Of Anxiety and Stress

They finally made me do it. Write a blog on life@L.

My initial disinclination to write on the subject stemmed from two impeccable pieces of logic.

1. Half of the population in this part of the world has already had something to say about it. Blogs on life@L, are literally, all over the internet. And the good for nothing bloke that I am, don’t think I’ve got enough grey cells hidden amongst the abundant hay and dung (people prefer to call it ‘Bhoonsa’ in Hindi) inside my brain, to be able to infuse any perspective that can be perceived as even remotely fresh.

2. I write crap. And even if crap is dressed in Manish Malhotra designer wear, it still continues to be crap. Take ‘The God of small things’, for example.

Be that as it may, now that I have willed myself to take the plunge, might as well do it as well as I can.

Life here is tough. Any alternate opinion can be confidently tossed out of the window without the addition of any undue weight on one’s conscience.

It actually started off quite innocuously. The first week wasn’t really too bad; at least for the ‘A’ section, where I’ve incidentally been dumped. We were prepared for the worst and the worst didn’t arrive. It was a classic case of bracing yourself for an imminent collision with a truck@60 miles an hour and finding instead, a bicycle@ 0.60 miles an hour.

However, the other sections had a slightly un-rosier picture painted for them. Suitably relaxed that I was, I found ample time and devoted ample thought to the predicament of those children of a lesser God, whose workloads were steadily and undeniably northward bound. Curiously, the situation reminded me of something I’d read all those years ago in 'Three men in a boat' (Hilarious book, that)

'I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.'


The ‘Children of a lesser God’ theory didn’t stand the test beyond the first week. The next week brought to my attention, rather painfully, that there wasn’t much of a difference between their God and mine, beyond the fact that their God had a more profound understanding of the theory of equitable distribution.

A fortnight into the term, Mr. Sapan Oza, a very good friend of mine, asked me - "What's the difference between anxiety and stress?"

"Anxiety is the fear of stress. And stress is that which shows you that the anxiety wasn't entirely misplaced.", I told him.

The sleep-less nights have begun to gradually degenerate into sleepless nights. There are assignments and presentations and projects and quizzes and tasks all over the place. But for the kind soul who included Quantitative Analysis in our first term syllabus, I would’ve struggled to find an appropriate term for the amount of work I have got to do. Now I can tell you that it is ‘Countably infinite’.

Let me end with some ‘Gyaan’. Amongst all the haphazard, crazy and seemingly arbitrary running around, this place does teach you something very important, something that helps you all through the rest of your life – Work is fun if you’re prepared to look at it that way. In fact, if you can’t think that way, you just cannot survive here. Or anywhere, for that matter.

‘When the rape is inevitable, lie down and enjoy it.’

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Just a thought - If the theory of rebirth is true, if we're truly just reincarnations, if its the same set of souls being recycled until they reach Nirvana...why does the population of the planet continue to increase?