Important dates of the second kind ! :)

If you are starting to read it thinking its about my dates,you are wrong.I have given up on that and am resigned to the fact that nothing like that will ever happen to me :))
This post is more to remind myself than about writing anything funny or concrete.

Today is August 3rd.Exactly a year ago on this day, I got my visa. Maybe not everyone will think that event noteworthy,but I know otherwise.I was put through an emotional shredder for a month before finally getting it.And so how does it feel,I ask myself, a year hence?
Well, it mostly feels like a dream, as though all that never happened.And yet there is a residue of the disappointment, the uncertainty,the prospect of seeing your dreams crumble, that gets me disturbed simply by thinking.Now sitting in the future,it sometimes feels that it was not anything to worry about.And thats the peculiar quality of the human psyche.
I once read a book by Dan Gilbert titled Stumbling on happiness,and it is this quality that he often talks about.
The inability of the human mind (or heart, whichever you prefer) to reconstruct effectively or accurately the emotions felt in the past.I have felt dissapointment before, joy and elation too,but every time is like a first time. It is as if my own past experiences are vicarious to my own self.
As I wrote once before, I remember dates.So it is that I recall some important events that happened in August in my life.

Two years ago I wrote the GRE exam on August 1st. I rushed back to college immediately from Bangalore because Delphi was coming to campus on the 2nd.I remember walking bleary eyed past the ad-block as I saw my friends ,dressed smartly, rush towards A-2 hall.I remember being congratulated for what then seemed like a great score.Next thing I saw was the written test paper- had lots of microprocessors and programming in it and so that was the end for me:)).
However it was not the end for Pattu.The only mech guy who cleared the written,I can recall vividly,his face flushed, outside my room window,waking me up from my afternoon nap,saying: "Shriram mera ho gaya!!!" :-) There are few times in ones life that you really,and I mean really feel delighted at another's success, but life in college gave me numerous such occasions.

There were more things that happened that month.On the 10th I wrote the TOEFL.On the 27th,Pawan and I got placed (but never joined the Tatas:). Infact I landed here on the 13th last year.Maybe August is a great month for me!

But Pattu's story doesnt end there. Very soon after there was a report in the ET that Delphi filed for bankruptcy.There is no end to the fun it brought us at Pattu's expense.I kept the copy of the newspaper in Pawan's room, and whenever this pest would bother us as we were having some discussion of great import (generally of a nature too scandalous to be mentioned in a blog:), Pawan would point to that newspaper by the corner.Pattu the Pest would then slink away sheepishly ;)
Let me dedicate this post to Pattu-that pestilential creature who figures in most of the good times that I have had- and due to whom I gained so much and despite what am gaining now, realise all that am losing.