Love Story

When I was in school, in our English portion, we had a poetic love story. It was really sweet one and a huge portion of the class was deeply moved by it. After the poem was done, the class discussed stuff about love, relationships, etc. and our teacher, seeing our interest into the subject asked each of us to write an original love story of our own and then read it out to the rest of the class. I too wrote a story. I do not remember the content of the story properly but I’m sure it was sweet because almost all the females in the class (including the teacher) were like “aww” at the end of the story. A class of ~35 and those many stories, and now, 7 years after that, I remember just one which wasn’t mine. Yes, I do not remember mine but I remember somebody else’s maybe because the content was worth remembering. So, here is that story for you:

John is deeply in love with Maria and is desperately looking forward to ask her out some day. Their only common course is biology and he doesn’t really get much time to be around her, get to know her and ofcourse, eventually ask her. So, he bunks his mathematics class just to follow her because Maria kinda runs away after classes and despite trying a lot, John could not manage to meet her outside Biology. So, he catches her, they talk. They talk a lot. About everything, things they like, things they dislike, their cultures and what not. John felt as if he had found the most perfect match and he could make out from Maria’s behavior that she too is deeply into him. He bought her ice cream, they enjoyed it all the way till Maria’s place came. John asked her if she would like to go for a movie with him and she agreed. A couple of days later, he had his date. Voila! He almost couldn’t believe this was happening. He bought her a beautiful bouquet for that day. On the way to the movie, they talked a lot. John felt as if Maria was the only one with whom he would never run out of topics and he could keep talking to her for eternity. Then it was time for the movie. Rather than watching the movie, he kept watching her. Oh, he was so deep in love!Great movie, great time. After they moved out of the theatre, some guy approached Maria and she said, “Hey Aden, meet my new friend John”, “John, this is my boyfriend Aden!” Inside his mind, John was all like, ‘Oh, she has a boyfriend. Oh, crap!’
A week later, John again bunks his mathematics class, to ask out Julie, just in case!


The moral of the story is Keep Moving! :)

Gifted!

Last weekend, when I was making this journey home from college for navratri with my dad, I was feeling quite low, didn’t show any interest in talking and sat sad. Dad, after easily making out that I was unhappy asked me what happened, I replied, “Nothing.”
“Got awful marks in some midsem or quiz?”
“No.”
“Someone said something? Fought with a friend?”
“No.”
“Then, what happened? Everything sounds so perfect!”
“Nothing!”
Then he went on to explain how people of our generation have developed a complex which just prevents us from being happy. We glorify sorrow and like being sad. Irrespective of whether we achieve or we keep struggling, we always whine about our situation, we keep asking for more and complain to God if we do not get everything. We have just forgotten how to thank Him and people around us for whatever we have. We just look at all that we do not have, and never take pleasure in what we have. I tried to understand what he was saying, threw a light smile but couldn’t just feel good. In a few minutes, I dozed off to sleep.

A couple of days later, at home, I went to visit our maid at her home with mom. She was teaching a bunch of kids from the neighborhood. They were mostly watchmen’s or other maids’ kids. Three of them were there. One was scribbling down Gujarati counting, another was recognizing pictures of objects and writing their names in English and the third was trying some basic addition. Except for the one who was recognizing pictures, the rest were 100% correct in their work. I sat down beside the girl who was writing counting and tried to chat with her. She was friendly! :D
She told me that she goes to the municipality school outside the street and her mom is a maid and dad does some job of transferring furniture stuff from a shop to home on his raali. Her school starts at around 11 in the morning, before that, she does the housework along with her sister while her mom leaves early morning to work. She gets back in the evening by 4 or 5 and directly comes to this tuition after which she goes to home, prepares dinner along with her mom. I asked her as to why she needs the tuition (silly of me, how would a kid know that!) and quite much to my surprise, she answered me! She said that her parents aren’t literate beyond doing some hisaab, and she wants to grow up and become great. She wanted to grow up and become a Chartered Accountant just like the daughter of one of her mom’s employers. Amazing and surprising, so much struggle, at this meager age without any complains! She made me go back to my childhood. At around her age, I would go to school, study some shit, get back and mom would keep a check on what I was studying, I never realized whether I needed that check from mom or not, in the evening, I would go out to play with the colony kids, get back, have dinner, watch some TV and go to sleep. Since mom’s chat with the maid almost got over and the kid’s exams were to start in a couple of days, I wished her luck. She thanked me cheerfully (in the gujju accent - thenks).

This small interaction with this kid made me realize all that dad was trying to communicate through his lecture. I learnt that the education I took for granted for these many years is such a precious and valuable thing for this kid! If we just try to look at things we have been taking for granted as a gift, we realize that we are actually very gifted! Whether struggling or not, if we try to do everything with pleasure, it’ll be done just better! And now, I am reminded of the booklet by Panna Ma’am, which said that irrespective of whether we believe in God or not, in the concept of nirvana, there is one thing certainly common with all beings, we all want to be happy and the more we try to look for this happiness together, the easier we get it. It also taught that this happiness is intrinsic. It lies within oneself, and if you really want to be happy, nothing on earth can prevent you from being so.

