The Wonder Years

Well you trudge, run, exhale, whisper, enjoy, whimper, love, be loved, hate, repent, salvage, weep, crave, pray for that one thing and basically live through each day of your life. The parody of all the actions, events, learnings that you pick up on your way just seems too huge in hindsight. But whats the catch?

But what would you gauge it all against feeling great about one's conquests, successes, relative happiness( MBA spoils you for life!) , that perk, that babe, your dream car, house, your love of life (or so you thought, cant help be the cynic here)... !!!! Hardly!

The only thing that matters is whether you feel good about the way you travelled your journ, or you repent some steps along the way. The only thing that would matter is your satisfaction that you lived each moment and secondto the full and basically steered your own way. You did not just float along with your self ego, that comfortable feeling or just plain lack of guts..

Most importantly would you risk it all again, when it matters or you would rather fade away..I know that i would risk it all again, put it up at stake for the sake of a few. Well these few are all that matter in life! Some people that you know, trust and sometimes depend with your life. Time and again i have realised this is life. I would rather have my coterie than a huge gathering!

It feels good to know that after 5 Terms here i can say that i have found some people like that. Some radically different, and some so similar that it rattled me at first :)

It was one hell of a hectic term with a thousand things to do and much more. But regrettably i did not do 2 things which i had decided. Guess i never will..

Today i got to hear that a friend of mine from Engineering passed away. She was one of the liveliest persons around. About a year back she met with a car accident and had gone into comma. After the initial trauma, she started recovering and responded to her name and music. We had assumed that it would take long but she would recover. But the fight ended yesterday...

It feels strange sitting thousand kms away and in the midst of this apparently busy schedule. You feel numb that a person whom you have seen so much for over 4 years is suddenly no more. It is like a bundle of dreams, ambitions and energy has been just nipped in the bud. Maybe things happen beyond for a good reason, just may be. This is the second news of death i have had to hear this Term, may it just end soon...

----
"Aaj hi to bas jaage hain;
kyunki kal to sirf ek khwab hai,
Jeena hai zindagi to aaj jee lo;
pyaar karna hai to aaj kar lo,
Aaj zindagi ruki hai tere liye;
Koi aaj ho tumhare raaho main,
Kya pata: Kal Ho Na Ho"

Ohh my Master!! Nearly every kid remembers the proverbial jeannie and her master from the teleseries. Some episodes of the teleseries brought back flooding memories.....

A jeannie of your own would be simply great. How would she be?? Blonde, petite and fair!! Naah... She did be Tall, dusky and not at all anorexic!! Well at least my jeannie would be that.

What would i ask? World peace, Israel-Palestine solution....Not a chance!!! Who would waste a jeannie on that :) Then what could one ask.. well money of course, a home on the edge of a mountain and sea, a car to die for and yeah a world trip with a babe..

But then what would be fun in it! If you get all the money how would you enjoy earning it, if you get your love just like that how would you go through heart breaks, atif aslam songs..and yeah the home would be a good thing considering the real estate prices esp in aamchi mumbai!

On second thoughts no jeannie would not be a good thing! It is not for nothing that we have aspirations, hear breaks, our downs and the effort to gather yourself and start walking again. That is the only thing worth living for!

I thought i could never live wihout the sea. However i have fallen in love with the night sky here. The demure Venus, golden moon and the hunter Orion. Smog-free skies and a plethora of stars. My hobby and solace over here! Sky Gazing club in Term 6 for sure..

It has finally happened, the bandwidth has shrunk down for the first time. The bandwidth for work that is. I felt that i could just keep going full steam with all the different work that i had picked upon. Council, alumni pending affairs, corporate conclave, academics and of course my jogging :) Well everything has finally converged to one point where you gotta choose. I had gone about it in the usual manner of quite background work. Many near me often question the mindless work done with out ayone's knowledge but the rewards are satisfying!

I had personally decided some things to be done when i had come here. I believe i have achieved most of them an maybe more. Later i had felt that the insti should should get the kind of respect that it deserves truly. The cibbing and mud slinging is not reflective of the real stature of the students passed out of here. So the campaign for NYCC an the like. Along the way i have met like minded people and it is a pleasure to have worked with them.

It feels good to know such people who would just stake everything for their and maybe your dream too. No questions, hours at end and all thankless work done! That is true effiiency and potential. Just plain belief in what should be and working towards it. We maybe called dreamers maybe foolish to be working on something that no one else cares about but eventually if you do not follow your dream then life is not worth it. Simply useless.

You feel scared to even mention it, lest the wind carries it away with itself never to return. It has happened before and it is difficult to arise out of it again. But it all doesn't matter in the end..Cos the bandwidth is infinite for such work :)

Some new quotes that i penned down here:

"In all the beauty of life
So easy to lose in all its strife;
I kept winning the battles to soar
But lost out on one great war!
Maybe the evening star will show the way
Which is to be my main stay,
So that the harried might return
To the solace of the homeward journ"

One of the very few people who matter in my life told me this today:

1. "You are not what you think you are, but you are what you think!": Your thoughts invariably make your person and your entire thought process.

2. "What you do in your free time determines how you do in your busiest times": come to think of it, I have been told many a times since school that my most important habit is to stay extremely cool in most adverse situations. I attribute this to my patient swimming for hours at an end and also to the fact that i had many seen too many things in life too early.

Very important note to self: Things just don't happen randomly, they are a product of what you have done and what have you been thinking. It is all like a code for a program, the output is always exactly what you have written.

