Pune.

The never ending search for love
There was a very pretty girl sitting in the CoffeeDay as we waited to board our IndiGo flight to Pune. Was she also going to MAEER MIT’S for her interview? As I shuffled through my iPod playlist and the portfolio I created the previous day, I noticed her smiling. I smiled. She smiled, this time at me. This chain-reaction was a textbook example of ‘love at first sight’. Destiny had brought us both there and Destiny would get us both in to the design college lying in the dusty outskirts of Pune. The gullible idiot I am, I blushed.
Ten minutes later as I took my seat and scanned the plane, I realised that Destiny had led me on like it always had when it came to girls. The CoffeeDay girl was nowhere to be seen. Destiny’s a bitch. And for being duped like that, I guess it makes me the bitch. A bitch’s bitch… Pathetic.
Textbook example of a reality check.

Pune
So, so hot and such a strange place, I tell you. A flock of unkempt foreigners draped in maroon robes and wearing oshos made their way to the ‘Osho Ashram’ situated right next to the hotel we were staying at. An old building, in desperate need of renovation. We were given the ‘Osho Suite’ (Oh, shoo shweet); a large hot room with a fan far from the bed. The room, far from clean. As the heat crept into my disengaging brain I sighed that this wasn’t the ‘warm welcome’ I was expecting.
Note to self: When eating at a restaurant named after a guy called Prem – The restaurant being Prem’s – don’t underestimate the continental food and try being safe by ordering the token Punjabi dishes. Prem Koshy would tell you that. Anyhow, we underestimated the continental food and tried being safe by ordering butter chicken and butter naan, enough butter in there to kill a small chicken. The small chicken, however, died before being made into a buttery curry which didn’t appeal to the taste-buds of a particular Joe and Anita Thomas. The poor chicken. I’m sure it would’ve agreed with my sentiments on Destiny being a bitch.

Of relativity and yellowness
When my mind could handle it, I’d pick up Janna Levin’s ‘How the Universe got its Spots’. I’m not a big reader, and when you’re reading about how gravity isn’t a force (something that you’ve been taught all your life), but is in fact ‘curved-spacetime’, you would understand why. Though convoluting at first, she gives you Einstein’s theories of relativity and explains it as simply as she can. From what I could get, everything is relative. It’s my new outlook on life.
The evening sky in Pune was beautiful. A warm yellow-hue of loneliness gave this ethereal feeling to everything. Sadly, it was being forced into oblivion by grey, mystical clouds, a premonition for the day that would follow. As drizzle took its cue, we huddled into an auto to take us to the closest mall. The auto-meters started their count at Rs.1. Bangalore autos would start at Rs.12. Of course, their was a weird multiplier that would be enforced and your Rs.2.50 ride would end up being about 20 bucks, but the comfort given by the single digit starting number was unbelievable. Numbers are funny. They’re relative. Depending on where you are, or what you’re looking at, the size of numbers could play tricks on our minds. A five rupee auto-ride and a five on seventy in a Physics test… Such a world of difference.
Pune had too many yellow cars. Something that a certain friend of mine would love to know. Something that the person riding shotgun would cringe at. A Snickers flavoured gelato was the highlight of the day.

College and all
When you wake up sweating, you either just had a nightmare about the college interview that was about to happen… or you were lodged in a dreadfully hot ‘Osho Suite’. Try both.

Sitting at the designated waiting room for the UG students, I glanced at everyone else seated beside their massive portfolios. This, and the fact that I was the only one who looked like a waiter (what with my new ‘good-looking’ haircut, immaculate white shirt, formal pants and leather shoes) ruined the nice walk we had to the college building across the beautiful green landscaped campus of the neighbouring school.
As the parents and students engaged in small-talk, I began to wonder who in the room had a stronger design-sense than me. These people were to be eliminated before the end of the day, before the personal interview round began.
Today was the studio test; a material and situation test to be precise. We were divided into two groups. Small talk became bigger. I made friends with a guy in his second year of B.Com. He was enlightened one day and decided that design was the way to go. I didn’t want to burst his bubble by telling him about my experiences with Destiny. The pretty girl from CoffeeDay wasn’t here. The final sword into the bull always hurt the most.

We were escorted to a studio and was instructed (completely in Hindi) to use a square piece of metal and the tools given to us to make a mobile phone stand.
I thought this was an interview not a sweatshop.
With a two-minute crash course on the usage of the tools and a burden of lines left untranslated, I managed to come up with something like this…


…relatively ugly when compared to what others were making. Everything is relative.

We moved towards another room where we were given a theme for a play (this time the instructions were in English). Together, we had to design something that was eco-friendly and make it into the form of a play. We made a Shakespearian tragedy out of it. Using ourselves and the things we had as props and after getting to know each other’s names, we came up with a funny, pretty off-topic play about designing a ‘new you’. We were left exposed to an arrow shower of questions that didn’t seem to have any good answers. Could you have improved this play? Why did she act like a car? Who did the most work? No, seriously… who?!
Over lunch (at the campus), we all wondered what they would make out of us as individuals. Everyone started worrying that their portfolios weren’t good enough. I only wondered why the lunch wasn’t good enough. But anyway…

We coffeed (there’s a new verb in town) at the German Bakery. And if I thought I’d seen the last of them foreigners walking aimlessly through town in their maroon robes, I was completely mistaken. The German Bakery was like headquarters to the hungry Osho-devotee. Not that I have a problem... A nice mocha and eavesdropping on some interesting conversation was quite relaxing. Post coffee, we wandered though town aimlessly, without maroon robes of course, and shopped a bit. We demanded a room with an A.C. back at the hotel… The receptionist, rudely disturbed in his game of Counter Strike gladly obliged and sent us off with a man to our new room. The night was pleasant.

D-Day
Our hotel offered a complimentary breakfast: ‘bread and butter’ or ‘toast and butter’. The choice almost seemed endless. We declined and chose to eat at the German Bakery instead. Mocha and a brilliant mushroom and cheese omlette. Mmm.

Familiar faces greeted me at the designated waiting room for the UG students, tenser than ever, portfolio laden. Me, with my one file of vibrant computer prints on A4 sheets… I looked like a jackass. Others were showing me their paintings, their fabric-work, their portraits, their own comic books, their jewelry and cloth designs, their unending works of art. I showed them my blog header printed on a page.

Three panels. 6 students per panel. A 20 minute interview for each student. A long time waiting in the waiting room. As our inbuilt barometers burst, we all got closer. An exchange of phone-numbers, laughs here and there, advice on how to please the panels and all, my time had finally come.
When four people just stare at you while you speak, you tend to freak out. Beneath the table, my legs were quivering with epileptical hysteria. I’ve come to know that telling someone that you’re a funny guy has no pay-offs. I told them I was a funny guy. They told me to tell them a joke. In a pressurised situation, telling a joke wasn’t easy so I failed in my hope to please them. They all shook their heads in disappointment and munched on biscuits that no one offered me. Though I answered a lot of questions really well, all with good vocab and amazing charm, I needed that something to make them laugh and so, in a last attempt at self-redemption, when asked to say the first person’s name I thought of when they gave me the word ‘monkey’, I said George Joseph. Redemption…

All in all, the trip was good. I learnt a lot. Harsh lessons about Destiny, an eye-opening stay in Pune and a relatively good interview.

Everything is relative…