I howl... !!

So, I was just looking through the Indian websites for summer projects, and got a sickening feeling while reading the eligibility criteria. Marks so n so n yada yada yada. And I was thinking to myself, why couldn’t they ask for a written essay and hold interview and review the student’s profile. Oh yea, that requires too much of hard work and Indians are bound never to such a thing, its not inbuilt in their character you see. And that tracked me back to my life in science in the Indian system. Maybe its worth writing a book, to talk about it, but surely there’ll be a billion cries about how good the Indian education system is and undergraduate studies are best (believe me, there are people who tell me that each day and all my reply to them is a questioning stare with a sarcastic ‘yes’). Maybe I am stuck up in a haphazard mess, of wrong time, wrong place, wrong people and everything wrong but that sets me into thinking that how can everything be so wrong and that leads me to thinking “Am I the one who is wrong all this while ?? ” …. I wonder, I seriously wonder about my existence and its purpose and wonder if people ever wondered about it too or are they just other creatures and machines bound to their everyday routine, bereft of creative thinking. I think I am surrounded by too many people belonging to the latter category in a place where there should have been none. When you first enter the doors of college, of a step further into the big world, believing to be entering into an adventurous ride, brimming with curiosity and pumped with enthusiasm, you don’t really expect yourself to slammed by dusted, directionless roads. First, the “Indian education system” fucks up your marks, then the cut-off marks rather slit your existence by a variation of 0.1% . Then you finally get into a college, you hope to make  friends and maybe the initial letdown wouldn’t have hurt so much, if at all you could carry yourself throughout along with your war of weapons of your desired subject. And seek for other warriors too. And initially, there are those who pose themselves to be such warriors but aren’t any. And even if u gave them the weapons, they would discard it away. No, I don’t have any grudges against them, but only a question as to why did they even opt to fight a battle when they didn’t want to fight. Let alone these warriors, the teachers, who could turn the tables upside down, inspire the warriors to pick their swords, turn out to be drained souls, bereft of joys of exploration and understanding. Studies were never about the chalk and blackboard, but they were a way of imparting knowledge of the universe we know till now, chalk was only a mean to sketch what you saw, when you couldn’t find anything in real that could explain what you tried to say. Yet, people got stuck to this fascination of chalks and laziness, where everything could be imagined even though they existed in real, the generator with the shaft couldn’t be identified or measured in scale, cause what they had known was only a rectangular plate between two blocks named as north and south pole of magnets about the size of half of a page of the answer sheet. And even when you want to discuss those engineering marvels you saw on nat geo last night, you’d only be confronted with questioning stares and blank faces. Let alone the voyage into space, the realities that surrounded them were just a manifestation of the unreal for them. It’s never just about the numbers you see, or the infinite derivations you rot, its something way deeper, of why it actually came and its significance. Fine, you rot, you score, you are the best machine that can memorize and write, but what about tomorrow, what would it be, when you are to discover, when you are to write by yourself, when are to think for thou self, oh yea, who bothers, cause you are more concerned about that mba degree you are going to get and the big fat salary that lures you from distant. Have you even ever like ever thought of what you are doing and why ? What does living actually mean to you ? Is it just to feed your greed and wants, and comply to the orders and wants of another homo sapien, or do you actually have a stand in this world ? And an individual identity… Does living only comprise of everyday booze and directionless days… haven’t you opened your eyes yet, or are your eyes smudged by the cataract of ignorance ? … Or Maybe I’m just tired… tired listening to cry babies, those crying for marks and those crying about how they have been pushed into science… if you never liked it, why take it, you had a choice, yes, the Indian system sucks, but that no way poses you to take the decision you’d want.. Sadly, even the meaning of science has been distorted into shreds of geek stories and the tag of a “sciency” cried by the ones who aren’t. And not just about science, I speak for those in humanities and commerce too, when how disgusted feelings arouse to see ever so increasing numbers of people who don’t know what they are doing, and claim to have a subject even when they don’t. thus, before you speak, know what you want to say, before you act, know what you are doing, and before you commit, know where you are heading to. But sometimes, I think my words go to deaf ears, and what I see, is something others just can’t, no matter how hard I try to explain, I’m afraid how many will really understand. Maybe my words would be misjudged as those of another cry-baby hating her life, and maybe my words would be just mocked as another weird cry. But, I howl, I howl in pain, I howl to the world out loud and tell them to stop and seek within.. I howl to find more companions in my mission to start the change, and it ain’t as though I just sit and howl, I’m digging my way into a deeper world of unexplored ventures and risked paths, cause I dare, I dare to dream admist the brackish fumes of ignorance and egoism. I dare to aspire beyond the barbered wires of rejections and forced failed attempts. I seek for a world, beyond today, I believe in a world of people who can truly see and hear words of one another, and appreciate the living in a cosmos, that never could have been ours....

Existence of God... and other things....