Blame game - the psychology behind

So, which blame game am I talking about? Well, not hard to guess! Its about the society blaming the victim for crimes. Particularly victims of sexual violence against women. Let's start with this awesome sarcastic, viral video:

Sparing the ones with modern thoughts, the ones who get and love the above video, there is a huge population in India that firmly believes that somewhere, it must have been the victim's fault. Okay, lets go through this, it must not be hard: Its a normal daily activity that you are pursuing, travelling or just your profession. Most of us have at least one daily activity in which we interact with strangers, travelling is one example. So, on a regular encounter with strangers, you had a male companion but you had no idea that those regular strangers were a bunch of united people with a good level of mutual understanding and ofcourse bad intentions too. The strangers execute what was on their mind and control slips out of your and your male companion's hands in just seconds and once they have the power on you, its even harder to beat that and escape. In all this, do you see any fault of the victim? Probably (hopefully), no. But, there is a huge population of India that sees largely the victim's fault. I am not saying that they say find the criminals correct or good, but before anything else, they'll point out something where, according to them, our victim went wrong. Obviously, its unfair and incorrect of them to call the victim at fault. So, lets go through the psychology behind this.
Its defensive attribution which is at play. Now, what is that? As wikipedia defines it: The defensive attribution hypothesis is a social psychological term from the attributional approach referring to a set of beliefs held by an individual with the function of defending the individual from concern that they will be the cause or victim of a mishap. In simpler words, we humans have a tendency to believe that this world is a good and fair place to live in. Acknowledging that the world is unfair and that something unfortunate can happen to you based on chance factors would lead to a sense of fear and vulnerability which we would naturally want to avoid. So, whenever we hear of some incident we have a tendency to explain that it was the victim's fault and that if I or someone closely related to me doesn't make that mistake, we'll be absolutely safe. In some sense, that's a coping mechanism to make oneself feel better and less insecure about it.
Well, I learnt all that in my psychology class. Now the next thing that comes to my mind is, why is this blaming trend more in India than in the west. Is there something like the tendency to make defensive attribution is higher in our culture than in theirs? So, let us look at the basic difference in our cultures. Western culture is predominantly individualistic while ours is a collectivistic one. Individualistic culture is one which is oriented around the self, where humans are viewed as independent beings instead of being identified with a community, Whereas, a collectivistic culture is one where there is a higher emphasis on interdependence of beings, where people belong to a particular political, religious or ethnic group and are expected to exhibit behavior that matches the interest and beliefs of the group. A simple way to understand this cultural discussion is to look at an example: If in a group of people that share the same workplace, some guy lives a different kind of lifestyle, wears different kinds of clothes and pursues an indifferent set of hobbies than the usual one. Such a group in India has a tendency to talk about that person behind his back, exclude him out of casual group meetings, and call him a not-normal or not-our-type person. While such a group in the west is more likely to accept this guy's differences, live with it comfortably and even let him be a part of their larger group. 
Now here is my attempt to relate this cultural difference with the blame game: Generally, in a collectivistic culture, if something goes wrong, people have a tendency to blame everyone involved while in an individualistic culture, the fellow at the root cause is solely responsible for what happened. In a crime, both the criminal and victim are deeply involved and hence we have a tendency to put some amount of blame on each given our culture. While the same crime in the west will be viewed more as the criminal's fault than that of the victim's. So, our cultural structure in addition to the normal tendency of defensive attribution leads to a relatively high tendency to blame the victim than the westerners do.
Now is it okay or acceptable on someone's part to blame the victim? Well, no! Although defensive attributions are self-protective, somewhat natural but certainly an irrational strategy that helps us avoid unnerving thoughts and give a feel of our life being in our control. As healthy individuals, we should try to look at things from the perspective of the victim and stop this blaming!
Note: the relation of culture with blaming is completely my view and arguments are most welcome. :)

You :)

Just to have a word with you,
I’ll keep all my work aside

Without that word with you,
my tasks remain shattered, unfulfilled

'coz in everything I say, in my every act
I just reflect the you I carry in myself

Though I have an image of yours in me,
without you yourself, I feel incomplete

And my eyes would shoot open, in the middle of the night
wondering how the day not had a single encounter with you

And I feel as if everything got disturbed,
as if nature ran against its own rules

Then I ask, How could the sun set,
without me talking to you?

