Taking a step...

Taking a step is the most important thing towards achieving something you want or overcoming a fear. However big, however small.

BSNL tutorial

Rainbow range of colors in the background
Yellow sun, using a rainbow umbrella to shield against blue drops of rain, holding a red phone and working on a purple laptop
In another corner, a gleeful & glamorous Deepika is trying to attract attention, but is hardly a competition with her monochromatic dress and décor
The headlines in 5 different font & color combinations, in vernacular language have just about 1 word per line which is actually a vernacular word, rest are all english words
In all there are about 9 font combinations, each highlighted in their own unique way through size, color, callout, highlight, exclamations and what not

Now if that doesn’t catch the customer’s attention, any clues what can?!

;)

October 2nd

This Gandhi Jayanti, for the first time means something to me apart from a holiday. While my reading of 'Freedom at Midnight' is coming to an end, it has given me an insight into the life of the man whom i henceforth was neutral about. To be truthful, i always related much more to the ideologies and methodologies of revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh and the brave Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. To Gandhi, i did associate some negative thoughts like shrewdness, manipulation, pretention and double face. For most people, this shouldn't be an unusual revelation since such comments are often heard. But i realize there is more depth and resolve in the ideology and actions of Gandhi than we were ever willing to explore. It seems the actual Gandhi is too idealistic for us to believe in the context of our world and so we internalize the more believable allegations, while associating the 2 words - truth and non-violence in a very shallow and hollow manner.

Evoked by this book and also the repeated references given to the film Gandhi in our communications or strategy lectures, i did watch the film too. As a child, the film was a boring obstruction to us being able to enjoy anything on Doordarshan, the only known TV channels to us, on our 2nd October holiday. But finally, it made sense to me.. to use a cliche.. better late than never. Though i now realize it is impossible to capture the life of this man in a 3-hour movie, nevertheless, for a film it is very well made and intruiging indeed. I wonder why nobody has thought of making a tele-series on Gandhi. I am sure it can be made interesting enough.

However, i have to end this by referring to a quote i found while browsing for  sayings by and about Gandhi on wikiquote:

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back -- but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.

Can't re-invent the wheel :(

It was our 'Corporate Environment Management and Carbon Markets' class, i would say early morning... Just to 'set the context', this class is like an extension of the documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth'. Btw, if you haven't seen this documentary, i strongly recommend it.
So while some mention of renewable energy, small dams being built on waterfalls and oppsoition toward dams etc... i had a thought.

Why don't we use wave energy for generation of electricity? I wrote it down and asked my friend. She didn't react much. I wrote again... i think i have got a brilliant idea, i will be a millionare now :)
She said, lets google and see after the class. Now as i have already stressed, google is really insensitive. And so it happened... the idea is already out there!!

See for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power
http://money.cnn.com/2006/12/14/magazines/fsb/nextlittlething_wave_power.fsb/index.htm http://www.wavegen.co.uk/
However, i do think this should be pursued seriously.

With the UPA Govt now gaining majority minus the Left, we could hope for action on clean energy mechanism in the form of nuclear energy sometime in future(At last, they'll do something!!). However, its merits remain debatable to many, so alternate options have to be explored for sustainable development(Yes!! This is an after effect of writing my mid-terms... forgive the use of any cliche jargon).

Life is quite simple for you.. I'll ask you how it looks, you have to say its good

So, here's the look of my blog before and after undergoing a cosmetic transformation:

In case you want to explore options for your blog.. visit freeskins.blogspot.com

Thanks to Iyer for inspiration for this change... though its a lazy inspiration, nothing close to his meticulously customized blog. Will sometime soon get atleast the side bars back there. But somehow i don't yet feel like adding any content here... thats why posting this in spite of it being an obvious change. No i don't feel like writing anything about the over-crowded place i am living in right now. Maybe sometime later.. gotta spend 7 more weeks here.

We are a moody bunch of people

I suspect my closest friends here to be an extremely moody set of people. I also suspect, that they suspect me to top the list of mood swingers.

Sometimes we are sad without reason, sometimes we are happy without reason. In the worst of our times together(read term 1 and term 2) we were laughing in the midst of seniors and committees making us feel like idiots, profs screwing us with projects, assignments and quizzes, and companies walking over our dreams of getting through them. We sailed through not missing on our long chats specially in exams, singing songs and mocking at one another's incompetencies to sing and remember lyrics. Sporadic walks, star gazing and head banging at insti parties. Whatever... we stole time to do anything we could manage to do in this schedule.

