University of Chicago has always been popular for one thing - their brilliantly fun college essays. I stayed up, late at night, trying to meet my Cornell deadline. And then my friend wrote - Find x. And I say, "Hey, what sort of a math problem is that supposed to be?" He forwarded me the link then. The list of the essay options that University of Chicago had to offer.
I have to admit it. I was pretty blown out of my fucking mind.
Cornell is one of the best universities for engineering. University of Chicago, as I got to know, does not even offer engineering. The hours were dropping, and Cornell's deadline was approaching. UChicago's deadline, was at the same time.
I'm a writer at heart. One day you ask me, writer or engineer, I'll say writer. Well, it actually is words that inspired me into wanting to become an engineer at all. Or so I thought. I read Atlas Shrugged, and I wanted to rule the world.
But, no more digressing.
UChicago and Cornell has the same deadline. Cornell, number 6 for engineering. UChicago, number.... THEY DON'T HAVE ENGINEERING!
So I look at the essays. And I think. And I just know, I want to go there. I want to go to university where they have people who think like that. Our usual universities, they have the same essays. Talk about your academic goals, tell us why you want to come here, tell us about something that inspired you, what makes a great leader and blah blah. And here was a university, asking me to find x and asking what solvent I would use on celebrities so they could perish in hell.
So, I'm inspired. Heck, inspired is an understatement.
I was excited. Oh, so excited. Just the thought of writing those essays, any of them, sent the pleasure coursing, floating, hopping through me. But there was another option. An option where they told you to "go wild" and pick our own topics.
And, rather cliche-ly, I was sent back in time.
I had Punjabi as a third language, studying in a school in Chandigarh. I didn't understand much, but I knew enough to get by and pass. One day our teacher decided, in a fit of delirium, or maybe as a joke (at least I thought so) and told us to write an essay on "Kursi" or chair. Not A chair, or the chair, or your faavourite chair or anything of the sort. Just, chair.
I'd come up witht he best I could then. I wrote a funny essay on the chair, on how it saves people's lives, and how I keep it in my refrigerator to preserve it. And I knew it. It seemed a foolish idea, but they wanted us to go wild. And, so I did.
5 am in the morning, with the deadlines two hours away, I came up with the following piece of crap.
Essay Option 5. “Marge, there's an empty spot I've always had inside me. I tried to fill it with family, religion, community service, but those were dead ends! I think this chair is the answer.” – Homer Simpson, in The Simpsons
Is the chair really the answer?
There are two types of people in the world. There are those that appreciate chairs, and those that don’t. The latter has eaten over most of the population, but there are still those blessed few who understand the gravity and intensity of a chair.
The former are those that appreciate chairs. They are those who think. They are the ones who go about quietly. They sit and notice things. They look at a butterfly, and they observe the fine, translucence of the wings. They see the light velvety powder resting on the smooth, jade-like surface. They see the lightest flutter of wings, much like the movement of a grasshopper silently crouching on its knees, preparing to fly, lightly brushing the blades of the grass. They look at the chair, and they realise how valuable it is. That perfect shape, providing so much comfort, so much pleasure. The brilliance of the design, designed so perfectly for our comfort. They see the selflessness of the chair and they care about the chair.
The chair stands all day long. It wears itself out. Its skin, its smooth polished skin, fades from our constant tiredness and laziness. Its legs ache and bend over, urging hard to bear the weight of our lives and emotions. It strains its back, trying to be more and more comfortable, more and more sturdy, to support us, through hard and soft. The arms lie strong. They bear the push of our hands, our anger and frustration, constant thumping, constant beatings. They hold our arms up, even as we sigh from having written poems about anything but chairs.
My sister was one of the people that appreciate chairs. She was five years old. She had a little tea table where she used to play with her dolls. One day, I went out and noticed one of the chairs missing from the table. I asked where it was, and she very innocently told me, “The chair was getting spoilt, so I put it in the fridge so it becomes fine again.”
The latter are those that get through life oblivious to everything. They don’t notice the small things, those tiny, precious details that add the uniqueness to things. They go on with life, with their big ambitions and big dreams. They smile, or laugh, or frown as they go about, occupied with their own busy thoughts in their busy lives. They miss the important little things which make life so much more worth living. These people don’t understand the value of things. They take things for granted.
Chairs are everything, yet for some, they are nothing. They are X. They vary for every equation, for every problem, for every person. Every problem gives us a different value for X. But X is X, and chairs are X. They mean everything, but without meaning anything.
This is the story of a chair.
A great tree came collapsing down on the earth, and the earth trembled and moaned, like a mother staring in the eyes of her dying child. The men stared, hearts filled with joy. One carried away the corpse, to be cut into bits, shaved, polished. The process started. The saw moved back and forth, back and forth, with sharp cutting movements, eating away at the wood. The stubborn trunk, now being cut and carved into utility. Some polish here, a little carving there, and presto! We had a chair.
The chair, brown, four legged found its way to a family. The family was loving.
The father came home one day. He was the security guard at the bank and had been standing all day. He came home and the first thing he did was sit. He sat on the chair. He sank into it. The chair was relief and comfort.
Just a few days later, it was the brother’s birthday. He sat on the chair, as he played musical chairs, his heart beating with excitement, bursting with the triumph of sitting on the chair, of winning. The chair was joy and triumph.
Years went by. His sister had just come back from boarding school. She had just taken her first step into the room when she saw the chair, the teakwood chair, polished to a dark mahogany. She began to cry, reminded of her room in school, with a similar chair. The chair was nostalgia and memories.
The mother had become pregnant again. The chair was happy, as were its brother and sister. Chair was tired these days, as the mother had become heavy. Her weight was almost too much to bear. One day, mother came and sat on the chair. The mother was in her last few months of pregnancy. The chair was tired. It had already been hit and bruised enough that day. The mother hopped onto the chair, and the chair broke. The chair wasn’t able to take the weight of the mother. The chair was humiliation, anger, laughter and broken. The chair spent the rest of its days in an alley, in dark, dark corners behind dustbins.
Hence, is the story of a chair.
The chair, as I said, is X. It is everything, yet it is nothing.
The chair is happiness. It is laughter. It is sadness, and it is nostalgia. The chair is humiliation and it is happiness; comfort, and relief. A throne is authority and power, while an electric chair is death. Chairs are everything, yet they are appreciated for nothing. They mean everything, yet they mean nothing.
I am one of those people who appreciate chairs. Chairs are beautiful, complex objects. They are the most under-appreciated objects on this earth. Great poems have been written about kites, swords, pens and even teeth, but nobody looks at a chair and thinks, “Hey, that’s inspiring.”
As May Sarton said, “A house that does not have one warm, comfy chair in it is soulless.”
So, yes, it really is the chair.
There it was. My BRILLIANT essay.
I read it now, and I cringe and laugh. At just the very idiotic, absurd notion of writing an essay, for UChic, about "chair".
Nevertheless, it was fun. I finished the essay. Had a good laugh. I'd spent about two hours on the essay.
Cornell deadline was creeping up on me like a stalker in an alley. And I was standing there, like a helpless, frail little woman.
I pounced on the Cornell essays. As the frail little woman would have, I just threw in a few random punches, here and there. Enough to get away, but not enough to hurt the stalker.
I don't know what happened to the stalker, but the UChicago decision dropped by just a while ago. I say drop by intentionally. As the decision dropped, so did my heart. I knew my chances of getting admission were enormously negligible, yet it hurt. Well, don't worry. My chair, was with me. Throughout. ;)
