RDB+FPS+3IDIOTS= VARUN PANT??

I have seen 3 Idiots….
I have seen it first day, first show…..
I have seen it 4 days before my end-sems…
And here I am, at last …..writing something about it….but first…

MARCH ’06 WAVE CINEMAS, RDB

It was , like a month before the JEE, I knew I was not made for it, but still was craving for it. On top of that I found it hard to choose – the knowledge that I was not made for it , or that craving. So to calm my nerves down, I went, for the first time in a multiplex, to a movie where aamir khan has till date the sexiest haircut. I sat down, looked at it, cried during the end credits, chose it the best movie I ever saw, but during that rickshaw ride back home I discovered, that I was a part of the youth RDB focused on. Suddenly a spirit was born , and an agility to change the things took form. The ‘craving’ won the battle as I waited to become successful, to be distinct, the environs around me were roaring…

stop living life like a cliché(dead and worn out)…live it like a joke(laughing it all away)….

SEPT’06 …UNIVERSAL BOOKSTORES

I read FPS* when I entered into this chapel of technical knowhow, I had started doing engineering with a crash landing of rank 6914, and it was not long after I started having shivers of ED classes that I got through this book. Two reasons that I chose to read the book
1. The book was by an IITian and about the IIT.
2. I was studying in UPTU**

I started reading because I had the curiosity of what these temples of modern india were like, what an IITian, was like, wanted to experience the life of a person my parents dreamt me of becoming, a person I knew I was not made to be..but still…..
I read the book, didn’t get that IITian, but….got to meet a person who lived a life that I had started to live, I got to know a hosteller, I got to know an engineer, I got to know friendship. Bieng the only son, being the ‘most protected one’ who learnt cycling at the age of 14, I never liked hostels, I never liked late night studies, midnight smokes, and random whiskies, but FPS, kind of, told me spot on…

stop living life like a cliché(dead and worn out)…live it like a joke(laughing it all away)….

DEC ’09……NATRAJ HALL

3 idiots was my 3rd movie after becoming a day scholar, a day scholar who still thought the hostel time of room no. 67,10 and 38 as the best time of his life, a day scholar who went to the college in the day all right but SCHOLAR …. I doubt..and so I went to see a dashing aamir khan , a 0-figured kareena, and a possible steamy scene, but then I got that was something more than a steamy scene.

I got to understand passion, apart from all the glitz ,and the zoobi-dooni’ness, it told about passion, or something more than that -following that passion, or even something more,-capturing and living ur life with it. Madhavan’s academic dump seemed to be the story behind my 65% aggregate. I realized perhaps that designing websites in ASP.NET cannot be my forte. And his later adventure in Brazillian rainforest as a photographer told met to follow your dreams , let loose of yourself, accept your heartbeat, and follow its words..that said..

stop living life like a cliché(dead and worn out)…live it like a joke(laughing it all away)….

P.S. …I don’t know which of the phase was right..or wrong, but cut these three phases and I find Varun Pant aka me difficult to imagine.

*FPS= five point someone

** UPTU- a rare univ where you get the rarest species of engineers-CRAMineers.

FACEBOOK...naam hii kaafi hai.....

There are times which are not just times. They cant be reduced to hours reduced to minutes, seconds…etc.These moments revolve around an axis, they revolve around a persona,that defines that moment , that rationalizes that time. Some great person , some great object carries the baton of that time with him and then that interval cant be defined in dates, it becomes much more than that,it surmounts to an ERA.


Eras, there have been many,that which came like a lightening with chengiz khan, or that which was came like an ordeal of peace with Ashoka. Sometimes it proved apocalyptic, when carried by guys like Hitler, Mussolini, and sometimes a tyrant like Mao, reconstructed the whole era. But, if I have taken even the minimum amounts of pain,in developing those nuero cells in my brain,I may not be wrong in saying that perhaps for the maiden time in the history of civilization, any era is in progress to be made out of questions like “WHAT TYPE OF KISSER ARE YOU”, out of quizzes like “WHAT WOULD YOU MOST LIKELY GET ARRESTED FOR “. Such an era is constructed by cyberscenic and worked out by biz-frieks ,only to be played by “PEOPLE”,and the sovereign, socialist , republic of this mother earth calls it….F A C E B O O K.


FACEBOOK, nothing extraordinary , when I saw the web page for the first time, just a subtle combo of white and blue, and yes there was something I used to admire a lot in it,and that was SIMPLICITY. Little did I knew that those sober pages were made to control the psychology of the most intelligent animal on the earth, ’the human being’. Facebook started to counter with our lives when I was still a hosteller, the craze of G-Talk, was still above the limits, with status messages getting longer and longer, and now that orkut was banned by the firewall, facebook sneaked in from somewhere.

“abe is par America se bhi dost ban jaate hai”, “abe ye bahut zyaada secure hai”,”mast hai be”, were the reasons I used to get when I asked them “why facebook”. Actually the problem was , I was in love with ORKUT. I loved its insecurity, the way it used to rip apart our privacy. I never can forget those days when I used sneak in any profile just grabbing some acute personal info about that guy, or as happened in most cases ,that girl. So I took a vow,not to use it, but sadly the others didn’t. and the classic blue of orkut, the colour of the sea where we used to float our heart out transformed to the gentle white of facebook, the color of sky where guys used to soar along, higher and higher.


“ha ha ha, abe karra comment tha ,”,”abe wo waali quiz mast thi be” , these were the general sounds that I started hearing as I became a day-scholar, at first I thought there might be some weekend program organized by hostel athaurities. But quizzes are not what they call a hosteller’s forte, so what was that. Slowly and steadily I got the answers, not through any explanations, but thorough a vivid observation. When I saw the PCs of our labs where we we were to make c programs turn white and blue. Classrooms became quiz centres and the would be engineers were the future quizmasters. The server of facebook turned to a sorcerer, which told you about your best friends, expalined you about the car you resembled,and as I have said prophesized the kiss that I would take in the near future.


I was going mad now, I was the only one who was there with orkut, blabbering about orkut, its themes ,its quizzes, but as it turned out orkut was now the thing of the past. And then there came a day, I created a facebook account and commented “F**K OFF facebook,orkut rules” and signed off,.then again signed in and saw that comment was counter-commented by many,I felt good, again scribbles something,signed in again, and this scribbling with comments continued until I played the quiz,” what personality are you”, and after sporting a string a question I got yhe answer “DOMINATING”, - now for a guy like me who failed to even become the monitor of his class, who loved that last bench of his in schools and colleges, loved the word ‘dominating’ and so I endeavoured into a new world of quizzes and comments, and a subsequent divorce to orkut was given.
Its been 3 months I have been following quizzes in facebook, and in these months have tried to understand me and my friends; madness for it, what I have got is as given below
There is nothing big in the magnificient come magnanimous craze of this F thing,its just contains 2 logistics:-
1. Applying a 3 tier Client Server Architecture.
2. Knowing the art of reading the minds of people.
The first one is developed by geeks, constantly jabbering around servers, redundantly manipulating the I-Protocols. The second logistic , is done by common men, who got no degrees, they might have been college dropouts, but knew what the other person wants in the crowed. They knew it well that “MAN IS A SOCIAL ANIMAL”, and there, too, stressed on more on the ANIMAL instincts of man. they will give you what you want from it and thus it'll end up being the thing you will crave for.

p.s.- last night after 3 months I opened orkut, I felt like it was crying, as why I had cheated upon her, why I moved on to facebook. I couldn’t say a word, just logged off, and then aftera few minutes, started playing a quiz..”WHAT TYPE OF A CHEATER ARE YOU”.

AS THEY SAY 'DREAM COME TRUE','LIFETIME WOW'...blah blah

As per records, I am doing engineering ;well according to my Orkut profile’s Professional page its ‘forget it..just ‘cram’eneering. Anything ,in these 4 years…differential equations, tower of Hanoi, PDA ,Codd’s rules…..etc etc….have not been able to influence me (or I am not able to…who knows). Its always my ACCENT,my DEBATES, my “ANGREZI” that has given me respect, sometimes given me internals and one time , I guess, I got a GP of 49 marks. But to tell you the truth, I am not comfortable in it, I seriously love hindi, the language in which I scored distinction in class 10th, the language in which I learnt to talk with my parents, the lang in which I learnt friendship, and also how to abuse friends. But still for all that it has given me,I must respect the LINGUA FRANCA of this world and so….lets visit in cloak of this respected language, the “dream come true” and “life time wow” of this ‘cram’eneering session..TOUR de MANALI come ROHTANG come CHANDIGARH.


The night that brought us from the 6th to the 7th of September was not an easy one. Apart from the excitement and observance of the excited status messages of pals,it was the night when I had seen a hint of reality, of professionalism, which had confirmed me pf the fact that this mother earth is not perfectly spherical but a little deshaped and that’s what makes all the difference. So 7th started with an alarming call by Niteesh, the shrillness of the ring tone signified the height of exhaustion(and enjoyment) that we were going to face, and thus at about 6:30 ,the sun about to rise,the weather (at last) devoid of the clouds, we started our march towards the bus,towards a dream ,towards ecstasy.


My first impression about our TITANIC, the bus, was of coziness, which gradually changed to congested. The first voices heard inside the bus was a song..”aaya rey”..i liked it..started tapping my feet, until I realized the technical faults of the tape and thus the tapping and the liking slowly vanished.
And now, at last we were off, for me it was still a dream, which, a day back I was convinced would be a nightmare. All 40+ of us, girls, boys, girls with boys, digicams, everything was bustling…like boiling milk*. I don’t remember much about the first hour, as the 3 musketeers of A-6 , Shastri nagar(raja ,me and vikky) choose dozing rather than singing Love Aajkal’s ‘aise kaise ho gayi re’ which was an instant hit for the last 4 rows of the bus.