Bolly songs of 90s :D

I am a 90s kid. So, I was brought up with these. The typical bollywood songs of the 90s. Infact, the first imagery of my ideal boy I had in mind resembled a typical hero depicted in these song videos - the one who would take me (yes, literally take, against my wish! :P) to a picturesque location and sing and dance with me. Fortunately, this imagery doesn't exist anymore. :P
To give you the feel of what kind of bolly songs I am talking about, consider the following for reference: chalo ishq ladaye, ankhiyan tu mila ley raja, chori chori sapno me, dholna, jangal hai aadhi raat hai, chunari chunari, sona kitna sona hai, kudi kuwari, and many more. A couple of videos:

The pattern of all songs is exceptionally similar. The same template, still they were always entertaining! Most of the typical ones are filmed at some location in Europe or some exceptionally green lands, etc. The song is lively and full of beats. The hero and heroine appear in 2-3 different clothes throughout the song. The design of the female's clothes is particularly new while the hero is wearing particularly bright and colorful bottoms and shirts. The bottoms are a bit too tight in case of Govinda. The hero and heroine have a good practice of doing the dance steps in sync and their steps are weirdly symmetric too. The characters get rhythmically romantic while doing these steps. I have seen some song videos where the heroine blushes with the beats!
However illogical stuff they contain, they entertained me a lot back in the 90s and continue to do so. Here, I choose to stay a bolly fan. :)

The anger is justified - Delhi gang rape case

Anybody who is well aware of the culture in this country (in fact the world) knows that above all things, be it law, opposition, God or whatever, there is one thing everyone including the government and the criminals (I am not calling them the same) should be scared of, and that one thing is mob anger. If you suppress the mob anger for now, it will come up later, with double the force and will hence render you double helpless.

There are protests all over the country demanding immediate hanging for the culprits in the case. Well, this protest is not precisely over the gang rape, etc. It’s over the regular abuses a girl wanting to stand on her own legs faces in her everyday life. Everyone who is participating in the rallies have either experienced some trauma or seen it happen. And just because of this, we need to give a strict punishment in order to tell them that its not easy to rape someone and escape with a life. Our government or the court fails to understand this very trauma. Is it because these bodies are composed of largely men? Maybe yes. Most of the men do not know what it is like to be scared when you are on the verge of losing the shreds of your dignity. The way our culture goes, I guess its difficult for men to even understand what dignity I am talking about, ‘coz they are never assumed to possess such dignity. Yes, our culture is like that. If a guy sleeps with another girl who is not his wife, then he doesn’t lose anything. It’s the girl who loses her dignity, etc. We feel a girl is insulted if she is raped, not the guy. He has his desires. And that is so justified! We have rapists and abusers around and amidst this, we demand for virgin wives.

Many people have expressed how the hue and cry over the Delhi gang rape is useless and a waste of time. If our best justices feel that a step towards better securing our women is useless, etc, then I am scared and paranoid of living here. Female folk is supposedly the half of our population. Given our sex ratio, women in this country, in the least exaggerated sense, are a minority. And for the government, securing the minority is nothing more than a duty. I recently got from the news that our home minister Susheel Kumar Shinde declared the forming of a council to ensure the safety of women. Recognizing the routes where women safety is better so that women can take up those routes while travelling is also one of the roles of this council. Well, what?? Let’s mark certain roads with a red sign saying “its unsafe for you to travel by this route, lady!”. 
A good number of people expert in law have also told that the max they can be punished is lifetime imprisonment. Well, by law, this is true. But wait, are we joking here? We all know really well that law has been tweaked to suit our requirements. Okay, lets talk of law. Law is to make our life easy and comfortable. It stands to protect us and not to make us more vulnerable. So, law! Law doesn’t even recognize inserting foreign objects into the female’s body as rape. Law dictates the same punishment for rape and murder. In the eyes of law, rape is equivalent to gang rape. Definitely, for the victim, it is not. And none other than the victim herself knows the gravity of the pain. Our law anyways doesn’t treat rape as that heinous a crime. The list of capital crimes (crimes that can lead one to death sentence) does not include attempt for murder by sexual methods, or rape. It’s strictly for the “rarest of rare cases” . Probably, a girl getting gang raped and attempted to be killed by pathetic sexual methods in a bus moving on the roads of the capital of the country crossing three check posts is too usual or too not rare to be imposed this sentence on. Maybe yes. Our newspapers are full of incidents of sexual abuses, rapes, etc. Even if 50% of these are fake (talking on the assumption that every victim files a police complaint), the rest are sufficient to assure you that you are insecure here. And our government unwilling to treat such a pathetic crime as a rare one assures you further. As Sheila Dixit quoted, “It is the most painful incident that has taken place since I became chief minister of Delhi”, I guess pain is a rare thing for any country. Isn’t it? I wonder what impression of our government’s efficiency does this give to the other big democracies of the world. At a moment, I would even question, do we have a government? We can’t call it a government if it is bereft public confidence.

In my view, and in the view of a large fraction of the country, death penalty to these rapists is justified. But the government doesn’t seem to agree with this. All we need is a good lawyer/justice to stand up for this cause. Do we, the women of this country have a supporter?

In the pink ghetto

“Pink ghetto”, this term is basically originated from the term “pink collar” mostly used to associate the pink collar jobs, the jobs meant for women, the ones with the flexibility to suite working moms and the housekeepers. Obviously, on the very assumption that the sole responsibility of household lies on the woman.

