musings

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A Solitary Walk

I needed a perfect start for this post but after two hours of mulling over it, I gave up. I succumbed to my spontaneous ideas and went on to a campus walk with a cup of coffee. I had left my mobile in my room and so was very happy to be cut out off the grid for a while, however short it maybe.

When I looked at the night sky I remembered my childhood days. My locality was in the outskirts of the town and so on a clear night, the sky used to be filled with stars. I used to sit in the garden with my hand caressing my dog and my eyes watching the sky. It was like a big portrait to me. A black and white one. I would take a deep breath and feel so tranquil. But here in our campus, I could see nothing but the moon and there was no feeling of tranquility. I attributed the reason to the orange halogen lamps. I hate them and so my loitering got an aim, I needed to find a spot with white soothing lights.

Brain is a wonderful creation and I left mine to wander aimlessly. And within a moment I was overwhelmed by the infinite number of random thoughts which were streaming in from every corner of my mind. And there began the first introspection of the walk. I got struck by a thought. The thought which considered each of the thoughts as threads and my brain as a big multiprocessor system. To be frank, this thought made me sad. Computer Science is a pretty fascinating field and I would love to be called a legendary Computer Engineer someday, but seeing computer stuffs everywhere is not a very soothing thought for me. Its just that there develops a feeling of hollowness, a fear that now I would never be able to appreciate the real beauty in the world as I would be spinning endlessly in the zeros and ones of the computer as my computer does while I am typing this.

I have this very bad habit of throwing the trash only in the dustbins and so the last sip of the coffee brought me out of the introspection. Now I had to carry the empty cup till I could find a dustbin. And so I took this distraction as an opportunity to change the topic of my thoughts. I started pondering over what I had been reading lately. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. I believe one is never too old to read it. And then there was this wonderful world which was served to me by Salman Rushdie in his book Midnight’s Children. I am fortunate that a lot many of my friends blog as it fills me with lots of refreshing ideas. Moreover when I read their blogs, I feel that the author is speaking directly to me. And now started my second introspection of the night. I started comparing my writing with the writings of some people whose blogs I admire. And it was not pretty. I feel I rush through in my writings. There is no soothing feeling in my blogs which I found in some others I read recently. Its been a year blogging and there is no sign of improvement. But I think I should be patient. Lets wait and see, maybe I will start writing the way I desire.

Now this time what brought me out of my thoughts was the second lamp in front of the lecture halls. People claim that some designer guys have implanted a sensor somewhere inside the lamp so that it switches on whenever a person passes by. But I would like to dismiss the claims as I observed it from behind the library and not a single soul passed by the lamp, but still the lamp was switching on and off in definite intervals. Believe me guys, its periodic and no fancy sensor is attached to it. And I would like to apologize to the environment club guys for I forgot to switch off the tube light when I went on this walk.

Sometimes I just dont understand myself.

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Fighting A Lost Battle

There are uncountable battles which I have lost. And there are as many which I have won. But not until the results were out that I could enjoy the sweetness of victory or the bitterness of defeat. But this one is different, a lot different.

For an optimist, the words goals and deadlines are divine in nature. They keep him on his toes, they are like checkpoints to be cleared in the journey of life, and without them his life would be just a stretch of a long road with no bumps and no turns making his journey unbearably monotonous. Whatever the result may be, never in his journey does he think that he would miss the goal, shoot off the deadline.

There are some battles in life, or maybe a very few of them, where you know for sure that defeat in inevitable, conditions favor the adversary and victory is just a fool’s hope. You are too tired, not because your muscles lack strength, not because you are exasperated of those infinitely many challenges thrusted upon you, but because you don’t have any motivation to keep you going. But still you wont quit, because you believe in miracles, a faint voice in some dark corner of your heart assures you of victory, and this voice however weak it might be, becomes the basis of your faith although everything around you is announcing your defeat in its own shrieky voice. You know that when the reality descends, it will slap you so hard that you will think a hundred times before committing to any further challenges. But that’s the beauty of an optimist, you still go on.