The bus moved on……

BREAKFAST TIME…and my dreamy, dozing self found some heavy breakfast. “Yes !!! it was true…the tour is really on..yipee” I was thinking until Ramandeep singh announced…”HOD was angry in the project lab, have to report him next week.” All my dreams, of playing in the snow,dancing in the bon-fire,immediately changed to nightmares of cut short internals,deducted GPs, Year Backs etc. I tried to bring the nightmare down for the next 7 days as Muradabad was the next target, both for the bus, and us. Basically our target was Pankaj Singh, Muradabad was just a buffer for that, came Muradabad and guys were charged up as if we had reached the ultimate, songs were instantly made,poems were immediately created with finesse, just to watch the glow(or not-so-glow) of Pankaj Singh’s face. “kisi din banoongi main RAJA kii RANI” was echoing in that enthralled atmosphere until my dancing,enjoying persona drowned again in a grand siesta.


The bus moved on…

I missed the chance of watching rest of the Uttar Pradesh. i discovered twilight when I woke up, and instantly I was told that we are somewhere near the Haryana-Uttar Pradesh Border.”wow we are entering in a new state, so finally a new state visited!!!”, again repercussions of “yes the tour is on” were in full throttle. In came the night and on came the Jat’s land, I realized that there were some expert information that was coming about the state, I soon confirmed that “saali beer keval 40 rupaye kii hai”..was all that was being announced. To add to those “just 40 rupees” I realized that road turned quite smooth and yes,I needed some more sleep. Well that was last of my sound sleeps.

The bus moved on…

Dinner time..was a normal one and here we got out first taste of Haryanvi-Punjabi culture as ‘maa ki daal’ was served to us. 10:00 PM and back to the bus and..sleeping was not allowed and thus started a session full of songs, full of shayari, the college life that I dreamt of during my struggling days at TRIVAAG was coming true on that midnight. All the fines that we had given, all the fights that we had done, all the cold wars that we were engaged in were just being washed away,until we discovered by the topsy-turvying of the bus that the mountains had arrived.

The bus moved on….

That night was quiet. Everybody was rich with sleep except me as the last seat of the bus did two things to me….draining me of sleep and allowing me to admire the mountains, the divine conic sections which made me felt proud of being a kumaoni. The prudence increased as morning came and Manali was welcomed. It was the second time that I was seeing snow-clad mountains..and least to say..i was glad. Manali was much like my Uttarakhand, scenic, confirming that greenery was still alive somewhere also confirming the presence of endangered yak. My 3 years in hostel have filled me with one piece of information that a girl looks most beautiful on her wedding night. Although it was day time but Manali was gorgeous like a newly wed bride. One felt like kissing them as one saw those greenish hills.
About those temples we visited: they had nothing in them ….still acquainted with something..they weren’t the worship domes of Creators, they were the cottages of the creators , the builders, the magicians of the universe. Everything was quite, serene seemed as God was having a date with us.


The night was firy. …seriously it was.. there was fire and we were dancing around it. Again the dance was different. Chacha’s b’day was the first occasion when I first danced my heart out, and then there were many, where we flaunted our joints,but this one had some chicks,had some fire, and then there were we, ever so desperate to bring the Elvis out of us, also there was the IT branch which was dancing along, probably reminiscing the 3.5 years long journey that started from 17th aug 2006 and were dealt with repercussions, reverberations,which today were adding more to the music of the DJ. Night came and the guys still jumping with that unity circle* thing , ate and slept to discover another mesmerizing ‘snowy’ day.

The night carried along……

After a long time we were in a room with a television + a bathroom+ a western toilet. The cozy quilts made our journey to Rohtang late by an hour.a hurried breakfast and a short stream of photo sessions was all that was needed to pull up our socks and head on to see the snow in all its feast and fervor. So at last ,we were there in a Qualis and I finally was heading towards seeing snow for the first time. Rohtang was the icing of that tour, the reason why half of the people of our tour were with us, it was a dream we were dreaming from academic blocks and canteen, we all had fancied and fantasized different faces of Rohtang and now we were about to unveil the prized veil of that gorgeous lady ‘always’ in white. There were some halts…
1. When our normal ‘tourist self’ was converted to an abnormal ‘eskimo self’, courtesy” that protective suit and
2. When we realized that that goggles that was worth ‘rs 100..bargained to.. rs 40’ suited us and we had an avalanche of photo sessions only to discover that battery was discharged. But still….

Our quails moved on…

And so…seeing a live demonstration of dealing with a land slide, and experiencing a mile long jam we finally were with the snow we were anticipating. It was like those fantasies where we are locked in the room with the girl we stare from our balcony. “why called rohtang pass??” ,was the question still disturbing me but those frozen water falls, and foamy snow were degrading that disturbance. And so finally the end point was reached, we discovered that we were there in that Leh-Laddakh Road and finally I understood the meaning of Rohtang Pass , its relationship to the silk route and admired myself to have reached there.

That snowy hill and the 9 of us…

That snow was shining up the mountain and we were dying to kiss it. We discarded those donkeys besides us, and we chose the hard way, we believed in our feet and for sure what a belief it was!!!! We started marching, there were , at that time just two differences between us and Bhagat singh, one we were not going to the gallows and two we didn’t know ‘mera rang de basanti chola’. So we continued and slowly but STEADILY the Bhagat Singh inside started fading away and breathlessness showed its colours, we took a rest, we were 22, felt like 82 but had that temptation to go up still like a 22, so we moved on…we stopped for a tea, which acted like a bisleri in the Sahara and incidentally I got my best ever snap (as Harry told) clicked there. The vegetation seemed lesser, the snow seemed nearer the legs seemed weaker, the excitement seemed tougher, at last God was felt closer and Bingo!!!! I had reached it,I was there in the snow, playing, caressing, admiring, except writing somebody’s name on that snow,,perhaps I had to wait for another destination for that. That snow point was where, I guess I was kissing snow and making love with success, I was discovering it, there was this sweet taste I was tasting which I got by overpowering the breathlessness, the exhaustion, it was beautiful and I was enjoying it.

Coming down I had just started celebrating our trek until I found out that I had lost my purse, with that my right to drive a vehicle( DL) and my ‘cash in palstic’(ATM). But then again, all was fair in love, war and rohtang. Back in the hotel the sorrow of purse was gulped down with the tea and so from that tops-turvying we were heading towards the ACHTECTURAL AJOOBA….the land of goddess …CHANDIGARH. And 10 PM sharp our journey to witness the modern wonder of India started.

The bus moved on….(this time a little quickly)..

This time I got a little sleep in the bus, as I was exhausted singing those medival times songs and screaming more than singing. we got no deluxe rooms we got dorms with no TV ,no western toilet , but with smoke detectors, that were not there in that deluxe room. Buzzes of ‘daaru yahaan bhii sastii hai’ were still buzzing around . Some sleep some paraanthaas and we were there in the INFY campus , on our way, watching, for the first time, more surds than normal shaven guys.


Eye-opener INFY

It was here that we were confirmed of the fact that not only we know nothing,but we also do not have a goal, we might have played with snow, bought beer at half rate, had travelled 4 states but PRO-ness was what we were devoid of. One thing we did there with confidence…eat that good quality lunch..though the custard was a bit like a Pain killer, but, perhaps we deserved it. ‘INFY.we will be back’ with this in mind and a snap clicked with its counselors we moved in to Rock Gardens. Rock garden was a gem,that’s it, nothing more, ……OK ..something more, it showed the perseverance of a single man, the creativity of a single self, that ‘life is not to waste but to cherish it’ was all that was written over it. We were having snaps clicked like anything but it was a place to be snapped in mind as that garden was telling the colours of life, all sewn to one, be it love , hatred, lust, everything being a subset of creativity….again Kudos.

The evening was spent admiring the BROOOOOOOOOOOAD roads of sector 17, 2 snaps (one infront of woodland) and an hour’s search for a food joint which ended with one chicken burger. You see,if manali was beautiful, rohtang was majestic, Chandigarh was ambitious, it showed realism,modernity. If manali was worth admiring, rohtang worth worshipping, then Chandigarh was worth experiencing,learning and imbibing, and so taking a rickshaw, studying the architectural intricacies of the city and with my maiden snap in the rickshaw we reached back to the dorm
‘Wake up SID’ was in the store …again just 2 statements for it
1. As vikky said…’it ended where it should have started’ and
2. Mota’s b’day coincided with that of Konkana in the movie

The day was over , the tour was over, the dream that we were dreaming was coming to an end , but we all were determined to cherish it forever. Next day, the journey back was filled with dumb-charades, songs, dahi-parantha ,a jam near Rampur and in the end I was woken up at Izzat Nagar, I wondered why,until I realized that I had become a Day-Scholar and life was somewhere in the city. Next day ,I woke up at 12:00, and …………

At last ‘life moves on and on and on……’

* Sorry for that bad similie
* a memorable moment where were not individuals , but IT-06 and also proud of it
P.S. – dedicated to Birju and Shashi Kant Sir..no need to tell why.

NAZAR K SAAMNE.....and now JIGAR K PAAS

I'll be true to you...i write blogs to learn something, to master this art of wasting ink and also for some respect like.."arre waah yeh to BLOG likhta hai"
And so i respect the criticisms, if there are any...but for this post...i dont give a fuck to any criricism...as this is my heart in front of you...this is dedicated to ME....(sorry for that 4 letter word..couldn't help it.)

