My First week in college as “Tyler Durden”

This is the winning submission (tied) for the Ping!xLitClub writing contest held during Induction for the 2k19 Freshers.

Kadari Ruthwik Reddy

Author’s Introduction:

Tyler Durden is a character from one of my favorite movies of all time “Fight Club” Released in 1999 based on a book by Chuck Palahniuk by the same name “Fight Club”. He speaks truth as real as it is His point of view is completely different, He is the guy who accepts all the bare facts of life openly and there’s a lot about him actually if I say anything more it’ll be a spoiler so try to watch the movie if you haven’t (It’s a Dark film)(Give it a try you will love it). This character is played by Brad Pitt.

After a Tiring Process of getting registered here in this place called International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, people call this as Triple IT instead of IIIT. They Say Triple IT is Shorter IIIT Is even shorter I feel and then went to my room in Bakul Nivas. I thought What’s the point of keeping names to hostel I feel the point is to distinguish between the hostels but here the hostels are distinguishable because of their structures and colors The only use of name is for the Zomato and Swiggy guy instead they can keep numbers instead of names like 1,2,3,4 Then during the introduction to campus the chief council of wardens said we named them to give a feeling like home(Said like he has a VR box where you can feel like you are in your home)Yes I’m in a Hostel without my parents I don’t want it to be my home I want it to be a place where I can try living on myself with the money of my parents So I can be a better person myself (instead of saying this thing he is trying to make a home here , He deserves an award), Then I heard one of a valuable speech by Prof.PJN in which he talked about the right things though it’s Academically biased (He is a prof Afterall That’s what matters) he referred us Young Adults to Adults Which meant Responsibility, Duties and things like that. 

After that welcome session There are bodies called SLC Apex SLC will take care of student life After thinking for a while I felt If they are really serious about student’s life the first thing, they have to do is tell everyone “Student life sucks! “, directly to everyone and explain like “you will be here for 4 years where you have to do what professors say without questioning, where you can’t take major share in decision making, where you’re expected to follow the college codes of conduct even though if they are pretty lame, And most importantly you Have to face all this shit to get your degree or else don’t face all this and then become shit!” When somebody says this to a bunch of ug guys one random jerk will shoot a question as if he is going to make everyone spell bound “Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg don’t have a degree now see them”.

Well my reply for them “According to me the point of Degree is to not get a job or a car the point is to learn from experiences face failure waste time fail and do what all we can so that when we live our life on our own we make less mistakes and be better than who we are.” 

Instead of that they told with a sugar coated words they were like we value you we care you etc…. (If that’s true did we come here or they called us? just asking?) 

Now comes the Apex The moment I heard it I googled what’s meant by apex the results are:

1. ” The top or highest point of something, especially the one forming the point” (this definition doesn’t suit them they are not any decision makers)

2. The highest point of achievement (Probably (pun intended))

I don’t know why they are named like that but whatever they do is appreciable in this great world when you give your time to help freshers who have all lame problems or say repeated things and you still help them that’s great but wont that stop freshers from interacting with others as for every simple problem they are like “call apex” Apex is introduced to help introverts but I fear wont that make majority introverts 

I feel introverts should be dealt as normal to survive they have to adapt the more you help the more they become (P.S: Even I am an introvert, Tyler Durden isn’t :p) 

Then I came to hostel seeing how well are people starting fake talks fake conversations (It’s the beginning though fake yourself for a while then depending on the situation be the “fake you” or “another fake you” or “real you” The last part is bit tough but there is a saying “The tougher the path they beautiful the summit” So we can get valuable friends like that I don’t know why all are doing this, they are busy building up feed instead of personality). 

I’ve met a guy who said “Why is this institute named as Triple IT instead of IIIT?” We had Same question so without any introduction with him I asked him “why you wanted it to be IIIT?” He said,” If we say IIIT Hyderabad many think that It’s IIT Hyderabad and give us some respect, If I say Triple IT they are like People go there if they don’t get NITs right Then I say them Those are Government’s ours is Private it’s ‘International’ not Indian They see it like LPU or SARADA, Even though I cleared JEE Advanced with a decent Rank I’m Not an IITian All my friends who took all not so famous branches like civil, metallurgy,chemical are at IITBMKD etc.“

After this I was like too furious I just grabbed his collar And pushed him near the wall and made him sit on a chair there and brought a book and Made Him right “I am not an IITian “ 10 times And I said “This is a truth which you cant change Your friends who joined those XYZ IITS also Have their own insecurities don’t glorify it. Everyone is not a unique snowflake we are all shitting all crapping waste of the Universe Nobody is Perfect We have to do the things we don’t like in order to do the things we like. We are not SPECIAL!! Not even those xyzIITians”. 

And Then I went to my room talked to my roommate just we shared our experiences with each other and then I introspected about my behavior with him then I dozed off then in the morning the same guy came with whom I argued and gave dhyan yesterday he came telling his friend locked room and went off I said , “so” He said that “I can’t get into my room” , I said, “so” then he said that ,” Can I sleep in your room for a while”, I replied, “Ask like that “,Everybody has this problem they expect us to ask I don’t care about it. Prof Asked “What you liked at IIITH” A guy replied,” Average package “ Then I thought that Do we need money? what does money do? I thought of Gautham Budha’s quote he said “The greed for money is the root cause of all evil.”

What can we do with money, ”We can Buy the Shit we don’t need with the money we don’t have to impress the people we don’t like” We want them to feel jealous by looking at us we work our asses off for them, Work the job we hate if we really want to make them feel jealous we should be happy they can’t digest.

I went to the guy who said average package and told him,”You’re not your job, you’re not the car you drive, you’re not the contents of your wallet you are a person in this society and you have to contribute to it more than anything.” Gave a pause and said,” things you own end up owning you.” 

Then I was having my lunch there one of my friend whom I know before I told him,” Playing keyboard tonight for spotlight huh?” He replied, “no dude I will do it later” This is the problem with us the optimist and pessimist will argue about a glass of water where an opportunist (Nowadays called as successful people) grabs the water and drink, To be an opportunist you need not know everything so basically I was pissed off by my friends answer and told him, “This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time so make the most of it this comes only for freshers so give it a try.”

He told me what if I played and messed it up how do I feel I said, “I don’t want to die without any scars, how much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight I want to fight and loose then fight back If you feel like shit everyone you hate wins.”

August 15 The Independence Day for India was nearby I was thinking what’s meant by independence someone said,” We got freedom from britishers we fought back them.” I tried to see the way we fought back and finally realized that we didn’t got freedom they left us due to the incidents of world war 2 and we celebrate (ooofff) then I was thinking for a while about what happens to our generation problems what might come (not the standard one’s air land water will be polluted etc.)and then I realized ,”We are the middle children of the history man, no purpose no place, we have no great war, no great depression our great war is spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working job we hate and given social media to fake everything.” 

I thought why shouldn’t I try getting freedom from this great depression and I finally found freedom losing all hope was FREEDOM. 

Author’s Footnote

Thanks to the one who came reading all way down even my English is horrible and I killed punctuation thanks for reading this and thanks to Tyler Durden because he wasn’t there I wouldn’t have tried this.