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Grow Up

In this world of grownups and childs, I find it very difficult to place myself in either of the categories.I am teasing and irritating and I often have been a victim of child like jealousies and stupidities. But as soon as I decide to put myself into the category of a child my whole other form starts flashing in front of me.

I like to take control of the things going on in my life. I like to take responsibilities for my failures, handle my problems myself. I like to be independent. I dont even remember when I last went to my parents crying for some reason. Clearly, I am not mature enough, but I am also not a child. I guess that will be the norm of my life. I ll never grow up although I grow up everyday.

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frustration or something like that

Past two days have been a lot frustrating for me and so this is the safest method I could think of to ease the pressure. I am working on a project which is critical to a friend of mine and the adversary I am up against is our very own IITG network.

To put it in layman’s terms, I have a remote server on which files are supposed to be edited and I log onto it through my laptop in my room. And more often than rare when I perform an edit, the cursor stops blinking for 5 seconds and and it takes maybe 30 seconds to save the file, and add to it another 30 seconds to refresh the page on a web browser and see the results. You see, our lan is a time sharing network. Our laptops get bursts of time to send data, which get stored at the routers till the routers get bursts of time, to forward that data to another router, which again requires bursts of time to send that data to the remote server. And this bursts of time is based on some probabilities. And so I was a victim of heavy traffic congestion along with very screwed up odds in favour of me. I felt like I was playing a game. A game where I was being provided with bursts of time to finish off as much of code as possible before the cursor stopped blinking again.

There are an uncountable number of things that we desire in our lives. Some important, some might not be so important. Some we get, but for some we are not so lucky. But we must understand that each one of us wants the things to go in our own way. And I choose to believe that the guy above tries to take a maximal subset of all the wishes of all the souls on this earth. Considering the mathematics involved, its a monstrous amount of job, and obviously each one of us will never get satisfied. If I really like something, I can get crazy for it. But as for the end result is concerned, I just need to let it go. I even choose to believe that this guy above is recording my efforts somewhere, anywhere. Maybe its not true but believing so makes life a lot easier.

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Random Musings

So with this being the last sem, the end of placement mania, and with no motivation of doing anything, a thousand random thoughts surf through my mind each day. I would like to share a few of them.

I like the smell of cigarettes. And I dont know what is stopping me from taking a sip of that nicotine-filled-lungs-perforating smoke but I just dont smoke. I have nothing against smoking. I have even thought of starting it many-a-times, but there is something that stops me at the right moment. I have even experimented once, but that too coudnt lure me into addiction. I guess thats good for me.

Patience is a virtue that fascinates me the most. The image which pops up in my mind when I hear this word is that of a tiger hunting. It waits hidden in the bushes waiting for the right time to give that killing chase. “Behind the enemy gates”, is a movie I love, for it depicts the complexities of being a sniper, which requires endless patience in its job prerequisites. I want to do something in my life which involves a lots of patience and go-for-the-kill at the opportune time, so that whenever I look back, I would see myself as the tiger in the image which I see.

Sometimes we meet some people who leave an everlasting impression on us even though we might not remember their names or faces. Like there was a rickshaw-wala in gurgaon who brought me in time to the metro station as he promised and was not ready to take the extra money which I was giving him.

I never like to speak about myself, but if I like you, you can never bore me of your endless chatterings. My friends understand that and accept the fact unquestioningly, so if you have a problem with it, screw you. 😛

I usually put sticky notes on my wall to remember the things I have to do. Last sem there were a half a dozen sticky notes, like placements, gre, BTP, this assignment, that submission, ion. But this sem I have just got one, ION, and that too is about to be ripped off thanks to shobhan. 😦

I love that last shop in khoka, the one that sells awesome pakore and tea.

I am not lazy, its just that I am not interested.

This post is getting big, so I am stopping here.

I am posting this blog just so that when I look back at it, I could remember how much time I had to kill in these days. 😀

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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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I Know I m Still in IITG When

1. The Undeterable Singers: There goes the cacophony, “Aye khuda blah, blah, blah”. No its not Rahat Fateh Ali Khan I am cursing, and believe me after listening to all those self-proclaimed singers of my hostel, he is a god to me. I put on my headphones to escape the daily attrocities I suffer. There are room singers, there are bathroom singers, there are lobby singers and even the mess-walas are no less than singers. I am sure the day all of them start singing together, all the dogs of the IIT will gather in kapili howling.