So today , was yet another goofed up bunk….’GOOFED UP’.. I use this word because I find it interesting, count it among those words of which you don’t know anything but use them because they sound interesting, make even a piece of crap look like something serious. So coming back…another bunk…added with the news of my current attendance score as 70% made the whole day a little creepy. 70 % is not that bad a call, but when you have to deal with a fine of 400 per % below 75 that call becomes a scream , a LAMENT rather. So with dreams of mastering LINUX still struggling to prosper, Bill Gates’ “The road ahead” suffocating somewhere below the pillow and attendance drooping to an all time low..i thought of blogging…thought of penning something great , something …..something as luscious as those seekh kebabs, something tasty as that ‘late’ coffee at that ‘late’ Nescafe ..something as steamy as that por…oops!!....but something about that time ….when we made a trip…a trip down memory lane…a trip down holy lane….where probably half a century ago….my father was born…..implying technicaly…that on some unlucky (depends)day ,I was born too…


So back to 18th oct 2009……an ‘EVENING WITH A DIFFERENCE’…….
The evening had started…. Rather jostled to start…some friends had visited my place…as they said, to‘wish Diwali’..and as I took it,…’to burn fire crackers out of me’. With a whole lot of witty bombs and great no.of NON VEG. ROCKETS.(code for obscene talks)……shooting up to the sky…I was easily shown dust in that war of wits. I was being made fun of ..i was joked about, I was being done at everything that I used to do to people before, but this time I was just looking ,partly at the clock to chao my friends off….and partly looking at the door just in case anybody might here those largely on the air NON VEG. The clock ticked 9, friends were off and in came a news. Babba (father) had won bucks at a cards party, he did lost some playing blind, but thankfully the deal came out positive and thus destiny decided upon a memorable evening for us.


So the party started with a cousin added, and within a white Honda City we(uncle aunt,amma, babba, cousin, me) started off… babba was exploring Lucknow to my cousin…..you see …I am thought of as a home-alone kind of a guy…who knows nothing about lko except that he also lives there. But things have started to change…I also had started exploring the city and this was the time I wanted to tell it all. Who does not want to impress upon a cousin landed straight from Mumbai and that too…from an aeroplane?. Unluckily I never got a chance….and I too…saw..the university..colvin etc etc much like a tourist….the urge to speak that ‘I know too’ grew irresistible…and luckily one voice from behind came ….”whats that” and I yelled …vomited(more accurate)..”that’s saadat ali’s tomb…under control of ASI”…a bit hush hush from behind and I thought I had won the war…I was elated…until I realized that it was time to dine…more than that it was time to show my culinary knowledge as since 2 years I had been WIKIing lucknow’s taste laboriously. Well, it’s a dream of every lucnowi to sit in a famous non veg joint with his guest and tell him/her about the cuisines, not important whether he likes the dish or not, not important whether he fills his tummy…he should like one’s knowledge, he should fill his mind. And I saw such a moment coming before me .


Again unluckily I didn’t get a chance… I proposed ‘shakhawat’ for dinner…plea rejected and here again pops had won,ordering dishes that I had never even heard of..let alone telling facts about it. I silently ate it all cursing Tim Berners-Lee (founder of world wide web) and Wikipedia.

So the day was coming to an end …after being the subject of friend’s pranks and then with a broken dream of exploring lucknow to everybody we were heading to have paan ..of which I seriously had no idea.

The paan shop was not found and instantly it was decided to visit Nazarbagh. ‘NAZARBAGH’….this is the word that easily would be the most heard word for me….heard sometimes from my mother ….with twinkling eyes…sometimes from my father..with a nostalagic throat….this word was always there for me….it was a place which was my first home after the maternity ward of Lady Dufferin’s..but still I never had any sentiment to it…nazarbagh for me was just a place and 69, Nazarbagh( a mansion built by my great grandfather a century ago) was just a house where by chance my father got born and by his choice I also had the chance of calling it my first home…but as you see I never seriously and sincerely honoured this fact.

So with chitters and chatters the ‘white Honda City’ moved on….it kept on moving ….until it stopped and with that stopped the race that the people in that car (except me) were running to survive in life..for the 4 people in that car (amma, babba, uncle, aunt), the race converted to a walk down the isles of the rosy past whose petals had nurtured them to become the strong individuals that they were. We had reached Nazarbagh and now we were in a place that had ,to me, stories to tell. All of them were looking at those buildings , those landmarks, where they had played cricket, where probably they had their first smoke, got drunk for the maiden time, and perhaps had fallen in love umpteenth times.

Seeing a mixed bag of emotions I too asked my mother “apnaa waala ghar kaun saa hai ….wo to dikhaao”…..and amma with 4 years of residential experience but with 40 years of storytelling guided me through a ‘little more’ broader lane and there stood a daunting white building…recently whitewashed…and on the backdrop was my mothers commentary….”yahaan babba money-plant lagaate the..yahaan khidkiyon pe grill nahi lagi thi….i didn’t know why, I didn’t know why…but I also was swimming in the pool of Nazarbagh….i started imagining myself as a child…how I used to cry? how I would have started to learn walking on foot…i tried to capture that 100 year old monument but the 2 megapixcel glitter didnt prove enough.


Meanwhile babba’s nostalagia was overflowing ….as I could hear…Laal Makaan and Pista Niwas was same as ever…those roads were not a complex organic compound of carbon, but had been a mirror where my uncle and babba were on a past expedition. I used to think that living out of home,in a hostel and now independently, I have enjoyed and will have memories that my father would always be devoid of. I got to know that day ..how wrong I was… as my father, too had an exubherent past which was having a showdown for me that night right after diwali.

With the heart and eyes longing for more , but brain longing for some sleep, we moved to our homes..having a hard time to accept that nazarbagh is not ours now..we finally accepted the fact that ‘property 50-60 saalo se zyaada nahi rehti’…

So the day ended . I ,who wanted to impress upon my cousin had to be content with her e mail id. And then at the doorsteps, babba finally admitted that today he had grown sentimental…somewhere there my heart also clicked, not because father was growing senti…perhaps I had started growing senti for nazarbagh…I , from now on had started honouring the fact that 69, Nazarbagh was my first abode after the cesarean in the maternity ward at Lady Dufferins’

CHALLENGES...1 .2 3 4 ...GO.....

Its been time since I’ve written my last post. And each time when I try to think and care about that gap…many things flood down this rather small cerebellum. To be true to all of you…esp. those who have taken pains to take my blog count to 130 (and esp esp to those 6 musketeers ..the followers), the time is not good at all. Its been moving with that speed that even ‘lightening bolt’ may feel shy to achieve, and I as a trainee for a long boring marathon, is perplexed by that. That unfathomable* Manusmriti challenge is over , but the new ones are more senile, more variegated *. so why not explore them and let me put them for you in a “what I love” tabular way.

CHALLENGE 1…. Indian Philosophy………………the oldest of ‘em all ,the grandest of ‘em all. This massive storehouse of knowledge has been a point of chaos for my grey matter. Its all a great theory, where logic is undermined as hell , though this undermining is great news for chaps like me who have hated maths .thus logic, but still 4 years of ‘as I call it’ crameneering as made my brain understand some ACKs and NACKs (courtesy..tanenbaum and NETTECH) such, that the ‘Radhakrishnan’s dualism, his distinction of self and not self, seems a bit , you know…unnetworked(courtesy.. ditto). Its been the second week of my issuing of our second president’s epic..but still, the caricatures of Atman and Brahman haunt me.

CHALLENGE 2… Recession………..aah….this is a veteran challenge, and we are still playing it down. This great word made its debut when our sky blue placement cell was all hustled and bustled with a BPO coming in and slammed us after 3 months when the ,all the more blue cell was all barren, all silent as if Obama’s Guantanamo replacement was this bluish arcade. It was a mourning that started with “TCS not coming” news around the campus, continued and watched Jackson’s death, submitted our training reports like a massive meal’s starter (didn’t even burp after that),and is now having some dezzerts with some more call centres and words like “TCS still not coming”

CHALLENGE 3… C#.....this is the latest challenge..a new one ..a teenager but c’mon Sachin was also a teenager to start with. Though it’s a new challenge, but its revelation was quite an expected one as, for at the end of 4 years when you still think twice before compiling a C program, when words like TCP/IP seems like some skyscraper in downtown New York, when you can’t , after 25 days of mugging concepts grow cold in explaining… “what is a server”…and then at the end of it all..log in happily and play those quizzes in Facebook, then such sharp revelations are understood. So in final year, as this mega project seems to be a mine of 250 marks..and I ,still confused with ins and outs of Visual Studios ..,my relation with c#,till now seems to be paradoxical.

CHALLENGE 4… WRITE GENERAL..so finally my blog, one of the homes that I made last year where I can make love with my thoughts (and that too without a condom!!!!) is now falling over me. “write general”..”write easy” phrases have been tossing over this poor soul, just to come down and split my blogging brain to two. And that’s a challenge I have been working upon, trying to work it out, sport out with some AS YOU LIKE IT..’general words ’.
There are more of them , infinite in no. but then its like an onion, peel out those layers from me, and I’ll be gone( that’s one thing I learned from Indian Philosophy). So well, my next quest , ummm…lets convert that marathon into Asafa Powell (c’mon..he’s just second to BOLT.

CHALLENGE 5 ….No onions in dinner tonight..now that’s not fare.
*-sorry if they are not general,part of “learn at least 2 eng words aday,you sucker” program. Had to add

PS- Vimarsh Kar , I will keep up my promise in the next post.

PPS - SAMAJ KALYAN GROUP, I take a vow , something great will be written on you.

1 BOOK..7 DAYS

Ashes has at last been won, Ponting at last (with a sigh) is down in the dumps. So a victory much needed at last arrived at the shores of Thames. Again a sigh……too many though ,but this month has been a month of sighs. Sighs of many types, like the one that came in the hope of having an internet connection in our room, that which came when all the grievances of the project were satisfied, or that golden one which came when I answered nine back to back word meanings asked by a batchmate (who like others made 2 mistakes- considering me Norman Lewis of English and asking from Norman Lewis’ Word power made easy). But amongst all these sighs the one that was penchant, ticklish, exorbitant, exuberant and having all such multisyllabic emotions of the same kind, was when I returned that book in the library, that book, that ‘great’ book, which made me the ‘Mahatma’ for seven days of its issue.

Barely a month have passed when I have started discovering Bareilly city as one of my hide outs, as I have left the hostel. Still that hostel building calls me, to relive all those magic moments of the past three years, for one more year, one last year…and I bewildered and amused, take refuge in that grand citadel of ours , the library. That building dipped in limestone has always been the same , like an introvert ‘n’ obscure father, who has been there to listen to the wishes of his son, in the same manner, both the times, when he was a hosteller and now ,as a day-scholar. ‘ In that heaven of my college’ I found a book.

