Every step I take, thumping my feet on the ground only to take it off next moment, pressing the mud and the grass beneath my feet; sends a pulse up my body, a pulse of joy, a pulse of liberation, like unleashing a rocket waiting to speed away. The sight of kids playing football with their Ronaldinho and gawd knows who's tees, teen age guys sitting at pavilion and smoking away in their glory, grandpas taking an evening stroll along with their little ones, some athletes speeding away like they have to catch a bus and some heavy guys trying to catch their breath as they try to keep up...
Never been much of a sportsperson and this first taste of pushing my physical limits has given me a undying source of joy and confidence with nothing else can match up to.
At first it is sunny and the breathing gets tougher, the sun shines brightly before it finally gives up and unfolds a cool breeze. Slowly the fun builds up... The twilight in soon outlined by a boundary of trees on all sides of the Parade Ground here in BHEL Campus at Bhopal. The sight of the open sky is as rewarding as seeing the making of future football players and marathon runners of India. The thumping of my feet matched with the beats of the melodious music played creates a harmony which none can appreciate but the runner himself. As each step is taken, one more patch of grass covered and one more beat played, I move on to place which is my own, a place where I have clarity in my mind, where there is no pretense, no doubts, no preconceived notions, no regrets, just a bright light coming from the behind illuminating my path, giving me the courage to face what lies ahhead
Saturday 19 September, 2009
Sunday 9 August, 2009
fair play or chance ..?
Ever since I was child I have heard elders say that this universe is just. They said that deeds are like boomerang, though not so flamboyantly, they do come back to you soon or later. Good deeds are rewarded and evil punished, well I don’t know what happens to the grey area. If you plot evil you will have to bear the brunt of it someday. They said it with all the conviction that there is, that the all mighty upstairs has a log book (maybe he uses SAP now) to keep track of our white, black and grey deeds. “Nothing goes unnoticed, my child. The Lord is watching you every second”, was what my second grade school teacher had told me. As a naive young boy I believed in everything they told me, partly because I thought so too and mostly because they believed so strongly in it.
For fair portion of my life I have believed in it and to a great extent I still do...
But lately another chain of thought has been culminating in my mind; what if this is all bull-s**t and there isn’t anyone who one really keeps scores. I have never really cared if my scores were kept by ‘Bharma’ or by a ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ (http://www.venganza.org/), but always believed that scores were like a provident fund, you can en-cash someday. But what if instead of a balancing algorithm it’s a random number generating function. We speak of a just and fair world and yet accept all the despicable acts of violence, calamities, rape and death everyday as if it were somehow a part of that balancing act. A six year old died in a car accident, her clock stopped ticking and we were sad :’(… chooo chweet. I do not believe that in the 2190 days she lived, she had enough time to gauge how the world works leave aside the possibility of her committing any act as atrocious as to receive a death penalty. And then we say, ‘ God works in mysterious ways ’. Well he sure does.
The point I am trying to put forward here is that maybe it is all a matter of chance, more like a dice rolled than balancing weights. When you flip a coin or roll a dice you just hope to get you desire and leave the rest to fate. The child dying example is only the tip of the ice berg, we find numerous examples everyday depicting how perfectly innocent people were sacrificed to this game of chance and nobody questioned the log keeper.
But if chance is all that prevails then why put up a facade of fairness and boomerang analogies. Probably because these analogies have a much higher purpose to serve. When an individual fears in the power of log book he thinks twice before committing a crime. I man driven by lust think a million times before he commits hideous acts which degrade the human nature. His sense of morality and fairness help him overcome his unrestrained animal instincts to violate another human being. He believes that he will have to face a similar situation someday and redemption will be upon him that day.
Now imagine a man who fears no one, he believes in chance. He can go cheat, swindle, kill and still walk free because he will get convicted based only on chance. There is no stopping such a man. And looking at the justice system, his beliefs may turn out to be true as well. But I am not talking about the police convicting him; I am talking about the universe making him back based on the log kept upstairs. If people stop believing in the log keeper, there will utter chaos in this world and morality will lose its meaning in due time. Our sense of right and wrong will soon be hazy and everything will merge into one big grey area for which no one accountable.
