I don't give a &^$#

(Disclaimer: This is one of those me, myself and I posts. The kind of sad, introspective posts which were the bread and butter of this blog before I started writing the Mahabharata series and the theory posts. So if you are here for satisfying your dirty fantasies regarding those hot, semi clad princesses in ancient India, click on the Mahabharata label link on the right, and if you are looking for some theories to explain particular aspects of life, click on the theory link, again on the right. If you want to still read on, do so. After all, I don't really give a &^$#).

I am not much of a shopper. I prefer spending my money the old fashioned way of food and alcohol rather than on the latest gadgets, shoes and clothes, which I do not buy until it is extremely necessary. I am not a spur of the moment buyer, and need to be very sure of the utility of the object bought. I haven't bought a new gadget in two years despite my phone and laptop both being in conditions which would make the refugees in Assam look like living in heaven. The less I talk about my clothes the better, especially as they have to deal with me, a person who cannot go through a day without dropping food/tea/beer on my shirt. Probably, the most I spend on after food and alcohol is books, which tells you just how expensive books have become today because I do not read that much as well. And which also tell you how few clothes I own, and makes you question how cheap I am, the answer to which would be very.

Shopping for me is a very structured process of first identifying the need and then establishing what would fulfill the need. The "shopping" process, then, is generally going to the first shop which would give me what I want, and buying the desired object. I cannot envisage going through different storerooms and/or online stores to buy the perfect match. If one word describes me the most, its probably unstructured, but somehow, unlike everything else in my life, I hate chaos when it comes to shopping. And which is probably why I hate on-the-spur buying.

Having said that, my last major buy was surprisingly a spur of the moment buy. It was this T-shirt I bought in Goa. A friend was buying it - and when he showed it to me, I really liked it, and got my size as well and was soon the proud owner of a brand new T-shirt.This was what the T-shirt looks like: The front side of the T-shirt has a silhouette of a man raising his middle finger. The words "I don't give a fuck" occupy the top left. The back of the T-shirt is plain, with just the words "I don't give a fuck" again in a smaller font at the top.

I got lucky. The two t-shirts are entirely similar, except that the T-shirt my friend had bought says "I don't give a fcuk". It says Fcuk. Like the clothing company. The censored version I suppose.  On both the front and the back. It does not even make any sense, come to think of it. But my shirt does not mince any words. It tells anyone who cares to read it exactly what I think : "I don't give  a fuck." The message could not be clearer. If it is meant to be a message that is. What is it I don't give a fuck about? I do not know, but somehow those five words seem very true.

I see myself as a happy-go-lucky person. While most early readers of this blog would probably disagree with this assessment, but I think I have always been a believer in the Que Sera Sera philosophy. Whatever will be, will be. I am kind of inspired by the song "Aane waala kal jaane waala hai" which encapsulates everything there is to know about life. Live in the moment. And the Beatles Classic, "Let it be". Take the three together, and you come to realize, that you are too small, world's too vast, and that you cannot change anything. And hence, live in the moment, be happy, and let things be. Which is to say, there is not point in giving a fuck about anything. And hence, I do not give a fuck.

Perhaps I never really gave a fuck. I never desired much and hence lived a very contented, happy life. I spent most of my school days in classroom playing book cricket and filling pages after pages of mine and my friends' notebooks with imaginary world cup scorecards. I made my own book cricket rules which helped me define a 50 over match. The only time I paid attention in classes was when I was made to sit in the front seat or when I was made to read for the entire class - something I loved doing. I did not really do my homework all that earnestly either. My house is in a fairly isolated place, and I filled up most of my afternoons imitating those legendary Stefan Edberg - Boris Becker Wimbledon finals with a plastic ball and a wooden tennis racket against the wall. I had rules for the tennis points as well, and I did make my own tennis scorecard too, something in which Edberg always won. When my parents told me to study, I went to my room and started completing the World Cup of book cricket, or started browsing through the Atlas and prepared statistical charts of area, population and density. Did you know Sweden was the 49th largest country in the world by area? I did, and had my charts ready for reference. I had world lists, continental lists and country lists. All in all, I had the perfect counterfoil to study time - the non-study time.