Great people, even not so great ones have talked about intuitions, about premonitions, where in before doing a thing you are able to perceive with a crustal clear vision the consequences of that deed(generally grave), but still you commit it. That book looked at me..err.. it winked at me, there was something unusual in our meeting, I could calculate the ‘raised eyebrows’, ‘wide opened mouths’ that I had to face through this book, but still I was induced to it. I looked here and there, opened some pages, shuffled it with my hands , knew something wrong was happening but my relation with that book was turning to an enigmatic love affair. At last I decided , I issued it, I made it my guest , my mate, my partner for the next 7 days. The book was “MANUSMRITI”, , it was in “HINDI”,was an ancient indian “SHASTRA” and I HAD ISSUED IT.

AT THE ISSUE COUNTER : That robotic librarian,stopped like an old hanged XP machine, saw my reg. no. and branch twice, assured that I was a B. Tech. student , and murmuring a few words, gave it to me.

DAY 2: I carried that book with me to the lab, all the compilations and interpretations of an old C program of crypto were being done, suddenly a girl saw that book in my hand , all the compilations stopped, programs stopped giving results, lab was, as if , in a complete chaos , what happened? She had seen that book in my hands.

DAY 3 : Till now I had understood all my premonitions of the library, I was reading the book, and more than that I was reading people who were reading me at that time. So I took a day off and started analyzing that book, had study session

DAY 4: My roomies saw it. That’s what happened , nothing, they watched me, I peeped more into the book, they tried to savor me with their touch, I tried to find the meaning of its Sanskrit shloka. One of then , I saw it, didn’t blink for about a minute, and then suddenly burst into a laughter that made his eyes watery for at least an hour, nowhere to go I slept and that laughter continued.

DAY 5,6 : I locked myself,didn’t do anything , just tried to find the answers, of that non stop laughter of last day, that unrun program, of last to last and that librarian’s weird looks. Now I was just looking at that book, I was not giving attention to the book, but , I was asking that book. And that book, it seemed, on hearing my question was jumping with laughter, those hindi words , that pure Sanskrit script, danced before me, and told me the reason for that librarians’ weird looks. That classic title, MANUSMRITI , came forward, hugged me and whisphered to me all the logics of that hallucinated lab. And at last the title , the honour of being a dharmashastra, came forward and uttered the answer for that laughter night. Later I knew the concept of those premonitions, those premonitions were the visual definition of a modern youth where a young gut esp. an engineer was not supposed to read hindi, let alone shastra. We were in an age where we were moving towards tomorrow and as if paying homage to the roots of our yesterday was not in vogue. That book, by winking and laughing was telling that falsified reality.

DAY 7 : I read the last part of it, enjoyed it, went to the counter to return it,to my surprise the new librarian didn’t show any emotions. And now came out with Khushwant Singh’s “In the company of women”……next day I gained some respect, perhaps that of an engineer, thus having the greatest sigh of relief.

63rd......

So Nescafe is still like that tomb which despite all its affluence and glamour, still signifies hopelessness. But here it is again, as I call it, as Shakespeare might have called it, the ‘ides of aug.’ the day when we came to know the meaning of that Spiderman dialogue “with responsibility comes power”, the day when Raisina Hills, seemed to be ours, the day when Mall Road seemed more Indian, the day , frankly speaking , when we got independent.

It’s a different kind of festival, celebrated more by law, than by heart. That’s why , we the descendents of Aryans like to treat it as holiday, nothing else. A holiday which is more or less cloudy, a holiday when the most powerful man (the P.M.) comes at the most powerful looking place (the Red Fort) to utter the most powerful words of his life with perhaps the weakest will, the weakest intention. If that is the irony, or pure logic(of power politics) I cannot say, for me its been a tradition, repeated 40th time when I was born, and this time ....62nd time, when I am, perhaps at the most crucial point of my life.

Traditions , yes , they are something good old mathematicians, called axioms, great rulers called rules and the flamboyant bureaucrats call them sections, points, “which come under IPC so and so”. So we have been following traditions,right. Traditions of hoisting flag at sharp 8, tradition of watching an odd movie as a matinee show, and then sleep/make love according to ones requirements for a brighter tomorrow.

Everything above is logical , it happens, it does execute on that rainy August 15 , we wake up, we hoist the flag we watch movie, sleep ,make love, except for that last few words, ‘brighter tomorrow’. Now that is a bit miraculous, a bit illogical, as those mystics might have said, beyond language, beyond words.

Because , for all the other things the mission was one the target was one, me, I, our ego. Simple logic. For that last thing we have to be a bit altruistic, a bit generous, we have to be miraculous. Miracles, as the great Yogis say, let yourself become infinite, let yourself feel that ever so constant light, that ever so constant divinity, and materialize or dematerialize, a child’s play.
But are we, in that situation, or lets put it like this, what if we are in that situation. When we are able to be above all ego, when we are weightless ,when we are able to feel what Kashmir feels when each hour its childen are attacked ruthlessly, what those martyrs feel when they see that those who planned an attack at our parliament are still roaming around freely, when we are able to see the thousands of swords that have risen in revenge against “god knows what” in the North East. Then we will be able see that solution that way, of breaking the rules, cracking the tradition, modernizing the orient, making a way for the 200+ year old IPC to go to the gallows so that peace may be born the next day.

Then it will all become mathematics, having , in Tagore’s words a clear stream of reason, reason for everything, a secure Mumbai, a beautiful Kashmir, and a prosperous North East.

LIFE AFTER DEATH

DAY 1 : There was a big lock outside. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, a total , abysmal atmosphere. I was missing her throughout the 2 months. No doubt I was disappointed, but waited for another , brighter tomorrow.

DAY 2 : Again a lock, now everything, in and out was becoming jittery. Omens were being produced and reproduced before me. Something unusual was to happen, I knew that.

DAY 3: Nothing was normal around that place. Everything , it seemed ,as if, was implying to a mis-hap. That place where I used to find her, was not normal. Some guys stormed in, something stormed out. I tried to drift my attention away,only to find it pinpointed there . My thoughts conjured up this time, something unusual was happening.

DAY 4: It finally happened, the doom’s day finally came , and judgment ,at last arrived, all the penultimate restlessness resulted in an ultimate assault. It was gone, that reddish grace was no more , that bombastic atmosphere was killed by some abstruse enemy of mine. My love, my Nescafe , finally was gone ,don’t know why, don’t know where, but……gone.


They say, I don’t know why, “TIME HEALS IT ALL”. Does it? Or time itself is like that old grandpa whose camaraderie with tensions, socio-political wounds, is an obscure yet profound truth. Or even it is not a truth globally, for me, it has been locally, a mantra. If I recall the 3 years of my college , right from those ragging season, to this year of penance at Shastri Nagar, I have been drowned in tension. Tension, sometimes, it seemed act as a soother for me.
It was all a matter of questions, arising baselessly in me, until I found a tacit answer. ADDA LAAL BAADSHAAHON KAA”. A place, where I tended to forget all the syntax and semantics of life. That cup of coffee, bina pani , was as pure as those last wine drops of Jesus. That red bricked border of hers, where I tested many dreams, most of them finally rested in peace. Those sips, which used to take us to soaring heights of magnanimity, just to relinquish, for a split second those awful tensions.

DAY 5: That white blank space is still visible to me. That coffee is doing a razzmatazz in my mind as I, newly formed day scholar, is having a bout with my tiffin. And at last as I gulp down my last bite, I see a structure being carried in front of me, to the other side of the canteen. That bright red Nescafe was being shifted to the other side. “In a better style”, somebody said,”in a better way”.
A sudden feeling arose, what type of, I can’t tell, old days were laid to death last day, only to be buried today, so as to give birth to a small set of memories. There was a ticklish, feeling, a perfect combo of excitement, nervousness, pain, and joy. Perhaps now, I was understanding my inner turbulence after becoming a Day Scholar. My love , the Classic Coffee of the Nescafe, had , by taking a reincarnation, taught me the ethics of time. Time , I understood,was healing in form of wounds. It was giving answers, in form of more complex questions.

DAY 6: The new Nescafe is being constructed, and I as a Day Scholar am eating my Tiffin ,calmly.

TIMES OF TRAINING 'n' ASHES......QUITE STRAIGHT THOUGH

These vacations were real hectic, after a “one on one” heavyweight bout with the deadliest of all papers, with a hope of apocalyptic results, I was all set to be drowned in a sea of training, where some more Loch Ness were ready to gulp me down. But as the archaic saying goes ‘Time and tide waits for none’, so happened in my case. It all went, bringing with it, MJ’s death, the master, with whose ‘Dangerous’ I inaugurated my course of English music, the typhoon of dance, the Aristotle of songs, the connoisseur of style went away, in ,perhaps, the most stylized way.
The last eight days of the vacations, or probably the only days of my vacations, were spent watching that recurring “My daddy strongest” act of Jackson’s daughter. That crying phenomenon served as a fulsome week’s package for our agencies.

The politically more important salami that made a handsome sandwich for the news guys was ‘article 377’. Gays are now in vogue, lesbians are rollicking hard, heydays for straights. Long gone are those days when guys like Turing committed suicide and gave way for trademark of companies like Apple*. The most HOMOgenous of all decision resulting in the STRAIGHTest of all debates.

“Pappu pass ho gaya “ was the champ in one-liners until “Article 377 pass ho gayaa…. “ went way ahead of the former. As my chronic struggle for getting in the general compartment of the train continued this time, I still managed to get inside swimming through massive pool of enormous bodies,and as I peeped out to get some Oxygen ( with its faintest hope), I got ready for facing the “ now a clichéd “ grin and listened that “ now an over clichéd” …”article 377……”. I realized that my back was in close contact with a man’s trouser and so temporarily, yet affirmatively , I was declared a gay.

