Week - 9th Oct to 16th Oct

Well, my imagination is not at its best now and thus the very simple and functional title for this entry. (Its just too difficult to come up with interesting names for uninteresting weeks!). The highpoint of this week were - a)the hiking trip and b)the setting up of my room.

On Saturday morning, I met Sheila didi and we had breakfast together. She is a very interesting person and I enjoyed our conversation. I like her field of study and we primarily spoke of things related to it. On my way back I bought my bed frame and lugged it back to my apartment. I then started the day-long process of setting up my room. It took a lot of time to get everything in place, but by the end of it, I was very pleased by the way my room looked. It is a nice, cosy, comfortable room now with a bed, a side table, a study desk, a book shelf and a high back leather chair. In the course of the day I also ended up going to a mall in the suburbs to buy my quilt, chair etc. The drive was quite scenic and I got my first taste of "fall colours". The trees turn uniformly yellow, orange, red, pink, maroon and and all shades in between. Its quite magical.

On Sunday, I went hiking with 3 others.: Soumyajit, a DBPC senior now at MIT, Stuart (who is Soumyajit's friend) and Antara (who is Soumyajit's family friend and now doing a PhD in history at Harvard). We went to Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire which is a 2 hour drive from Boston. Soumyajit owns a car and he drove us there. It was an enjoyable trek - though quite demanding. The ascent is 600m in 2 miles. Most of the trail is very rocky and there is always the danger of getting a twisted ankle if one is not careful enough. There aren't any life threatening dangers like the ones in the Uttaranchal area. It was great fun getting to know these people and we were enjoying our climb. We were about 500 m from the summit when Antara's knee cap dislocated! I don't think it was her carelessness or anything, but she was plain unlucky. For 10 minutes she was in severe pain, but then miraculously it popped back again into its place. But by then the Mountain rangers had arrived and they gave her whatever medical help she required. We abandoned the idea of reaching the summit because there was no way Antara could climb any further. She was still not able to bend her knee and the 2 mountain rangers decided to go all the way to the bottom with her, providing her with expert guidance and support to climb down roughly 3 kms with a bad knee !! We had a pretty leisurely walk the way down because the pace was set by her. It was quite enjoyable (though I cant say the same for her). So finally we reached the base camp and headed back. To speak the truth, I was not very disappointed at not reaching the summit. We all had a nice time and that we actually missed was a good scenic view from the top (and a sense of achievement!) . One of the mountain rangers was actually the Dean at Brown University (which is an internationally reputed university) who did this work as a hobby on weekends ! By the time we reached Cambridge, it was 9 pm and we were all quite tired.

Monday was a holiday and I spent the day recovering from my trip and looking at my assignments for the week. Since I did not go the university and both my room mates were out of town for work, I spent the whole day without actually uttering a word! It was ok for one day, but anymore than that, and I would have gone into depression !! Tuesday, Wenesday and Thursday just whizzzed past and all I did was work. I finally got a breather on Friday evening. I went to see Antara in her hostel to see how her knee was healing. The hostels are quite decent though the rooms are quite small. Maybe I'll try to move into them next year. I like my apartment a lot and it will be a tough decision. I dont know . Its too early to be thinking about it anyways. After that, I went to a "Bollywood" party organized at one of the hostels' common room. I did not enjoy myself too much. At American parties, all you do is make small-talk with others, something that doesn't go down too well with me. They were playing hindi film song videos and I was surprised to see so many "non-Indians" enjoying them. I came back at around 11, walking in the rain (Mummy, I had an umbrella so dont get worried) . Upon reaching home, I made myself a hot cup of Bournvita, made myself cozy in my razai, played some Kishore Kumar songs and read some poetry. It felt so relaxing not to have a impending deadline screaming at you.

Well that was the week. In general my lifestyle here is quite different from my IIT lifestyle and I dont think a change of location has much to do with it. There are suddenly more responsibilities. I make a mental note if I see the stove slightly dirty or paper napkins running out. I guess its the natural process of growing up. I dont know whether I prefer this or the carefree, almost careless Ankur, loitering about in the B2 wing of Alakananda Hostel, IIT Madras.