So I still can't believe I am goin' to LSE! Whew! I still remember the day I wrote my TNPCEE exams. My mom's expression bordered between sad and cynical when I told her that I was the first one to finish the test. Nope, wasn't that smart. I just inky-pink-ponkied it.

Considering that I am not 'the type' who could've actually aced the IIT-JEE, I was 'atleast' expected to go to Anna University. With your dad's younger brother being the HOD of the textile engineering department and all, you'd be totally insane to even be considering anything else. Unless and of course, if it was the elusive BITS, Pilani.

The day I signed up for the Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Computer Science group as a naive teenager because 'pakkathaathu maami's son' took the same group and was now with IBM after finishing his BE Computer Science, as my mom seriously explained over a bowl of thayir saadham with beans poriyal, was the day that I was brainwashed into thinking that software professionals were god's gift to planet earth and that my very prospect of getting a 'panakaara ivy league maapilai' (and later settling in the US) heavily depended on this singlur decision that I was about to make! Yes I was petrified. And rightfully so. And for reasons unknown to me until date, I applied for the highly competitive second group and unfortunately got in too.

But then, everytime I finished a chapter of Fountainhead and wondered why Roark did the things he did, I'd wonder aloud about wanting to consider the commerce group instead. But, that of course, was abacharam! Afterall, if Prasanna (the pakathaathu maami's son) could go to the US after studying in 'some local college', then, someone like me who was supposed to be 'so intelligent' and possessed 'so much potential' could definitely get into Anna. I only had to work a bit harder.

Yeah right! And so they fooled me into it. Until I realised that Math wasn't as easy anymore and I couldn't really score the 198 I was trained to score in 10th boards. Misery followed with more Ayn Rand. Then came the TNPCEE and also the vis com entrance test. I flunked the former (I think, didn't go back to check the score) and aced the latter. Three years of MOP later, I dread to think what would've happened to my life had I chosen to go to SRM Engineering college instead. haha! What a joke it'd have been!

Anyway, so for all those maamis who whispered to each other during the gollus and the varalakshmi nombus that Latha's daughter is 'only doing a B.Sc.' and it wasn't even in Maths or Physics, but some random alberquerquesque course called Electronic Media, well, here's one. I am going to LSE and I am going not because I am stupid and 'could'nt get in'. But, because, I refuse to conform to mediocrity. I follow my heart and go behind my dream. Because, like Robert Frost, I choose to take the road less travelled.

eh? Robert Frost who? No he has nothing to do with the late Kunnakudi Vaidhyanadhan. :)