On Life...

Two of the frequent questions I ask myself are- Why do we live and why do we die. Life’s greatest irony is that we have no idea why we come into this world and why we depart from it. What difference does the existence of a mere mortal make to the vast expanse of this universe which has been here almost since eternity and is going to be for a pretty long time (So I guess. I am no Stephen Hawking, you see). I have spent a lot of good time thinking about it and all I have concluded is that the more I think about it, the more its answer, if there is any, will elude me. Moreover, sometimes I question the existence of God. And then I can feel His existence. And then I question his existence again. The bottom line is – I am confused.

The vast diversity in this nature, clubbed with its wonderful ways of working, makes you believe that there is an intelligent designer who designed it all. But does the existence of an intricate design warrant the existence of an intelligent designer? I am a Darwinist. And from whatever knowledge I have acquired in the twenty years of my life I have come to be a believer in probabilities. What we are, how we look, how we think and how healthy we are born, everything is decided by probable mutations of the genes we inherit. Many believe that the God throws the dice. But if he really exists and is the Supreme one, he should never use a dice. What use is God if he can’t provide everyone with equal opportunities to live life with dignity? What eats me is that I can’t decide if he is really there. I have always believed that Man invented God so that he did not lose the sight of what he was up to and because the pillars of morality couldn’t be erected without the foundations of a concept higher than anything and everything else. Man’s desperate attempt at saving himself from ultimate hopelessness pushed him towards conjuring up a concept so brilliant that no other man could resist its temptation. He invented God and God gave us hope. God guaranteed us a light at the end of the dark tunnel. He assured us that nothing bad would last forever.

Our thoughts and actions are motivated by our desires and material goals. Sensual pleasures keep us too busy to contemplate the deeper meaning of life. I have no sound reason to believe that epicurean way of life is the right way nor do I vehemently support an ascetic retreat. There can always be a middle way but the problem is that I don’t know where to draw the line.

No doubt that these questions befuddle us, we can’t afford to lose sight of the immediate concerns facing humanity. Hunger, poverty, pollution, illiteracy, diseases and the associated suffering are the problems that need to be tackled before anything else. You may find yourself asking what difference it would make to the universe if you brought smile to one unhappy face. But think of the difference it would make to that one unhappy heart. So let’s leave all our doubts aside and strive towards making this world a better place to come to life in and depart from.

P.S. A recent research by a prominent evolutionary biologist says that even apes have a sense of morality. They must really be God fearing! The conclusions of that study are still not final and the research is still on.

Home Is Where The World Is

As they say “The best journeys are the ones that take you home”.

For us people the best time in college is the week or two (or three) after the mid terms when, although there are regular classes going on, we are revelling in the fact that there is no trouble (aka mid-terms/end- terms) in sight for quite some time. After the first mid-terms, a substantial part this very time of mine got marred by Jaundice. Oops! Sorry, Malaria. Our college’s hospital is the last place a patient should go to. A day after the mid-terms ended I had a severe headache and started shivering. Fever followed. Two days, two appointments with the doctor and a blood test later I was diagnosed with mild jaundice. For someone like me who had never been affected by any major disease (like Jaundice, Malaria, Dengue, Typhoid, Chicken Pox, Cancer, AIDS, Crohn’s Disease or Epilepsy) before, the coming week became a living hell. Fever rose like phoenix every day, only to be brought down by paracetamol at the end of the day. Shivering followed by fever had become a part of my daily routine. The medication was not working and I was giving up the ghost. My bed had become my world. After writhing in pain and suffering for a whole week (which seemed like a whole year), heeding the advice of a very dear friend, I called my dad and told him I wanted to come Home. Next evening I found myself shivering again but this time I had mom sitting by my side and felt for the first time that everything was fine, that it was just a matter of time. I don’t think my mom fell asleep that night. But I sure did, unlike the nights I had spent in college last week. Next day we were at a doctor’s. Again the pathology guys took a bloody part out of me and I came to know that a female Anopheles mosquito was the culprit. The doctor prescribed a medication that would rid me of a protist called Plasmodium vivax. Waves of fever appeared on alternate days with each attack of merozoites on my fresh red blood cells. But with my parents by my bedside, things went smoothly. Within a week the fever gave way, though it left me very weak. But within another week I regained myself pretty much.

The whole incident taught me, or in fact reminded me that in the most adverse times it is your home that comforts you the most, that very home which you leave behind in search of greater possibilities. Life is hard and it is inevitable that if a big opportunity to rise in life presents itself you have to leave your home and embark on a long journey. But remember, no matter how long or how difficult that journey is, in the end, after making the best of it, it takes you back home. Because, home is where the world is.

The agony and the joy...

The waves that hustle and bustle on the surface of the sea make it look very joyous and happening but underneath the surface lies the real world. A world inhabited by creatures that are exquisite, yet unseen. These creatures almost don’t exist for the outer world. Only the sea can feel their presence. It seeds and feeds them. It harbours them as long as they can live and finally provides them with a resting place.