So I am ready to surge ahead with just a handful of soldiers, against the unsurmountable enemy. Instead of fear I feel serene, tranquil. There is nothing I can do except for fighting so hard, that my efforts are remembered forever. I have got just one chance to show what I have got, either I resign to my fears and let my feelings, my spirits plunge deep into the abyss, let them be lost into the oblivion or I muster enough courage and fight in such a graceful manner that my feelings and spirits cast an everlasting impression. For me there is no option to quit. And who knows, maybe the angels bless me and the miracle does happen.

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The ‘He’

He is in a deep confusion, a self-guilt so to say. He thinks he doesnt care about anybody around him. He tends to lose contact with his friends over time and loses them. He thinks he is too egoistic, too proud to say that he cares. He used to be a free, carefree soul until a wave of self-consciousness hit him and hit him hard. Now he analyses each of his actions to make sure he hasn’t hurt someone. He fears a lot.

He is a kind of perfectionist. He likes to do things flawlessly or doesnt do them at all. He promises only when he is sure of delivering the promise made. He hesitates before taking a responsibility for he fears whether he would be able to do it perfectly. When things doesnt go as planned, he blames himself, loses his confidence in himself.

I wonder maybe thats the whole problem, the idea of things being perfect. Maybe he is not confident enough to say that he cares and so he doesnt. Maybe he loses touch with the friends because he wants to use his energy to hold on to the ones he has around him. Maybe he should understand that life is not something to be taken seriously and there is nothing called “The Perfect”. Maybe he should just believe in himself that when the time comes, he will do the right thing.

Its the only thing I can do, wonder.

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The Joy of a Letter

Once in two-three days, against all hopes, I go to the reception to check whether miraculously there might be some letter lying there addressed to me. And without failure, there doesnt exist any. An invisible sigh comes from within my heart and I go back to my daily chores.

I still remember the joy of receiving a letter. Since I came into my senses, this is the longest I have stayed at one place. After each transfer, I used to send letters to my friends. The most beautiful moments were when I used to come home from school and find a letter addressed to me from my friends. But eventually the tradition used to fade away.

Now the things have changed a lot. We have mails, social networking sites, chat clients, and what not to stay connected even with the friends we barely spoke to. Compose->type mail->send, thats all we need to stay in contact. And the worst part is, you dont even need to remember birthdays, or anniversaries. They even have e-greeting cards to be sent. I just hope that the process is not so automated that it sends the e-card without you even knowing it. It is all a by-product of capitalism, the idea of mass production. Quantity rules over quality.

What we forget is, the more time and effort we spend on something, the more we get attached to it. The letters carry a personal identity of the writer with them, which is lost in the zeros and ones of the computers. Feelings can never be transferred over the internet, and without feelings all forms of communication are just worthless. They are just a formality.

Nowadays even books are being digitised. I wonder why anyone buys such books. You have to strain your eyes to read them. You cannot smell the scent of the freshly opened book. You cannot see the pages turn yellow when the book gets old. And you will never find some flower or the feather of peacock inside the pages, which someone might have kept inside for you.

We are becoming increasingly impatient. We dont want to enjoy the journey, we need to be at the destination. We prefer a 2 hour flight to a 24-hour train journey. We like to watch a movie on the computer and finish it off soon, instead of going to the theater.

I once had a dream. I was in a world similar to the Axiom spaceship of the movie WALL-E. Everything was computerized. People dint even touch or see each other. They had their computer screen for all communication. I was so scared. In such a world, somehow a girl put her head on my chest, her head touching my chin. I felt a shock through my body and woke up with my heart beating fast.

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Truth Silenced

A week ago, the whole of my facebook wall was painted with patriotism. There were profile pics with Indian Flags, many patriotic songs were posted, and I saw people liking pages like India, and some others with that name in it. And now, barely a week has passed but it seems like it has been ages. There is nothing abnormal in it, nor is it something to be ashamed of. We dont need to be reminded everytime that we are Indians, twice a year is more than enough, and it makes me overwhelmingly happy to get a glance of this patriotism twice a year.

The only thing that concerns me is that what happens to this patriotism? Where does the energy go?Is this energy only enough to post things on the wall and listen to patriotic songs? I have a feeling that these national holidays are like alcohol. You drink it, you get high, you speak your mind out, and then the next day you forget everything. Even alcohols have their hangovers, which these days fail to manifest into us.

