Graduation

In a highly improbable scenario of you missing the fact, this is the graduation season in USA and you should notice that about half of all orkut users find it a convenient time to update their profile pic with a pretty one in a black gown. (my rather high standards of laziness doesn't permit me to indulge in such laborious activities). This is also a good time to look back at the time spent in school and see what you have learned and achieved. Some people are actually known to do that. Rest of us, the simple people, use it only as an excuse to have fun.

I have been away from Durham for 5 months now and was expecting a heroes welcome, like what Abhishek Bachan got in Sarkar when he returns to Mumbai. My expectations proved slightly ambitious as I realized that only 4 people in the Durham area(including the Biryani House guy) recognized me and only one of them thought that the probability of my first name starting with a V is greater than 1/26.

We had too little time and too many things to do. Waiting for good weather to play volley was not really very practical so we had play in the pouring rain. And then there were n-th order treachery, vengeance, egoism, jealousy, revenge etc. which resulted in us watching the Telugu flick "Aaduvari matalaku ardhaley veruley" later in the day. All that I can say about the movie now is that "it is very worthy of a review". For a brief moment I thought the villain would be a much detestable "America pelli-koduku" who always performs a wild card entry into a nice romantic love story, but thankfully I was wrong.

Anyways after enduring the emotional turmoil, I thought I had enough of family values but
unfortunately Pichuk(who got engaged recently) and Rohit (who cant wait to get engaged) had other plans. They are co-authoring the book "101 Best Practices to avoid domestic family friction in the early stages of Indian marriages" and decided to share some of the tips with me. Chinnu, the younger brother who also happened to be in the car during the discussion put the time to good use by reading relatively interesting stuff like the ATM receipts and gas bills lying around. Thanks guys for all the liberal advice thrown in and educating me of all the nice things like changing diapers and why the second kid will be much tougher to handle than the first. I am sure I will put everything to use someday and appreciate your spirit to share the best practices.

The graduation ceremonies were quite an experience by themselves, where everyone tried to strike some nostalgia for all the time we spent there. The graduation advice this time being "Don't overplan", which I liked maybe because I always followed it unconsciously. (My graduation advice from IIT was "Wherever you go, Whatever you do, stay with passionate people", which also I liked). The MEM reception however was disappointing as the space soon ran out. Either they under forecasted the no. of guests which is a sign of poor project management or they must have said to themselves "Lets make our large contingent of Indian students and their families happy by recreating the Chennai local train atmosphere right in the Fitzpatrik center". Apart from that everything else went smoothly, with the photographer dictating which way the graduates should walk.

And then the gowns got removed, the bottles emptied, the guests gone, the music stopped and its another bright day of explaining the negative slope in many a graphs back in Richmond.

Did I say Graduation is a photographers conspiracy?