Reasons

A day spent without you

2009-11-05T23:44:00.008+05:30

Its morning as I wake up to the remembrance of your smile, an embrace with innocence, a delight for the soul. An indulgence of a dream with open eyes that the time has not passed at all. Cutting through the numerous rays of sun and this alien world I keep holding on to that ray of hope, not to walk alone again. The day passes brushing against characters, with the goodness in each of them meeting you on the way. Finally closing my eyes with a wish for the distances to disappear so I can feel you even closer the coming day.

Many happy returns of the day

From a free man of a free country

2009-08-16T02:29:00.003+05:30

A piece from the good old Manipal days(dated 15th Aug,2008), posted after a lot of deliberation:

Without enduring you with ambiguous introductions, to prevent you from forming conclusions too early, let me take you straight to the sanctum where lays my idols in solid form, of answers to real life questions, as to, what are the rights of a human? What should independence mean to him/her? How patriotism has more in toil, clear conscience than in sacrifice? Why violence/war have their real place in museums? And ask if you may, the ultimate question of justice?

Words retreat in defence to these posers as deeds and action draw strength from them. But dare I will to give you a closer view of the pillars supporting my conscience. Without further ado let’s see these blazing questions where they need be seen, in the eye.

Talking of independence/freedom at first, for what my instincts tell me is to demand that independence and the right to live be ensured, in a radical sense, by birth. To the level that these rights are guaranteed by all from being lost to any act of injustice or intolerance what so ever. And to be save, if it they can be saved. To these two elements combined, I look upon them as a law encompassing the power vested in a human for unbounded seeking, planning and execution. A power, which he/she must choose, with care, to tread the course of his/her life and precisely, it. So to be careful enough not to step on other's and ruin it in due course.

Letting you not to stand deprived of its other contrasting shade I quote the famous words:"Freedom is incomplete without the freedom to make mistakes". Thus it remains a trick balance to be achieved in the ideal.

When we talk of life we talk about things we have today and try to appreciate it. Contrasting is the state of patriotism, concerned with greater welfare. With it in mind we keep rounding about the things we missed out on, the loss, the war and the martyred. With due respects to the soldiers, who fight and in order lay their lives ensuring the comfort of peace we live in and its wholesome effect which makes a country worthy enough to live in, I would like you to stop and take notice of the builders of our nation the workers, professionals, thinkers and the planners. Who willingly indulge themselves into the daily grind of work to face a hail of challenges, save the bullets. Let alone the ones who go in deep mines, climb on towering bridges but to a simple salesman who lives to brave the sun and the heat to go door to door only to suffer a loss of dignity each time he/she knocks a door, for the professional who endures the clogging city traffic to reach the place of his/her work and in doing so meeting the ire/intolerance of people on the streets. Patriotism for me is to appreciate all those people who directly and indirectly make others, including their own lives worth living and comfortable. If only you accept, an expression of gratitude and dignity is due on part of all of us to them.

We made big strides in evolution of our race or did we? Carefully stacking away the peaceful elements, of our civilizations, for struggle and existence to museums and literature. Saving away for ourselves crude forms of violence and developing a legacy of it even more sophisticated and much lethal. I feel strongly that we still tend to preserve the bad inheritance of primitivism in intolerance, where there was the rightful place of reason. Prejudice, fanaticism and thus intolerance are none others but violence taking mental form. Thankfully enough there remains to be some scope to still do well, only if we decide to start practising a religion of "live and let live" and in order of doing so help patriotism achieve its true flavour of oneness, with tolerance right at its core where it belongs.

Talking of it at the last but not the least potent of areas for developing flaws in the human fabric of life is justice. Of justice when I talk in its full meaning, I tend to believe it as an act of phasing out the ill taste left of mistakes and forming measures to prevent similar damage in future. For justice if you decide to do you must block out all personal interests be it large or trivial. Ideal too it may seem but without it there is no true justice I can talk of. For I think it has lesser to do with courts and laws but to be preached and practised through life. For it’s even lesser to do with punishments met out but with rewards for merit and the deserving.

Afterword: I extend my gratitude for such patient reading. It’s been long since I have incubated this overwhelm of beliefs and watching them laid brick by brick strong enough to form my way of life and shelter it. Imagine if you will an oyster with many layers, in multitude of colours, the colours finding their ultimate source hiding deep within. A pearl so white which grows and glows even more with the usual erosive offensive of interactions. The pearl which if you take away will leave the oyster robbed off the prized possession of the experiences of its life yet seen. Alter; if you tend it with right intentions to polish its glow with much sensibility, kindness is all left of it to show.