So, as much as I hate to believe and see people believe in the idea of a log keeper, I think it is for the best that our rational mind has chosen something as irrational as morality than the rational nature of chance…
For fair portion of my life I have believed in it and to a great extent I still do...
But lately another chain of thought has been culminating in my mind; what if this is all bull-s**t and there isn’t anyone who one really keeps scores. I have never really cared if my scores were kept by ‘Bharma’ or by a ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ (http://www.venganza.org/), but always believed that scores were like a provident fund, you can en-cash someday. But what if instead of a balancing algorithm it’s a random number generating function. We speak of a just and fair world and yet accept all the despicable acts of violence, calamities, rape and death everyday as if it were somehow a part of that balancing act. A six year old died in a car accident, her clock stopped ticking and we were sad :’(… chooo chweet. I do not believe that in the 2190 days she lived, she had enough time to gauge how the world works leave aside the possibility of her committing any act as atrocious as to receive a death penalty. And then we say, ‘ God works in mysterious ways ’. Well he sure does.
The point I am trying to put forward here is that maybe it is all a matter of chance, more like a dice rolled than balancing weights. When you flip a coin or roll a dice you just hope to get you desire and leave the rest to fate. The child dying example is only the tip of the ice berg, we find numerous examples everyday depicting how perfectly innocent people were sacrificed to this game of chance and nobody questioned the log keeper.
But if chance is all that prevails then why put up a facade of fairness and boomerang analogies. Probably because these analogies have a much higher purpose to serve. When an individual fears in the power of log book he thinks twice before committing a crime. I man driven by lust think a million times before he commits hideous acts which degrade the human nature. His sense of morality and fairness help him overcome his unrestrained animal instincts to violate another human being. He believes that he will have to face a similar situation someday and redemption will be upon him that day.
Now imagine a man who fears no one, he believes in chance. He can go cheat, swindle, kill and still walk free because he will get convicted based only on chance. There is no stopping such a man. And looking at the justice system, his beliefs may turn out to be true as well. But I am not talking about the police convicting him; I am talking about the universe making him back based on the log kept upstairs. If people stop believing in the log keeper, there will utter chaos in this world and morality will lose its meaning in due time. Our sense of right and wrong will soon be hazy and everything will merge into one big grey area for which no one accountable.
So, as much as I hate to believe and see people believe in the idea of a log keeper, I think it is for the best that our rational mind has chosen something as irrational as morality than the rational nature of chance…
Saturday 13 June, 2009
Expectations... Observations and Disappointment
Sounds like yet another preachy and depressing post from bloke, yeah will it is to some extent but this one too has some figment of reality, personal experience and a word of advice as always...
Change in life is an omnipresent. We move one from one stage of life to another, from school to college, then job and may be even a family later. Every time we leave a stage and enter another, we expect certain things. There is an air of positive anticipation, a ray of hope screaming out loud that things will get better now. Probably the things which were flawed in the previous era will be rectified now and there will be a new beginning to things. Well no one really said this to you , or did they ? It's all in the mind, our tiny little gray cells playing games with us, showing us things that comfort us, make us wanna move ahead and not cling on to the past if it all it was flawless enough to hold on too. I fully justify what the gray cells are doing here, the preconceived notions put in our brains to make us wanna go ahead in life, obviously it is the right things to be done, but as always, there is a catch to it...
What our tiny little gray chaps fail to conceive is that when they fill our heads with positive expectation about the future.. they also create a ticking time bomb, every ready to explode , God(just an expression, I am an Atheist) forbid the expectation are not met. Please do not judge me here. I am not a pessimistic asking you to expect the worse of the outcomes. As it is said " Hope for the best and be ready for the worst." All I am saying is that be prepared for the worst of the outcome so that if you ever have to face one, you don't end up being ruined.
For example, many of us are gonna soon join the professional world with huge pay packages, some of us are doing start-ups, and some going for higher studies in India as well as abroad. We all have some expectations, some probably think that a glamorous world awaits them. I hope it does for them. I am strongly believe that there is nothing a place or an institution has to offer to an individual. But it's the individuals caliber which takes em to the top. So have unreal expectations from some place is just unjustified and unfair. What applies to material and professional domain also applies to other aspects of life.
