First day at PGC
Oh, God!
Well, it took me a long time to realize that the frank and liberal attitude I have towards life, that actually works at some places, doesn’t actually work everywhere. Let me explain:
I took my time in getting to college; I had to enter by 7:30. The thing that occurred to me strangely last night was that the people might be chill there, too. And that I might get off for not wearing my uniform for the first day. Little did I knew it’d cost me a whole new trip. So, I took off to home yet again, but this time with that strange rage which the people that regularly see me, now scarcely ever see.
The reason for that rage was that I hadn’t actually received any messages on my WhatsApp or any SMS on my phone whatsoever. And if it weren’t for my friend, I wouldn’t have been able to know the time we had to reach there. No roll number. No account details for the app. Nothing! I was furious.
I got myself in the WhatsApp Community Page or whatever and I see that I still haven’t gotten the app’s account details.
Then, I head for the wrong class once again because the list on the board was utterly wrong. My friend later told me that I was in his class and not the other one. I then took off to the office and got to know that, yes! I was in the class of all those who had some good marks. I thought I had gotten less, for all I knew, we were all the same. Some had 90% plus or something.
I really didn’t intend to get such marks — for all that matters to me, I was quite content with 60% or more. It was mere luck that I went till 79%, and got myself into this class.
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My first perception of this class would probably be a class of typical nerds, with no societal communication, and no care of anything other than study whatsoever. It just so happens that I’m good at picking up faces, and the people there were absolutely cool. One of them had this cool moustache with his little bit of beard — I think I was the only one who’d shaved.
Our Physics teacher was perhaps the only one who actually caught my attention. He was quiet and calm for the most part, yet there appeared a certain charm and passion he had for Physics from his eyes. I’ve heard how petroleum thing’s going to end, and how we need a good alternative for that. He was writing his thesis on “Photocatalysts” — bunch of stuff on hydrogen, I think. Which he said to be a possibly good alternative.
A certain strange thing occurred to me with my English teacher. He was a cool guy, with charm around him. He told us how to get good marks in English and how everybody struggled with it and blah, blah, blah. Then, although I failed from lack of rationality and more attention to emotions, I took off to procuring a cure to a disease that he introduced to our class. Our first Short Story is from Richard Matheson, called “Button, Button”. He told us how the first “button” was a noun and the latter a “verb”.
But, then I considered how liberal Americans actually were when it came to their writing. How they’d broken all recently known boundaries of Literature and grammar at that time, and became more free with their writing. The first two persons to appear in my mind were Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg from the Beat Gen. I loved them. I also gave him an example of Thomas Wolfe’s “Look Homeward, Angel”.
I basically said they were too liberal to care about grammar and stuff in this regard.
I told my teacher how I think it was not for the sake of grammar, but for the sake of the story and beauty that he had named the story “Button, Button”. He said that it didn’t matter, since we only have to care about the grammar.
So, I thought, if the author’s intentions don’t matter, then what does? Does grammar make us more aware of the story’s purpose or do the author’s intentions not do the job?
I can talk forever of my tendency to question, which was especially rising up today. And I’m happy. It’s all due to my master, Khurram Elahi, who says:
“Let the questions travel with you — don’t ask for immediate answers. They are dangerous.”