War and Peace

2008-11-20T03:34:00.025+05:30

As I came of age, I started seeing a subtle sense of humour in every conflict that I happened to witness or read about. The higher the bets the further it appeared to me transforming from a mere subtle to a much naked element of classic humour. Let me for instance talk of war, of two sides holding an offensive against each other. As I narrow down my sight in the battlefield, I see, two men holding their guns ready to open fire at each other, two men who also happen to be holding on to a huge life of uncountable, ordinary, yet unique experiences. And precisely there, I find my cue to laugh when I realize them of being completely oblivious, to speak of the least, of the other's name, bare identities and in the very first place a reason to kill each other.

Talking of things smaller to the scale of wars I have for you my friends 'The Great Personal Conflicts'. I regard them as one of the most plausible grounds for missing out the imperceptible humour blended in human interactions. For instances, the common occurrences of people resorting to annoying habits to get someone’s attention, or for occasion people getting upset over what was supposedly an appreciative expression only veiled in a sharp wit, or at worst an expression which very much resembles a thorn. Even so, I bet that if you look carefully enough you will surely find a simple yet enjoyable part to each one of them, a realization which will most certainly bring you to smile if not laugh. Although, I do agree to the existence of people who can play such roles of pleasing and attention grabbing with much more acceptable mannerisms and disarming charm. But still, I would like to point here that you will not find a friend truer in a person who respects you and honestly seeks your opinion.

While we are on the issue of conflicts I would like to express another, of what I regard as, one of the major reasons that leads to them. I.e. the gap that lies between, what you know and what you seek the knowledge of. Before it takes the face of a full on clash this so called 'gap' moves from phases, of curiosity to growing frustration and finally to a heap of bitterness seeking gratification. And as goes my belief in such matters, we must strive to trap this gap in its heydays of curiosity and introduce it to the greatest ever healer of all times, "Dr. Talk". And as the doctor says, “Come lets open our hearts to educate and to be educated of, the ones we care about and the people who care for us”.

An Observation: No person is bad, mean, it’s just a lack of perspective here and there, somewhere, which we must find and if we are unable to find it there's no one left to be blamed but us. This capacity and ways, in which a person can introspect into it, rectify it or in failing to do so accept it is what adds much to our strength of "individualism", the ultimate gift of uniqueness bestowed upon each of us.

The man on the streets

2008-11-20T01:54:00.011+05:30

It's been sometime time now that I logged but it occurred to me not without a reason. For one of them is my aversion to write anything short of popular interest, second would be a complete lack of skill for weaving nice capturing and engaging stories.

Talking of the current state of affairs there has been a lot happening around the globe, a greater part of which that has seen humanity and its entire fighting prowess against misery and suffering on the wrong foot. The dampness brought in by the financial meltdown, the still hovering clouds of personal intolerance taking communal face, a gloom that has set in after the serial bomb blasts, the realisation that it’s the third millennium when the U.S still maintains enthusiastic plans of capturing Iran to gain control of its oil resources, China yet trying a hand now and then at gaining extra territorial control into sovereign territories of India. To speak from a personal view point the TATA-Singur issue being a big loss for W.Bengal and apparently a big blow to the struggle against poverty especially for the East Indian region and the country as a whole.

Each newspaper reading session now leaves me disturbed with a vision of that of the life of a 'man on the streets' trapped in a never ending tunnel devoid of the much needed light of hope. As the man starts his unsure steps in it he feels a sense of overwhelm in every breath of its air. Each one of the memories of assurances, of promises made by his leaders brings to him a different taste of pain. Every thought of betrayal hands a blow to his confidence. The burden of the loss so instigated by his fellow men makes him fall to his knees. He lets a cry out “Spare me the words... Show me my brothers action, action, action...” At the precise moment he lifts his eyes and only to see a delusion, a flicker of a light at the end of the tunnel.

My DNA

2008-09-25T15:26:00.001+05:30

Smiles without its cries, lows without their highs

2008-08-26T01:27:00.007+05:30

--black and white with no shades of gray
firm ground bare of soft hay

--birds incapable of songs of gay
a wish come-true heedless to pray

--a longing unknown to that perfect stare
love devoid of intentions to care

--joy of discovery minus the wait
a penguin's fate missing a mate

--winning without a fight with loss
a lifeless life, a rock without moss

--troubles and burden which fails to heap
a giving away without a struggle to keep

--fiction refused a soul of reality
courage missing a tinge of insanity

--truth strange to the tempt to lie
openness lacking a hint of the shy

--a time which refuses hatred to blur
a freedom forbidden the freedom to err

alas!