From the day we step into this world, we seek for dependence on parents, for they stand as our support, then we eventually grow, and our sphere of dependence (friends, family, relatives etc) also grows involuntarily. And in atleast a typical Hindu family, we sit in front of the deities join our hands and pray. What my question is, what is this prayer actually? Is it placing our insecurities about future in hands of someone supreme? Is it to ease the burden of responsibility we hold? Is to blindly follow a religion for it has been believed for centuries now? Or is it to tune down our ego that seems to pump bigger and bigger each moment? Everytime I hear people asking something or the other to god, but explain to me who is this god really? I do have respect for all elders and love for all, but does that inadvertently make me a God-follower, cause who is God? Someone you can’t see, but can feel? Well, that’s actually dark energy, you know… But really have we created some form ourselves on whom we can bundle up all our worries, insecurities and uncertainties? Why then is astrology so famous? Because we find it easier to blame someone else for things we did, politics is a wonderful example, also “Pechle Janam ka Raaz” series and God is always there to take in your blame rubbish, but somehow we lose one major part of ourselves, we lose our character that is the ability to own up responsibility responsibly. Why then Indians have such a big character-problem, well of course there are many reasons too, like over-population etc. But it’s just one of my theories you see. 

Well, I think if something happens, it just happens, things don’t go about the way you set your expectations, of course, you can do your best in order to achieve high probability of what you want, but what you want is not always what you get. And that’s the beauty, the uncertainties that make life such an exciting adventure: exciting, thrilling, ecstatic. But if you do pursue what you really want with utmost desire, your brain automatically starts to work in a similar process, chemicals I guess and alas! A eureka moment shall be on its way. It’s difficult to understand how the brain works, but surely introspection highlights our hindsight knowledge about things within us and around us. But really sometimes, things just happen in such a way, that we are left clueless why they should’ve happened, but after years or so, sometimes when we introspect we are just amazed by the beautiful pattern that was created, as though we were the ponds of a chess game and someone else was playing with us perfectly fine. 

Or maybe that’s just an extrapolation of my logic; to the wonderful things life gifts us each day. Sometimes; a bird’s rhythmic chirp, the cold blow of air swishing past your cheeks, drops of shower that tickle through your skin, an ant’s amusing behavior, the delicacy of petals that hang by a flower, peace in solidarity, flow of paint through the blank sheet, the cuteness of a little puppy, the weightlessness in deep waters, the sense of belonging when you’re surrounded by green woods, the carpet of flowers and leaves during autumn: well, all of these are just a small list of the infinite things that make you just happy, innocently happy, wonderfully happy, just plain happy which makes you smile, and laugh a little laugh involuntarily. Because sometimes you just feel, you’re a part of this beautiful cosmos, and you’re an entity of this cosmos; or maybe even when you’re not really thinking, it’s just an overwhelming feeling. Oh! Then comes the adrenalin rush: the excitement, the high: biking through steep slopes of a mountain, bungee-jumping, para-gliding, rafting through ice-cold ruffling waters, tackling the football past several defenders and scoring the crucial goal, excitement when you look up at the Hubble images of the cosmos or just plain exhilaration in understanding the mysteries of particle physics, or the feeling of skipping a heartbeat when you were talking to someone: now this too is a small list of many other things that make you feel on a high, excited and thrilled, I believe it’s mainly because of the large amount of uncertain factor that makes it special. So thus this human brain is certainly complicated, weirdly wired, incomprehensive, and interesting. And it prevents me from analyzing it further, rather confuses me as to what it is, how and why? 

All I’m left to say is, we are who we are, we do shape ourselves, and believe it or not but we do have an inbuilt consciousness, that helps us guide through difficult times, and I don’t see a reason as to why should we have to depend on someone else, we should be responsible enough to handle our responsibilities effectively. Well, if you ask me what are these responsibilities, then you should go ahead and ask yourself aka introspect, consciousness shall guide you, just keep that flame burning, principles stand strong, they shall be with you to the very end. The light, the flame is within you, don’t extinguish or ignore it. Carpe-diem!!! ^_^ 

Listen Up !

