Stench and Sensibility

As interesting as this might sound, I finally got down to chucking my clothes into the automatic washing machine ....the old clothes strewn frivolously about my room are gone finally, and as one of roomies quips, we finally found out why our room had an affiliated stench to it ;-)

On to rosier things, the typical day in the life of Mr J.S., I shall go on to detail for you (with utmost sadistic pleasure )...topographical information is not really necessary, but take a look at maps.google.com for I.H. 35 at 32nd street in Austin ,if you feel up to it...

I cross the inter-state ( I live damned right next to the Interstate Highway 35 that runs through most of Texas), and notice the usual down-trodden folk asking for god-knows-what with sign boards making political and economic statements. (Remarkably enough, I once saw a 60 something man offering a woman a 10-dollar bill to take off with him...the sheer audacity of it all shocked me...I mean, I have heard of all this taking place in Kodambakkam in Chennai and all, but in broad daylight in Austin? Wasn't it too weird or is it just that I had'nt seen the world enough, I wondered...). Reading the signs they show while I wait for the crossing indicator to turn on is one of the more colourful portions of the sojourn to the university.

My walk past the interstate takes me to the neighbourhodd hospital, where I waited patiently for the Route 22 bus, which ought to ferry me onwards to the university campus ( I live kind of 15 mins by walk from my department; but am often in too much of a hurry or too bugged to foot it...). (A middle-aged nurse who works in the hospital looked at me one day and gave me a winning go-get-em smile...little did I realize then that I had not shaved for a week or so, and she probably took me for one of the recent dischargees from the hospital, I guess...)the never-on-time Capitalmetro bus comes in 20 mins late, effectively losing me $12.50 for being late from my wage-paying job at the university...aaarghh...

Reaching the department, I "manage" to bump into this huge desi junta perenially decking out at the graduate lounge( Seriously! they are always there...little india, perhaps one can call the place...) and the phully phaltoo discussions we tend to have wake me up fully to a state wherein on reaching my work desk, I can respond soberly to my employer's queries about what I plan to do to earn my pay for the day( I am too sleepy before 12 noon, all conversations and statements I make before are things I claim to be not accountable for...). The day rolls on with me "slacking off" at work till abt 2pm, when I head off to yet another lecture on distributed systems, to be followed by an even more interesting discussion on wireless networks .

5 O clock finally, and I am back at the graduate lounge not knowing what to do...I hang around for another hour or so, browsing the internet , and checking for elusive useful email, and finaly give up, and head home...I have too much work left, weighing on mind is just too many issues in life, thanks to the tons of things I agree/have to do academically... Juggling responsibilities is one thing; taking on too many responsibilities in a fashion that you know you will never be able to do justice to any of them is another thing altogether...As a consequence, life has started sucking badly; My graded test marks , which adequately reflect my apathy towards the subjects I am supposed to be interested in finally came in to round of an awesome day. I return home, and sleep off as soon as possible, dreaming of a good day some day...

Sigh...Life was so much easier in Chennai ( Back in India...as a famous personality states so eloquently)... I am fast losing focus, losing sight of that elusive dream of being independent, and being capable of enjoying the subtler aspects of life...Of having "arrived", rather than tending to do so...

Why am I here? At a place far far from home, where I need to actually fend for myself ?
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I know not...