--a world of smiles without its cries
and a life of lows without their highs

Why David stands alone?

2008-07-15T16:18:00.017+05:30

Scanning through the "objectively carved" pages of The Hindu, my eyes almost subconsciously caught a piece of news, blame it on the keywords, titled: U.K. Indian jailed for “biggest” bank fraud. Sooner I had lines ringing my head: "These are the people who give a bad name to our country... a roadblock for our aspiring, skilled, talented, young working force... The bad blood etc etc...”. So cliché at that, so not my words and certainly none of the business of my thoughts. But still I was left lingering with an aching doubt: Is origin its man or man its origin?

Reason needs its evidences too, to fight its doubt. At complete loss of it, it cried out "God give me a sign".

Scene:
In a moment I found myself disconnecting from the waging doubts half-hearted, half-consoled the control being taken away from me, God taking care of it. Fingers on the keyboard typing in yahoomail ctrl+enter. Signed in to my account and disappointment creeps in with the doubt to my mailbox too: you have zero unread mail, one spam, so routine. Everybody just forgot to mail me on yahoo, my erstwhile raging mailbox, since the Gmail happened to me. Sigh! And as fast I found myself logged in so did I, logged out. Yahoo homepage... Eyes, scanning the page again almost involuntarily... The mouse pointer closing in on the cross-button of the browser window and dart, hand freezes. Another piece of news with the exact same keywords the Britains the Indians the Laws etc... Wait there's a woman on the thumbnail picture, a very different one at that. A confident, determined glow on the face. The title read: Indian-origin woman among Britain's top 10 powerful lawyers. Click. And you get more than a peek of her day old feat. A string of achievements and honours that bestow this epitome of power and inspiration named Shami Chakrabarti. She features in an informal list of 50 most powerful people of the U.K. holds the royal honour of being recently knighted by the Queen. A Graduate from the London School of Economics she started working as a barrister in 1996 from a home office. In a decade she garnered enough flare and political influence to make it to the BBC list of top 10 people to run Britain featuring at the 2nd position giving Tony Blair a run for his money while he actually ran the office.

All this and more not only holds my faith in God even higher but brings me even closer to my belief of individualism. Not only do I lean on it for strength but for consistent judgments, of people and situations. For it’s much above any prejudices of origin, religious faith or the worst the sex, by its very nature. I can only dare support all of what I just said with a pinch of common sense, if a piece of automobile coming off an assembly line can vary in its performance how in the hell's name can a human born to different mothers won't differ, let alone their experiences, in their perceptions, notions, their belief, fears, their strengths, weaknesses, thus their fundamentals. To rub some solace in places where you find it easier said than done, nobody's a pro at it anyway but all of us can do decent as beginners. As there's never a bad time to say it: Today is the first day of my good life, my individual life. It can be yours too and forever.

Introduction to Shami Chakarbarty's persona made my day, hope it does for you too.

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Related links:

Jagmeet Channa- Man linked with bank fraud.
http://www.thehindu.com/2008/07/14/stories/2008071455561300.htm

Shami Chakrabarti - U.K lawyer.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20080714/890/twl-indian-origin-woman-among-britain-s_1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shami_Chakrabarti

Colours of life

2008-06-30T21:15:00.006+05:30

--I loathe the times when life goes on a downward roll, for no reasons at all.
--There I stand the times, staring the screen, watch the wallpaper go dark from green.
--The wag's knocked out. Life enters an algorithm of sorts.
--Blank stares to strangers on the street. Meet a person, jab a wit, endure their story, deliberate the poison- the departure, the retreat.
--Self-conscious numbness passed on as sensibility. Sarcasm gets bitter with life getting back at me.
--As my fingers on the keyboard become a fixture, I muse and wander to paint me a picture-
Placed in a cell of boulders on the shore, the sea goes rumbling on a chore, a slit in the wall, the optimist struggles to keep an eye... a distant star of the yore.

--Cool breeze blows past, breaks the shell. Out comes the spirit, spreads its wings, flies, and meets life laid on hay.
--Together they embrace light, the change, light defies the night.
--A constant glow pecks the face with a promise to stay. When rains seize to be a source of gloom and leave me drenched with gay.
--Bruised my ego, big deal!! Now it takes no eternity to heal.
--Music fills the silence, smiles zing. Life treats me, a prince and I, a king.

--The contrast teaches, makes me speechless, heart sings out-
I live to be loved, falling in love with me, love the world around as I want it to be.

Love's labour earned..

