Confused

I have always been a very confused sort of person. (You knew that always? The things you already know, after you have been told!) Since school I have found myself weltering in a morass of doubts when my peers seem to be seeing things through crystal clear glasses.

For example, I had always harbored the opinion that West Bengal ought to be in the west. If it were not, why call it 'West' Bengal? It seemed to me that they deliberately named it like that in order to provide trick questions for school-kids. "Where is West Bengal?" - "In the eastern part of India". No matter how much people assured me that it was so named only because the rest of Bengal was situated further east of it, I stuck to my stand that it was a deliberate ploy to mess up with the minds of kids so that adults can feel superior about knowing more than them.

With my geographical orientation the way it was, it is but natural that Chess should be far more confusing. With so many pieces moving in so many different ways on the board, I just could not keep track. Yet, I persisted in playing chess with my brother and, as was inevitable, lost invariably. Or I would have, but for the fact that I started throwing the pieces at him somewhere around the time when defeat seemed inevitable, thereby converting a virtual battlefield into a real one. Despite all this, he did manage to get quite good at chess. If he had learnt the way pieces are moved from the way I used them, rooks would fly, bishops would be hurled like javelins, and the only way he would have won any game would be by putting out the eye of his opponent with a knight. (Though I cannot help thinking that Chess would have been a more appealing spectator sport played my way than the way the likes of Anand play it.)

Comes to the interview I had for selection into IIM, though, I really cannot blame myself for being confused. I mean, I was a chemical engineer (certified as such, at least) and the interviewer asks me, "What does increasing positive entropy mean in the context of the Universe?" Have a heart, guy, I did not say "Astronomy", I said "Chemical Engineering". It meant that the universe was expanding, I believe. Well - can someone tell me in what way an expanding universe would help me in selling soaps, after my MBA? An expanding waistline, I can understand, because it provides more surface area to wash and, thus, more demand for soaps. Sometimes, I feel that interviewers have a mistaken impression of what they are supposed to do. Instead of testing how clever the candidate is in the concerned area, they seem more intent on showing off how clever they are.

By the way, if you thought that I was chucked out unceremoniously, you are sorely mistaken. Believe me, I was selected into IIM-Bangalore based on THAT interview. Goes to show that I may not have been the only confused chap around. Or, maybe, the sheer confidence with which I said, "I do not know" must have made the interviewer feel ashamed about knowing that tit-bit (Like you would say loftily, "I do not know", if asked about how you would scrub the floor) and he had to select me. It is a pity, though, that I lost that lofty confidence in latter life but that is another story.

Anyway, I have confusedly bumbled through life for this long and...what was I saying, anyway? I am a bit confused!