CHAPTER 19- SOME GOOD NEWS, NOSTALGIA AT BERKELEY AND THE END OF THE TRIP
It was in the middle of the quarter that I got an amazing piece of news- my first admit for grad school- at UC Davis. I had got a rejects from a couple of big guns I had applied to, Princeton, UC San Diego and so I was quite anxious about whether I would get any admits. And I had ambitiously put in my application for a Phd at UC Davis, which is generally more selective than a masters.
One evening, when I was shopping, Varun called me and told me that he had got a mail from UC Davis for the Phd that he had also applied to. I was happy for him, but was sure mine wouldn’t have come as his profile was way better than mine and it is only fair that he gets his admit before mine. I went home and checked my mail to find nothing new, and as rejects always come a few days after the admits, I thought my aspirations at UCD was over.
Then after an hour of brooding, I suddenly got a hunch that I should check my spam, and voila, there was a message from the UCD CS dept. I opened the mail and realized this was an admit letter. I was stunned. I didn’t really believe it until JB read it for me and confirmed that it was indeed an admit to the Phd. I was relieved more than anything else. I knew that I, at least,, had a choice to decide what I wanted to do for my career when it is time. I spent a couple of hours on the phone letting people close to me know about it and then went to bed and got up a different man, with no pressure on me.
I enjoyed the rest of the quarter without too many qualms even if some minor glitches came in the way as I knew I had the big fish. And so, now that I had that choice between working in India and pursuing my Phd in UC Davis and pursuing my masters in either UC Irvine or Oregon state university, I decided in favor of UC Davis and so am back here and quite happy.
I also squeezed in a trip to Berkeley towards the end of the quarter, for a day mainly to meet my cousin who studies at UC Berkeley and collect some stuff my mom had given for me through him, as he had come from India only a couple of weeks ago. Varun accompanied me for that, and we took a shuttle which runs between UCD and UCB early in the morning. In an hour, we entered Berkeley and saw it was a wonderful scenic place.
We got down and decided to explore the town first. We went into a bookstore, which had the largest collection of old books I have ever seen or imagined. I doubt if a museum would have such a collection. There were many rare and coveted ones, some quite controversial and therefore unpredictable. We spoke to the owner, an old man of 90 years and he told us that he had spent all his life collecting these and he even knew what books he had and which shelves it was on. Remarkable, considering that there were at least a 100000 books there. We went around the shelves and some were so old that in a few years from now the paper may start disintegrating. The whole smell of the place and the history associated with it really impressed avid book enthusiasts like me and Varun.
We then walked further in the town to get to a street, which was like mini- India. There were at least 20 restaurants, 5 saree and Indian clothing shops, lots of Indian supermarkets etc. We felt so much at home. So nostalgic.
It had been months since we had proper Indian food, and so with no worry about the prices, we ate thrice that day. The chole bature in the morning, the biriyani in the afternoon and the chaat in the evening may well be my happiest meals in my life considering how much I had missed such food and I got an opportunity to have it unexpectedly. I licked my plate clean each time, not even leaving any work for the dishwashers.
Then we walked further and further and explored the whole town. We must have walked about 10 miles there and went to parts of the town to which my cousin later disclosed he hasn’t been to in his 6 months of dwelling there. We also did some shopping at a place to fulfil the second of the two places I had aimed to visit while coming to the US (I had visited the first with JD and D-dub in Sacramento). After all this and many a buck spent, I met my cousin and took the evening shuttle back to Davis.
Soon, it was the end of the quarter and we were done with our exams. I was rather disappointed at how the course on visualization I had taken, turned out for me, but I was at a stage where I was starting to get homesick and the fact that I was going back home in a few days cheered me up loads and kept me going. Soon it was time to pack and we had to vacate our apartment a couple of days before our flight because the GSP people insisted and so the five of us spent about 15 hours each over a course of two days to clean the whole apartment, including the carpets and walls and shelves and toilets and get it ready for presentation. Though we did a commendable job, it wasn’t good enough for a certain suddenly hostile GSP staff.
So slightly upset, we said goodbye to #116, our wonderful home for the past 7 months which has given us many memories to cherish and went with our luggage to Dwarak’s place, where we were going to be put up till we left for our flight. We had a lot of fun there, especially playing FIFA 09 on his Xbox. Thanks for being a great host, D-dub.
Cherishing those memories, we left for the San Francisco airport on the morning of the 26rd of March, bidding farewell to Dwarak and boarded our flight.
At the Hong Kong airport, on the transit, we had to wait in queue for boarding the next flight and we realized that people were pushing past us to get to the door first while we were socially giving way like a person in Davis would. We realized we were back in the big bad world of again and we needed to get back to our selfish selves to survive in this competitive Asian world. And so with no further delay, we blended into the crowd pushing other out of our way. It was a good feeling to feel right doing that in some ways. It took us some time, after a couple of embarrassing situations to realize we shouldn’t be commenting about our co-passengers in tamil as it is quite probable that they may understand the language. It was going to take some time getting used to some things in India again. But I was looking forward to it.
We arrived at the Chennai airport with no glitches and after checking out my luggage, bid farewell to the others for now and was delighted to see my parents after a very long time. We had a lot to talk about. And a lot to not talk about too :D . Only then I realized how much I had been missing them. All this time while I had been in Davis, I had I never felt homesick which I guess is due to my good fortune that I had such good friends there. I thank you all, who have influenced my life, in any way, as I like how it has turned out till now.
Epilogue:
It was a great feeling to be back in India but not so great a feeling to be back in SRM as far as academics were concerned. It sucked to be back in the system where you cannot question anything and take things at face value and memorize stuff instead of understanding it conceptually to get marks in “exams”. I had to unlearn the system of learning I experienced in Davis and get back to the degradatory folds of the SRM education system. Worse, I had to put up with the politics and all the other crap that was dished out to us. But now that I have come past all that, and passed out successfully after graduation, I can say I have no regrets and I can look forward to what’s coming.
P.S: this started as a blog post which I thought I could complete in a couple of thousand words and publish at once, but as it went on I realized I had so much to say. So I decided to type it all as I remember it, omitting no non-sensitive important detail, with no worries about the size. I am quite shocked to see that THIS is the 31645th word that I am typing and the 19th blog post that I am posting . And I shall end it here!!!
THE END!!!
THAT'S ALL FOLKS!!!