Amid all the noise that waves make while they travel and finally hit the shores, the sound of those inner creatures is muted. It’s only a matter of getting your ears just under the surface until you can hear them. Sometimes the waves sound sweet and yet at other times they are cacophonous. Sometimes they sing in the appreciation of the beauty that this nature has endowed the sea and the land with. But sometimes they are querulous about the way shore rings a death knell for them. Sometimes they are boisterous because the winds carry them so turbulently. Waves have the privilege to expose themselves to the outer world and let the world hear what they have to say.

The creatures that dwell inside are doomed to infinite solitude. It’s not that they don’t talk. They have probably more things than the waves to tell the outer world and yet due to their sheer misfortune they cannot. They are colourful and lively. If you approach them in the right way, you find them convivial. They are desperate to have a glimpse of what lies on the other side of the surface. But they can’t help it. The vast expanse of the sea beneath its surface can gratify their desires for not very long. Some of the creatures are so naive that they have no idea there is a foreign world. Their ignorance never facilitates them to push their limits.

There is another class of creatures that are so naive that they don’t realize the existence of a boundary separating their world from the foreign one and swiftly cross it. Some of them wade through the waves to the shore. Others like to somersault and in the process they occasionally catch a glimpse of the other world. Whatever may be the way, they have the ability to witness the epiphany of the moment of their exposure to the other world.

The sea below its surface holds a whole different world. That world, though very serene and placid, has creatures that outshine most of the other creatures living outside. To ignore what lies beneath the surface is to deny oneself the opportunity to have an altogether novel experience.

Recent past, present and future.

It’s been a long time since I wrote my last post. Past couple of weeks have been quite hectic and consuming. Being a Govind Bhawan inmate is almost unlucky. I had to change my room because the supervisor discovered that my friends and I had exchanged our rooms. Although I came out unscathed, two of my friends had to bear the brunt of his sadistic nature. Not that exchanging rooms unofficially is a violation of any rule, but vocalizing our grudges wouldn’t have pleased the warden and we thought it better to not get into any trouble with him.

After room affairs and registration were over, the bromidic classes began. Evenings were spent playing tennis and in endless bakar with friends discussing who did what in summers and what were everybody’s plans for the semester. Three, including me, could find only one way to keep ourselves “really” busy and that was by preparing for CAT. Yes, I admit, the same beaten track. First JEE, then CAT. Now although among the three of us I have the least chances of making it to the coveted IIMs, it will kill me if I don’t prepare while others are busy with the same. So we went to Career Launcher’s orientation session and a demo class. It was good. Then we went to TIME for the same. It was good, too. But the fact remains that in Roorkee CL has been faring better. Moreover a senior who made it to IIMA last year recommended CL to me. So it’s CL finally. Let’s see how things unfold in the coming months and whether I am able to handle the pressure or not. The silver lining is that we have quite a light schedule of classes at college this semester, although I dread that the excruciating Machine Drawing practical classes may make up for it.

Meanwhile I finished reading Thomas Hardy’s Return of The Native. Interesting story and mesmerizing style of writing kept me glued to it. Now I am reading The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara. I was also able to lay my hands on a senior’s big collection of movies and since then I have been watching almost a movie a day. I saw The Raging Bull, Finding Neverland, Kungfu Hustle, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Except the third one, all are “a must watch”.

So that’s how it has all been lately. Unlike my previous posts, this post has rather turned out to be like a diary entry. May be it’s the efficaciousness of the book that I am reading.

And there She was!!!

The day had arrived. She was coming today. His mind was blank. His lips were sealed and he couldn’t utter a word. Words had failed him today. The moment was indeed very special. He had waited for this moment three whole years. Not a day had passed when her thought didn’t pass his mind and not a night when he didn’t embrace her in his dreams. How he lusted for those curves of her! Mere words couldn’t explain it. He craved to feel her body with his own hands. He wanted to touch her everywhere and slide her hands to that large back of her which had his jaw dropped when he had caught the first glimpse of her three years ago. He would possess her now.

He vividly remembered the day. Just like other people who saw her for the first time he too was awestruck. Her beauty and elegance could seduce anyone. She was a magnate. That day he wasn’t able to take his eyes off her and had stood there for long. She did not notice him. She was the one people craved for. It was that day he had realized what was missing in his life. He had decided then and there that someday he would have her and then he would never let her go. And today the moment had arrived.

A sea of emotions rose and fell inside him as her figure drew closer. He found himself struggling with his thoughts. It was all he had longed for and then too he was more restless than ever. And then she arrived. He remained motionless for a moment. The time had stopped. The thought that one day he would be inside her and ride her had kept him excited enough for three years. It was his day today.

The driver came out of the car and handed him over the keys. “Congratulations Sir, for your new car.” He said.

When God Vanished...

