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How to Ruin the Next Semester- Instant Recipe

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A fresh bowl of a ruined semester is one of the most historical dishes of University of Delhi, passing from one batch to another as a legacy. Here is an easy to learn instant recipe to acheive your own ruined semester.

Cooking Time: 6 months

Cal: An average CGPA

Ingredients: 

  1. Previous Semester’s Grade
  2. Procrastination- 8 Cups
  3. Scrolling on Social Media- 3 Cups
  4. Bunking Sessions
  5. Proxies (optional)
  6. Failed Mass Bunks
  7. Feelings for Crush
  8. YouTube Videos
  9. Netflix (according to spice tolerance)
  10. Societies’ sessions
  11. Fest season
  12. Kasol trip (skip this step if impossible)
  13. Guilt Trip
  14. Tears 
  15. Previous Years’ Papers
  16. Coffee
  17. False Promises (suggested garnish)

Method:

  1. Take a pan and sauté the previous Semester’s Grade with undivided focus, add 2 tbsp of free periods spent in the library. Let it burn. Empty the residue at the back of your head.
  2. Take another pan to add 8 generous cups of procrastination, mix it with 3 cups of frequent scrolling on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Let the mixture cook for 5 ½ months. (Caution: it may lead to allergic reactions like insomnia and lack of concentration during lectures. This may even compel you to miss your lectures scheduled at 8:45 am.)
  3. Grind a few innocent bunking sessions, adding a few drops of pleasant proxies might make the substance addictive in nature. Dry roast failed mass bunks and add it to render slight bitterness. Grind it till a paste is formed having a thick consistency. Add this paste to the pan. Let it cook on medium heat.
  4. At this point empty the newly developed feelings for your crush into a bowl. Marinate it with 2 cups of casual feed checks, several drops of attempts to start a conversation and a pinch of heart-burning. Take a smaller bowl and add romantic hypothetical situations along with 100 grams of cheesy pick up lines for a peculiar texture. Whisk as hard as you can till the emulsion starts bubbling. Now slowly drizzle 2 cups of realization that your crush is in a 3 years old relationship. Transfer the emulsion into the marinade and let it rest.
  5. Add earphones in a large skillet or pot (select a suitable size according to the time taken for you to reach home) over medium-high heat. When sizzling, add YouTube videos to taste. Stir occasionally. One may add mid-week Netflix binge-watching sessions according to their spice tolerance.
  6. Check the pan and stir it with a ladle to avoid the mixture from sticking to the bottom like your professors’ expectations from your assignments. Generously add society meetings, double the number of society meetings if you are in the dramatics society, further add deadlines and workload. Cut your soul into two halves, chop one of the two halves finely and sprinkle it for aesthetic beauty. Add the other half if you are organizing any fest.
  7. Transfer the contents of the pan into the pot. Let the sauce heat and flow over. 
  8. Turn on the “mid-semester break” exhaust when a pungent smell is observed. Take a break from the kitchen and go for a Kasol trip with friends. Now, remember about the fourth step and let your heart sink. Alcohol consumption may reduce heartburn.
  9. As soon as you start feeling alive, turn off the exhaust. At this point, you will realize that the kitchen is burnt. It is time to start all over again.
  10. Repeat step 1-7 and fail miserably.
  11. Take the last skillet available, place it on high heat and add 3 tbsp of semester date sheet, this may cause choking and loss of senses. 
  12. Frantically add 100 slices of guilt trip, a generous number of tears and finely chopped previous years’ papers. Stir vigorously and add infinite cups of coffee for better results.
  13. Garnish with false promises of hard work for the next semester. Serve when hot and burns self-confidence.

 

Feature Image Credits: Aditi Gutgut

Priyanshi Banerjee

[email protected]

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DUB Speak

What Delhites Can Do This Mid-Semester Break

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It’s that time of the semester again when outstation students pack their bags and head out to their hometowns, either to revel in the festivities or for some quiet family time. After 3 months of continuous slogging and assignment submissions, the days left to go home are crossed off each day till the much-awaited beginning of the mid-semester break arrives and the prospect of homecoming seems as sweet as your mother’s ladoos.

However, for all those students that are bound to stay in Delhi, the break can seem like a not-so-exciting prospect and might just eventually turn into boredom. The hours of endless unproductivity might just get to you after one point in time.