One more great news of the term, esp. for me as I have a soft corner for England , was the Ashes, and a convincing , determined win at Lord’s. Its not that I hate Australia, as I have rolled over the googlies of Shane Warne big time. But c’mon man, now everybody wants a change, and who does not enjoy, Freddie Flintoff savaging the middle stump and KP hovering for a towering six. Though we never saw that six, but still I enjoyed that ‘voodoo’ of Lord’s (as one commentator had put it that way).

And as time again has started jogging down the track, lets hope for a safe haven for MJ’S soul, great life of all the homos and c’mon England “ whip’em hard”.

*Alan Turing was the revolutionary Computer Machinist who is undoubtedly the father of modern computing. Fate proved him to be a straight. And as he was a code breaker with England in World War days ,it was not considered apt to give him independence, so he was given Solitary Confinement”, and within an year he subjugated and killed himself by mixing poison with apple. The time when his body was recovered , a half eaten apple was there, and to commemorate the great scholar Apple kept their symbol that way

TO ALL THOSE WHO ASKED , “WHY LEAVING THE HOSTEL?”…A TRUE ANSWER

“YEH RAATEIN NAYI PURAANI….AATE…..AATE JAATE…..
LIKHATI HAIN….KOI KAHAANI…….”

Nights for me are something sort of an oasis when I am a thirsty one all alone in a lonely desert. Where I quench my thirst, I fulfill my heart. Nights are like a fresh morn where it all seems to be new, like a laborious noon, where a kind of ‘wanabee’ spirit rolls down my mind, alas, like that gorgeous twilight where after all the trials and tasks done , heart lives up and says ,…..”C’MON LET’S PARTY’
This time alone in my room, and incidentally in a dark night, my mind lingers on to those days which perhaps, made me start discovering the life that I was made to live beforehand. Those days of hostels , of those rooms, of those lobbies, and of course that awful mess-food, those days that perhaps will never come again as I have dropped them in the aisles of history (reasons I’ll tell later.)
If I roll back myself and start recounting those days, the moment that tops the list contains a letter of a mother and I ,a freshly ragged son of her reading it, a point where he understood what that home he left behind was for him, what that letter and those feeling inscribed in the blue ink were. I was wearing a filthy uniform , but that was the last day (or moment) that I was pure, and knew what relations actually meant.

Friends ,or rather partners, no, shall I say mates…..or I don’t know ,perhaps beyond language, they were guys, who acted as parents, as girlfriends, as something unimaginable. They are still there….yes….they are…its just that ‘I’M NOT’. Still remember those sleepless lobbies, where the night crawlers (all of us), used to crawl away days, nights, weeks, away from all the hindrances, all the struggles, all the realities..perhaps.

Hostel for me was like a school, a school where I learnt what life was, what I was, what the near ones whom I had left far behind were, what home cooked food was …….. It was fun; it was all like a riddle whose answers I knew beforehand until….
Until I realized, that this was the fun I was not supposed to have, this was the riddle I was not supposed to solve. I was somewhere in a huge, long mango orchard and I well knew that perhaps, that it was the arid Sahara that I belonged to, or rather I deserved. I wanted to prove something, I wanted to prove that I can convert my Sahara into a fruit orchard, wanted to prove, that I can take a decision, struggle with it, but stick to it, hate it again, but ultimately gulp it down so that the reality can be digested. This was all I wanted to prove to myself.
So I took it, and am out of the hostel, of that PMC, of those night strolls, of many things. Electricity is not there this time in my rented room,, everything out and out dark, sweat flowing like a distant Campty, but somewhere inside, a faint lamp , of introspection, is burning, burning low , burning slow, but burning deep, burning steady. And somewhere along that low battery radio, in some distant channel a song is being played………

“YEH HAUNSLA KAISE JHUKE…..YEH AARZOO….KAISE RUKE……”

WHEN A MANGO TURNED PRO....

SUMMER OF ’09 … warm and sweaty…. Summers always have been the same story ,of heavy electricity loads, pepsi, those funky chocobars and “not so” funky Dermicools. One thing you can’t forget if you hail from this heveanly part of the state of U.P. are those mangoes….those glib.,Yellow,smooth, acts of ecstacy. Mangoes , to me, have been , like a savior, like a friend,like a wife. Now like a savior, because mango only came for my rescue when I was mercilessly raped by these tropical villains. Friends , as I had spent those countless summer afternoons with this yellow cutie and believe those noons were as pleasant as that night of first love. And of course as a wife because it gave me everything…..pain (when not there), pleasure (when there ), support (against that sun when it was inches away from my mouth).

But come this summer and I was devoid all the three. I became alone, lost a friend and consequently became a widower. Why….well…”AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT, WHEN INDIA SWEATED, ME (WITH 2 MORE) WERE SET TO PERSPIRE IN JAIPUR. We were there for a networking course. That meant something , in fact many things, like downloading , uploading ,webhosting, but where was my fruit, my love , my life, my mango. It was not there, all downloading seemed empty, uploading seemed fake. All the virtual world of web was turning unreal for me. Until…… love finally spoke, it finally excecuted and gave me the reward. Next day, in the lab , with all the state of the art facilities , I got a username “M A N G O” Now …I don’t have words to describe it, 600 kms from my home , 600 kms from those dussehries , I got my love, though as a username but I got it. I was now all set , to climb up the virtual world….how wrong I was ..in fact how unknown I was …..
They say that this whole holy world is just a mere probability of interconnections, some times its there , sometimes it is not. For me this web world of internet was something identical.

So now I ,as a mango for the next 25 days, started gearing up , lets say for the inevitable. The next day, now it might be a cliché but I have to say that the sun rose for me, and me only ,the rays of the sun , pinching me , forcing me towards ruthless labour. That smooth sunshine inspiring me towards professionalism. Yes that’s the word, “being PRO”. The course, in a certain sense was null and void, ‘coz all I got in those tests were null and void, i.e. zero. 10 zeroes in a row. Physically I was exhausted, that sprawling Jaipur campus no longer enchanted me. Mentally , I was down in the dumps but from one anonymous part , I was all spiriited up, and that too unanimously.

For me those zeroes and those failiures were not emptiness , but a ‘suchness’ one cannot describe. Yes,I was unknown before as that virtual world was a real professional world we were climbing to. I guess this generation z (or z++) is quite crazy about professionalism , but perhaps while approaching that , we tend to loose it…..loose it all. There is a thin line between professionalism and practicality. We , quite often tend to forget that. Being practical , is more or less like being ‘I’, like being a mango, which is eaten by that mango itself, there are no ways, there are no possibilities, everything is for a specific reason, for that ‘I’. While being ‘pro’ was being true. True to the profession , true to the world , to the almighty. Those, are the professionals who behave like an ‘I’, serve the ‘you’ and targets the ‘us’. Those 10 zeroes and loads of internet told me all that as with each of them I was getting up close with my goal but not emotional towards it. I was getting truthful for it, not selfish.

These 2 things , Internet and the mango , told me a lot of things. There is hardly a day I pass without tackling my fingers over the address box, internet’s like a friend . like a mate sometimes, but for the net I am nothing more than a login id ,a code. Why? because its true , its pro it seves ‘you’ and targets ‘us’. Similarly the mango, my love whom I adore. But for it, I am just one of them , whom it has to serve, from season to season, orchard to orchard.

So now, back home , with dusseharies , bustling around me, I was in them, eating enchanting , caressing them all this time , a bit professionally.

EXAM TIME-3..Tanny and and an affair with his (E) book

I know I am not that big of a blogger (am I ?). OK I am not, but so what…..i try to start my write-ups in a different way. But this time I am caught, caught in a big fishhhhhh……
.
.
[This was what I got through when I looks at just 1 post in the month of may..but the experiences of the second week made my fingers ….travel round the keyboard as under……]

Don’t know him ,never even thought about him..he is some protégé of Berkeley..California university. Made some system called the MINIX., and yes married some Dutch(poor she..tch tch..). so that’s it,nothing more, NOTHING MORE , till came the networks subject, and got just 3 mins of swashbuckling intelligence in a 3 hour long paper. So what was to be done, I thought of buying some intelligence from this Dutch’s husband. Well , he was ….Andrew S. Tanenbaum. T. A..N E…N….too tough a name , lets call him..”Tanny”.

So Tanny wrote a book on Networks, and I had to study,for that I had to have a book, which I had not, so I had it have it, technically speaking, I was out of one book and had to buy it. You know buying for me is a tough task as I carry a euphemistic wallet with not so euphemistic “ only 50 Rs. in it”. Now I was at the crossroads of taking a “udhaar” (sorry don’t know the the right English) …then going to the bookshop, and getting success in galore or just….walking towards the gallows of the backpaper. Talking of the udhaar I got nothing, neither the udhaar nor the book shop.

What I got was a network phobia, what to do…all those protocols …what to do….those layers that were like piling up likelayers of my grave….what to to….and then tired with all those what to do’s , my trembling hands went to that Brin’s and Page’s miracle GOOGLE ..and typing some free ebook and passing through the seas of links ….at last found 1 Rapidshare link. And so I found a real friend, as if rescuing me in those gallows like a counter terrorist, I found Tanny’s book, without udhaar and the shop. They use to call it the E-book. So a new relationship…was in the making…

This e-book of mine , was a strict disciplinarian ,like Tanny I guess. I have this knack of feeling a book, touching its pages with full passion…but this time when tried to do it with this book, it said,”DON’T TOUCH, we’re here for study so don’t be PHYSICAL.” Unlike all my books at the almirah, kissing dust at every nook and corner, this new aristocrat friend of mine resided on my Rs 40,000 prized possession ,the lappy. And we used to look at each other , and just look,….sometimes scrolling , just to feel that we were alive. This e-book thing was turning out to be a boring marathon. No flutter of pages, no division of books, no pride of the possession of a thick book. Just scroll, read ,scroll, read…..

Prior to this event, I used to develop an emotional bondage with books. I used to be filled with passion when buying a new book, smiling on seeing the attractive paperback, elated on finishing each page, celebrating while finishing it all,even crying on torn pages. But this time I was just, as I said before scrolling, scrolling. I was like a man who married a lady who took over my mansion and now I was just..scrolling and scrolling. Also I had to digest the wide eyed looks of all the mates on seeing me and my electronic partner together.

