Random Thoughts

FORM class was very boring today. the prof was explaining some very difficult topic, and there were only a few students who were trying to understand that. others had already given up. i hadn't slept the previous night and was trying my best to avoid sleep. but just when i was about to go into deep slumber, suddenly a boy in a corner of the class raised a doubt in his loud and clear voice.

what i noticed was not his arcane doubt and the prof's equally arcane answer, but the girl sitting with him. the whole institute knows that they like each other very much, and are pretty committed to the relationship. they both had a serene smile on their face. the smile that a boy has when he knows he has found a hidden treasure buried deep in the ground. all during the class the couple didn't speak a single word to each other, but it seemed to me as if they had never stopped talking. the mere fact that they were together had made any utterance of words superfluous. later on when the class was over and they walked out together, they had a confident grace in their body. like they both knew they had everything they had ever wanted and no force in the world could ever take it back from them.

I don't know why, but i had a very strange feeling at that time. it was what a small boy feels when he sees that his favourite toy has been put in a glass showcase in his home. it was what a little girl feels when she rushes out to her home after the first day of school to tell her mommy some new secrets that she has discovered, but finds after reaching there that mommy has left for shopping. it was what a young man feels on his birthday when he gets all kinds of wishes, but not a motherly scold for why he didn't take lunch that day. and it was what a man feels when all he wants in this world is to touch his beloved, to feel her, and the only thing he gets is the distant echo of her voice which is reaching him after travelling for 1000 miles and is constantly breaking down.

I felt sad, and alone.

today i started reading Ayn Rand's "Atlus Shrugged". it is her second most famous work (the most famous one being The Fountainhead), and the author herself has regarded the book as her magnum opus. the book also is quite thick, there are more than 850 pages in it.

Reading Ayn Rand is always a difficult exercise. after reading books like "how to read better and faster", preparing for CAT exams, and reading thousands of pages of course casemats in the past one year, my eyes have got used to scanning through the content of a page and knowing the relevant details as soon as possible. this technique is quite useful while reading fiction works of current maintstream authors like Michael Crichton (author of the famous book Jurassic Park) and John Grisham (blockbuster movie The Runaway Jury was made after his book). they give lots of irrelevant details in their books, there are many short stories which run parallel to the main one, and you have got to differentiate between them if you want to finish the book in reasonable time.

But you can't do that with Ayn Rand. using such a technique in her books will be like replacing the ferry in a zoo with a bullet train. of course you will finish the trip faster, but it is not the destination you are after. her stories move very slowly, and you always know what will happen at the end. the true pleasure lies in the small details, and in the graphic scenes of the seemingly irrelevant incidents. in this sense it is like having sex. or like raising children. or for that matter, like preparing for exams.

my friend had gone to Delhi for a few days and she returned today. she told me that she had gone to see her friend's father, who is in deep coma and is in ICU on life-support system. even the doctors have left all hope, and they are just waiting for the moment when the heartbeat stops.

this incident in itself is very painful, but the family's story is more heart wrenching. the person had a very distinguished woman as his wife, but she passed some years ago due to cancer. now he will be left by his two daughters and one son. 2 of them have just completed their studies, and the youngest one is still studying.

it is strange how much difference a 5-minute chat can make. ever since then i can't help but think about how painful it must be for the children to see their father die, and how painful it must be for them to realize that from now on, they will be left all alone in this world, with not even a crying shoulder by their side. but worse, how painful it must be for the dying father, who can see all his dreams about a bright future for his family shattered in front of his very eyes. and who knows, that it is all because of him.

i have lost my grandfather and my unmarried IIT-graduate uncle within a span of 6 years, and have seen my grandmother lose half of her weight and all of her charm due to cancer. but at least i am fortunate in the sense that i didn't watch them while they were going through those agonies. my grandfather died on the very next day he was diagonsed with cancer. my uncle had a slow and painful death, but it was while i was doing my engineering.

