campus, etc

three or so months ago, stumbling out of divine, drunk asf, i got to bus-tea, looked at rohit bhaiyya dead straight in the eye & said "aap nahi hote toh mai ab tak college chhod deta"

aaj he put a little less butter in my bun-butter, and vaise bhi dil toota hua tha, so i ate it with my minute maid & thought maybe i should drop out now.

did you know rohit bhaiyya used to work at amul?

i hate the old, smaller, pulpy orange bottle design. there’s no room to shake the pulp back up from the bottom. you’re forced to take a sip of bland pulp-less orange water so you can properly shake it.

i don’t think i’ll drop out. i was a lot more sure of it one year ago. right now, i’ve found enough reasons to see this through.

people talk about communes a lot here, lately. easy comparisons considering campus is an independent, walkable, functional cocoon of life. but i mean, idt that’s about it. we’re in a v government college lol. national importance even. the essence of a commune is to render the state needless, not just live with your friends. campus is v dependent on the state. i also don’t know how i feel about anarchism in general lately. i think i love the state. all i liked about communes was rendering capital needless. i like campus then. in all my access to state resources- probably the best for an undergrad in this country. all because i wrote one stupid exam, lol.

campus is cool when it’s empty. me, v, & matke. routine doesn’t suck. like, at all. it’s v easy to be convinced routine would suck when you don’t really know what you want your day to look like. & it works a lot more bottom-up than self-help books would have you believe. you fall into routine when you force yourself to only spend your time in ways that you want to. because the things you want to do are a little less volatile than you. you’ll see routines form, fall apart & rebuild every month. you don’t start with the rules of routine.

i’m sorry, i digress. i’m not sure why i’m writing this. i was thinking of treating this like a roorkee diary. as in, not my diary while i’m at roorkee but roorkee’s diary while i’m here. so i wouldn’t be the one coming back & revisiting memories but like somewhere, some kid, several batches down the line, would desperately want to hear someone talk about campus in words they could use, in vaguely marxist or gay terms, or just in any terms at all that sounds like they genuinely care, they could find this.

i wonder what the weather’s like where you’re at in time. no, seriously, this isn’t me exchanging pleasantries with a second person audience. i very seriously do wonder this. i don’t have a lot of hope or faith, but i’d like you to tell me nice things about climate change. it’s getting worse here every year. it feels like it’s been raining almost all year on completely random days & we’re in september now man, wtf?

last year as well, it rained in september but s & i went to kedarnath & stuff. thought it was v cool & we learnt smth about the true nature of taking risks. but idk where all that went. i’m pretty much put now. in the summer i did a cross country road trip to kerala from here, & now, i haven’t been on a single trip this semester.

thomso is coming though- great time to run away.

i’m such a mess of contradictions here, i swear.

i can’t fucking decide if i should stay & experience campus without it's usual boundaries of behavior or use that state of suspended linearity to run away & get back. it worked out really well last time but i wish i played pictionary or smth too lol.

i’m not v sure about the boundaries of behavior this time either w kk pant or wtv anyway. thomso might j be worse & boring. people are usually so interesting on campus during thomso, holi, etc. actually that maybe, is one time we come anything even aesthetically close to a commune.

one definition of the state is that which predicts the likely behavior of its people. all their tools to do that are momentarily suspended because of the sheer amount of activity & variance. everyone’s suddenly high, gay, & rich during thomso. i mean, in the larger context, it is a sanctioned & prescribed release, something we are allowed. but still, if you view it as some state of suspended animation, entirely isolated, the deal is pretty fun.

i think a huge part of my indecision stems from me being able to make the most of whatever material explanation of my life i’m given. that’s probably a very dialectical, marxist explanation for it. but that’s probably the most leftist way i can explain my centrist brain lol. i love it when i’m busy on campus & i know why. i love it when i stall & laze around in rkb, all bhaangs & bongs & canteens all day & i also know why. i can’t stop thinking that perhaps i’d know exactly what to do with my life if we lived in a correct world, because right now all i do is oscillate between trying to do something about it within it & then being overrun with such understandable distaste for it that i completely reject the idea that it could define my life in any way even if that definition is of me trying to change it. & both make sense.

understanding all your possible decisions feels like the first step to making a decision but somehow it also always invariably means there’s no reason to make one.

or maybe i do know. being busy feels correct. sensitive reason, if you will.

i want to write this. i want to write Fairy Tales for Radical Children. I want to make the movie about gender that p & i are making. & all the other million secrets p & i have saved for a world graced with our godhood.

the actual, correct dialectical answer to this is that all your million lives & decisions aren’t incompatible. you’re in campus. go do things, including nothing!!

p & i occasionally “drop our lives” when it gets unbearable. we pretend deadlines don’t exist & go on a 3am walk & it’s the most beautiful thing. & its probably very telling how alive we feel when we drop our lives, despite the absolute certainty of our picking it up again. fuck the despite- what makes the dropping of our lives feel alive is the absolute certainty of the pre-supposed pick up in the future.

i don’t know how i’ll deal w p graduating. i got lucky w p. it’s always felt like there’s been a part of me on campus way before i got here. that’s what i want this diary to feel like to someone coming way ahead in time. like a part of them, of you, has existed in my thoughts. you aren’t new here. & you definitely aren’t alone. i’ve thought & felt some of the things you have & are going to feel. but there’s also a shit ton you’re going to have to feel on your own.

but hey, what i’m trying to say is basically, if a part of you has always been here & will always be, you can’t really drop out lol. the world is shitty in almost all its corners. in a few million different ways. i could give you rational reasons for why campus, politically, economically, and emotionally could beat out all the other corners but i won’t do that. maybe you’re not a marxist. yet.

still, try creating dialectical explanations for all your lives & decisions. understand your decisions instead of trying to make them. you can live all your lives in all the world’s places, even campus. on it’s worst days, with less butter & a broken heart. or atleast you can try to live them. that’s usually enough.

& also, jfc, trust me, every one of them is difficult to live.