What is amusing is that what happens when we give in to all the pressure and actually start spending more time on our acads, work or any serious activity. For sure, within a week of this 'undesirable' behaviour, we will have wierd look on our faces and status messages to complement the same. On second thoughts, it wudn't actually be a fallout of working hard, it could happen at any random moment. Often this is a virus that infects the others too and all of us would soon be roaming around with long faces the reason for which would be unknown to most. A sample list of Maggu and Maggi's messages at random times is like:

'It ended exactly where it started from...'
'Third in a row'
'Sometimes... its best saying nothing...'
'Les petits mots ont tellement la signification...(small words hold significant meaning)'

If you read them alone, they are almost.. i shudn't say it, but comic- given the seriousness they try to put in a simple digital status. Or at least i hope so, else they are killing me for posting this. The problem is that they want to shout out these statements on the little space they get on our screens, but at the same time conceal what they are for. Is the intent merely to grab attention and keep people guessing to the extent of frustrating them? Yes, i was kinda bugged and still don't understand what is the matter with stating without being ready to explain.

Now starts the fun part. People start to guess the reason for the wierd gtalk status messages.. and considering the possibilities of their contribution to it. For example, my dear friend Maggi always has the most enigmatic messages and when asked the reason for them, she would always quip.. 'generally... for nothing/no one specific'. We sure buy that, don't we? Recently she let 'arrogant personified' be the resting message on our screens. Hmmm... well, i had not been spending much time with my musketeer friends and had few arguments in the little time that i did spend. So i was about 80% sure that i could the the object of that arrogance impression. Theek hai bhai, kya kar sakte hain. Shrug.

I left only 20% doubt that it could be some other story. But after some chance discussion with others around, it turned out that there were too many people waiting to grab their claim to fame for arrogance. Aditi thought that because she had just won another amazing competition, non-intuitively she might have done something to deserve that status. She said 'abhi to maine orkut mein pic bhi nahin lagayi thi trophy ke saath, maine socha rehne deti hun ab'. Gaurav too chipped in saying, since he had got through INDEX, he thought maybe in his ecstasy, he had done something that annoyed Maggi. Wah!! so we were all in our individual wonder worlds speculating whether we had been too arrogant lately.

Obviously, as always, we still don't know who the message was for, but i stopped paying attention to them and uselessly blaming me or anyone else for that matter for them. Now they are a source of.. YouKnowWhat ;)

Scratching to code and update about my now complacent nalaayaki

Here goes the pseudo code for an average performer's happy life at a b-school...

Keep(Expectations, VERY_LOW);
if(results==LOW)

I = Happy;
Life = Chill;

Declare(%s, 'A relaxed five point someone at last :)');


P.S: I would appreciate if my competent coder friends could refrain from comments on misuse/wrong use/no use of syntax.

sometimes do you...

want to speak less.. and be understood more
those days of unsaid passion that passed by
leave me with little words to reminisce thy
but just the presence that obviated it all
makes me shy from these ghosts of lies

FIVE POINT SOMEONE

Not an ounce an good as it sounds...

From now on...
My introduction
My signature
...pondering again... why the hell?...

good for nothing
five point someone

Faux Pass 2

Scene: BIO exam morning, 11th September, 2007

Background info:
According to recent estimates, I take about 20 mins to get ready every morning.
Exam starts: 9.30, reporting time: 9.15, PGP rule: if you reach after 9.25, you can enter 30 mins after the time that you reach.

Situation: Even though this course(usually called a Globe course, though you don’t get any marks for any kind of globe in its exam) has a nice fat book, not particularly uninteresting or difficult, half of which had to be mugged for each exam, we had not read a single page of it from the portion coming in this exam. I downloaded the slides for the chapters after the exam the previous day, and the only target was to go through those slides somehow.. We managed to do most of it by 3 the previous night, and decided to leave the rest and sleep.


Got up the next morning and wanted to go through the parts we had most obviously forgotten.. decided not to take a bath for lack of time, and abundance of cleanliness ;) so went on mugging again.. now Mattu goes to take a bath, and when she comes, I decide to follow suite, not hearing her bickering.. so she leaves at 9.15 to have her breakfast.. shouting on me to come very soon.. I try my best and reach the examination hall at.. yes, you guessed it.. 9.25!!

