Unnatural Act

Why am I here, and for how long? It's been exactly a month since I parted ways with Bangalore, so it seemed an apt time to key in something here. I don't feel greatly out of place here in Austin: indeed, my routine of waking up groggy, spending long hours on work and the rest of the day on wotla-ing, isn't really different from my routine in CTS a short while back (when I was on the project). I haven't had to make any major adjustments to my lifestyle which, for me, is a good thing. I still feel a little funny about being away from Bangalore, though.

Being in the states for at least two years feels like a break in the chain. Not that I'm especially homesick. I was never a conscious believer in karma, but my (subconscious) feeling about Bangalore was that I was somehow destined to be there for a very, very long time. Maybe I was there for too long and it was time to go someplace else. The chain ran something like this: after class 12, I applied to a number of colleges outside Bangalore but somehow knew I was going to remain there, and I did. When I got placed in CTS, despite the knowledge that we would probably be sent to Chennai for the training, there was the looming suspicion that I would end up in Bangalore after all, and it proved to be true. I wasn't complaining at all, though and spent a mostly relaxed year in Cognizant Bangalore. You may live in a city for many years and desparately want a change of scene, but you could also look at it another way. Every city is like a person, and you need time to get to know it better. In the last few years, I can't put my finger on it but I discovered a lot more of Banaglore and enjoyed it as well. Although I knew I most probably would be off to the states in a while, I somehow didn't shake off the karma theory. The city grew on me like old wine. (Yes, Bangalore has changed for the worse in many ways. While the rest of the population grumbles about it, you can still savour it for what it has to offer.) So, leaving for the states seemed somewhat abortive. The abortion analogy seems (crudely) apt: By killing the unborn child, you're commiting an unnatural act, impeding the course of nature. By leaving Bangalore, I broke the natural course of growing up wholly in that city (yes, I may be 22 but I'm still growing up). It's a crazy (and perhaps, needless) thought, but it feels almost like a sacrilege defying the Bangalore karma theory. A bit like killing the unborn child!

While I can't quite get over my pet belief, things are pretty good here. Austin has a bangalore-like charm, filled with pleasant people and nice weather (apart from the last part of summer which was way too hot). Settling in wasn't a problem at all, I'm getting by with a little help from my friends (read: roomies). The major adjustment has to be the academics, which are very homework-intensive. The Texans are an interesting set of people, proud of themselves and their state. I find quite a few parallels between them and the people form Punjab back home. Both are hardy warrior races, who overcame hardships and hostile conditions to turn their respective lands into prosperous states. They're both aggressive, enterprising, and lively sets of people. Every texan is said to own a gun, and every Sikh regards the Kripan as a symbol of spirituality. Texans share a common border and an overlapping culture with Mexico. The Punjab shares a definite and vital history with it's namesake across the Wagah border. And so on.

On an entirely different note, Prof Pearce comes up with these weird digressions to break the monotony of his field theory lecture. he consideres partial differential equations to be as vital to engineering as Shakespeare is to Literature. He brings up the humanities vs sciences debate thus: "These guys discuss Shakespeare over a cup of coffee when the day is done. How does Green's theorem sound over coffee, huh? And those guys have the nerve to say our field is narrow. After all, the average engineering student knows more about arts than the average humanities student knows about science and engineering! You might want to keep that in mind if you get invited to one of those parties, where the humanities people say "we" don't belong. When that happens, you might wanna shoot back 'When was the last time you solved a partial differential equation?!!' " A real Revenge of the Nerds moment, indeed.