Though we (Indians) are still in a stage where women development level is way behind where it is in the rest of the world or where it should have been right now, I’ll choose to talk of the urban female folk which is far more developed than the rest of the country.

The male dominion in our culture is kind of inherited. The idea of a female taking the lead position of a project or team is still a little unacceptable. While the world saw Marissa Mayer being hired as Yahoo! CEO while she was pregnant, we think extra for even employing a married woman or mother. Even in one of the most urbanized cities like Mumbai, getting hired while you are pregnant is not even a question.
Well, the problem is clear, we lack female leaders and female professionals leading to the mentality that a woman can't be skilled at this. Not actually society's fault in thinking so. Tracking down this problem, we realize that these leadership and professional skills are not developed in girls, like since childhood. We pamper our daughters with all cute, nice and delicate stuff. In most of the urban families, even their choices are also not theirs. When up till teenage, parents or brothers take most of her decisions, all she learns is, taking support. Going by the way we bring them up, being strong, independent and decisive is not their part. That's called being a man. And we choose to teach that to our sons.
And the women who take the other path, choose to be independent are treated as superpowers and even their vicinyl society (family members) looks at them with little sympathy. If they choose to write their own destiny, obviously, in a setting like India's, this would require utter amount of strength to be able to face the society and its million questions and hence they are treated as heartless beings. The independent woman is expected to be exceptionally self consistent, especially emotionally. A friend of mine recently shared this cartoon strip on Facebook: 

Precisely here, I fail to relate being strong and independent with wanting some love and pampering. We all as humans have an emotional quotient and want to be loved (in addition to being ready to love). If the working husband, the sole bread winner of the family, upset from his day or something else, wants to cuddle in his wife's lap, takes pleasure in some pampering, its fine. It doesn't contradict his being independent and strong. But it does when its a woman. Sad.

Even today, we come across people who feel that the right place of a woman is within the four-walls of the house. This reminds me of a PhD friend of mine at insti who wondered why do women want to study so much when they are from well off families and can really easily find themselves a husband who is rich and loving. And yes, there are females who want to settle as housewives in their lives. I hope for most, like me at times, its just out of laziness. 

Another friend of mine equated being a housewife to being a good housekeeper. The term "housekeeper" did hurt me at first. How does a silly binary characteristic "gender" entitle the responsibility of housekeeping to one particular person? Why can't all members of the family put equal shares in housekeeping? Unfortunately, if a man wants to sit at home as a househusband, our society shall taunt him till death. In the case where the family accepts the working lady, she is just overdone with responsibility. She is expected to cook or to look after all the servants in the case where the family can afford them, to take care of the elders (mostly in-laws), to ensure her kids' homework, well bringing up, etc. A silent obvious compensation of her wanting to pursue her own dreams. And if you raise the matter of gender equality to such families, they would say with pride, we have a working wife, we obviously understand and implement equal status to females.

We fail to understand even the meaning of gender equality. Implementing it seems too far off. Poor females, perhaps born and destined to die in their pink ghettos. Its time that we as society realize this and grant our women actual equality.

Of what I am feeling like...

Advice: Ignore.

The green leaves turned yellow. It did not rain for long. And when it did, I did not like it. The sun did not shine for long. Though later it did, but that was unacceptable as it was burning hot and I wanted the clouds. I knew the clouds would make it better. But the clouds never came. The birds didn't chirp. I don't know why. I always felt that they stopped chirping on seeing me. The beautiful green parrots never came by my balcony anymore. The moon didn't seem to smile when it looked down at me nor did I feel as if it was stalking me from behind the bushes, like a secret admirer.
I didn't sleep. I never felt like eating. Not even my favorite dish. I didn't feel like painting, not even writing. I didn't even want to sit and dream all day like I used to, when I was a little girl. I wanted no music. I did not want to remember God either. I didn't feel like staring at the night sky, the stars. I didn't like the breeze at the lakeside or through the door of the rushing train either. I was not interested in the games I would otherwise spend entire day playing. I did not feel like talking. Not even with my love.
I was living a monotone routine and I wanted to continue living like that only. I didn't even want a change. What I wanted seemed too far to even think of. I constantly felt as if the leaves won't turn green ever, it won't rain, the sun won't get soft and nor would the clouds come over softly without making it gloomy.
It seemed as if everything happened all of sudden. But no, it didn't. It rather was gradual. Too gradual. So adiabatic that I couldn't even notice the change coming. Now I feel that if I had noticed it, I might have either avoided it anyhow or learnt to adjust to it. But I couldn't do any of those. I was too blind to realize what was coming.
I wasn't unhappy all the time. I was happy too. But that was because I wanted to be happy. Not because I was actually happy. And now, I want to be actually happy like I was, when the leaves were green and the weather felt nice. But again, this is just wanting. I don't know if the actual reason will ever show up. Nobody knows that.