But let us look at it this way, the word ‘break’ itself literally is supposed to mean a break from all the things that you normally do. Simply put, a break from your schedule. It doesn’t really matter if all you are doing is catching up on your sleep for you haven’t had a lot since the semester began and probably won’t have a lot either once the exams begin. It becomes important that you just sit back, relax and eventually doze off.

Another thing that is advisable is spending time with your family and friends. Delhites live at home and meet their parents every day but in the rush of college hours that only lets you catch your breath at night before you go to sleep, it makes sense that you might not be spending a lot of time with your family. Similarly, maintaining school friendships can prove to be gargantuan since college takes precedence over everything at this point. Gather your group, make plans and stick to them.

Invest time in things you like to do such as reading, cinema, or even some sport. Exploring new genres of books that you might like, watching an abundance of French Cinema, improving your Squash, writing in ways you haven’t tried writing in before etc can really make your one week of break seem fruitful at the end of it.

For all those who love to travel, Delhi has a number of small hill stations in a 300km radius that can be explored. A short trip to hill stations like Kasol, Lansdowne, or places in Rajasthan like Jaipur or even closer to home, Agra, might make up for great mini vacation spots.

Having said all this, it is essential to note that the added pressure of making your break count and utilising it in the best way possible is just a construct. A break is what you want it to be and what you make of it.

 

Feature Image Credits: India Today

Anoushka Singh
[email protected]

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Biblio

Reads for the Mid-Sem Break

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Haven’t picked up a novel in the last three months? Or tried to pick one up but never got past the first couple of chapters? Who has the time, you say. What with that mounting pile of course work, multiple readings for the same topic, classes, a dozen societies and some socialising squeezed in amidst it all, reading for leisure has been pushed into a corner somewhere at the back of our minds, where we know we would like to read that book, but just haven’t got around to actually doing it.

You could possibly use the mid semester break to catch up on some of the reading you’ve missed over the first half of the semester. Since it’s an incredibly short break, here’s a list of equally short reads that you can finish over the duration of the break, and still have time to do other productive things like sleeping and sleeping some more.

 

  1. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

If you’re questioning your place in the world, this is the book to go to for some solace. Exupéry’s lovely illustrations to the book, which are almost child-like in their simplicity, are an added bonus. Though it reads much like a children’s book, the message is something everybody needs to be told once in while for, “one sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

 

  1. Mottled Dawn, Saadat Hasan Manto

This is a collection of 50 stories on the partition of India. At a time when the atmosphere between India and Pakistan is charged, there is no better book to familiarise yourself with the angst and violence that partition entailed. The last couple of pages of the book is a collection called Siyah Hashiye, which translates to ‘black margins.’ These poignant stories are barely a couple of lines long, but they drive home the pain of partition.

 

  1. Animal Farm, George Orwell

Orwell’s critique of dictatorship in general and the Stalinist regime in particular is couched in the allegory of animals running a farm by themselves after they have driven out the owner (reminds you of a revolution?). It’s a quick read and Orwell’s clever usage of allegory to make a political point makes it an interesting one.

 

  1. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

Persepolis is the story of Satrapi’s own life, growing up as a girl in Iran, in the form of a graphic novel. Besides the graphics, which are a work of art in themselves, Satrapi’s subtle humour makes the book (to use a term that’s quite cliched) ‘unputdownable.’

 

  1. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Gatsby lives an oppulent life in the America of the Roaring Twenties. The story will leave you feeling sorry for that Gatsby that lies within all of us-the one that clings on to a long gone past.

Image credits: http://www.forbes.com

Abhinaya Harigovind
[email protected]

 

 

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Bazinga

Bazinga: Fee refund for outstation students attending first day post mid sem break

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Losing the fight against lack of attendance right after summer and mid-sem breaks, the DU administration is preparing to leave no stone unturned this year. In the same spirit, it has announced that outstation students of DU who attend their classes on the first day of college right after mid-semester break will be given fee refund equal to 20% of their annual fees in the form of cash.

The move has met with a lot of cheer. Bus and train tickets are selling out quicker than Thursday movie tickets, resulting in a slight boom in the transport industry – a BJP MP took no time to term the boom as ‘Achhe Din’.

Some students, however, are not content with the fees waiver and are waiting for more incentives like attendance and internal assessment marks. Delhi students are also preparing to launch a protest soon. “It’s suddenly a good thing to be in a college that charges high fees!” yelled a student sitting atop a DTC bus already ordering things off e-commerce sites.

Disclaimer: Bazinga is DU Beat’s weekly column of almost believable fake news!

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