2008-06-17T13:31:00.013+05:30

Love is in the air, so it is on the TV, the obsession for the silver screen for the past century, brisk business for gift shops and restaurants alike etc etc. So why am I still holding back, to make my share off it. No longer, as I let my writing soul muse and spin a piece around it and put it on my blog, and thus set off to a blogger-ego satisfying voyage.

As it would have taken much toll, on my naive mind, to write a sweet cuddly romantic tale. I chose something better suited - a third person account on the realizations of these much coveted and mystical bondings, which takes form into three broad distinctions:

• Through fun, candid conversations, ability to keep each other happy, entertained, interested and satisfied. For people who can be overtly charming, light headed and fun loving or to speak the other way round, not very serious, demanding, expecting and generally content. They are also seen comfortable and confiding with almost everybody. This relationship deals with stressful situations in the most easy and outgoing manner with least friction.
P.S: For people least expected to read this.

• Through friendship by building bonds one after other. Devoting a lot of time (quality as well as general). Going phase by phase. To exemplify: it goes from mere acquaintance to knowing likes, dislikes, appreciating each other through every small effort, through honesty, till knowing each other to bare. Requires highest levels of communications to be achieved, a lot of thought to be spared. This can sustain lasting relations as both partners keep discovering each other each day through their lives. Inherent with maximum amounts of stability even when the partners are distant. Trust keeps their love fragrant and blooming. This suits best for the people who desire to confide their personal feelings, be it trivial or deep, in only one and not even their family or best of friends. It turns out to be a relation very fulfilling, enriching and a treat for the senses.

• Through intense mutual physical and personal attractions, the ability to catch vibes flowing between each other almost instantly. The one which we gaily refer to as "love at first sight". Things move at lightning speeds, with both partners making manipulations and creating conditions to achieve it. People with big, open hearts not very anxious for a relation are likely to fall for it. Naturally rewarding and satisfying to its core. Vibrant, energetic and a fragrance never lost.

Afterword: This piece stated as above may still be short on covering all aspects of such relations coming to existence. But is a brief log of conclusions formed off my novice experiences and observations. A valuable and valid observation may point to the lack of attention to weaknesses of these bonds. To quell such apprehensions it should be appreciated that the strength of these ties lie in the levels of honesty granted and the nature of intentions that eventually led to them. Also the article does not amount as a tip to sustain relations but to identify with them. As my belief rests in the notion that love is not about adjustments but acceptance. So it fits best to say at last to follow your heart (it rhymes too).

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This piece of my blog is a dedication made out to my friends who fell in the laps of sweet love at the most spirited period of their lives and have been committed to each other since. To a point this article also draws both strength and inspiration from their relationships.

We are..

2008-06-16T01:20:00.002+05:30

I made it as a speech for college elocution stage. Being concerned with an area of broad and larger interest I decided to put it on the blog.

Respected sirs and dear friends. I am here to speak my mind on "student’s role in improvement in quality of education and lifestyle on campus".

It all starts with a question: what is the typical age of a student on campus? Say 18 to 26. If a credible research is to be quoted, it states to the effect that after a certain age, 30yrs to give a fair idea, a person might loose the attitude of building new concepts and the ability to accept changes as a whole. Thus as a precedent we bestow a new title on our student : "The Ambassador of Novelty".

Keeping the dream alive lets throw some light on the contemporary status of our student and his role.

Restraining from being too tough on you and boring for me, lets call our student "Neil". Now what does Neil feel about all this. Neil an average student, maintains low profile and has some "not so good storytellers" as his friends. Comes to college goes back to his room and nobody feels any better about it. That’s how we see Neil.

Sparing a little more insight we discover, although a bit shy but a passionate thinker, ever equipped with radical ideas, not just taking inputs but eager to return the favour. But how to give vent to all that boiled inside him. It ached even to brood over it.

One fine day Neil had this incredible dream. Where he was at the college at a usual working day but a bit different one. He had just finished attending a lecture which made him feel happy and confident. What was that? A lecture..happy? confident?.. These don't go hand in hand. Yes the lecture had some distinctive elements to it, unprecedented will go closest to describe them. The lecture, for a change, dealt with the practicality of the topic being taught, was short and precise. Interestingly enough, you could score some extra credit for making a second effort at learning a subject. To name some: making presentations, preparing comments, in a gist a kind of self run R&D on it. To his advantage and joy, Neil loved that subject. Fair enough but extra points? Apparently Neil was not as good at all of his subjects and so the college decided to tailor down the standards for him in those if he compensates with extra efforts in others, to a reasonable extent.
Neil: WOW!!.
The joy ride didn't seem to stop there. At the end of the lecture the teacher happily and enthusiastically asked them to fill a feedback form prepared by the teacher herself. Aptly the form read at the bottom "The only thing constant about change is change itself".