Tutor-ed kids

Whenever somebody talks of school, what we immediately do is, go back to our school years. For most of us, school was actually the temple of all knowledge we have gained and remember till date. It was also that battlefield of our heart where making/breaking relationships at times composed whole of our mindspace and nevertheless at times it was also the place where we would take interest in the first, second and third wives of that fat language teacher. But definitely, above this all, what meant most, were the classes, the time when we actually learned stuff and most of us (I hope so) just loved it.
On the bare mention of school level education, the images of those classes and playgrounds come fresh to the mind and with a little more quickness, we think of our buddies. But with time, things have changed. Studying is not restricted to schools and home works for today's kids.
In the last decade, the education industry has seen an enormous boom in the tuition culture. Catch any middle school or high school kid in an urban neighborhood and he'll make you count the number of tuitions he is attending and how his timetable is jam packed. Its not that the time table is void of any physical activity or stuff. You'll discover that the same child is also going to dance/music classes and sports classes too. Such a time tabled kid might seem to become an all rounder, a perfectionist, but the poor fellow lacks somewhere. He misses what we had in our childhood. It includes silly things ranging from staring at the night sky, or peeling layer by layer of the flower from the garden, or discovering how the rainbow patterns in so many transparent-ish objects, or even picking up a spider or cockroach by one of its legs and inspecting each of its body organs. The child basically misses the time he actually needs to develop his mind. And ya, when it comes to mind development, parents will claim that they are sending their child to the Vedic Math classes. But unfortunately, math is not the only thing that develops mind.
These kids end up being a bigtime failure when they are asked to understand the stuff written in the book by themselves. They need a teacher, a tutor at every step. They do not know how to discover a way to do stuff. All they know is that if they are told the way once, they will efficiently repeat it. Though this level of efficiency is surprisingly awesome at times. The most unfortunate part is, the teachers who created the school environment for us back then themselves have become greedy enough to start their own tuitions and ensure a good crowd in them.

Education - a stamp?

Whenever we talk of any problem about our country, the very first thing that comes to our mind is- "whatever the problem be, the solution is only one - EDUCATION!" True that education is the only potential weapon that can uproot all our problems, but looking at how this weapon has faired, I don't really think it has worked that efficiently as it was expected to or as we all saw it would.
Here we live in a country, where most of the middle class is educated. Educated, perhaps just to say. You look around and you shall find many people who have done their graduation, even post graduation but their thoughts, mentality still belong to the early 20th century. People for whom a marriage is incomplete till there is ample amount of dowry to be shown off, people who still find daughters a burden, schools and homes where girls are still not treated as equals. And these people go around claiming their degree  for jobs, government positions, and often, even for match-making. But unfortunately, these degree holders lack even the middle school education. People who so easily waste kiloliters of milk feeding the idols and then calling it their tradition which as they strongly feel, needs to be kept alive. The same bunch of people on seeing the poor starving would call it mismanagement on the government's part.
I am not saying that our country is full of these kind of people. Of course not! We are 1.2 billion. This massive number itself implies diversity in behavior, thoughts and beliefs. So, there is definitely another class of people, who realize the actual worth of their education and hence choose to escape to the US or Europe. The ones who cannot afford to escape, stay here and assume that they can't do anything than follow the herd of the educated uneducated. Well, there are a really few who do make an effort to make a change.
But the other bunch of people just seem to be stuck in there. The worst part is, even the educated parents teach their kids to maintain the traditions in a social setting where the education given by parents holds the highest importance in a child's mind. And this issue is not with the lower class or even the lower middle class, its with the upper classes. The class where we have figured out more cases of female foeticides than amongst the poor village people. The class which is apparently the educated class. The class for which education is just a stamp, the stamp they like to carry with pride on their chest.  

I will transform India

situation of the country is terrible
government is awful
problem is with the citizens themselves
our laws need to be made again
the constitution needs to changed perhaps
India is not the apt place to stay in
Everyone wants to move out
the big and powerful are all corrupt
not only the youth, but the entire population is spoilt
the India of dreams of Gandhi and Nehru is lost
the onus is on us to bring about a change
and I am telling you
I will bring that change

I support Anna Hazare
I will uproot corruption
I will transform India
For this, I need your support

And when I say all this
you will listen to me
Some 5% might be keen to know how I'll transform India
some 20% could tell what problem I am talking about
the rest will follow blindly
you will buy my books
come to my public speeches
you will participate in my rallies
you will like my facebook page
and participate in any mass movement initiated by me
because I need your support
why exactly I need that?
You need to know that?

You will all unite
support me
and all this just because
I say
I will transform India

Crisis

Disclaimer: this post is a bit random. Avoid it if you find it useless.