Its easy to lecture people, especially youths like us, about the importance of standing for our nation. They very vaguely ask us to do something for our country. They ask us to fight against corruption. They ask us to follow our ethics, speak truth and become a good citizen. They ask us to go into politics and clean up the mess the politicians have created. They even tell us how to do those things, but they forget to give us a very important lesson.

The lesson is: How to survive?

Evil prevails because the truth is silenced. Either by the lies of the evils, or by the silence of the good ones. I see a girl being eve-teased by some boys, and as it is not one of those bollywood movies, if I say something, I risk being beaten by those three boys. The auto-wala is over-charging me, what do I do? Should I call the police? These auto walas have their own union, which pays in lacs to the police monthly, so do you think police would help me? I am travelling with a waiting-list ticket, with say WL-1, now should I give bribe to the TTE to secure a berth? Because if I dont do so, some other person will give, and irrespective of whether he/she has a ticket or not, he/she would get that berth.

These are the simplest cases of everyday life. We are here dealing with the players at the lowest level of the pyramid of evil. Guess what happens when we try to challenge someone at a higher level. There is no reason and I am not optimistic enough to expect that the case would be better than the likes of Satyendra Dubey or Shanmughan Manjunath. Its easy to die when you know that 21 canons will be fired to salute you on your deathbed to acknowledge your sacrifice for the nation, as compared to when you know that although you would be doing something for your country, your death will be treated no better than the deaths of those 1,50,000 other who died on the same day.

I dont have enough courage to stand alone in this kurukshetra, I need someone to hold onto, someone to support me, someone to save me when I am in trouble.

I would like you to have a look at these sites:

http://india.5thpillar.org/

http://ipaidabribe.com/

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I Can’t See

Life was going carefree until someone slammed me with a brutal truth about my country. 400 million poor live in India. That means every third person is poor. That hurt my patrotism and stole my sleep. So I woke up in the morning and did some investigation of my own.

So I wake up and prepare to go to the office. While leaving the house, I run into the landlady:
“My landlady cannot be poor, she has a big house in this posh area.”
Then I go to a shop to get some tea and snacks:
“There is no way the shopkeeper can be poor, I mean look at the shop and look at the crowd.”
Then I pick up an auto-rickshaw to the bus station:
“This auto-wala, can he be poor. Nah, he cannot, he has a mobile of his own. Oh btw, Its against the rules to talk on phone while driving!”
Then I catch a bus:
“Can this bus driver be poor? No, I dont think so, he is a government servent, government wouldn’t pay anyone below poverty line.”
I see some slums while travelling in the bus:
“So here are the poor, I finally see them. Oh no, they can’t be poor, they have satellite TVs. How can they be poor if they can afford them?”
And finally I reach into my office:
“Well, well, this place is in par with the first world standards, no one here in his wildest dreams can be poor.”
After office, I reach home and go to a restaurant:
“Can this waiter be poor?No he cannot, consider the crowd here, and the tip each one them pays, he can earn so much apart from his regular salary”
And so I go to sleep with a satisfaction:
“Ah, so they were just trying to fool. See its not so easy to fool me.”

Wish, it was true!!!

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So Finally The Better Arrives

Lifes a roller-coaster ride. When I look at the past few months, I cant help but smile. Even in my most imaginative dreams I coudnt have thought of wat all happened in these past four months. And so finally the better has arrived. Now I ll spend my summers in the AC rooms of bangalore(hopefully :D) coding. Have fun with all my friends whose summers are destined in the same city.I can even get a free cook for myself, if his office is not very far from mine. 😉 Its better than Germany I suppose where I would have been the only one in the University, and ofcourse a lot better than hyderabad(2 months without linux :O).

Life is irrational. Nothing follows a logical sequence. Its all about crazyness and weird decisions. Somehow interviewing till 2 in the night, they dropped the plan of taking anyone, although I was quite sure to get through after the interviews. Somehow the cutoff for germany increased to a level higher than I could have afforded. Somehow without giving a thought I chose this company for interview which wound up everything in a single day and let out the results while the other one hasnt even started off with its. Somehow I dint plan to go home from Kanpur, or Id have missed my interview.

So I am happy again. Lifes beautiful again. Lets see what all life has to offer. Now I have something else to worry about. I have a bangalorite whom I have to enlighten about the streets of bangalore :P.