2. The Blaring Vuvuzela: Aah! How can one forget it. Just when you start believing that god has finally started blessing you and batakh’s vuvuzela has been stolen, BAAAAAA, there it goes, and tears come gushing into your eyes. I admire the person who named him batakh for his foresight, for the sound of his vuvuzela is no different from that of a real duck, although to match the intensity the duck has to be as big as my hostel itself. 😀

3. The Khattebaazon ke Khatte: “Person 1: Yar ek khatta suna. Person 2: Khatta”. If you think thats bad, think again. If you still think thats bad, then you should leave this place immediately and never come back. There is a whole hierarchy of khattebaazs. There are khatta kings of individual lobbies, then there are khatta kings of each floor, and then finally there is just one khatta king of the whole hostel, and we all know who he is, The Pirate, Aint he? You are gossiping with your friends, the discussion is typical, bad mess food, girls, bad profs, girls, bad movie, girls, good movie, something which has xxx or naughty in its name, 😉 and suddenly as if someone has silently passed a “dhussi”, (I hope you know what it means, both the meaning of dhussi(else google is god) and what it means when someone does so in the middle of that serious discussion), a khatta is dropped in between the discussion. I have got nothing more to explain, we all know how we feel. 🙂

4. The Infinitely Looped Songs: while(1){ “And I’m so lonely, blah, blah blah”;}, hope thats not too technical. 😀 I know there are broken hearted people all around. I can imagine the reason too, but it breaks my heart when the same portion of magnetic media gets chafed again and again and again, (infact i should write while(1){ “again”;}, again sorry for technicality.) I mean common, why are you dumping the other portions of your magnetic disk like your girlfriend dumped you, are they so bad, I know they are not as charming as this portion, but they are still portions, they too might have feelings. And ya, I love that song too, but not to an extent where I would run it in an infinite loop.

5. The IIT of Snake Charmers: 50 years back, India was considered a land of snake charmers. 50 years since then, The Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati,(heavy name, isnt it?), is considered as the IIT of snake charmers. There are snake catchers everywhere, some catch the small slimy ones, some catch the big poisonous ones,(disclaimer:Trust at your own risk. :D). I think its the only IIT where if someone says, “There is a cobra!”, people will bring in their cameras and swarm around it like the journalists do in the Peepali Live movie. I pity the snake!

I was thinking of writing about earthquakes too, ya those naughty vibrations which dont let me finish my dreams, but I think they have long forsaken this place. I miss them. 😦

P.S.: This article is not to offend anyone, infact these are the memories to be cherished forever. 🙂

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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 Lost Mango

My eyes were set on it. The mango at the top of the tree. It seemed so ripe, so sweet. People told me I couldn’t climb that height and I should choose the lower ones. People warned me that it might even be rotten. I even heard someone saying that if I somehow manage to climb so high, as soon as I try to hold it, it would just fall down and I would loose it.

Nonetheless, I had to give a try. I managed to climb the height. I reached the top of the tree. And as I tried to touch my prize, I lost it, for it went crashing into the ground. I was shattered. People said it was just a mango and I could always get another one. But I knew it was not just that, just a fruit, it was something more. It was something my heart was set on. It was my desire. And it pained because with it went away a piece of my heart.

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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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And So We Fall In Love…Again!

“How could I not notice you for the past few years? You are so beautiful, so flawless. The innocence in your smile, the stupidity in your actions, the hair groomed or all messed up, all adds to your elegance. When I look at your face, the whole world dissolves and what remains is just you. Oh wait, why is everything dissolving? why are you dissolving?….

Now I am on a horse, whoa! You are standing on a hill covered with green grass waving at me. I ride faster and faster and finally reach you. I lean down, put my right hand around your waist, lift you a bit and kiss you. I can see a tiny drop of tear at the right corner of your right eye. With the thumb of my left hand, I wipe off your tear.You smile at me, and that reminds me how much I love you. Now I say, “I …. hey… why is everything shaking ?“”

“Sanmukh uthja saale, earthquake aa raha hai”.

“Oh damn this earthquake, now I will never find out how I would have proposed her. Another love story gone in drain..”