Crisis.
Yes, we use this word really often. Managerial crisis is the most day-to-day experience infact. Take this for example: I have loads of work to do, shitload of deadlines on my head. So, I pick a paper and a pen, plan when to do which work, voila! It just sounds so cool! Okay, so I start working as per the prepared time table. To my surprise, about more than 80% of the plan was executed! So, I have put my effort in there and now I am waiting for approvals, replies, etc. so that I can proceed on with the work. I had expected that those approvals and stuffs would come pretty sequentially and I would finish all the work at least just before the deadlines. An hour of waiting. Another. I watch a movie to pass time. I watch another. Still no replies and go-aheads for the work. I decide to take a nap. Barely five minutes of constant switching between conscious and subconscious minds and here - pings, mails, phone calls and texts. Everybody is replying, approvals are here and the next milestones up. But why does everything pop up all of a sudden. Now I have really less time (before the lan bans :P) and loads of work. I was so jobless a few hours ago. And now, I'll have to spend 15 minutes planning and another 15 approving the plan and I don't know how well it'll be executed.

The Trap

I heard this phrase in my freshie year. We had our department intro (a typical intro at IITB where the first years are asked silly questions so that they get to mix up with the others) where some passing out seniors were asked to say something about the department, etc. The thing which fell into my ears the most was, this department is awesome and you're just going to love your stay here. So true, perhaps the most awesome and home like department in the institute.
In the same intro, there was some senior whose words I remember fresh as if I heard them just a moment ago, he said, "CPI is a big trap, don't fall for it." I think that I could not really understand it right then but something it contained which made me remember it till today.
CPI is perhaps a tag associated to us (IITians, I mean). From the very beginning of my freshie year, I have heard people talking about others like, 'oh, she is a 9.8', 'that chap is perfect 10!! :-o' Agreed to the point that, to an outsider, the only thing that reflects your sincerity and caliber is CPI. No objection to this. Had I been a professor and given a time constraint, I would have considered the student's CPI on whether to take him for a project or not. But this all doesn't mean that the criteria is generalized and that we work our asses off just to shoot up the pointer and do not bother to learn or enjoy the course. The fact that everything ranging from the day0 jobs to good postgrad univs, you are told that a good CPI will take you through and that you should not even put an attempt at it if you have a messed up CPI. A two figure digit that defines you.
Almost all of us have a past of stardom, being the topper of class since Ist grade, topping in every course, etc and then coming to the premier institute of the country and this CPI crisis, we are like kicked off from the well molded position we had been holding till now. Only a few of us know how to handle the situation, the rest suffer a psychological setback. The worst part is, our environment doesn't help in coping with the same. The initial poor marks of the first MA105 quiz would just make us study more. I remember ditching the line follower competition in my freshie year just because the quizzes were drawing near and I had already messed up the part till midsem. Well, it was not really a worth regretting decision in first place because I recall well that I enjoyed the courses I had studied post ditching that event. But that might not be the case always. As fresh as yesterday, I also remember the course MA 205 (yes, at IIT, the course code makes more of your memory than the course name) whose every lecture I enjoyed thoroughly, loved solving the tutorials as well as the beautiful literature the course was made up of. But starting with the first quiz, I messed up bigtime and given my already dull CPI, it got me nervous over the grade the course will render me. And by the time the semester ending exam of the course was nearing (it was a half sem course, unfortunately), I had already stopped enjoying the
course and forced myself to prepare in the grade oriented fashion. And to add to this all, I did mess up with my grade in the course, despite all that forced effort, which all made me feel more helpless than ever. A few weeks after the result of this course was out, my memory took me back to that freshie intro moment and I whole heartedly realized how big a trap it was. The desire to build up a good looking CPI constantly kept me away from things I probably wanted to do hence leading me into a situation where I don't have a single certificate proving myself good at any particular thing. In such a situation, I am left with no option but to start afresh and that too from the middle.

Taking it easy

It so often and easily happens that you don't know what to do next in life. Recently while I was doing an internship in Chennai, we had an office lunch bidding farewell to someone who was leaving. There was some senior employee in the office who asked me what I was going to do next. I innocently replied that after the lunch I'll get back to work like everyone else and I hadn't planned anything for the evening. He was like No No.. I am asking what are you planning to do with your future? I was left numb for a second, then I gathered myself and replied, “I am just in my second year, I need not know that now itself. I don't have any plans as yet.” He was filled with shock and gave me the example of his son who is in his 8th that he is all planned to become a computer engineer. I appreciated the fact and tried to busy myself with the food. Though the food had only rice, I found it certainly better than the talk! This was just one encounter, I have met many people who are so much more worried about my future than me.

There was some mentorship programme at our institute where a particular club of the insti had invited so called successful college pass-outs. One of them on taking up the mic wanted to teach us to always play safe in life. He said that one should strive for what one wants but there are always chances that you might not get that and hence you should have plan B, plan C and also your plan D always ready. I was terrified to hear that for I don't even have a plan A ready with myself. I raised my hand and asked him, “Is it always necessary to have plans ready? Can't we go on in life with instantaneous planning?” He replied saying that no instantaneous thing works, you should always be planned. I wanted to argue but given the crowd and his attitude, I dropped the idea.