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Failure is not that bad

Life is not a bed of roses, neither is it fair. I had my own moments of victory, I had my own moments of defeat. Victories used to fill me up with a fresh wave of confidence, while the defeats used to suck it all up. The cycle used to go on until recently.

Surprisingly and paradoxically, the last few defeats have had a completely different effect on me. Eventually I gained confidence through them instead of losing it. Being asked for my password to app on my behalf, getting calls which were to make sure that I was fine, receiving messages from half-expected persons, nullified the effects of defeat. I laughed at myself for being so stupid.

“dont worry, lag jayegi intern. And I believe something better is waiting for u. :)”

The last two lines of this message struck me. The last one made me smile for I imagined the smile on the sender’s face and the second last one led me into thinking. My whole life had been marked by last moment decision changes mostly which were not under my control. And everytime, I thanked god for these decisive moment decision changes for they have always proved correct. The courses which I took at the decisive points dint even used to be in the inventory list. I admit that I have a very poor foresight. I dont want to decide where will I be 15 years from now, because even at the end of 14th year I wont be so sure about it. I believe life is not just a set of completely independent co-incidences, but each event in life carries some significance associated with it. And maybe this one has its own share of significance too.

Now I ve started believing that something better is waiting for me. I just have to prove myself by working even harder. I have to increase my level of excellence for the one on which I am standing now is not enough, as has been proved repeatedly. Now I dont fear failures, for I know I have people to catch me if I fall. 🙂

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I Dont Care

No idea about you but I believe that these three words in the title when spoken in the same order imply just the opposite of what they literally mean. And maybe they have a greater effect than the negative counterpart: “I care”.”I dont care” means I do care, its just that I am trying to be rude because you hurt me sometimes before which I can still feel. Although my heart is screaming within, that please try to understand how much I care, but maybe its my ego which is stopping me from giving a voice to my heart.

She(it might even be a he) is the one you love. You care for her and want her to reciprocate. Statistically its not even possible for a relationship to hold on. There are a million reasons for things to fall apart, but theres just one reason to hold on. In your case that one reason fails.Maths triumphs. You can see the sly and wicked smile on its face saying, “I told you, the probability of success is negligible”.Your broken.

The problem doesnt end here, its just the beginning. You come to realise that the universe has played a wicked game. The statistically impossible happenned and you fell for the gal who is your class-mate. So now each day you have to enter the class room with a plastic smile which shouts “I dont care”. You try to avoid her eyes. You try to ignore her altogether. When shes somewhere in the vicnity, you try to hear what she might be talking and then suddenly you tell yourself that you are being stupid and you should just ignore her because you dont care for her.Her absence troubles you because you are desperate to know the reason but you feel handicapped for you can’t ask anyone. That very smile of her which used to make you giggle, now just pierces you heart. Or maybe it just touches your wounded heart which got numb due to the pain and so now you can feel a fresh burst of pain. You start being mean to her. You try to make an alternative world somewhere in your dreams where you are with a better gal than her, or where you somehow get this gal back into your life, whichever one you feel soothing and more conforming to your ego.

So the time goes by and it starts healing your heart.Although the wound never heals fully and sometimes it does hurt. But now you are addicted to the pain. You instead start liking it. You kind of feel a euphoria with this pain. You think you have forgotten her. But then one or two incidents happens which erases this misunderstanding. But now “You dont care” or you try to think so. And the life goes on. 🙂

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HUM TUM

So this post is about Hum and Tum, He and She, He by me and She by her(my co-author: ANKITA SHARMA)