Conscience hit him that he no longer needed to wait a full semester to fill a pre-prepared form on a dumb computer, which goes to Mr Who? Neil leapt in joy.
Came out when somebody called on him: "where are you coming from?".
Neil: "A seminar of ideas".
Walking a few steps down the road he read the sign, proudly but carefully, which now said : "MANIPAL INSTITUTE OF INNOVATIONS AND TECHNOLOGY".

Without breaking his dream I would like to sum up on his behalf: Students can help progress the quality of education through their ideas. It all depends on how we tap it and transform from an odd bunch of quality managers to a strong force of 3000 innovators, the MITians.

Changing perspective and looking at the niche of a student, his lifestyle on campus.

Where Neils's dream left was caught by the nightmare of Vijay. Vijay comes to Manipal with a hope to prove he was unique yet one of them. Good at studies but extremely enthusiastic of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. Decided to give it a shot, failed miserably. He was not alone to fail but it hurt. He tried and tried, all in vain. You should have seen him, he was good, deserving. Rumor has it though that most the student groups and clubs events are rounded up by the people near and dear to the organizers and the benefits do seep to them too, in one way or the other.

Vijay broke. He had some acquaintance time and again to fall back on, the people who had always discouraged his guts and now in his eyes too they had won. These were the people, not very different form Vijay, who doped their way to thrill. The thrill that was so much lacking. Unsurprisingly Vijay fell for every bit of it.

The story ends on a pessimistic note but not without a moral. Had those bunch of students not lacked the intellect, the moral, the courage to stand the win of the deserving, had they been not fed with unprecedented power and say in these student groups, this would never had to be faced with.

To remind: these activity or students groups/clubs, with whatever name we choose to glorify them as something sacred and not to be interfered by the college authorities, play single-handedly a very important role in the personality development and lifestyle of a student. To start benefiting from them, in the larger sense, we must ensure that their functioning becomes accountable not only by a bunch of students but by each student on the campus. Which will alone do away with the irregularities which are a hindrance to its very purpose. Steps such as ensuring the participation of each student, even if it comes at a price of making it compulsory, with due respect to their interests, would give a great boost to it. Maybe taking it further by putting a credit on their GPA cards, would be the icing on the cake.

Apart from anybody it is most important that we students realize to cut all barriers, kill every prejudice to accept each one as a brother. Else, this privileged place on earth would become a world of students reluctant to change, unwilling to learn.

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This article was written with the purpose to sensitize us, the students, towards the accountability we hold in respect to the whole learning system of which we form an integral part and to recognize our core responsibility to innovate in our capacity. Not just to ensure our survival through lame blame-games on the system's shortcomings but to rationalize our very presence and purpose of being, through concrete ideas/solutions for our present-day problems by means of maintaining and projecting an assertive attitude in our actions pertaining to solve them.

Critical opinions solicited. Please contribute them in the comments section to your will.

Confessions of a 21yr old....

2008-06-12T00:40:00.000+05:30

Off goes my first attempt at blog writing. To cut short it is a log of my mind wandering, time and again, from its normal self. Hope you are still reading.

Modesty certificate: I don't seek one.

Feeling:

There is no stronger feeling than realization of truth or of a mistake.

Passion:

Commit to things if you want them to happen your (set) way, pursue it with passion and watch it unfold like a garden of roses.

Intellectual:

There is no better way to judge an intellectual talent other than truthfulness and honesty.

A true intellectual is one in whom people can realize a befitting leader (leader of people) and their worst slave.

Blogging:

Never promise yourself to write a blog each day/week/month or you'll end up writing none. I did.

Extremism:

People who hurt us do not come from a religion or community they come from a deranged state of mind.

Bad/Bitter politics:

Never make the mistake to glorify a cause/thing in the eyes of the masses of which you want them to get rid of.

Pseudo leaders:

People choose to immortalize the leaders who thrive on their (people's) grounds of failures and their otherwise rejected fallacies.

Ethics:

The best thing about ethics is it does not need for you to meddle with.. it’s a set of rules, derived on rationale, existing out there.. It leaves you to either follow it or be otherwise.

Friendship:

You stand for me once and I stand a thousand times.
You think about it twice, sooner I am gone.

Random:

As character comes to a person by birth, conscience comes to a person by education.

Learning:

It’s never easy.

This is as of now. Will keep updating this space, as I arrive at more and attempt at writing some focused stuff.

*Disambiguation: multiple periods (..) placed between lines/statements bids the reader to read between the lines. When placed at the end it implies- keep reading......