Some people might call this line of thought as mediocre. Thought process of someone not bold enough to think big, well I believe otherwise.
That concludes another lesson I learnt in life.
Change in life is an omnipresent. We move one from one stage of life to another, from school to college, then job and may be even a family later. Every time we leave a stage and enter another, we expect certain things. There is an air of positive anticipation, a ray of hope screaming out loud that things will get better now. Probably the things which were flawed in the previous era will be rectified now and there will be a new beginning to things. Well no one really said this to you , or did they ? It's all in the mind, our tiny little gray cells playing games with us, showing us things that comfort us, make us wanna move ahead and not cling on to the past if it all it was flawless enough to hold on too. I fully justify what the gray cells are doing here, the preconceived notions put in our brains to make us wanna go ahead in life, obviously it is the right things to be done, but as always, there is a catch to it...
What our tiny little gray chaps fail to conceive is that when they fill our heads with positive expectation about the future.. they also create a ticking time bomb, every ready to explode , God(just an expression, I am an Atheist) forbid the expectation are not met. Please do not judge me here. I am not a pessimistic asking you to expect the worse of the outcomes. As it is said " Hope for the best and be ready for the worst." All I am saying is that be prepared for the worst of the outcome so that if you ever have to face one, you don't end up being ruined.
For example, many of us are gonna soon join the professional world with huge pay packages, some of us are doing start-ups, and some going for higher studies in India as well as abroad. We all have some expectations, some probably think that a glamorous world awaits them. I hope it does for them. I am strongly believe that there is nothing a place or an institution has to offer to an individual. But it's the individuals caliber which takes em to the top. So have unreal expectations from some place is just unjustified and unfair. What applies to material and professional domain also applies to other aspects of life.
Some people might call this line of thought as mediocre. Thought process of someone not bold enough to think big, well I believe otherwise.
That concludes another lesson I learnt in life.
Wednesday 29 April, 2009
dark hour
And when your fears subside
And shadows still remain,
I know that you can love me
When there's no one left to blame
So never mind the darkness
We still can find a way
'Cause nothin' lasts forever
Even cold November rain
And shadows still remain,
I know that you can love me
When there's no one left to blame
So never mind the darkness
We still can find a way
'Cause nothin' lasts forever
Even cold November rain
Sunday 8 March, 2009
A blessing in disguise
It was India's cricket match going on. Just another regular evening in the common room hanging out with friends. But there was a certain degree of anxiety brewing in me about the HP results. Since my final HR round of the HP interview was perfect specimen of a typical interview blunder I was a bit apprehensive that the results might disappoint me and walla !!! they did.
I was sad then but when I look back it now I cannot thank HP enough for rejecting my application. Thanks to HP's rejection I was eligible to sit for other companies i.e. for BHEL in this case and I got in. All my friends who ask me for a party for cracking BHEL. I tell them, " I will give you two and not just one party,one for making it to BHEL and second for getting rejected from HP.
Universe works in mysterious ways.
I was sad then but when I look back it now I cannot thank HP enough for rejecting my application. Thanks to HP's rejection I was eligible to sit for other companies i.e. for BHEL in this case and I got in. All my friends who ask me for a party for cracking BHEL. I tell them, " I will give you two and not just one party,one for making it to BHEL and second for getting rejected from HP.
Universe works in mysterious ways.
Friday 27 February, 2009
A visit to the Global Pagoda
Global Pagoda... when I heard it for the first time I thought it was PAKODA, well who wouldn't. I am so used to eating pakoda at home and the J that it did cloud my hearing. Well jokes apart. So what exactly is it ...?
It is a stupa, a really really huge stupa built as a symbol of peace and harmony. Though its origins lie in Buddhism the present day pagoda is not a religious symbol. It is a place where they conduct a week long meditation course called vipassana. The details of the pagoda and the course can be obtained from the site http://globalpagoda.org/
Friday 30 January, 2009
Sometimes it’s good to just listen…
As one more company played cruel jokes on the eager lads from my college it lead to an uproar among my hostel. Me and some of my friends tried to liberate our minds and souls with our usual source of attaining peace, the usual IB was there to our rescue. As the night set in and hostel became quieter, the decibels rising from rav’s room grew more and more intense. Almost everything was discussed from jobs to recessions and from girl friends to family and even the fate of India was being decided in a 10 by 15 room filled in smoke and mist.