The door was shut on our face, I use ‘our’ because, I had company!!
4 of us were left stranded outside the examination hall for the next 30 mins J
Hows that for time management lessons at IIML :)

Its interesting what each one of us did in those 30 mins. First 5 mins naturally we were trying to get the door open… peeping and sneering inside from the windows at our comfortably-in classmates until their exam started… and then pleading people in charge to let us go in.. trying stupid tactics…

Profs coming and going were horrified to see us.. one of the student is repeating the year and had to listen to ‘Not you!!’ kind of remarks, one is a PCom guy and had red eyes as usual for lack of sleep.. and I just stood there hoping no one reads my T-shirt, which ironically had ‘Greatness is in ME’ printed on it.

Then gave up, and had a nice time waiting outside.. the nice old PGPO guy got chairs arranged for us.. and don’t think I am being euphemistic when I say we had a nice time.. I would suggest you seriously consider trying it out… because I can’t quite put into words how it feels when all your batchmates are taking an exam and you are not... :) One of the student outside was keen on using that time to study more… maybe he thought that way he could recollect and write faster in the exam… he actually went downstairs and got his book, and tried to look busy with it for the rest of the time. Two of us were just grinning and looking here and there when the third one(the ‘not you!!’ guy) suggested that he and the other guy(PCom) go downstairs for.. err.. a smoke :P

What better way to spend the time? I at one point, considered catching some sleep, but didn’t because there was always someone coming and going.. and we couldn’t look as if we were utilizing this time to do what all we couldn’t otherwise do whether in exam time or otherwise… but, we did actually do that… just relax…

And soon the 30 mins ended, we stood outside the classroom at 9.52 and waited for the clock to hit 9.55… and then… the inevitable.. what else?
Wrote the globe exam.

Faux Pass 1

Scene: Agr! Bus!ness Conference, Day 2, 12th August, 2007

Situation: As a volunteer, I was co-ordinating one of the sessions, which essentially meant I had to change ppts and hand the projector’s remote control to the guest speakers. And being my usual self, I thought, a natural responsibility was to answer anyone and everyone’s queries. So while I was sitting there, this gentleman approached me, kept his hands on the table and leaned over… lets call him DS

DS: Hi.. There are a couple of students here from Bikaner, and they want to meet you all… just a small interaction
(With this one line, I assumed he was the prof accompanying those students and was trying to be intrusive and show his students what students here were like)

Me: Ok Sir, you mean the abm students here?
DS: Yes.. you are an abm student here, right?
Me: Yes sir..
DS: So, ask some of your classmates and arrange an informal meeting, they just want to know what all you people study, what you do etc.
Me: Sure sir, I’ll ask my seniors and classmates and let you know…

(Now, being extremely formal and suddenly feeling the need to be extra courteous, I used the most clichéd of ways to ask his name…)

Me: Sir, your good name please?
DS: huh??
Me: Umm.. sir, so how shall I inform you… your contact no… you staying at the guest house?
DS: Well.. my name is Dev! S!ngh… You don’t have to inform me, you can tell Mr. S Kum@r, your abm head, he’ll arrange the meeting…

WOOOW!
^$&#%*#&@!

I held my forehead in disgust over myself.. and made no attempt to hide it.. For god sake, that’s The Director of the Institute, and I am NOT supposed to forget HIS face after listening to him for an hour during induction, even if that was on a sleepy morning, from the last bench of the biggest hall here(leave alone the other sources where I should have and must have seen his pictures).

Me: I am extremely sorry sir.
DS: Never mind, that’s fine. Just arrange that meeting..
Me: Sure sir

Ain’t I certified in performing blunders after this?

WHY THE HELL???

There are two pertinent problems with me which make me question why the hell am I in a B-school? Now this question HAS TO sound idiotic coming from a person who took CAT thrice and still managed not to get through and finally took an arranged marriage like deal to reach the gates of what is called Hell.

Yes… the problems:

Bad Memory
Bad sense of time

Ever since school days, I knew that I was bad at remembering names of people who meant nothing except recipient of some award or inventors of some thing which deserved a mention in our GK books. With people I met even once, I would remember their names forever… That was then, and I believe even till college.