Okay…. So I’ve always wanted to address this issue but never really got the time or the right frame of mind to put it all down. It started with a joke about a women’s stupidity that my friend forwarded me. Yeah, it was a funny PJ, nothing to be serious about right. Yeah, but disturbingly, there was a pattern I noticed, sex->women, less intellectual->women, talk more + think less->women, guided by emotions-> women, shopping->women, the dependent lot->women; and it was disturbing because not all women are what they are tagged to be. There are tags we don’t want; I want you to notice me as an individual, and not be seen by the paradigm glasses you wear. I am frustrated by what I see -> insecure girls who poster themselves the way others want them to be, men whose brains are controlled by the lower half of their body, media that seems to go crazy if some woman went naked, posters, banners, rape, trafficking -> I want to scream out, shout-> STOP, PAUSE, PLEASE JUST STOP…. Listen to what I have to say … STOP destroying the image of women, it’s none of your business, to play with others’ lives, and if you do portray something, do know that the audience isn’t educated enough or sensitive enough to realize the borderline between art and porn. And filmmakers, please have men who dance at pub naked when u show it in the movies, (then you’ll know the kind of criticism you face)… because it is uncomfortable to sit in a movie hall with hundreds of eyes glued to the big screen girl moving around, and Prakash Jha, women are not meant to be somebody’s wives for the only purpose of producing kids. And I feel frustrated to know that those saas-bahu, women-playing-mean-tricks, man-of-the-house serials still exist!! Ding-dong, we live in the 21st century!! Next time, I don’t want to hear from you, she is so n so’s wife…. Excuse me, who is she? Yeah I know she happens to be his wife… but who is she? And parents, (though most of us have been lucky enough) but there still exist parents for whom, daughter is a property, that’s sold at a bargain-able or at times fixed price, moved from house to house, just another item on the list, STOP! Humans are humans are humans and not objects. Neither are they objects of sex. And women -> please be independent, work just like another man. There is no difference, we are homo-sapiens. Men are not ATMs; you owe yourself a living and nobody else! Women! If you can’t work hard, then don’t work cheap, in your hands lie the image of women that exist across the globe. Men! Stop! Stop staring at that girl; she’s not what you saw on HT-CITY, and goddamitt she’s an individual, a homo-sapien just like you, stop your sick mind, stop your sick jokes, stop laughing, it isn’t funny, you are distorting the true picture. Don’t stay in compliance saying,”That’s truth, it can’t be changed, and it’s how it has always been!!!”… SHUT UP! Your compliance makes things worse. Change is what we can do, change our attitude, speak up against things that disturb you, aware the ones around you… It’s high time, I deserve equal respect, I deserve my freedom, and I deserve to be observed as any other individual -> untagged.

Women! Men! Media! Friends! STOP AND INTROSPECT PLEASE… you are disturbing my sleep. 

"Excuse Me"

They told me to write on a "current" topic.

Well, I’ve got a hundred topics spinning in my head, rather I think “current” is a relative term. What may seem new today would get stale by the very next day. Each day we pop up with the most “interesting” news, incredibly happening only in India. Lets see, How about the politicians blaming the nuclear deal waste to have come from outside but silenced after realising that homeground capital was responsible. Or media frenzy over Shohaib-Sania, poor souls whose lips tired of putting up fake smiles. Or Tharoor walking off admist all confusion, leaving behind his trademark style of causing upheavals of quarrels in parliament, keying the disclosure of IPL politics. Or endlessly hoping that something constructive yet to be done by talks between India-Pakistan, that still remain photographed in Hand-shake. Or CRPF themselves providing ammunition to Maoists. Or the “Save Tiger” campaign just becoming a poster. Or the humdrum of politics that seems to be only concerned about power…

But I’ve got something to tell you, something that ought to be told, something that one shouldn't turn a blind eye to. No, its not a “breaking news” that talks about milk containing formalin or villagers attacked by a bear. Its something that goes unheard, unheeded, untold.

You can print the big eye-catching advertisements of tutors, coaching centers that conform you a ticket to the best college. You can print the names of the best colleges, measure it in terms of infrastructure quality, faculty and what not. (The truth is, it is measured by the difficulty level of entrance exam.) But what you fail to see is what lies behind these big words. Rather I shall say we, the society.

Did we ever see a child cry to his sleep wishing he won’t get up to face the cut-throat competition. Did we ever realise the immense pressure we mount upon a child. Did we ever give a second thought that asking a child’s marks is equivalent of mocking or are we busy placing ourselves on the totem pole. Did we ever seek the sensitivities within us that lie unexplored. Did we ever stop for a moment to think if our child was actually getting educated admist the maddening rush…

Every year, lakhs of students get caught up in this competition frenzy, and thousands of coaching centres start up their business, for them each student is nothing but a packet of money (about 2lakh p.a. is their fees). Now imagine the kind of money they earn with thousands herded in one stingy place, like sheep herded into a room tagged with an identification no.. And every year thousands of students get caught up in this maze. It doesn't seem far when nursery kids would be trained to clear IIT-JEE. (And equally willing parents will get their kid admitted). Deluded by the glory of college, you slog and wear yourself out to the extent that you become a machine, solving each question that’s given to you. (In the end, the machine that’s fastest wins).

Now tell me are you even looking for humans? Do you even want to cultivate young minds? It’s a plain and simple answer -> NO! Cause it doesn't matter what kind of a person you are, it doesn't bother to you if we are interested in a subject, it doesn't matter if we are good at art, music or literature. The only thing that matters to you is whether we can “SOLVE” the questions printed on the question paper, and in the process we get trapped in the riddle of insanity. Why is it that the best colleges (of the world) have an actual comprehensive test, while we get stuck up to solve some 3rd year B.Tech questions (when we are still in school) And amazingly a high percentage of people actually appreciate this system! Where toppers (in the eyes of society, cause by chance he managed to get most of the questions correct in comparison to others) thank their school for support (a.k.a absence from school) and parents! I should rather stay mum about that! People have got air about marks, rank, marks, rank, marks, rank and that's  all!?! Where are we heading to? Can someone please push the pause button? Cause people have no idea what they are doing or whats happening around them!!

I wish God himself would come and explain to these people, but I guess even he ain’t got so much patience… May all rest in peace (the unfortunate lie)… Amen… I rest my case…