I have seen people die, and i have seen how lives of others never remain the same after that. we all are a little child at the seaside, who spends his/her entire life building and strengthening his/her sandhouse. he/she makes it bigger and better, hoping that when it is complete, he/she will have all the space to live with his/her loved ones, and no matter how strong adversities come, he/she will be able to protect them. but what happens when a tide comes to the shore and breakes his/her sandhouse? what happens after he/she sees that there is nothing left but only a scant vestige of what once used to be his/her world, and his/her life? he/she can make a different sandhouse, but it just won't be the same.

what will you do when all you hold so close to your heart starts to break down into pieces in front of your very eyes? and what will you do when one day you wake up and suddenly realize that the smile, the love, and the kindly face you had got so used to is there no more? and the biggest question is, even if you do decide to build a new sandhouse, who will you make it for?

3 days ago it was my birthday, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that so many people remembered to wish me, both in person and over internet. what made this year unique for me is that i even got a beautiful present, something which i hadn't got before on my earlier birthdays.

people wished several things for me, some of which were normal which anybody says, and some of which were personal which they had written especially for me. the one wish that struck me most was written by a friend of mine here, and it said

"Happy birthday D. I wish you that you surpass all the benchmarks you set for yourself."

this is one wish that I would like to ask not only on one birthday, and not even on all my remaining birthdays, but every day of my life. I wish that when i am lying on my deathbed, I should be able to say proudly to my grandchildren that I always set the highest benchmarks for myself, and always surpassed them. and in the process, i also changed the lives of the people i met, both in the personal and professional life. and i changed them for better. i always motivated them to reach beyond their limits, and was at their service when they needed that.

if i would be able to say that, i don't think i will have any regret about how my life ends or how early it ends. after all, as they say, it is not the years in your life, but life in your years that counts.

today i was having a chat with my friend and he told me a very interesting incident. he was talking to his friend a few days ago and somehow during the conversation my name cropped up. she had told at that time, and I remember the words accurately, "I think D (my dorm name here) has undergone a change. He looks very smart and raunchy these days." :)

now i don't know whether i should feel sorry or happy about that. i am feeling happy coz girls think I am sexy. but the problem is, the only girl for who i am putting such a major effort to look good and do good, is sitting 1000 miles away. and I know that she won't any interest in getting a good pic of mine and staring at it !!!

these are two quotes that i came across a few days ago -

1. the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.

2. There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love - the first fluttering of its silken wings, the first rising sound and breath of that wind which is so soon to sweep through the sould, to purify or to destroy - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

the first line reminds me of my friend's cousin, who is deaf and dumb. we are cribbing all during the 24 hours of our day thinking about our shortcomings. something which seems a luxury, becomes a necessity when our neighbour has it. life seems to be totally unfair when we look at what other people have, and most of the times we are sure that the God did show some misery when he had to allocate fortunes to us.

but do we ever care about what happens to those people who are not so lucky like us? and i am not talking only about handicapped people. we hate people who live in the slums all through their lives and can't afford to think beyond 2 days' wage. everday in the trains poor girls go through bogey to bogey wearing rags and hoping that some kind soul would show some mercy by putting a 1-ruppee coin in their hands, and people look at them with expressionless eyes, like they don't even exist. everyday there are children who die of malnutrition, and everyday thousands of rupees are wasted in parties by us.

the point that i am trying to make is, no matter how high we may rise in our professional career, we won't have any right to feel proud about it. because that achievement will be for our parents, who have gone through such hard times to give us everything that we ever wanted. An IIT-IIM guy is nothing in front of a guy who sits all day in an fmcg store, and tries to make a living for himself and for his family by honest means.

so we started on our return journey at around 9:15. and this time i realized that cyling also can make you tired. while i was riding i didn't feel any pain, but now my thighs were aching. thankfully there wasn't much pain in the back. we started slowly, partly because we were tired and also because we weren't under any time constraint. i was supposed to take part in a 3-hr game but had put up a post on the nb saying that i had some urgent work and so won't be able to come. :)

the pain continued to increase as i cycled. initially it was bearable, becuause i have become quite used to thigh pain after so many years of jogging. but the last 6 kms were really bad. the muscles had got stretched, and i was having a burning sensation. thankfully my partner was sympathetic and continued to cycle with me for the entire distance. i am sure he could have cycled much faster even then, had he wanted to. finally we reached campus at 10:15, full 3 hours after we had set off, and 1 hour later than our estimate. we had a hearty breakfast, and then went to sleep.