I sat there taking in as much as I can, listening to various view points. We had the constant commentary of bihari, the sudden uproars of rav, the exceedingly surprising yet witty remarks by eNVy, the random theories by dot as to how he will die at age of forty40. Amidst as this commotion and meeting of great mind I (budhha) was there sinking in all the info, presumably trying to analyze what was going on. Trying to figure out what people really were trying to say. How much of the sound was because of booze and how much was from the hearts.
I didn’t reach any conclusion. I don’t think I wanted to reach to one. But sometimes it feels right to just listen. You can always find a pedestal to stand on and speaks but you will never get a bunch a people who are speaking their guts out with complete honesty and yes with some prejudice of their own. My lack of participation was taken by rejection by some. But rest assured I had a good time listening.
I owe it to em !!!
I sat there taking in as much as I can, listening to various view points. We had the constant commentary of bihari, the sudden uproars of rav, the exceedingly surprising yet witty remarks by eNVy, the random theories by dot as to how he will die at age of forty40. Amidst as this commotion and meeting of great mind I (budhha) was there sinking in all the info, presumably trying to analyze what was going on. Trying to figure out what people really were trying to say. How much of the sound was because of booze and how much was from the hearts.
I didn’t reach any conclusion. I don’t think I wanted to reach to one. But sometimes it feels right to just listen. You can always find a pedestal to stand on and speaks but you will never get a bunch a people who are speaking their guts out with complete honesty and yes with some prejudice of their own. My lack of participation was taken by rejection by some. But rest assured I had a good time listening.
I owe it to em !!!
Tuesday 6 January, 2009
PS mates speak
Anjana Speaks
The word PSII filled me with hope, anxiety and frustration. Hope because it instilled a new responsibility making me feel all important. Anxiety in anticipating the kind of projects and work environment. And finally frustration, because it reminded me the painful truth that I was in my final year of utopia, and it is time for me to think about some remote term named future.
I eagerly bored my eyes into the allotment list to identify my PS mates. This is a customary ritual at college, since people have to spend the next six months with the ‘allotted ones’. To my distress I saw two names staring back at me which indicated that both were guys. So my whole plan of getting roomies was doomed. Little did I know then that the next six months would be one of the best times of my life.
I already knew one of them since he had been my workshop lab mate. But I was totally clueless about the other. I was in for a surprise as Sid bloke was a combo of fun + sarcasm + fundooness + mischief. Then again there is always this reticent period when you try to guess the wavelength of the other person. And it was indeed a weird and wonderful familiarity to find out that bloke matched mine as well as RKP’s (the other guy) wavelength.
So there we were just the three of us left to the mercy of our mentors, HR and Prof .It was this familiar mood of getting accustomed to the alien world (work environment) that brought us three closer. Sid bloke was the blabber mouth among the three of us. He used to drone on and on hence there was never this dull moment throughout the PS.
And I have to make a special mention about Sid bloke’s sarcasm which always reminds me of Chandler (And he looks the part too- all chubby and adorable). After this comment Sid must be in seventh heaven so I kindly ask him to step down to earth. And then again he always has you rolling with laughter with his antics.
I would be totally failing in my duty if I forgot to mention his Philosophies of life. You just Name it and bloke will already have a philosophy ready in his mind regarding that. And one word of warning, he is totally contagious in this issue and soon you can find yourself trying to conjure up a philosophy for everything in life
I have had some great times at my PS. The most memorable experience was the one on my treat at Brigade Road. I still wish it could have lasted forever. So this is an ode to the places where we have had the greatest enjoyment, ‘ The Parking lot’, ‘Dominoes’, ‘Sweet Chariot’, ‘Millers Road’, ‘Infinity tea where we almost had tea’, ‘CCD’, ‘Indian Coffee house’ and the list goes on. And most of all I miss my PS mates. A special thanks to PS for giving me two wonderful friends.
Best friends are the siblings that God forgot to give us
Soon to be appended is RKP Speaks
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