlet. But, traitorous though the thought may be, it is very difficult to read Merchant without wishing Antonio would stop being so noble, stop trying to save Shylock's soul, and get himself a life.

That has nothing to do with my life right now. I started with the quote because it's one of the happiest-sounding lines I know, as long as it's read by itself. The imaginary wine cup, the imaginary orchestra.

It's strange, how you discover that some things aren't as bad as they seem. While I would not make a habit of dressing like a prominent member of an underworld chain gang and going about shouting slogans, it is not without its attractions - on occasion. When I did it last night it was rather fun.

So was Welcome Night - or Nite; I don't know how they spell it. What I know about music, other than the spelling, pronunciation and etymology of the word, can be inscribed on a grain of rice with a blunt carving knife. It didn't make too much of a difference, though. I'm sure people who can tell C minor from C major had a nicer evening than I did, but I had, for lack of a better word, fun.

The week ahead is supposed to be the one where you learn how not to read an HR case and still avoid writing a 1000-word assignment in one evening. It seems a remarkably useful thing to learn, rather like the sixth sense some people develop that tells them whether or not there's going to be a quiz on any given day.

Aristotle would say that the expectation causes the quiz. But such accuracy would be a little too much to expect, even of Pythian Apollo.

In the name of Phoebus, then, play on.

Elysium!

The servants of Hades may be stoking the fires of Tartarus, the Moirae may be sitting at their spinning wheel with identical sinister smiles, Zeus may be giving orders to the Cyclopes and gearing himself to say it with thunderbolts, but nothing can change the fact that midterms are over and that for the first time in six weeks there is not a monumental amount of reading material demanding immediate and undivided attention. The battles are over, and it will be a few days until we learn who has lost them, who has won them, and who has lost some and won others.

Around this time I should start feeling particularly aggrieved about the fact that we have classes this Saturday, and on every succeeding Saturday excepting the one that is listed in our timetable along with the dreaded letters W, A and C (followed by the dreaded word "Submission"). But I really can't feel aggrieved about anything right now; it's too much trouble, especially considering that sleep is going to be in short supply for the next two weeks.

Post-midterms... it's a little hard to believe that I've been here only six weeks, or that I've been here six weeks already. Six weeks of perpetual sleep deprivation, of deadlines to be met and no time to meet them, of trying to balance Assets and Liablilities and track down vast sums of money that have mysteriously vanished, rather al0ng the lines of Houdini... actually, it isn't as bad as it sounds. While I would not go so far as to say that being mistaken for one of Cleopatra's slaves is a pleasure that grows on you, it certainly becomes less painful with the passage of time. Dark may lower the tempest overhead, but I can console myself with the thought that whatever happens, I am unlikely to find myself hobnobbing with a hungry crocodile at the bottom of the Nile. Or even at the bottom of the Sabarmati.

It's drizzling. It's a very soothing sound, rain, when it doesn't interfere with fruitless trains of thought that you know will lead nowhere, but that you hope will provide you with a brilliant insight on how to solve all the problems of the Indian economy with one swift stroke. Until those thunderbolts start falling, life is, to quote the ninth earl, capital, capital, capital.

The Hurlyburly's Just Begun

And the clock's ticking. Fifteen hours and some change until I discover how little I actually know about subjects about which I thought I knew something.

Incidentally, I do hope nobody was deceived by the title and expects this to be either intelligent or philosophical. I, personally, am all eagerness to get pally with wisdom (or knowledge, if you prefer to translate it like that), but wisdom thinks I am one of those mortals best avoided; that, then, is the status quo.

This is, of course, not such a wonderful time to start blogging. That change I was talking about is getting shorter by the second. But I've reached a point where I do not care who produces how many shirts and sells them to which client as long as nobody expects me to do anything about it. I'm hoping the situation will change by tomorrow morning: feelings like that with the OM paper in front of me, and "trouble" will not begin to describe what I will be in. Nor, for that matter, will several other words that, in the interests of propriety, I shall not list.

I can't help feeling that the past week has been the lull before the storm. Five days, five free afternoons, and just one quiz? Nope. Something's fishy. I don't know if it has something to do with tomorrow being a Sabbath, but I can't help thinking that the next three days are going to be a brew with ingredients beyond Will's wildest imaginings... And that takes some imagining.

By now, half the people reading this have probably resolved to tell me that my chances will be brighter if I stop writing pointless posts and mug. I daresay they're right. In any case, the change may be getting shorter, but there's always the uplifting thought of Elysium, or the day after midterms... Onward, then, and hopefully there are calm seas and auspicious gales waiting.