i must admit that for most of the part the journey was boring. it felt good to breathe fresh morning air and enjoy some lush greanery (which have cropped up along the roadside during monsoon season), but after a while it all began to look too familiar. frequently i used to get lost in my own thoughts, and used to come back to senses by the noise of screaming tyres of a truck. what was i thinking? well, many things come to your mind when you are idle, or the work is boring. most of the time my mind was with someone 1000 miles away and 4:30 hours behind, even though i knew my thinking about him/her wasn't going to make any difference. but i just couldn't help it.

on a funnier note, when i look back at my getting lost in my thoughts while riding a cycle on a highway, i can understand why people say that love can kill you. :)

today, after weeks of making weekend plans which always failed, today I was successful in going on the cycling trip. me and my friend woke up at 7:15 in the morning, and by 7:30 we were on the roads. the last night it had rained and till the morning the whole sky was covered with clouds, so there wasn't much temperature. though we were afraid that it might rain during our trip, we decided it was better to give it a try rather than wait for one more week.

we had planned to go to a step well which is some 15-16 kms away from Ahmedabad towards Gandhinagar. in total the trip was 32 kms long (actually a little more, if you consider that we had to move from our campus to the Ahmedabad - Gandhinagar highway) and my friend, who has done lots of cycling, estimated that it should take us around 2 hours.

the first half of the trip was good. i was somewhat wary of riding on the highway initially because i have had some not-so-nice experiences on Patna highway when i used to rise my scooter, but got comfortable after 30 minutes. the roads were wide, and there were no potholes, something so ubiquitous in patna that i think officials of patna transport corporation have adopted them as a substitute for speed-breakers.

after some 75 minutes we reached the step well. well, the underground well, which is some 10 metres below the surface, was exactly as romantic as i had thought. the water was dirty, and the place was too humid. the building had several floors, and the same design was adopted to build all of them. we spent only 10-15 minutes there and decided to return. while we were returning, we saw a group of 20-25 old men who had come to visit the place and the guide was animatedly talking to them, as if explaining what a great architectural marvel the building was. i remember the group only because some of them were wearing gandhi topi, something which you don't see very often these days.

i will write the remaining part in the next post.

a few days ago I found a very rare collection of U2 songs on my local area network. it contains some live versions of popular songs, and also some songs which have been unreleased. the unreleased songs are very old, they were written when Bono probably was still in his teens, and so they sound very different from their new songs. but though they are different, they are good. one song, "Don't say goodbye", is particularly melodic. whether i like it because the guitar rift is good or because i can identify myself with it these days, i don't know. what i know, and i am fully content knowing, is that i don't want this song to lose its meaning for me. i hope that i become the exception of my own quote - "Times change, people change, and nobody remains the same for ever."

It is said that one picture is equivalent to a thousand words. the picture below is about a small boy and a little girl....

how should somebody say goodbye to his/her friend? the question may seem simple. you just have to meet that person or call him/her, say some nice things about the future, tell him/her that you hope he/she will keep in touch, and then end the conversation.

but actually it isn't so simple as it seems, at least for men. you can't be emotional when you say goodbye, for you are afraid that your friend will feel sorry about leaving. you want that when your friend should start the journey, he/she should be happy, full of optimism, and bristling with energy. and you think, rightly so, that your sad face will fill your friend's heart with remorse and he/she will start losing the strength to fight adversities with courage even before facing them. in nutshell, you are afraid that your sadness will percolate to your friend's life also, even though it may happen later.

and anyway, you can't sound sorry because, as the name of an oscar-winning movie suggests, boys don't cry.

but you can't be happy either, especially if your friend is very close to you. you will have thousands of worries yourself about his/her future. you know your friend is smart and old enough to take care of herself, but you don't any option other than to lose your sleep thinking about her. you will be afraid that she will start to neglect her health if nobody is around to remind. she won't have anybody to talk to when she is feeling low and wants someone to comfort her. there won't be anybody who can advice her on what is wrong and what is right, so that she doesn't have to go through the same hard experience that you have gone through. there won't be anybody to give her a hug when she will do well, and there won't be anybody to scold her when she will commit some mistake. this world is so harsh, emotionally so cold, and so full of deceit that you are afraid she will lose her pristine innocence. she will lose the innocence which sets her apart from the rest of the world. she will lose the smile which seems to fill the whole world with its bright light. she will forget her laughter, which you love so much. but these, no matter how frightening they may seem, are not your biggest worries. your biggest nighmare is, that she will lose your memories.