When I was very small I used to enjoy watching Ramayana and Mahabharata on TV. I believed that the people showed in those programs really existed and nothing could shake my faith. God for me had the image of a virtuous man who lived by sound principles and killed the nefarious persons. I actually believed that during their battles the God and the Devil shot their arrows at each other which collided mid-air and although both vanished there itself, God’s lasted longer than devil’s. After a series of such shots, a special arrow shot by God would wreak havoc and finally the devil would take his last breath.
As I grew a little older, I started disbelieving. But why? Here’s the story.
When for the first time I picked up my 9th grade physics textbook, the world seemed an entirely different place. Many incomprehensible things seemed to be more comprehensible than ever. Everything around me seemed to follow a law. I was the happiest person in the world when during the lectures while my classmates grappled with teacher’s questions, I didn’t have to think twice what the right answers were. But I felt sorry when I saw others not being able to discern the beauty of nature that was so manifest in the subject and instead complain about it being tough and complex. Days passed and turned into months. With half the session still to come, I was already over with the physics and chemistry syllabus. I dreaded biology. It ran my blood cold. Mathematics I enjoyed. It seemed to me some obvious facts arranged in the form of symbols.
Months passed into years and I learned more. Newspapers to me were now more than just how many 4s and 6s Sachin Tendulkar scored in the last match or what movie was Aamir Khan doing next. I learned that the parliament, its members, the elections, the president, the army and the wars, the economy, GDP etc. featured not just in the Social Science textbooks. There was some real stuff going on out there.
Meanwhile I woke up to a new consciousness in the form of MTV, Discovery and National Geographic. While I loved these, I couldn’t stand the sight of the daily soaps my mother watched (she still watches them, whereas I have started hating MTV). And then like a storm came the Internet. It brought with it Google and I found a window to the world. Google introduced me to Wikipedia and I realised that there was nothing that I could not know. In all these years I graduated from school and got into college.
And suddenly as if a thunder had struck me, I asked myself if there was any God. Even with all my knowledge and resources to gain more of it, there was no way I could answer this question.
I had come to know in all these years how man controls everything around him, how his actions bring him consequences. And so whenever I saw a person bowing to an idol or murmuring a prayer I felt uneasy. He seemed to me to be superstitious. The tales that I believed so ardently in my childhood seemed to me to be mere tales now. Nowhere around me could I see God. He had vanished into thin air. The question whether God had created man or man had created God stared starkly at me. And I couldn’t ask anyone for an answer. My professor couldn’t teach me. I couldn’t Google for it. There was nothing on Discovery channel that answered my question.
Eventually after a lot of contemplation, I concluded perhaps, it was the other way round. Man had created God, for if he hadn’t, man wouldn’t have remained man. He would have considered nothing other than his own well being and he would have gone to any extent to satisfy his desires. Someone had to be there who man feared and acknowledged as the most powerful of all.
Although I have a feeling that there’s no God, I can’t convince myself. Somewhere deep inside me, I feel blasphemous. I feel as if not acknowledging him would bring me misery and pain. Nevertheless I believe firmly that bowing to him doesn’t please him if you are not kind to others. If you join hands and pray in a temple and while returning home break the traffic rules, all your prayers go in vain. If you spit in public, damage public property, hurt someone’s feelings, there’s no use asking God for help with your problems.
O my God, why do I end up preaching something or other in my posts?

Crap, holy Crap.

Disclaimer: Whatever I am writing in this post is not meaningful. Being the first post it deserves to outstand.

After some failed attempts at writing some good articles on my own, I have realized that it is much better to write whatever comes to your mind rather than writing with careful contemplation. You may create some disasters in the form of your initial articles like this one, but eventually you will start picking up as this is what I hope for myself too. Speaking of hope, it reminds me how hopeless this article makes its author seem and why wouldn’t it? I sure am hopeless to be not able to write something that is creative and keeps the reader involved for more than its first six lines. But is it really necessary for a piece of writing to be creative to hold the reader’s interest till the end? Does creative imply interesting? Is it really important to know this? I think not. I think one should write whatever comes to his mind, be it creative or not.

It’s really essential to be able to lend words to your thoughts/feelings but only if you like to express them to the world. If you are someone who keeps things inside, then well, I can say nothing about it. If you cannot express yourself in the right words, you better not express because there are good chances of what you say or write acquiring a wrong meaning, and remember, such blunders have taken down empires with them. Which empires you ask? Even I have no idea. Does this make sense? See I told you I will write meaningless crap here. Are you still reading?

If you are still reading you are probably someone who has gone through a lot in his life because being able to continue reading crap like this takes patience and a lot of guts. Ha! But writing this is fun. If you are an English teacher, a rather cruel one, give this piece of writing as a passage in English paper. I bet students will either hang themselves after the paper or will make an excuse of attending to the call of nature only to never return back. I think it is going out of my control and I should stop now. But what if I don’t stop? Ok, enough. I stop now.

I promise my future posts will be meaningful enough, at least to a person with average IQ. So please do not think that I am completely useless (Though sometimes I think so). Return back, or better subscribe.