But that kind of changed. I can’t remember names now unless I personally know anyone. It doesn’t matter if I’ve had personal interactions with the person.
Could it be that I’ve saturated the number of faces and names I can remember? After attending 2 schools(discounting the separate nursery & prep schools), 1.5 months of a science college, 4 years of B.Tech, 2 years of work, and now coming for a PG course, I have filled my memory to the point that I can accommodate more names and faces only when it is absolutely unavoidable or extremely outshining. There was a time I remembered phone numbers of everyone I knew and almost never had to look up the phone book for it… I hate to think about it but is it because I am growing(as I like to put it) wiser?

The two biggest faux pass I’ve done here as a result of these two problems deserve separate posts altogether… and so they shall get.

Meanwhile, there are good ways too in which I’ve changed

My closest friends have felt this over past years that I wouldn’t share a problem with them… and its true I wouldn’t. They’d ask… tu kuchh bataati kyun nahi hai?? Itna to bolti hun… would be my reply. But there comes the gap… Saying and telling… even small, insignificant things… I just dropped the habit somewhere after distances set me away from people I loved to share everything with, without the slightest of hesitation… S!m!, P@rul, Sh!kul, P@nz!… Talking on phone or meeting occasionally can not and does not substitute for what is there when you live together.

Sharma ji once said to me when I was truly in a bad state and still won’t open my mouth… not with them… not with family… Shweta, we all love you and you know it, but the problem is that you only love yourself… you just won’t tell us.

I wondered then how did he know?? Well, somehow he does… that’s a different story… Sharma ji can read minds… if he asks a question, you don’t even speak a word… but he’ll know the answer.

My thoughts were that why should I bore or bother people with trivial details or my small problems? How does it matter to them and how would it change things?

Call it the ‘Musketeers’ effect... this has taken a 360 degree turn.
I can’t hide anything even if I want to, and with them, I don’t want to, don’t need to.
I can’t explain the way this changed and how, or may be I can, but I would rather not. Coz sometimes saying things spoils them… I think they get the message..

Besides this, the culture of this place is also quite different… Right since induction, whenever you get into a group interaction with seniors/peers… they would ask you to introduce yourself such that you have to start by telling things you normally don’t go around telling the world about. Obviously, people don’t always like such forceful intrusions. But when you start with such things, you are forced to drop your inhibitions… and concentrate on here and now than keep guarding your past.

Its only once we speak out one thought do we stop cultivating it over and over and move on to the next.

Glad I found such friends where people find none… I miss my gold here.. but none the less, happy that they were once with me, and happier that I’ve found more to treasure!

Whats with g00gle??

Why does it have to give undesired search results to my blog when there are people ready to pay to get their links displayed?

The first time i realized this was when a search for my (now former) organizations's name returned the first search result as this blog. What crap!! Shouldn't the best search engine rather point to the co's website? So.. i scrapped the entire post. And since then, was careful not to use such names in my posts. Else, insert characters in between in case i had to.

The second... when my gmail id returns the link to this place.

Third... I did not edit my name in the signature of the mail i posted in the last blog entry... and there it goes... link on 2nd page when you search for my name.

Web 2.0 denies people their privacy or the freedom to write freely. Which means i have to be careful about what i write. Which means, i'd rather not write at all, as if i was writing everyday until now.

Now i understand when those articles in employment newspapers ask you to be careful of your net presence coz people, even employers can judge you from it... and i'm anyway not too great as far as first impressions are concerned.

But what the heck!! I've decided. I'll start posting stuff again... and since its not always what i'd like everyone around to read, use my own technique. I hope i am being reasonable in assuming that it is a way to avoid those search results pointing to you, and not underestimating the power of g00gle.

Slightly insensitive... highly critical...

Wow!! these are the adjectives i got for myself from a person i 'perhaps' know best here and who 'perhaps' knows me best here... Hell as this is called. Not like i was being blasted with negativities; it came packed with lost, mature and 'you present yourself nicely' feedbacks...

Right. I agree thats what i have been since i have arrived here. What surprises me is that someone noticed. And what hits me is that it becomes a generalization, which i am forced to believe by everything i had in my life before coming to this city that it is not, though it could very well have been a specialized case at some points of time with not a lot of poeple.

Too many things coming to my mind today that i am actually writing about it.