So 10 days got over until a paper came whose real BOOK I had and I just caught hold of the book, and instead of reading its content , I held it and cried and cried.

(The deluge has not yet ended, still operating with that e-book( electronic name for studying), lets see what happens in the paper.)

EXAM TIME-2 ..OF MIDSEMS, IPL AND NETWORKS

Teacher : How many states are there in India?
Student: 8
Teacher: Name them?
Student: Punjab Kings, Delhi Daredevils,Kolkata Knightriders, Deccan Chargers, Chennai Superkings,Bangalore Royal Challengers, Rajasthan Royals and Mumbai Indians.
Now your chance , what would you expect teacher does, a slap, a tooth busting punch,or a scolder ,well all wrong , it’s a shot of Rs 100 in the table on a match between KKR and CSK by the teacher. Quite a cliché now but “such is the madness of IPL these days.”
And back in our island, our hos, we are in a situation where we got to realize that the difference between 12 in the morn and 12 in the dark is just that the former is white and the latter is pitch dark as the ” sleeping factor ” has been taken by a chronic devil called Midsems. Period where we get indulged in a 5 days relationship with books, fall in love with the notes ( of others’ of course..) and marry all those booklets that give you a fizzer that these are the Q ‘n’ A that there in the papers.(the otherwise always happens though ,but you see it’s a marriage).
But you know the IPL , phew…..its like South Africa are the exam centres, and the match statistics are the questions, of course Lalit Modi being the paper checker. The tradition seen in the matches is the one following which Azharuddin missed in centennial test by a whisker, of course BETTING From 5 to 50 to 100 to 1000 everything for you players. Its all happening out there. Even the smoking of Marlboro Light by SRK is talked with as much delight as a sixer hit by Tendulkar.
So coming back…. apart from the festival that we are celebrating from 4:30 to 12:30 in the night (IPL). We get to remember that we have our midsems too, of course sometimes this chronic devil gives us the taste of its blood. So it was our Networks paper , morning 8 ‘o’ clock, we reached the centre containing the madness of the game played last night, but then, ooh then, what to tell?. Seriously how can you describe a paper 3 hrs long and you know just the 3 mins portions of it.
Well that paper was an incident as most of us , the normal guys had to pass the 3 hrs- 3 min of that paper without moving the pen. Apart from few scribbles of some protocols, some of us were( esp me) were there thinking about the chicken that we were to have the same evening, some were practicing their shots with their wrist cum bat just emulating the hero of last night . And some tch tch tch for them who were trying to spend half of their time in the toilet.
So these days with Midsems on and IPL blazing , networks also rolling somewhere near, its all happening here in this outlandish campus the other way round….yes we are “:watching xams and writing matches.”
Lets see what happens in the endsems.
(P.S. : Humble appeal to ICC not to keep any INDIA matches in that season.)

EXAM TIME ----OF WATERMELLONS JAMMERS AND EMINEM

“Adrenaline shots of penicillin could not get the illing to stop.
Amoxacilin is just not real enough……”……….damn it another miss, do wahatever in all the holy hells you can do…except for learning this Eminem number.
Well that was me…a few days ago…learning an Eminem song. I don’t know why I do it but I do it for ….ummmm…I guess for myself. You know I am a kind of a guy who has spent a score of his life debating, blabbering all the way through, getting an image of an intellectual(though failing in physics many a times in that intellectual marathon). Debates are good but you know what… I wanted it all. There are times I see myself as a dancer movin’ feet with Usher…times I am playin’ the “head over heels” drums beating away with a Linkin Park number. But each day I wake fuzzed up in myself and see a “Varun Pant” knowing nothing about anything and desperate to enter the loo.
These days are a bit comfy as we have landed our ships to the shores, we(i) wake up at 12(in the morn) and its such a pleasure (as of course the loos are also empty). Xam times..folks…apart from all the networking algos and operating system analogies, its always a time to have a love affair with ..”TIME” as we have it all. For the past 2 years this time has given a sort of ticklish reverberations (at least to me). Things take a subtle turn…you see subtle as they always seem to be straighter. From love to lust..from fight to fright..everything gallops and makes its way in these waters of exam time.
This time it was a bit different ….yes. due to some illegal activities(lets just not ponder over that) one of the gravest(or greatest…confused with v and t) decisions of the mngmt of the college in the last few years. Well.. jammers were jammed upon us. Signal and Systems might define it another way, but for all the others of us, it was no mobiles, as no signals. The God of all electronics has been sympathetic on us as till date jammers are not installed but that period was exceptional..everybody had his or her worries and tussles with jammers…lets categorize them

1. People like me…”My goodness how will I call my mother. You see 1 call everyday. No mobiles so P.C.O. and 10 Rs for each day. Man what about my coffee…:(.

2. People better than me….”….” well no words.. he is too stunned to speak, as this mobile phone was the place where those 2 herats used to beat together(of his and his girlfriend…he stands up..walks..then cries..(some TYPICAL INDIAN ABUSES) and then goes down, as if never to come up again.

3. People (much..much) better than me….”shit all my contacts are gone …al the more difficult for all the GATES and CAT. Aaargh!!! Don’t know how to bust out the soul of this campus.

4. And some….i guess NOT better than me …capitulate on the situation by just abusing the place where we are for doing 4 years of Technical Time pass.

And someday later…till now the jammer news was a bit under the bed…so we celebrated this “going under the bed” through a “watermelon treat”. And yes, to everybody’s surprise I was eating this up for the first time. You know I am a guy(guess I am) who has lived on a lot of B-complexes, and Liv-52(medicines). But water melons and sugarcanes…”naaah not my type. But now I feel that I have gone past a life of typos and am living it with a zeal, travelling with a heart as solid as a Maverick and getting to taste the sweetness and the surrealness of “Ganna and Tarbooz”, just to find out and learn that life is sour…just make it sweet by the sugar of your ability of taking chances.
I have laernt it all here..in room # 67, 10, 38. So cheers to college(n hostel) life.
(P.S…. pray that jammers are not jammed up…if not for me then for that “Reliance Connection”)

The GREAT INDIA(in hindi)

Quite recently I celebrated my 22nd b’day, so that meant a lot of things…a day to feel special, when all around you seems to be “all about you”, a day made for you,with quite a no. of SMSes ,calls and…if you are a scrappofreak then you get about 20+ scraps on that single day. So cheers, I had a fantastic b’day. Well the point is not my b’day ,the point is that I completed my 22 years on this earth. No, not like this I completed 22 x365x24 hrs on this earth. Perhaps not, as for those 20 odd years I was made live a life I didn’t know, I just lived it, as in I was made eaten, made seen, made go,that’s why made live. So after 20+ I stopprd living ….and I started exploring, exploring myself and the world around me…..and still I am the same old explorer ,no doubt enjoying it. During this exploration last week I came across an 18 gb epic the largest in the world in electronic style , it was called the Mahabharat, quite rightly it is a MAHA bharat.

I don’t know the etymological origins of the word ‘epic’ but no doubt this word means something solid something sturdy, like that rock of Gibralter,stoically digesting those waves. Whatever it means, Mahabharat quitely fittingly provides all the requisites of the epic. But in our indian culture we , quite often dichomotize things, thus making them perfect , sometimes larger than life, thus forgetting the sourness which makes sweetness the greatness it is. We call Mahabharat from our mouth and we recall in our hearts the HEROIC Pandavas and the VILLANOUS Kauravas. This thinking alone is the marring of the great theory dealt by Vyas.
Life , more importantly ,living life is all about opportunities, getting them, grabbing them, stealing them, but cashing them. It doesent matter whether you are hero or a villain in that process , cashing that opportunity makes you a hero in all senses. Everybody amongst us is a villain, everybody amongst us is a hero , so if you are a hybrid, then you are a human. For me Mahabharat is based on the above principle.
If you were to ask me , nobody was a hero , nor anybody was a villain. They all were humans(though exagerrated). They all waited for opportunities to come ,and cashed on them. Whether it was Arjuna, mumb when Eklavya got his thumb out of place, whether it was Duryodhana in that game of dice. If Yudhisthira was such a personification of law, then why did he kept Draupadi at stake, knowing the atrocities of the game, and why Draupadi mocked at Duryodhana who was elder to her, if she was such an innocent girl, not to miss Duryodhana’s opportunism in various places of the story. So they all enter into a dead lock state , where none can move without each other, they all in a way sinned thus providing the way for more and more sinner stories and thus …..a bloodbath.

Now the war, which often recites the heroics of Pandavas, where they won with a modest army against a hurricane of Kauravas. Lets look into this whole heroism from a different angle. Arjuna didn’t want to fight , who persuaded him, Krishna, so war was started in an a way through Krishna who was one of the closest of Pandavas. Why?? Perhaps because he saw the opportunities in that war for them. This war,which can be regarded as the focal point of all the trajectories giving this story a parabolic stint, is one of its kind, like a test match, with scores of rules, incidentally,all of them broken at one point or the other, some times by the Kauravas, the other by the pandavs(who what heroically!!!!). Abhimanyu was murdered mercilesly, ruthlessly by the Kauravas, creating a mockery of injustice at the battlegrounds. And then, started an uproar of Pandavas, a cavalcade of whatever they could do, to oust those enemies. One can point out here that Abhimanyu’s death which is regarded as a mountain of tragedy is an opportunity for Pandavas to get their foes through the same old tricks. And look at stalwarts who were the preys, Karna, Dronacharya, the old warrior Bhishma Pitamah. So wasn’t the deal doen fair ‘n’ square here? What to say more when the signature killing of the battle was done (Duryodhana) by the lavish undoing of rules.