All this meant that I did not really study nearly as much as I was supposed to. Luckily however, it was enough for me to do well through school, where I never finished lower than second in my class. I never did finish first either, but second was beyond satisfactory for me. I was coming second without any effort, then why put in the extra effort and come first in class was a logic I could not understand. And despite the pleas of my parents and relatives and friends and everyone around me, I just did enough to keep coming second.

And this continued till the 10th standard. My friends were in awe of me doing well without putting in much effort, and my ego fed off it. Who wanted to be the studious topper when you could be the stud second place holder? However, I did put in some additional, extra effort for the board examinations, as they were supposed to be a marker of real "intelligence". The result: I still ended up 2nd in school. And so I lost whatever little respect I had for working hard, or putting effort. I had tried hard to come first, for the first time in my life, but I had failed.

10th was easy, but 11th and 12th were infinitely more difficult. However, I had my ego to boost and hence my efforts were still fairly lesser than what was required. I was in a hostel now as well, in Chandigarh, and card games and cricket replaced the traditional timepasses. Instead of wasting time in class, I started bunking classes. The results were that my performance in class plummeted, but I still managed to get good grades somehow in some tuition classes. I remember preparing for 12th board exams with nightouts playing sweep with juniors. I was very under-prepared for JEE, but just managed a rank which told me I was not totally worthless.  It was a rank that was worthless but it was a rank nonetheless. And getting a rank in JEE, where a lot of my other hardworking classmates and hostel-mates had failed, only helped feed my ego more. But I also knew I had to work hard for it. This was not going to be like 10th.

And so for almost a year, I really did give a fuck. About JEE. About doing well. I never thought I could get over friends and company and television, but for that one year, I left it all. Only studied. Physics, Chemistry and Maths became my friends. I could see the benzene rings in my dreams after reading Morrison and Boyd. And got through JEE. And into IIT Delhi. There was so much more to do here than study. I wanted to discover myself. Play tennis, squash, get into dramatics, go quizzing, excel at Word games. And IIT gave me a chance to do all that.

So I stopped giving a fuck about studies. I barely passed courses, I failed courses, but it did not matter. I was living the dream. IIT was about all round development, and I had become so engrossed in that. I really cared about my hostel winning events, about dominating politics, about winning sports. And that was all I cared about. And the four years passed away in bliss, and in recurring periods of happiness and sadness, depending on how Kara did in various events. I did well in certain courses as well, courses I liked inherently, like Probability and Statistics, and Mechanics. These courses again reinforced in my friends the potential I had, and they tried to tell me to apply it better. But I never cared. Why become a Maggu,  I thought, when you could get a good return on investment. Passing 5/6 courses each term without studying is a big achievement in IIT, and I managed that. It was good. Even though it led to me passing out in four and a half years, that too after crying with the professor.

Then came the placement time, and the realization that the world really did not give a fuck over how Karakoram had done in various events. All the world really cared about was grades. And I did not have them. But by then, I had this blog, and as this blog emphasized, I did not really give a fuck about salary either. And so it has been.

To cut a long story short, the only thing I have really cared about ever since, have been wasting my  time and life going after two girls in college. Nothing ever came from all the effort I put in. "I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn't even matter" seemed to be written directly for me. Again, I had fought hard for something, and failed. For me, trying became a synonym for failure, and publicly acclaimed failure, while not trying became a symbol of studness.

And so I stopped trying. On anything. IIM happened. I was inherently good in cracking CAT questions. Alcohol did the rest. Ernst and Young interview happened on a resume I had not revised for one and a half years, and alcohol. And over time I completely stopped giving a fuck over anything. Taking things as they come. Being happy, and enjoying myself. When Ernst & Young became painful, I quit, not caring about what to do. I lived in the moment.

And thats the way life has been. Its good. Its happy. Except that I have grown very fat because of this. Its probably time to say I give a fuck again. Get thin, and then get back to not giving a fuck anymore. About anything else. Here's to a healthy lifestyle.

(I am thinking of using the T-shirt as a pickup prop. Go to a hot girl in Striker and ask her, "Do you give a fuck?" If she says yes, ask for it. If no, tell her she and you are two of a kind, and you should flock together. Either way a win-win).