I remember the first time i went out with the females of my course, ...hardly with any intention to see the upcoming malls of the city... rather hoping to know my classmates for 2 years better..., and we got down at a certain place and were walking down to reach a certain place and this girl was so lost, she almost met with an accident with a speeding bike while crossing the road before i called her out and as i like to believe... saved her life. Was she scared! You bet! She almost had tears trickle down her cheeks and i am sure was imagining what the consequences would have been had she actually collided with the bike until we reached the certain place and people pacified her. I had no problems with her colliding with the bike or with her lack of road sense, but the way she was scared... and the way i was mean... I told this(other) friend of mine, 'there are better ways of committing suicide... aren't there?' I am not sure how she perceived me at that moment... she just looked confused... she later asked me, you were really annoyed with her na... annoyed?? ha ha... i thought i was being comic... :)!!$%^^%

I don't know if this is making any sense and if you get the situation...
But for anyone whose reading this and abusing me... yes, i HAVE become kind of insensitive... In spite of knowing that it would have been scary shit had i(or anyone else) just saved myself from meeting an accident... i did not sympathise with the girl. Whats wrong with me? Where's the bonhomie?

Having spent a month here now, and still not caring much about people the way i used to earlier... Is it that i need more time... or that i've become too closed.... or that everyone's like that in a B-school... individualistic, as one of our profs told us... Or that its just this bunch of people i don't connect with too well... and am myself generalizing... Or that i have changed... and for the worse...

I wonder how it would have been had i met all these people 2 years back...

if i had just graduated the way most of them have and came here... little do they realize how much they care about things, how seriously they take everything and everyone, how they constantly make conscious efforts to be good to people and project a good image of themselves... and do sincerely believe that they are nice, well-cultured people and have done a great job by getting to this place... and carry attitudes shouting out the same... and also make conscious efforts to stay happy, no matter how vicariously or on how trivial an affair... its important for them to smile at their friends ALL the while... and to smug their shoulders when something serious comes up, like giving importance to any complex issue was the biggest crime people could commit unless it has certain direct devastating consequences.

I understand you all would like me to recollect all those nice quotes which ask you to smile to the world and it smiles back to you... and believe me, i am trying... but it gets on to me sometimes... sometimes... though things have started making more sense now than they used to earlier... With more people around and serious things to do... there is lesser need and no time to care about these trivialities... but i really don't want myself to turn into a misanthropist... i hope i am exaggerating and that not everyone around has the same adjectives ready for me... but i fear the opposite... or maybe fear not even having this fear... comfortably insensitive.

4th july 2007


That was then... 4th July... and i thought i'd never post it on this blog... Noone would take it well. And this would be one of those privileged posts which never get published.

However, something happened today that forced me to get back to this... another adjective... someone here says he is scared of me... what do is say?? $%^&@^^% Does that indicate that my misanthropic self is getting the better of me and the consequences are even uglier and oozing out? Though in this 'i'nteresting case, there exist alternate reasons, however strange they may be. But this reminds me of another of my classmates describing me as having a teacher-like attitude... that was way back.. during one of the intros with some of the seniors... But the doubt remains... ye ho kya raha hai yahan? koi samjhaayega? Either these creatures are wierd or i am becoming a wierd creature. And not to forget a scary one. Do i have to live with this kind of inconsonance of thought around?

My last day at *H*C*L*

The mail i wrote...

Hi All,

I've been delaying this since too long and still don't know how to write the customary good-bye mail. As you might already know or must have guessed by now, this mail is to inform you that I am leaving *H*C*L* Technologies to pursue a few goals in my life.

It's been 2 years that I joined *H*C*L* as a fresher and I guess it's natural to be nostalgic when I think back about the time gone by. It's been my pleasure to work with 3 different teams and in the process learn from all of you, my seniors and my peers. And I'm grateful to you all for all the learning I gathered by staying and working with you.

I also have to appreciate the patience and goodwill of my colleagues because I feel it often was the case that I made mistakes and blunders and they helped me out. Hence I have realized a lot of strengths and weaknesses in myself after staying here and have also enjoyed a lot of good times, laughter, lunches, tea breaks, chain mails, jokes and what not, the memories of which make it difficult to leave this place.

I love to write mails and can go on and on, but I would just stop here and say that I love to receive mails too. And for any future mails, since this id would no longer be accessible, please use my personal id : ---------

Also, please fill in the attached xl sheet and mail back to me so that I can keep myself updated with your contact details. Also, any feedback, good or bad, is welcome from your side and so I have added a column for that too in the xl sheet, don't forget to fill that up.