So who’s at fault, Pandavas , Kauravas, I guess none of them, they all did just what the ticking clock ordered. We often confuse the story with God, divinity, its never like that, it is(Mahabharat) a story about human biengs, their natural instincts, which compell them to go for success at any cost at any time. Nobody is God in it , even Lord Krishna is a human bieng with quite visible traits of human emotions(when he pulls on his Sudarshan Chakra against Bhishma, bieng animated by the latter’s skill). If Kauravas see the opportunity in the dice game, then Pandavas apply every tactics in the war. If the sari pulling of Draupadi was inhumane then the formers’s pledge of getting the blood of Dushasan is equally insane.
It’s a story that happened once, happened more, and still happens, amongst us many times. And unknowingly we many times create that same epic , many , many times.

AN ESSAY RE-WRITTEN......

“Bachpan kay din bhula naa dena”, this is one of those songs that is true both philosophically and psychologically(as for some philosophy is a science of fools and escapists. We play,wander,roll around,with the least care given to its consequences. But ,but….that childhood of our’s has some follies,has some phobias, which make us cry, which let us awake in the midst of a dreamy night, and yes, they are serious. One such fear was essay writing. Those long, ever so solid ,structures of prose, to me , they were like some ghost ready to gulp me in one go. But like all those poor chaps ,me too passed those days.

One of those ghost riders that I got in the examinations were “WHAT I WISH TO BECOME IF BORN AGAIN?”. The mere sight of the word limit instruction preplexed me. I was close to getting loose motions.I forgot all those verbs, adverbs, passages, be it seen or unseen. The whole situation was proving to be an anathema of sorts. So after grave research, I came to the conclusion of becoming SHAHRUKH KHAN ,if born again( as I was in awe of his youthful avatar(and the euro-trip) of DDLJ,and of course that KKKKK KIRAN(which still haunts me).
But now,many days have passed since that exam day ,and much water has flown and has polluted even more in the rivers of India. Whatever but stilll ..I mean its a bit strange but that essay topic ,now comes to haunt me....comes in my dreams, and asks ..."OK, lets keep the marks aside..but what is it that you want to be". So here is an essay of class 3rd revisited………………….
“they say you get this body, once in every 84 lakh births. And they are the one who also say that we have seven back to back births. I don’t know if they are fools or what but yes what’s the harm in getting a rebirth. So what would I become, or tend to become,and after some stuoid research I come to the conclusion that I would like to become AHEMM…. A DOG….a barking ,sniffing,bone licking dog. I hear you cry, “what for why for, whom for”. I guess for me being alive what I need right now are reasons. Quite clear, crystalled reasons.
So here they are….one thing I lacked in my 22 year old career as a guy is athleticism, 100 mtrs, 200 mtrs. are a dream for me which I win in my dreams only,and dogs with their un-obscure sprint can get me out of that slumber win. Most importantly there is no discipline, anything( I mean it) can be done anytime, no need to worry, about recessions, year backs, love affairs, do it when you feel like doing it. Thirdly for me being successful as a man, I have to be a hard worker , you know one who burns that midnight oil,toil,learn,hit the road.. But being a dog,no shitty business, either just get born in a good breed and somebody like Paris Hilton will take you in her arms ,or else you are just a dog ..who cares what you do in life!!!.

There are some other reasons I love about dog but for a dog, they are the reasons why it dies dog’s death. Being a dog at least I would be able to serve those who once served me with never ending affection. Being a man we never realize the importance of parents, our well wishers, being a dog at least I’ll get rid of being selfish. Being a dog I’ll wait for someone I loved ,someone I cared about, perhaps I may die too, but surely what a death it would be. At least I will be getting rid of that “moving on in life”. Homo sapiens are said to be making the best use of the brains, in a way killing emotions. Emotions, which doesn't make you live life , but enjoy life, savor this gift of God. That’s why by being a dog , I, if nothing,would want to enjoy life.
So that’s my ambition , my mission , if born again….BOW VOW till then."

AN ALTERNATIVE.....

India , as we all know from our naive years, is a land of festivals. There are thousands of them some joyous, some pious, for each scrap of human emotion we’ve got a festival of it’s own. One great multicultural,multilingual,but uni dimensional festival we started celebrating since ’52, we gave it a more technical name,which so on and so forth was more apt…”THE GENERAL ELECTIONS”. We tend to celebrate it every 5 years, if something goes wrong in between ,we celebrate it again with the hope that everything goes right again.(remember…..its just Hope….)
So for this term’s elections, in order to make it memorable one great pol party leader announced….that we will (I don’t know if ‘must’ was included here) build the temple. You see, elections are those swords which redesign those lines in our hand, consequently improvising our future. And temples, according to me, is a place,where you meet the infinite, a force with undefined acceleration, which doesen’t take you towards your dharma, but guides you towards your karma. So temple,elections, and our future our quite relative terms, are’nt they?
We all know about that dreaded history of that temple(once a mosque), or the mosque(once a temple). Keeping them aside I often wonder, purely as a to be engineer, that “is building a temple on that dreaded site the only alternative. I mean if one general election’s temple manifesto, is defining our future, then how can that temple end the recession we are facing. Can that God’ abode clean the Ganga at Kanpur. These days when I pass my days studying subjects of pure logic, I find the aims of that temple a bit illogical, so to speak aimless.
So are there any alternatives? What if, we built a school in that place, school which tells you about your country about you duties , responsibilities, about the comforts we have taken and the penance we have to take? What if, we built a hospital there , treating those infants which quite well be the apostles of our development, those war heroes that stand on that snow just to make our lives a degree warmer? And what if, we built a residence for those slum dwellers who submit their days and nights for the people who have a lot more bucks, in the end finding nothing for them, absolutely nothing.
Well , I am not giving any conclusions, I don’t believe in them,as dynamism is the charm of the universe. I am just placing it in front of you. So won’t these aforesaid buildings take us towards the goal we always wanted to achieve, towards that karma we always wanted to be guided to?. Won’t we in a way built a temple of our own…our own India. I gues we will.

DATE WITH DIVINITY

I had once gone to Kanpur for some ICAR examinations,so on my way , well ,I don’t remember the place,I saw her. She was not that majestic ,as people called her,mystique though she was. And that mysticism was something which enthralled me towards it. But…..nothing crazy about her..all the more,I didn’t get selected. Next year same place, same journey, same mysticism,and phew…same result….not selected.
That image was not a containable image and in due course of time seeing some somnasoporific beauties I clearly forgot about it. A bit darkish, not quite slim, and most of all quiet, not silent ,but quiet because you see silence is quietness with added beauty and mascara. It was as if that lady is quiet after seeing some hundred, what hundred , a thousand years of penance, torture, and what I wanted was a silence,beholding her, taking her proudly above the seventh heaven .
This time ,barely a couple of days back I saw her again ,(this time in Haridwar and Rishikesh). Or you can say, I saw her for the first time because formerly it was my devilish incarnation that saw it, as the beauty was majestic, divine,bovine, reminiscence of the greatest bliss God has ever blessed earth with. She was a figure models envied, that stretch of her from the groin to her stomach, was indispensably seductive. There I found that silence, that flowing silence, those breath that she was taking ,eventually converting the whole atmosphere breathtaking. That walk of her,which carried a caress, a push that pushed the world to dance to the tune of her rhythmic gate. I loved her. She was /is my latest crush, her name is GANGA…sometimes she likes being called the GANGES.
I did’t know her profession ,didn’t know who her parents were , what I knew was that she’s got her home somewhere in the heart of Himalayas from where she had stolen all the greatness of the never ending snow. So what…. I loved her, so,I got to know her, I didn’t call her, nor mailed her, but met her, talked to her(in Haridwar). She was a simple girl, but had got moods , sometimes she was jovial, luckily with me she was. Sometimes she was aggressive, falling from the mountains as if announcing the Doom’s Day. Sometimes she was just great, how could I explain her greatness , when we the Upites are bye-products of her greatness.
If you have not slept throughout this write up, I told you that back in Kanpur , it was the mysticism that enthralled me. Well now it was a question mark(exclamation too). It was, like, what is in her despite my love for her I want to close my eyes before her. If I wanted to kiss her, some force intervened and I started worshipping her,with that much joy. Some times I thought she was mine, sometimes she was of the whole world. That exclaimed me, as well as, irritated me. And I asked her,what’s so special and what so different about you that my simple love is turning out to be a sacred worship. She smiled and turned away.
Next day our last day of our trip(this all happened on the trip to Haridwar/rishikesh), we went for river rafting. There in the middle we all jumped in the water,but I was taken aback ,by a flow , a gush of water,no she was Ganga, but I saw water all around. I thought I am drowning, I am dead , but in between my commotion came the most comfortable thing of my life. It was the voice of her,but she was no where I cried within myself,” where are you, where are you???”. A voice came,”I am here , there, everywhere, in that rock ahead, in this chilling water, in your raft for the adventure, in this drowning for death. You wonder that why you worship me,perhaps because you imagined me as a girl, you got that feeling that each one of you gets. The problem is I am not a girl, not a guy either, I am force serving this country for years, that’s why I am nothing but mystic in Kanpur, because there I lose it all except for my spirit to serve. So love me kid, man or darling whatever you are but do remember for me, service is the greatest love and vice versa which eventually is love.”
Sooner I got out of the raft , stood near Ram Jhula, closed my eyes and joined my hands , this time with utter satisfaction.

MOVIES …MY VIEWS…

I missed the Oscars this time. If I go in the right path via my medulla to my sub-conscious mind ,I used to watch it with an awe, awe of don’t know what , but , yes there was something fancier in the Oscars than the BAFTA and the Globes, for sure. I watched Denzel Washington grabbing it, even watched it slipping from the hands of Amir Khan, saw Russell Crowe admiring it and even saw Mel Gibson accepting it with a Brave Heart.
This time as I have stated before, didn’t see it but such was the range of hearing the vibrations, the fascinations of the event that it went past all the benevolence of my vision. Slumdog … was in it, though a British film but as the critics say its body heart and the brains are made in India. We won it, won it big time now and, also in a big way, but somewhere the foreign element remains. They say that the fair skin that slender rim, of Danny Boyle, and hopefully the posh brain of his did the trick. No points still are given to Indian style, Indian songs , Indian actors and therefore amidst all the jubilation a simmer comes that…”had this not been a foreign film then ..tch..tch…tch.
The point is that after so many ‘ladies in gold’ we still , I mean the Indian films still find themselves suspended in a rusted iron chamber. Movies here come and go, perhaps in largest nos but still we lack, lack many things , let’s list these so called accusations in a point form……

ACCUSATION 1 - We lack the ever so important thing, the concept, the logic, which you know is the backbone of a motion film.
MY VIEW – I guess for a film we need not have a strong concept, it’s the feel, the emotions that matter, eventually which turn out to be the divine logic. And films here or anywhere are not made for a particular engineer or a doctor ,to churn out all the logics, its made to give a person a new world of 2.5 hrs. which we surely do provide.