All this renders me worried about what I shall do in future, for I don't have any plans. But what I wonder more is why do we need to have plans, why can't we let life flow the way it wants to. Is it necessary that I make a life scheme and that scheme decides what interests me? Isn't it upto my heart over what interests me? I have often heard the quote, you are the potter who shapes his life, but should we decide the final shape of the pot even before we start collecting the clay. The scheme of final shapes we already have is pretty limited, isn't it? If we let ourselves be the potter and shape the pot with time and the natural flow of life, won't we end up with a shape which is completely new to this convention-ridden world?

The next time anyone asks me about what I am going to do with my life, then my only reply would be 'I'll be taking it easy!'

Mumbai meri jaan...

The title of this blog post is stolen from my friend Surabhi's blog post, but she has no right to complain for I have an equal right on the title as any other Mumbaikar! And as of this blog post, my another friend Pritam almost made me write this (for I was really getting bored sitting in some other city), but I am not really sure whether I'll be able to do justice to the title of the post. Mumbai pe jitna likhu utna kam hai!!

My experience with Mumbai is really short. Up till last two years, I hadn't been to Mumbai even once. Or like any other kid, I might have been there to catch a train or a flight or to meet some obvious relatives, but that was just a visit, I didn't feel the city right then. I don't really recall when and where I heard about Mumbai for the first time but it seems as if I've known Mumbai since I know I exist and I'd always been keen to be a part of the hustle of the city! All this made me decide back in high school, that I will do my graduation from this city and given that I wanted to do engineering, the first thing that came to my mind was of joining IIT Bombay and I did realize that getting admission is tough, but don't worry that did not make me study hard! Its just that I kept dreaming (didn't work hard) and fate brought me here. Probably I was destined to be belonging to Mumbai.

I so properly remember my first day here. I came to do some paper-work for my admission at the institute. My foot stepped the first on Andheri station and the very feel of the moment was awesome! I still don't understand from where did I get this feel, but yeah, it was there. I was all full of energy to discover the entire city, but for that day, task was defined and time was limited, we had to leave Mumbai by lunch time. Mumbai gave me a warm welcome that day with its continuous drizzling signing no hopes of stopping! Unavoidable rains is something most people hate about Mumbai, but for me, that is something which gives me the feel that I am in Mumbai!. That day was anyways a short encounter with Mumbai. It was almost a month later that I properly shifted to Mumbai and probably even a month after my shifting did I decide to go around places.

More than places, it was the public of this city which caught my attention. Everyone has such a precise calculation of his time, counting every second involved in catching a local to finishing a file in office. In the rush and crowd of everyday life, simple things that grant pleasure just amazed me. The feel of you peeping out of a rushing fast local and the breeze thrashing your face, the taste of vadapav available at almost every local station or nearby areas, the ambiance of a simple mall, the sound of rain pattering on your umbrella, the holy air of a small temple or masjid around.. all these make up the hidden elements of this city, the fun of which only those can enjoy who have been a part of the inevitable flow of the city.

Often people would ask me, whats there in Mumbai that you're mad about and my answer completes with one word, the 'feel' of the city. Its this feel that I miss whenever I am not here. This feel can't be explained though I can make an attempt at trying to give you too the 'feel'. When I went to Marine line for the first time, I was gripped by this awesome feel.. yea that was the same marine which was eternal to movies from Chalti ka naam gadi to Guru. All these years, so many things around have changed but this marine line remains the same, so much like the way it was. The view of illuminated Queen's necklace at night, the feel of  dirty Juhu chowpatty, shabby sea-side at Gateway, the 'let-it-be-as-it-is' elephanta caves, really beautiful Victoria Terminus and surrounding area, always crowded Siddhi Vinayak, sea-facing fresh-breezed Mahalakshmi Temple, another crowded Haji Ali Mosque, the ages old and its own Mumba Devi Temple, the self-sufficing Nariman Point, the rich-and-posh Bandra-Worli Sea link, Bandra's unavoidable fashion street, vast Powai lake and our very own Sameer hills with the adjoining National Park, it is all this which constitutes this city. The locals, which are unmistakably the heartbeat of the city for it executes the flow of people and goods across the city, exist to liven up the city.

Yea, you'd heard it right somewhere, Mumbai is very crowded! Managing a space to live in this city is a big deal! The actual land area of this city was originally very small and it has been build up to accommodate the crowd flowing in and on this land stolen from sea, there is utter lack of space! The exorbitantly high property rates and cost of living reflect this. But despite this, in addition to housing the country's richest, this city has a heart big enough to accomodate the country's poorest. Almost in each and every meter square of Dharavi, a life breathes. As the song correctly quotes, Ae dil hai aasaan jeena hai, suno mister, suno bandhu, ye hai bombay meri jaan, a person hailing from any corner of the country can manage to earn a living here. And this attractive nature of the city is not new, from before independence (almost since its birth) till today, people of different classes, of different parts of the country come here, settle here and belong here!

Been in this city for only two years and that too largely in the walls of my Institute, I already feel as if I belong to this city, as if.. if there is some place I could choose for my death then that is Mumbai!