How to say goodbye, then?

Here are some of the lines of the song "I am mine" by Pearl Jam --

----------
The ocean is full 'cause everyone is crying...
The full moon is looking for friends at hightide...
The sorrow grows bigger when sorrow's denied.....

-------------
And the meaning, slowly gets left behind....
And all the innocence is broken with lies....
For we're all different behind the eyes...

There are very few bands in the 90s which write songs with these intense lyrics (This song was written in 1991). Coldplay("yellow", "You only live twice") and Radiohead ("No surprises", "And true love waits") are the two that come to mind most prominently. U2 did have this intensity in its songs in the 80s ("with or without you", "Red hill mining town"), but slowly it has learnt to compromise in order to survive in the pop-&-rap era. Eminem definitely is raw, in the sense that it portrays emotions without altering them, but is too bold. there is no subtlety involved in Rap.

it seems my bride has really come with bad luck. ever since i have bought my bicycle, something always keeps happening and i have to postpone my trip to Gandhinagar. its gears got jammed on the very night i bought it, and i had to wait for 2 hours of rainfall and 7 days for the mechanic to come. the previous weekend i had really planned to go on the trip with my friend. we had planned that we will leave by 6 (in the morning, mind you) and return within 2 hours. now it does seem a very convenient schedule, if you don't know that we both have basically been converted into nocturnal animals by living 6 years of hostel life. our day starts with 5 in the evening and evening comes at 10. night "really" comes only at 4 in the morning, the time when other animals of the homo sapiens species (except some lucky ones like us, of course) wake up to a new day. so no wonder, we both kept sleeping on saturday and woke up only at 10 when the sun was shining with its full merciless strength.

we then decided to go on sunday morning, and this time we both decided that we both will sleep by 12 so that we could wake up at 6. but alas !!! again fate had planned something else for us. we had a daaru party in our dorm on that day with our fachchas. we had bought "Fuel", the premium version of Smirnoff, for this day. though it costs over 700 bucks a bottle, we somehow managed to get it for 550 bucks only. now vodka is something that I can't resist. i sincerely believe that there are only 2 things in life to die for: U2 and Smirnoff. so that day there was no question at all for me to refrain from that. more so, when we had bought it at a discount of more than 25%. my friend doesn't drink so much, but that day he also liked the new brand, and had some 3-4 pegs which usually is more than enough for him. finally we both went to sleep, but only at 4.

but i got the biggest shock when the next day, or rather after 2 hours, he came to room and woke me up. it was 6 in the morning, and he was there in full mood to go on the trip. i also was sober at that time, but wasn't active enough to ride for 30 kms. so i declined and went back to sleep. so, in effect, once again our weekend plain were unfulfilled.

a few days later i found that my friend is suffering with fever. why ? because he had actually went for cycling that day and cycled for 8-9 kms.

it may seem very trivial, no major incident. but think about it. when you have alcohol, it is there is ur liver for as much as 12 hours and there is no way you can do any intense physical activity even if you are completely sober. i myself have been running for 3 yrs now and even then i have difficulty in running if i had taken vodka the previous day. the cycling must have put a lot of strain on him. also, less sleep was another reason. though i am sure 1 yr of gruelling IIMA education has tought him how to live without sleep, but still lack of sleep is harmful.

so no wonder, he caught fever. now he is better, but still in no condition to ride a cycle. i don't think even on this weekend we will be able to go on the trip, but then, hope is the opium of life.....isn't it ?....