ACCUSATION 2 - The songs, useless dabble of 3 minutes, should cut them off.
MY VIEW – If they are so , so useless then why have you kept it in the Oscars. And yes, songs are not dabble, they are like rivers that take past the boats of our feeling in the most peaceful way , to an island, which we fondly call heaven. They are not 3-4 MBs of space , but a soulful 4 minutes which fills the heart with unnerving ecstacy , thus defining humanity, they are pure, there are pious and we, the followers of a 3000 old great culture, are proud that they are the part of our films.JAI HO…

ACCUSATION 3 – We are too long….2.5 to 3 hrs. are too much.
MY VIEW – For us , films are not a lesson , they aren’t a chapter either,they are like a story, a story which is created for a person, not just to see it but to visit it, get inside it and live that story. We don’t make film of 3 hrs , what we do is that we make a world of its own which plays in you, lays in you, lives in you for 3 hrs. 3 hours, this way is a very short time.

ACCUSATION 4 - We are not committed (esp. in intimate scenes). We don’t have guts to move further.
MY VIEW – Yes you are right , we don’t have guts, guts to move against our values, our tradition. You know where we fall short, eventually catching the soul of the film, its just that we bring film for the masses, not for stringently divided classes. And as far as intimacy ,the euphemism for sex, is concerned, sex is too great, too divine, too logical a thing to be shown in a film. And as far as boldness is concerned movies like Page-3, Corporate are enough bold , enough committed to even teach us a thing or too.

ACCUSATION 5 -We lack stories………..
MY VIEW – To this lot of people I want to say that, first watch RDB, watch the ever so serene Saransh, get a closer look at Devdas, and then take home the idea of what a story is all about, what a script is all about. Of course there have been copies, I would be lying if I deny it, but I will be lying all the more if I deny the fact that the stories of ours are like a guitar ,cords of which give goose bumps to the westerners through the Oscars taken by Gandhi and Slumdog.

So like these , there are many other accusation, but let’s stick to them. These aren’t that much of our problems, the problems are the people who make them and sadly they are WE. Yes some of the bigger hypocrites amongst us. Bigger because someway or the other we all are hypocrites, never admiring our own , but yes envying the other one’s , all the more if its TRANS ATLANTIC. The need of the hour is not to answer those accusations , but to shed that cruelity in us and believe in the BPL’s logo ,’coz we certainly are the BEST.

KNOTTY affair

Believe me I am damn serious when I say that I seriously wanted to write something serious this time. Something enervating, something that just pulls the real you from you and makes you the real…you know ..YOU. That’s why , this time I took time , and tried to write the real stuff. I would have written had that marriage not been attended by me. The marriage that fell on the lap of this earth on the ides of feb,gallows which seemed like aisle of the ecstacy. That marriage, what a marriage………
Anybody who has been a hosteller may forget everything about it but…..but the mess. That long hall with that so long table, with food that is beyond description, ‘coz you got to have to see the food to describe it. And the food in one word….is HIDEOUS. And living in such a world when somebody gets you an invitation of a marriage ….it’s like “PARTY TIME ..FOLKS”. Something like that happened to us, when Ronny brought to us the invitation of the a marriage of his distant relative. Immediately, the day was seen,The mess food was seen and the plan was sealed. Finally there were 5 of us who went out of the college gates like those “Mohabbatein” guys, not to love but to eat, eat till the tummy twitters.
A truck, a tempo and a 2 km walk was all needed to get to that marriage place. During our journey we were all dreamers, who dreamt of food, dreamt of good food, dreamt of great food, of … well, only food. So , we went there , we saw the place, and we just went on seeing. It was awesome, it had savaged our fantasies of food, of marriage as the grandeur was much ,much more than that. Ronny was a bit conscious , so he said as we were 5 in total,”2 first and then 3 after that.” The plans were followed and thus we entered.
As a mature guy I was attending a marriage for the first time. Normally it had been with parents, relatives and all meeting and asking ,”aapka ladkaa kya kar raha hai”, it was about half eaten plates, and yes, about Rs 101, Rs201, Rs 501,etc etc. This time it was different. Seriously ,no caustic affair this time. It was surreal.it was divine, more than that it was pure. It was like a pure mountain getting the river of our culture to flow through it. I was thinking about all this with French fries in one hand , cold drink on the other and a fab. remix of a song of Raaz 2 in the backdrop.
The DJ was absolutely rocking. Cool,no,they were kool remixes of some foot tapping songs. Those taps made us journey through the future and we started contemplating the plans of each other’s (5 of us) marriage. We were about to give birth to children when one “not so good” number broke loose our sojourn. For the first time I started believing in the magic of the sari. “What a wear maan”, was all my inner voice was echoing as that bride with scores of perfume poured over her passed by my side. No matter what was happening our Mission Food Court was on, every thing was , as a future software engineer was tested and then implemented.
Everything was just happening there. Don’t ask why, don’t ask when but it was happening. There was a sort of order in that grave disorder. There was tension in the faces which implicitly produced a sort of calmness. There was heavy make up somewhere but from somewhere inside that the simplicity was coming out somehow. Everything was happening in a complex unison as a dynamic change was nearby. It was a celebration ,to go one step furthur, step that was changing the phase changing the life,changing it all.
Thoughts , like this were coming and going, new crushes were made, destroyed on getting to know that they were married, songs went on and off, food though kept coming in. handing over that crisp 100 rupee note , and with a chilled bite of ice cream, we decided to move out and wait for 5-6 years(or more) to witness this eternal change.

matter of an answer

That was perhaps the first time when I didn’t get a convincing answer of what this love, marriage, love marriage is all about. Bro’s wedding was the first time when I wanted to enquire about this thing which if put in poetic synchronization…would be something like this…

Love….a riddle…that makes you , me , everybody insane;

Love …an animal…that some greats did tame;

These days also,I am the same old stupid who hasn’t understood the meaning of those 2 lines( though I , myself am the composer of them). From that bombastic wedding to these unimaginable hostel nights, I have been, curious about this thing which some call an insect, some call poison, some even call it the reason for life, reason to live, to be more specific.

To tell you the truth, when I got admission to the engineering college, I vowed that I would emerge out to be a technical tank, out of which , bullets of equations, paradoxes, lemmas , will zoom and boom,24x7, but it s proved to be the slight opposite. Today in the third year I have been devoid of a tank, eventually, of those bullets too. What I have transformed into , is…. a plane, gliding through the clouds of relationships, thus increasing, all the more, my thirst and agony of knowing what isLOVE.

Avinaash , I still remember, was cuddled up in the blanket. He was my recently made friend and tp pass through the night I went to his room. His room partner , as soon as I entered, warned me “ Shhhhhhhh…..don’t disturb….talking”, I didn’t disturb him(c’mon I am that much of an obedient ), but yeah, kept on thinking, as to why, he was cuddled up in his bed. “Cheap cell phones….tch tch….”, I thought. Minutes later, the structure of that bed changed, and there emerged Avinaash, shining, fresh, as if, was taking a bath inside the blanket, and most importantly, with a Nokia 6600 in his hand, which instantaneously erased my apprehensions about him. Avinaash I knew was a bit different from the Avinaash I was discovering now , who was staring in the mirror, smiling, laughing in the middle, then came to me , hugged me, and finally spoke…” Great girl..maan”. I now, was, understanding the whole story.

That was the first idea of love to me, which was more of, blankets, and Nokia 6600. As I said , that this was my first one as , now in my sojourn as a “ would be engineer “, I saw many things. I saw those guys……..drifting away from Linkin Park to Roop Kumar Rathod. I saw “ facialled” faces every week, that great Rs 100 note was often observed by me, which was kept in the purse, with a longing that she would come once in the cafeteria and a maggi would be shared. So I started getting an idea of what this love was all about. “ It was fun”, I thought, “Though a bit expensive, (coffee and maggi all the times) , but c’mon”.

So days passed on, I had my idea of love intact, until one day, I heard that one pair(with maggi and coffee) was badly harassed, and abused. I was more surprised , on coming to know that the guy in action was , just days before, quite an ardous follower of this love. Now my definition began to dwindle a little. “How can the most beautiful thing in the world be harassed like that, this is not not done”. So, my confusion prevailed, until I found one of the most decent pairs in our campus. They were looking quite cajoled in themselves, and as I was staring them one voice came from behind,” abe in par comment mat karanaa , inkaa serious hai”. Instantaneously I got the new avatar of love. Simplicity with devotion, decency, and beauty that became love for me and that pair became God for me, until……Two weeks later that girl used to roam around aimlessly….by some searching I found out that that guy took him to a hotel room and……everything became serious. So another “Love Definition” which survived 2 weeks , finally died.

I was all confused now, from mobile phones, to cafeterias, to, hotel rooms, even chat rooms, every thing was tried and tested, and failed. So I developed my own theory…..that…ok I am nervous..but here it goes….love is a mixture…a homogeneous mixture , I guess not of souls, nor of bodies , but of thoughts. What you think, is what you do what you do ,is what you reflect, and that’s what makes a person fall for you. It’s that mental keenness towards each other that makes a relationship go ahead , boundlessly, thus letting love rise high.

But still I am confused, let’s see what happens when this happens to me….till then best of luck…to you and to me.