Satyamev Jayate

Before you begin reading this post, I just want to make clear that this is a product of near end-sem empty mindedness!
So, recently there is all news about this new show starting up on Star Plus called "Satyamev Jayate". Not much idea about the show though but the theme song and its video is reaching viral fame. The song is awesome and the video too. The diversity shown in the video makes me feel like planning an all India trip!
Though the video has a lot about this country but still I did not find a single thing in there to relate to. No semi-urban people, no metros being shown. So the India lives in the villages is what being portrayed. Or probably "Satyamev Jayate" (only the truth wins) survives only in the villages. True that it depicts the large and diverse India but why to miss on most of (in fact all) the large cities. Not just the on places that have been shown, its also on the class of the people. I don't understand why only target the working class for the feel of the country. Another example of taking poverty synonymous to the Real India? Not just the upper class, even the middle classes have been forbidden from the video. Probably "truth being the winner" is something too much to strive for, for these middle class urban metro population.
I have no intent to criticize all that is there in this video. In fact, its one song (and video) which gives me the awesome max feel of being an Indian. Reminds me of that craziness of childhood when we would sing patriotic songs during those national events drawing closer, with the very feel and the determinism to be the next Kargil shaheed. 

Of trust and betrayal..

Of most of the people, friends I've asked on what is most important in a relationship, most prompt reply I've got is : trust. The quote of friendship without trust being nothing and valueless is too popular. But here I would like to make a completely different point. True that after being betrayed by someone, one doesn't have the tendency to possess the same amount of affection for him/her. But what about love which dominates this betrayal. The feeling that "I don't care whether I was betrayed or whatever... I just can't live without.." It is this feeling which strengthens a relationship. Agreed that breaking someone's trust is a bad thing to do but it happens.. and I would like to put my favorite quote ' One deserves to be forgiven '. Someone who trusts you enough to forgive you for the so-called mistake of "breaking trust" is the one who actually trusts you. So, this might sound sheepish, but I would like to boil down to the conclusion that betrayal is an important part of a relationship.

what I utter is not what I feel..

What we say, what comes out of our mouth matters a lot. The phrase "tol mol ke bolo" emphasizes the value of words aptly! What you say can sometimes handle the entire situation, and can worsen the entire thing. People suffer screwed up relationships just because they uttered a wrong statement. Or perhaps at the wrong place and moment.
What if this was not the case? What if the human race could be more broad minded? If after getting offended by something someone said, we just make an effort to dig deeper, realize what he/she exactly felt and then choose to forgive that person? Whatever comes out of the mouth is a result of sheer spontaneity, not everything we say has a logical manipulation behind it. You are asked a question, and you are more keen to make sure that your answer is immediate enough rather than making sure that it is apt enough, then you end up uttering almost anything and that might lead to really unwanted consequences. But, in that case, don't you think that you deserve to be forgiven? At times, you don't because the consequences are anyways suffered. But often enough, its not that big a mistake as much you have to suffer!
I am not keen to claim that always forgive people for whatever they say. Nor everyone deserves to be forgiven neither every mistake. All I want to say is : making a big deal out of it is not what the situation deserves! Someone's few words offend you and you repeat them every day, every week in order to make him realize that he committed a mistake. Can't we forget it, forgive him and bounce back to the way we were? Yeah, obviously we can but we don't or perhaps we don't want to. But just try doing this, and I bet things in life will get smoother.
I hope I have made my point convincingly enough! And if that influences you, do change the way you take things. :) 

wierd encounters

Encounters... ya this is what life is made up of, you meet someone, call that an encounter. That is the first time you meet, and ya this is the very meeting that decides, how your relationship will be, how you two will bond up. This illustrates the sensitive dependence on initial conditions as in the chaos theory.

When we are heading for an encounter, we never know what the next moment holds in store for us. In fact, we don't even know that there will be an encounter. We just don't have any idea what type of a relationship we are going to make up with the person we meet next.

 I don't know exactly how the encounter decides what type of a relationship exactly we are going to nourish, but i have some really weird examples to share.

In my experience, I have nourished awesome relationships with people who, from the encounter concluded me as someone too rude and an insensitive person.

I freshly remember the encounter with a senior back in my freshie semester (first semester in the college). We were all standing outside the ATM, keen to know whether the ATM was working or not. A man came out from the ATM, my senior asked in her shrill voice, "Uncle ye paisa nikal raha hai kya?" As usual, I was in a mood of flying fun.. I replied (I intended to utter in low volume but probably I failed), " Card daloge to paisa nikalega, fokat me thodi na nikalega!!" Everyone around was laughing except for her who was red-faced by now. I so much hoped that she forgets the incident. I so much wanted to apologize too, but I could never gather the guts to do so. I always chose to believe that no such incident ever happened.

But now, contrary to the encounter, me and her foster a really good friendship. She has always been there for help whenever I needed someone even my own friends couldn't turn up.

Now I wonder, in what way, encounters dictate the moments to come, the relationships we make up...