Then what about GOD? Well, he gets to decide when to press the ENTER key!!!

Over the past week, i have been disturbed. Not for anything serious, but just those moments when you inspect, introspect and evaluate. Sudenly the course of things seems murky, you doubt your own actions and the general scheme of things that you have created for your self.

I spent much time talking with some very close friends, reading up truly great words and as usual speaking to my mother. Her words remind me of all the things that i truly want, show me the path to take. Some time alone spent jogging and the usual pranayam has made things clearer. Now it is much better! In fact i feel rekindled for life again and the enthusiasm to wake up every morning and work towards something has come back. It is time to bet everything for a chance at something that you wanted, time to cherish and time to enjoy each and every moment as it comes.

I have pushed myself to the work levels that i want and now is the time to push the envelope and push myself to be really the best that i really can.

Nowadays, the only problem s that of plenty! Too many things to do, too many things to think about, too much stuff to read. To choose what you want is really difficult.

The only thing that is constant i guess my jogging. All the other things are stashed up according to the time available and the vagaries of B-school lofe. Sometimes i am reminded of the quintessential story of "The babysitter" by Chekhov. The baby sitter is being over worked by the tyrannous land lady and the poor soul is burdened by the extremely arduous and menial chores of home. Just out of complete exhaustion, she enters a twilight zone where things become clearer.

Chekhov is difficult to think about anf forget. One of the masters of the language. Though not as elaborative as J R R Tolkien but maybe as good at human emotions as Victor Hugo. They are the masters who not only make beautiful verse but ever lasting ones.

Boring lectures have induced me to writing poems. Here is the work of such 2 boring lectures:

Its a long & winding road,
Difficult to keep your own horde;
What is it that we seek,
Sunlit land's golden breeze;
Piling upon careless breaths,
Although end is only in wreaths.

Treading upon paths where millenia have trod;
Sometimes dark, sometimes daylight broad.
Does it matter at all?
Whether you win or fall.
When all you see and all you feel.
Comes to naught when you finally kneel!

Today i went to an adult literacy class for a group of 27 people who work various jobs in our own institute. Right from sweepers, labourers and gate keepers. It was amazing at the enthusiasm showed by these people.

Initially there was scepticism on my part whether i will be able to relate with them or not. However to teach somebody to write a single alphabet in whichever language and to make him understand the meaning in relation to a word is the most wonderful and satisfying task. They were aged from 10 years to about 60 i guess. Some knew a bit of alphabets from their schooling days where as others did not have a clue.

I typically remember this old lady who was seeing a hindi alphabet for the first time, and i struggled for an hour to make her write the first alphabet of hindi. When she managed just half of it, i felt great. I hope she continues to come!

I have got a new thrill! That of running 3 rounds of my campus. It comes out to be about 10 kms in total and it feels really great to accomplish that.

What i find is that i had been stuck at 1 or 2 rounds where i was pretty comfortable. When you are in your comfort xone, you tend to avoid moving out of it. God knows, how many opportunities we miss because of it. But the world outside of our myopic view is pretty limitless and full of potential.

So time to break free and explore new grounds and gain back some of that carefree and adventurous attitude... And yeah time for some major revamps.

How short is our life span when considered the bigger scheme of things. How much do we strive for in this short span, money, affection, status, success, recognition, fame, friends or even peace.

But in 90 % of the cases most remember childhood as their happiest time. Surprisingly we had none of these while we are kids. The first rain, the muddy patch of land served as the cricket pitch, the circle on the ground as the battlefield of kabaddi and a bag of 30 marbles was considered a wealth. The kite flying taught unforgettable lessons in life which even the best profs havent matched up.

Today, it seems a long journey. But time and again i would give it all for just one more evening of that careless life. Maybe i was lucky to have an unbrindled time with just the right amount of guidance when needed.

It all makes me realise what do we actually yearn for? Many think for a job, a position or an opportunity. I feel it is doing what we want actually and not falling for the herd.

The flight is only as high as the will for it and not the wind of some one else's efforts. It reminds me of Coelho in the Alchemist, " Slowly as we grow, we move away from our real dreams with the chains of practicality and common sense".

If we barely manage to keep the fire alive then its worth to toss it all out for just one shot at the dice of chance.

Here it is, I am kickstarting this blog after an entire year. Last time round something went wrong, hope i have better luck this time.

Just back from a 2 1/2 month summer internship with Citigroup. Overall it was a great learning experience. By just being there and being inquistive, i learnt a lot about Corporate banking. It is exciting and worth pursuing as a career. It is strange how inchoate our ideas are about things like summers and we talk about job profiles, credit card ones and those which are not. Howeer 2 months have really shown me the entire gamut of jobs available and the tremendous scope of opportunities. Having a very enthu guide really helped. More i think, the most important thing that i learnt was to do things on a "need to do" basis.

I also had a great stay at home. How strange it is, back there i felt that i was in Lucknow a very much time ago. Now while i am here, I feel that i was back at home ages back. I guess the short term memory at work pretty fast.

All that time back home in the lap of comely atmosphere, i really got time to contemplate and straighten a few things out. Sometimes the knots just keep increasing and it takes some time to untie them. However when you do, a certain clarity strikes you. That is when you realise the importance of slowing down and look around. Where are you and where are you going....

You then realise it takes a fair bit of patience to get some things in life. and those are worth waiting for!