It was getting dark in the evening and she still hadn’t been able to sell a single pack of cigarettes. Usually she woke up early in the morning and started selling, since she used to sleep on the pavement and it was very difficult for her to shield her eyes from the bright sunlight when morning came. Today, however, she had slept a little extra, since she was not feeling well. Actually she hadn’t had anything to eat yesterday and so she was having pain in her abdomen. Not that it was any rare incident, however. She had gone quite used to this ever since her mother had died on a cold winter night. But Muniya didn’t like to think about that night. That was so frightening, with so many people just starting at her and her dead mother. She had more things to worry today. Her brother had been crying since morning as he also hadn’t got anything to eat since yesterday. Only now he had gone to sleep, either probably because his hunger had been satiated somehow, or he had gone too weak to cry. There was a small crowd in front of a large building which they called PVR, and she felt this might be her only chance to sell something and buy some food for both of them. With whatever strength was left of her, she lifted the big box on which she used to keep cigarette packs, left her brother sleeping on the ground, and moved towards the crowd.

Swati was very happy today. Her fiancé had just returned from US, and they both had come to PVR to buy the latest blockbuster movie of Amir Khan. She had wanted to get tickets for the show of 9 o’clock since it was very hot even at 6 in the evening in June. But the movie was a blockbuster, and all the tickets were booked. Even these tickets were arranged after she had paid twice the fair amount to a guy selling them in black market. The tickets were definitely expensive, and Swati was feeling a little guilty over them. But what the hell, she thought. Her fiancé was earning a handsome salary and definitely 500 more bucks in Indian rupees wouldn’t have mattered much to him. They were standing in the queue, and with nothing to do, she was idly chatting with him about what to do with the wedding gifts she would receive.

But their talk was interrupted when suddenly a small girl, with a big box in her hands, came out of nowhere and stood beside her fiancé, asking him to buy some cigarettes. He refused, for he had just bought a full pack few minutes ago. But that girl didn’t move, and just stood there as if she didn’t know where else to go. Finally he ignored her and turned to Swati to continue the talk he was having with her.

But Swati’s eyes were fixated on that little girl. Malnutrition was painfully obvious on her small face and petite body. Her dry lips were telling that she hadn’t had anything to eat, or drink, for a very long time. Not that she wasn’t cute, however. She would have looked very beautiful had her clothes been not so ragged and there was a little bit of oil in her hair, Swati thought. Suddenly Swati felt a very strong urge of buying the cigarettes, even though she didn’t smoke herself, so that the little girl would get some money. She thought of taking some money from her purse and giving that to the girl, but then thought that her fiancé may get annoyed and so decided against it.

And she never knew why, but suddenly at that very instant, a young guy flashed in her mind. She had met Tejas a few years ago while she used to work in Cannaught Place. He was tall, dark and had thin hands that she didn’t like. He wasn’t that smart, but he wasn’t bad, either. They used to share so many qualities that it used to amaze them at times. They both liked chocolate truffles, and loved cracking jokes on each other. They both liked to wear blue, and kept long dark hair. In fact, in those days once she had almost decided to dye her hair, but didn’t go for it when she knew that he didn’t like it. Of course, she never told him that. And that, perhaps, was the biggest irony. They both liked each other so much, but didn’t have the courage to say this to the other one. He had gone to study MBA, and she left for US to complete her studies. They had planned to meet somewhere in Europe, but as fate would have had it, that incident never happened.

He used to get very emotional over little girls who used to roam around in the streets and had nowhere to go. He wanted to open a school for them in his home town. She, on the other hand, wanted to do something for the street children in Delhi. (This was another point where they agreed with each other. They had planned that they would help each other in their social work when they both would start earning).

But why was she thinking of him at this time? She didn’t know. Maybe because that little girl had suddenly reminded her of the pledge she had taken with him to help street children, and had slowly forgotten in her rush to make it big in the corporate world. Suddenly, she felt a very strong urge to rush back to her home, open her old address books, find out where his friend was staying now, and if he was still unmarried, marry him. It wouldn’t be for her own happiness. Her fiancé was a very wonderful man, her perfect partner – she was in no doubt about that. It wouldn’t be for Tejas, either, because she was sure he would have met many better girls over the years. It would be for that little girl who was standing before her now. It would be for a small boy selling steplars at a traffic signal. It would be for that old woman who used to sit in the subway with a plastic cup in front of her. And it would be for those countless little children who were roaming around at that moment of time in Tejas’ home town.

