So it begins.

Well yeah, I've always wanted to quote Morpheus' famous middle-of-his-life words. (If you don't know who he is or when he said this, it's a good indication that you shouldn't be here. Avast, freshwater swab!)

Yesterday I received a rejection from Brown. In the process, I struck out for the first year of my PhD applications. Duke and Brown - yeah, apple and orange - both didn't want any more of yours truly than an application form. Goodbye, blue sky. :-(

I'm now at a point in my life where I'll have to do what I've dreaded for the last three years: make several applications, take tests, fill out forms, e-mail professors, write my proposal/SOP several gazillion times, make hundreds of photocopies of inconsequential papers (and some, absent-mindedly, of my butt) and haggle the oh-so-considerate folk at the holy grail of human niceties i.e., the administrative building of Jadavpur University - and all in a few months' time. Oh, fuck me silly!

Let's face it - everyone wants to go to Harvard and brag about it; to be taught in a group of five by Michael Sandel or be advised by Stephen Walt and then go home to mesmerise a crowd of young 'uns with stories of oak-wooden lecture halls and air-conditioned dorms. I'm one in the crowd. I'm taken in by all the hogwash, regardless of how poor the job market in political theory is, and without care for how hot it'll be in India when I've to return after six years with nothing to show for the time but a degree soaking in my sweat. Yes, let's face it - that PhD is surely the road to unemployment (RTU).

On my journey to find the RTU, I shall take with me the unfortunate reader of this excrutiatingly artificial and painful blog. (The self-disdain and mockery works for me. See if my blogging doesn't improve by the next month.) When I'm there, I shall continue as your humble correspondent, reporting all the unserviceables in lieu of the payment of my taxes. Right now, I must conclude this confused first post. Ta!