Saturday, July 07, 2007

my school of life...

college really, but we called it school, and i was there today, back to the campus i spent five very short years, which taught me more about life, which has shaped me more into what i am today, or rather which let me shape myself, all the while teaching me nothing helpful for my present career academically, a career which is poles apart from what i was trained for in those five years.

i can't describe my school to anyone who has not been there, simply because they could never imagine what i did there. a campus where 24 hours for five years used to seem like one unending short day, we never partied in college, not the kind of parties i go to now, but it truly was the best club i went to. it was an oasis in the center of the city, where even though being one of the best campuses in the country, it had managed to stay so distant from the rest of the city, no one outside would even know we existed. there were stories about the campus floating around, and many true, but no one could ever imagine to what extent. the campus didn't have a fence surrounding it till very recently, but no one even noticed such a huge area of land right in the center of the city.

a campus where the parking lot has never been empty for many years, even for a single minute, where music and smoke and energy hovers even in mid summer breaks, where the old and new merge seamlessly, where an architecture school was designed to have no washrooms!!
a campus which u entered as 'i' but within the first month, u were changed to a ceptian, a campus where there were no seniors after the first month, everyone was given the freedom to be themselves, where beautiful works of art, made with amazing amount of hard work and effort and zeal, were made with the knowledge that they won't survive till the end of the semester, will be replaced by something new.
where the lingo was so built in to everyday language, where 'launch ho gaya', 'death aa gaayi' and 'fuck amazing' described everyday happenings like nothing else, a place where people were known more by the wierdest of nick names, all throughout their lives.

a campus where even the basic infra was all wrong, we had peon steel stools to sit on, after the initial week butts used to pain, stool which were put horizontally on the floor to seat two. where drafting tables were well, simply huge tables which had to be covered by thick sheets of paper to draw anything, a campus where no one blinked on seeing anything out of the blue, the colors all mixed in so well, weird n different was the only excepted way.
a campus where creativity flowed from the most traditional, most orthodox, where doped and smoked people performed garba in the most traditional of way, followed by an arti at 4 in the night, attended and done by people wearing shorts and kurtas, and almost all bare footed.
where i could walk bare foot all daylong, attend lectures dripping wet, sit on the floor in the studio, hell sit on the floor anywhere, be there to open the studios before the peons (i knew where the keys were...)
where u could sit and chat and do all kinds of stuff in the deans cabin, enter the lib long after it was closed (and own up to it without being thrown out too...)

where u found all kinds of animals, dogs (with collars and names -'gotu, still alive' and over dog lovers and haters used to actually fight), fearless squirrels, a monster of a goat, monkeys, a cow once and even pigs, but never cats, and all kinds of humans, long haired, no hair, no eyebrows, clothes, semi nude and sometimes indescribable,
a campus which had a parallel economy, with our canteen coupons accepted as currency even outside the campus.
where proffs were friends, where there was no official way of doing stuff, where there were no after hours.

CEPT was life, and and it taught me how to live life. it taught me how to be open, accepting n be different. how to get respect out of top people in any organisation, and respect the least of a person. how to handle dead bodies, how to walk 40 ks a day, and drive more then 100ks sometimes and still be back to the campus, no one ever went home
.
it taught me nothing about what i am doing today, but gave me and everyone an opportunity to do something different, have the guts to go out and explore, and make a life out of it. i never would know how to thank my school,

someone told me before i joined college, these will be the best years of ur life, till now they were, and also it doesn't really matter what u graduate in, all u need is life skills, thanks to CEPT i got those.

for all u people confused about what to do after 12th, u would not know till u have done ur grads, u cannot discover urself so early, so just go ahead and go to a great campus which teaches u life and the art of exploration, and make ur life then.

and by the way, i still do not have my passing out degree from CEPT uni, but then i have myself to show for to prove that i went there.

take care.

PS: http://www.cept.ac.in/ if interested to learn life...

3 comments:

  1. It is so touching and I wish i can fly back in time back to those amazing times. It is true though we did not pursue what we studied there, it helped us to explore and be successful in different areas. I miss that times so much. - Vaibhavi

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