For both Tejas and Swati, it wouldn’t be for their lives, it would be for their dreams.

Swati and her fiancé had reached the end of the queue. Just before entering the movie hall, she cast a last glance at the girl, who she never knew and perhaps never will, but who seemed closer to her than the entire world right now.

P.S.: this is the first story I have written. it may not be that good, but i do hope to get better with time.

i don't know if alcohol really makes you nostalgic and emotional, but today i am really missing my mother. i generally try my best not to be or appear emotional, but today all my rationality seems to be totally in vain. i can't help but think how much i miss my mother, and how i am letting her down.

there is a time which comes in everybody's life, when one starts to think that one's capabilities have been developed only through one's own actions. others may have helped one, but those were marginal with respect to the effort that one had to put on his own. he starts to feel proud of himself, and pride is the first step to arrogance. who are the people who face the wrath of his arrogance, or the so-called "pride"? of course, he can't go to the unknown people walking down a street and show to them that he has really grown to be someone important. they won't care a damn about it. so the only option left to him is to go to his own relatives/friends, and try to make them realize how the small boy they used to love so much has grown up. and has grown up to be some "big" man. they are the only ones who will say nothing at his arrogance, for they fear that if they say something, their beloved will lose his/her pride. they remain silent, not because they acknowledge his/her self-professed importance, but because they are too afraid to see his/her sad face.

and sadly, mothers are the first victim people turn to. always meek in front of their children, they lose sleepless nights thinking about them. so much so, that their sons/daughters start to take them for granted. when their children grow up big enough to realize which relationships are good and which are not, their mothers are the first one to be overlooked. the sons start to substitute their girlfriends/wives for their mother, and think that they don't need the care and love of their mother any more. i don't know about girls, though. it is just that i am not the daugter of any woman, so i don't want to make any specious remark.

but almost all the relationships that we make on our own are based on selfish reasons, isn't it ? we make friends not because we like them, but because we think someday they might be of some help to us. we marry not necessary because we like the boy/girl, but because we think they will be kind enough not to leave us in hard times. why is it, that we overlook the only relationship we have which is based on truth ? on selfless love ? why do we forget about the only woman who truly loves us ? and the most ironical of all, why do we forget the only woman who is, and can be, our mother ?

I don't care about this whole damn world.....I just want to see my mother happy.....

today....while snoozing in the class today....i came across a very strange thought.....that you can actually make a connection between the financial market and the love of ur life.....and the conclusion that i have come across is ---

1. love is not an option, whether American or European.

2. love is not a forward contract.

3. love is, actually, a futures contract actively traded in the exchange market also known as "life".

now i will explain my logic. when u are in love with somebody, or at least pretend to be, you are constantly in touch with him/her. and whenever you are feeling low, you just call or meet him/her and tell them ur problems. similarly, you have to put up with the various ups and downs that ur friend goes through. isn't it like the margin call on a futures contract ?......the contract is marked-to-market daily....daily you have to go through the rigour of acknowledging any gain/loss made in the contract...when u r in love, you have to spend time. when u r in a futures contract, u have to invest money, which is nothing but another form of time.

there is another aspect also. when u enter into a futures contract, the value of the contract is zero. similary, when u are just starting falling in love with somebody, you really think that both of u are on an even plane...that both of you really need each other, and need it badly. it's only later that u realize that either u were there in a hurry, or the boy/girl simply cheated you. in other words, the "contractual" love ceases to be a fair game.

and yes, the most common of all. you don't have to pay any premium when u start liking a girl/boy. you just go to him/her, and say some nice things to him/her. it is only later that you have to spend some time and/or money on him/her. it is to similar to a futures contract.....where you don't incur any cost when you enter into the contract.

so, love is nothing different from a futures contract !!!!...isn't it ?..... :)