Take care and keep writing…

Thanks and regards,

Shwet@ Agr@w@l

[30th May 2007]

Yes, its true... life seems pleasenter in retrospect... I always weighed my options before taking alternate routes to leave this place. Doing something else vis-a-vis staying here... but i seldom realized the emotional and habitual attachment i had developed with it over this time period of 2 years....

The last day spent here makes me remember everything even more fondly.

Did the last minute handing over... Then had lunch... which Aachin insisted on calling the last lunch as if i was going for crucification after that... Then took a lot of time to write the simple mail above. And then took a lot of time figuring out who all i need to send it to... didn't want to miss anyone, so it ended up being a loooong list...

And this bunch of office colleagues, whom i better call friends now... gathered around my cubicle and asked for a treat. But wait, this was different... unlike most requests for treats that i had seen in office, this one was genuine... I thought they would ask for it for five minutes and then disappear...(not my fault... it was habitual... happened all the time...believe me or not) but... demands... talks... laughters... 5 mins... demands again... jokes... bye byes... 10 mins... demands yet again... ha ha... am i shameless or what?!!! 15 mins... they just didn't go... they actually wanted it no matter what... Thats the beauty.... they were friends now, not just colleagues... not the kinds who didn't give a damn whether someone stays or not. And so we had it... not a proper party like the one i had already given to my team mates but a very small and makeshift one.. as small as it could get... very bad on my part, but very sweet on theirs... coz what followed was not just samosas n cold drink n the pastries(makeshift cake) they got for me, but also a lot of chit chat... I describing them in one and only word and they doing the same for me...

Here are some pics....


Since it was already evening and time for office buses to leave... we ended the short n sweet party and i returned to my seat to read and collect the replies i had got... which were unexplainable... would i sound immodest if i say overwhelming?

Well, the day was almost over and i had not done half the things i had to... So, started taking my data and mails backup etc... thought i'd leave at 7... no 7.30... no 8... no... this day wasn't finishing.. or did i not want it to end... finally started leaving... and why! didn't we want pics of the team on my last day... lolz... so there we were, forgetting that it has been a long day and we need to go home... clicking pics yet again in office... hushhhh.... don't tell anyone... cams not allowed inside.
Here you get to see them... my lovely n lively team in what we used to call the 'M*S*N lounge'



The K3G retake and the right one with my two sons... i was supposedly their office mom...








Then took some in the conference room... where we had looooong meetings and con calls...
this one is turning out to be my favorite...

And this one with Upasana's calligraphy...

Would end this here, i know its abrupt... and late too, like most posts in my web log. This post was meant to be posted in the beginning of last month... However, today seems to be a good day to post it, coz even though it was what seems ages back that i last went to office, it is today that i am expecting i would be finally relieved from the company... how and why that happened is another long and bugging story...

[Ha ha ha... wondering about the gaps??? I couldn't place all the pics since i don't have a lappie as of now... would do so when possible]

Programmed feet

Driving back from office yesterday, i had this very very random idea of trying to apply the breaks with my left foot instead of right... Its kinda scary! Try it if you are curious but ONLY WHEN NO OTHER VEHICLE IS AROUND YOU. Seems like the feet are programmed by now, left one to be harsh and right one to be very soft on the controls, and it can be disasterous to try using the middle one with the other foot. I am SO thankful that no one was behind me, or it could have been my life's last drive... crazy me got this random idea on the Akshardham red light!! May be i'm exaggerating and it happens this way only with me(yes, i kinda tried it again, but this time with no other vehicle in sight and much more carefully), but this makes me wonder how people are able to shift from right hand drive vehicles to left hand drive vehicles. May be i'm doing another crazy thing posting this here, so I'd better repeat this, DON'T TRY THIS WITH ANYONE AROUND.

Forced Nationalism?

Yesterday i was watching NDTV and the ongoing debate on We The people was about whether Vande Mataram should be made mandatory. One gentleman put forth the view that nationalism should not be forced, and children should be made to sing it only if the feeling of patriotism comes from within. Very well, but the thought that came to me was what about forced religion?

If we can support the ideology that nationalism should not be forced, what kind of discretion are we given to choose our religion? Why a child is necessarily labeled as a Hindu or Muslim or Sikh or Christian as soon as he or she is born? Why can't we let them be 18 and then decide which religion they wish to follow, if at all? Did Ram or Allah or Christ decree that every child inherit the religion of their parents? May be so, but may we ask, why? I am a Hindu because my parents are Hindu, they are Hindu, because their parents were Hindu, and so it has been for no one knows how many generations. Was everyone in the hierarchy an ardent Hindu? Am i a true Hindu? What do i do in my capacity as a Hindu?