He: OK. There was this girl with a beautymark on her left cheek in my class. She was calm but confident. When I first saw her, something happened in my chest. It was constricting, my heart was being pricked by something, my stomach was tingling. I thought, “forget it, it happens with every second pretty girl I see.” 😀
So the days went on and nothing spectacular happened until one day I crashed onto her(by mistake ofcourse :D,and not too hard). I said sorry, she smiled and said, its ok and she went on. But I? Well actually its hard to explain, her lean body and the intensity of crash was not enough to do any physical damage to any of us but it did crash my mental framework as if it got crushed by a truck. The cupid’s arrow struck me and I had fallen, fallen for her. The time stood still, my heart was banging. But for the natural instincts in me to say sorry, I couldn’t have said a single word. It was the first time I was feeling like this.
So now the world was a new and a better place to live in for me. I stole the glances of her face in the class, I tried to listen her voices when she was talking to her friends, and tried unsuccessfully to approach her many a times till I succeeded at last. So now we were in talking terms. Her voice had some mesmerizing element in it which I got addicted to. The glow on her face shadowed the whole world in the background. I used to try to think what she might be thinking about me. I used to think how I could make her happy. I was linked to her each face expression. Her smile made me smile, her frown made me sad, her neglect broke my heart. We became friends thats what she thought but for me she was my reason to smile. I looked for reasons to hear her voice called her for absurd queries, I messaged her all night. I knew I had fallen for her but I was so deep in trouble I never realized.Every expression of her made me fall for her even more. Before I knew I was crazy about her and everything she said. One fine day in one of our conversations on one of her cute little expression of annoyance I let the three most dangerous words slip out of my mouth. She was furious and that was the time I realized I lost her. I apologized but she denied to talk to me. I felt helpless, I lost her…perhaps forever and my heart ached to hear her voice. I couldn’t sleep she stopped taking my calls. I asked her friends to convey my apologies but she had turned to ice and my life had changed for she was not a part of it. I cursed myself for being so stupid to tell my true feelings. and so days and months passed and I couldn’t acknowledge anything or anyone except her. But life is after all not so unfair and one fine day she approached me to leave the past behind and be friends again. I had never forgotten her and after a lot of apprehensions again I proposed to her.

She: So He finally proposes to me.I wouldn’t say I expected him to propose me neither did I wanted to get involved. I tried too hard not to say a yes to his proposal but some people acquire an indispensable place in our life and the heart denies to let them go for the care and the fondness they show and it gets impossible for the brain to reason with the heart. And after lot of days of denying and not accepting here I say a YES. I still wouldn’t say its love I like him ya I like him. He is really sweet, always taking care of me, I can talk and talk to him for hours he is never bored of what I say no matter how irrelevant my thoughts and acts are they always seem cute damn I REALLY LIKE HIM. and so days pass on..and the endless talk continues. He has won over me. I dont feel complete anymore without him and yes I know, I know I LOVE HIM.Well its been two years with him and with a few disagreements I am very happy to have him in my life and blessed be all those circumstances which got us together and I truly madly deeply LOVE HIM. In two years a lot of things hv changed we dont take long strolls for he always has a prior commitment either with friends or his books I am not complaining but I miss the guy I fell in love with I miss him, I am surprised to know how I embarrass him easily and quite often now. We have been fighting a lot and on trivial issues every now and then, my tears made him cry but strangely enough off late he has been the reason for lot of them. He claims we have  grown up and need to be more responsible but I fail to justify with his excuses to not see me. He says LIFE has changed. I say it sure has for the one who is MY life has. I dont how and when so much has changed I always knew life would not always be rosy but I had a stronger faith in our love. I knew in my heart we would face every struggle and come through the tough times though with few scars but nevertheless in love with each other.ALAS! I was wrong so was my heart in believing that HE would be the one who would hold my hand all my life and be there forever and ever.

Today it will be a year since he asked me to part ways for he is not in love with me, for I am too obsessive and he thinks I have changed. I didnt try to explain him anything I didn’t shed a tear but my heart sank the moment I saw his eyes for I could not find any love for me no matter how hard I tried. I knew it was over for him, and as for me he never asked what I wanted how much I wanted to hold on to him. HE had decided about the situation I won’t call it a relation anymore. HE had to move on. Its been a year since I saw him last in the same coffee shop we had come for our 1st date and many more. I still come here often alone just to sit and relive all the moments together.I dont hate him for not loving me. I hate myself for still loving him.YES HE changed my life from the day he proposed me to this date. I hv not stopped thinking about him and I doubt if I would ever..

and dis the story which resides in every girls life chapter and a HE always stays though locked up in the little broken piece of her heart..!!

THE END..

As a footnote: It must be obvious that this is fiction, as I never crashed into a gal UNINTENTIONALLY. ;). And for her part she’s having a wonderful life with her love. 🙂

As another footnote: Tats the reason I want to stay away from love. 🙂