P.S.: Forgive me if my language seems to be a little sensitive to the gender issue. actually our professor in one of our courses used to emphasize the fact that one should always use "him/her" in place of using only one of these pronouns if one is not sure of the gender. i am just following her instructions.

today in my friend's room i saw a poster of Levi's jeans. actually it was a full calender and had separate pages for each month, but it didn't have dates in it. instead, there were some 5-6 lines which would show how Levi's has managed to remained unchanged for so many years. some lines which caught my attention - (i don't recall them completely, though)

1. good girls grow up dreaming to be Cinderella. all others go to hollywood.
2. times change, things change. Foul - mouthed Axl Rose is replaced by foul - mouthed
Eminem.
3. There was a time, before Clint Eastwood, when wild west was for real. And it
wasn't always a pretty picture.

the second line actually shows why rock & roll has fallen from grace in the late 80s and 90s. there are now only a handful of rock bands, like U2, which have managed to hold on to their ground. but they also have managed to do it only by considerably diluting their political and social stand. in the 80s, there was a guy called Bruce Springsteen who opposed to the Vietnam war vehemently in the song "Born in the USA". there was a band called U2, which called the names of innocent people killed by the autocratic government in chile in their own show in that very country, and dedicated the song "Mothers of the Disappeared" to them. how many bands you know today have opposed the Afghanistan war, or the war in Iraq? how many bands you know have dedicated even one of their songs over those who were killed in the recent katrina incident ? Rock & Roll, in the 60s, was an expression of the soul, and that's why it caught the imagination of the entire generation of baby bloomers. today, thanks to the commercialization (do you know that Britney Spears and boyzone get their songs written and composed by professionals ? they only have to sing them) of the industry, it has been reduced to nothing more than some catchy combination of lyrics and music notes. no wonder, it has lost its place to more ear-friendly versions like Pop and Rap.

is sleep really a way to rejunevate yourself for the bright tomorrow, or is it just a way to get u some time in which you can lose all your worries? for no matter how hard you try, tomorrow is nothing but a sad replication of yesterday. you go on the same rotten routine you always wish you could have escaped from, do the same little mistakes, and try to please the very same people who thing nothing before breaking ur heart again and again. every day, the whole world goes to sleep, dreaming of promises they can't keep....(taken from a song by Bryan Adams).every night you go to sleep, fully determined that the next morning will herald the dawn of a new era and there will be a new guy who will get up from the bed. and every morning, you get up in a lousy mood, see ur timetable and find that you have to attend those classes which u don't have any wish to, eat the same boring food, and waste your time doing the same useless things. i wish i could have avoided all this. but i, too, am human, after all. no, that is wrong. maybe i am just an ordinary human being. And, I hate being just as mundane as everyone else around me.

Pawell (the defence minister of USA) once said, "It is very simple to be wise. do nothing all your life. and when you grow old, say nothing and give no advice." probably when i grow old, i also will take solace in the fact that at least i didn't do anything wrong, for everyday was always the same for me as the previous one.

it seems i will never understand why half of the civilized world is mad over a small round ball these days. no matter how hard I try, i can never watch football (or, "Foosh-ball", as they pronounce in German) for more than 20 minutes. is it really a big deal if Germany lost to Spain 2-1 (or it might be the other way round also, I don't remember) ? or today is the "historical" match between Brasil and France in the quarter-finals ?

in my institute, there is no dearth of football maniacs who make professional powerpoint presentations every time Chelsea and ManU clash with each other in European championships. they have arranged for TV tuner cards by which they show matches on big screen in one of the classrooms. i have never gone to watch any of the matches till now, much to the dismay of my dormmates. today, however, i decided it was time to try something different. i took 4 pegs of vodka (the first daaru-party in my dorm with the new fachchas) and decided that it was time i lost my virginity with respect to football. so i went to the classroom where they were showing the match on big screen, made myself comfortable on a chair and decided that i won't get up until the match is over. but alas !! i lost again. my eyelids started feeling heavy after 10 minutes (you shouldn't expect anything else from a drunk guy anyway), my head started swinging after 20 minutes, and i was happily drooling off after 25 minutes. somehow i got up in the middle of the match (due to the loud cheer when France scored the first goal of the match against Brazil) and decided it was time i accepted my defeat. to me, it seemes watching "foosh-ball" for full 90 minutes will always remain mission impossible.