When we have the freedom of thought, of choosing the kind of education and profession we want, the kind of people we wish to meet, why do we have to follow the religion that our forefathers chose? Do we listen to the same music that they listened to? Are our daily routines the same as theirs? Often, when a child asks his parents why a particular thing is being done the way it is being done, he gets the answer, 'shaastron mein aisa likha hai' or 'Humara mazhab ye kehta hai'. Well, were those texts written in today’s context? And have we decided on our own to follow that text? Sure enough, these texts are very rich and have wonderful teachings, lessons, examples and beliefs. And I believe a religion is never about any god, but about the set of beliefs it preaches, the gods merely symbolize and exemplify a set of values, and all these originate in certain texts. But today, majority of the people who are said to belong to a particular religion have not even read these texts. Had it not been for Ramanand Sagar and others who recreated the magic of holy epics vividly on screen, our knowledge about them would have been even more limited. That we still call ourselves belonging to that religion is not just a misnomer, but a blasphemy to the religion itself.

Sure enough one can argue that one has the freedom to convert if they are inclined towards another religion, but few take that path. Doesn't it still mean belittling the religion you were born in? And what if a person wants to be just religion less? Why is it necessary to have a religion at all? The way we are asked, 'do you read newspapers?' before being asked, 'which newspaper do you read?' may be we should ask a person, 'do you follow any religion?' before asking them 'which religion do you belong to?'

My main point remains that if it is a matter of choice to love the land where we were born, whose culture we adopt, whose institutions we study in; a matter of choice to respect the country from which we give and take so much, why is it not a matter of choice to belong to a particular religion, when people are fighting over it day in and day out, and the greatest contribution we have seen it make to our country is communal tension?

Does anyone remember a very old Hindi movie song... 'Na Hindu banega na musalmaan banega, insaan ki aulaad hai insaan banega'... I wish we imbibe this feeling in the young minds of India.

My Birthdate

Your Birthdate: August 14

You work well with others. That is, you're good at getting them to do work for you. It's true that you get by on your charm. But so what? You make people happy! You're dynamic, clever, and funny. And people like to have you around. But you're so restless, they better not expect you to stay around for long. Your strength: Your superstar charisma Your weakness: Commitment means nothing to you Your power color: Fuchsia Your power symbol: Diamond Your power month: May

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Is this true?? I don't like the weakness part here... Rest is fine, does someone agree? Or is this crap?

Where have i been?

I have been off blogging here for quite sometime, but not quite off blogging completely... We thought of a very good use of blogs, and started posting sessions of Norman Lewis, Word Power Made Easy, on a blog. So myself, Manas, Priyank, Gaurav and Mickey took turns to make sessions of our own after reading NL's sessions and posting them here : gyaanis.blogspot.com

Anyone interested in vocab, or dreadful of the voluminous red book, do go through this blog, and give me your comments. We have actually managed to post our own sessions for every chapter of NL, in spite of our daily office routines, lack of net connection at Priyank and Gaurav's place and shortage of electricity at Mickey's place, not to mention the periodic spouts of wonder of the point of doing it all.

Just one of the interesting things we came across while doing this was finding out about NL Read about him here. Besides WPME, he has written numerous books, and though i was doubtful in the beginning that it really is the same person, i concluded that it has to be so, when i found this link that had all his works. Some of you may still disagree and contest that the person who wrote WPME and the one who wikipedia mentions might be different. If so, and if you come across any evidence to back the same, please let me know.

Tanu's b'day

I should have posted this ages ago... Tanu's b'day was on 18th June and we got a nice little treat in Noida. And when we set out to buy her a gift, or may be i should say she set out to make us buy a gift, coz we've become real misers and shameless people when it comes to this part of b'days, this is what we ended up doing...

Tanu and I, posing as mannequins, and Rajat checking out the price of Tanu's stole... Lolz

Now i have to post Kammy's pic too, else he might just be mad at me... No, this is not any earthen hut, and tanu did not cook for us in copper vessels, this was at the earthen restaurant where we had lunch... yeah, its urbane these days to go n dine at restaurants which recreate a rural world for you...