this continues from the earlier post. there were some other incidents also on my first day. if you are a 21 year old guy and driving a cycle, other guys on a bike will look at you so scornfully as if you are standing totally naked in front of them in the broad daylight, with not even an iota of clothing on. but at the same time, you also become the object of attention of 10-yr old boys. well, actually, it is not YOU that grab their attention. instead, it is the special handle of the cycle and 12 gear combinations that do the trick. but still, it feels good. like a girl blushes with delight no matter whether people are looking at her face or at her clothes.

speaking of girls, i just remembered that i hadn't spoken about the biggest advantage you have while cycling. and that is, you really get enough time to admire girls which are out on the streets window-shopping!!! you get enough time to enjoy their beauty (provided the TATA sumo in front of you doesn't halt suddenly) and smile at them if they deign to take a glance at you. actually Vastrapur is one of the not-so-posh areas of Ahmedabad from conventional measures, but for a small-town guy it is still a far cry from the streets of patna.

today i took out my cycle to take a ride around the campus. i was actually looking for a circular road where i could practice without getting stuck in traffic jams and signals. finally after searching for around 1 hour, I was successful at that, but not before i had quite a few amusing incidences.

first of all, i went straight for aound 2 kms, then turned left and i was calculating that if i were to return to the point where i started from, i would have to take two left turns again somewhere (all in all it would make it 3 left turns). so i went on according to my calculations, but somehow got lost. now i don't think i am to blame for it, however. i have spent four years at a place where cars were as rare to be seen as sunrise for a late riser. even the profs used to come and go on their cycles. and the maximum distance we could travel on our cycles was from our hostels to the department. so no wonder i have lost my sense of direction.

so again coming back to the point, i got lost. however, i went on cycling for some more time and heaved a big sigh of relief when i saw some policemen of IIM. i went there and asked them about the vastrapur (because that is where i had started from. reaching back to vastrapur would have given me a complete circular route). first of all, those policemen were not letting me enter becasue they thought i was an "outsider". and after that they really had a good laugh when they came to know that i was a second year and had lost my way to the campus on the cycle. in their opinion, one year is pretty good time to get acquainted with gali-mohallas of a place even though you spend 15 hours a day buried neck-deep in books and assignments.

in the meanwhile, before this incident happened, i was once waiting at a traffic signal for the green light and had to turn left. then suddenly i thought, aren't traffic lights only for vehicles turning to the right or going straight ? (well, forgive me for my ignorance. it has been 5 years since i drove any 2-wheeler on a city-road. ) my first instinct was to turn to the left while the light was still red. there was a policeman on the corner and if i would break any rule, he would definitely stop me. but then suddenly i remembered my earlier not-so-pleasant encounters with traffic policemen. finally good sense prevailed and i waited till the signal was green. then i sheepishly went to the trafficwalla and asked him the question. here is how the conversation went:

Me: Sir, (well, this is what an MBA degree teaches you: kabhi kabhi jaroorat mein gadhe ko bhi baap banana parta hai) i can turn to the left on a roundabout even if the signal is red, isn't it ?

Trafficpoliceman: you see this line to the left of the road? this is reserved for padestarians. not even cyclists are allowed to cross this.

Me: Sir, i know this very well. but on the rest of the road, can i turn to the left when ......

Trafficwalla : and when the signals goes to green, u will hear an announcement that (in Gujarati) kripya paidal chalne waalon ke liye jagah chhorein.

Me: sir, but what i want to ask is......

Trafficwalla: (again in gujarati) wait wait !!! do you hear the announcement ? you are a good boy, drive well, and don't drive fast.

now, i don't know whether it was my fault that i don't know gujarati well or that guy simply didn't want to hear me. but anyway, i decided that i already had taken my monthly dose of gujarati and it was time for me to move on.

the post is getting too big. i am posting the rest of the details on the next post.