Convictions

Me and Kuldeep had almost similar opinion about everything.Maths, physics, philosophy and how the first two take care of the third one.And our discussions used to go in the same order, from the day he interviewed me for the job till both of us left the company .
On our way to Jim Corbett on an official trip, after a couple of shots of vodka I had already reached the third phase of discussion, philosophy.I don't recall what I was blabbering ,but suddenly Manish said that you speak everything in terms of logic and Maths which soon translated to ,"you think only from your mind and not from your heart".Had it been any other time I would have said- no. I do think from heart. But with vodka and kuldeep on my side and a good amount of time to waste , I took the other way.I said," Nobody thinks from heart.Heart has only function , to pump the blood.I am not saying emotions don't exist , but even they come from mind. I am talking the most basic science as you read in junior class ,that heart pumps the blood and mind controls the actions and thoughts.".Kuldeep as drunk as me declared it to be an eternal truth . But this didn't go well with other people.Manish and shewta just couldn't agree that it was right.They knew it was ,but couldn't accept.And they were not arguing to me but explaining to themselves. Manish pulled the old trick that I can't know everything as I cant explain how did the universe start, and when you explain that they ask you what was before big bang...till the time you say you don't know.But again, when you are drunk you have two advantages- you speak loud and you tend to say things repeatedly.And so I kept saying about the heart and mind stuff.

Now after two years when I think about it,the reason why Manish and Shweta opposed so vehemently was not because of what I was saying.The problem was that you believe in something throughout your life and suddenly one fine day you wake up to find that it ain't the truth.Doesn't count how simple and clear it is, you can't take it.And the more time you have believed it , more painful it is for you to accept it.Like no matter how hard I try to explain my Mom that God doesn't exist and all these religious prayers are nonsense, she won't accept it. I quote her examples from our own lives but she just wont agree.She cannot. A person who spent her entire life believing in something can't just give up on it.Your entire body would fight against such a thought(okey..thats just a metaphor.only the mind fights).Its like as James Taggart in Atlas shrugged who when confronted with the truth that his life depended so much on John Galt's intellectual that If they let him die he will die as well. And he chose to die rather than accepting the truth.

I wonder if this can explain how some people don't try new things in life.People say they are afraid of failures. I say they are afraid of success.They have always believed that wont be able to achieve.And when they do ,even though they succeeded in achieving they lost one thing:their convictions.But you have to have convictions as long as you are alive--right or wrong.The only problem comes when one has to switch from one to another. Well...the fundamental conviction was we all like to live.Rest follows.

Fear Factor

Justin. Another guy from India in my office .On the second day after his arrival in Mauritius, we had a little chance to catch up with each other in the Bus.Not exactly catching up , because I was not very eager to know about him, and I guess neither was he, but probably the fact that both of us are from India and living in the same country, and traveling together at that time forced us to fill the silence.
After a bit of talking , he asked me, " So, you live alone? "
I replied ,"yes.".
"How do you live alone?".
I laughed and said,"By not letting any body stay with me.
"I mean aren't you scared ?"
"Scared of what?" I was a bit puzzled.
He paused for a while and said ,"Scared of yourself ".

It was one question that I knew for such a long time ,still never could frame into words.A question that is more abstract than its answer.But we simply don't have the courage to ask it to ourself.Probably because we are too afraid of the answer.
we are all scared of ourself.Its not the boredom that frightens us from spending time alone.But the fear of confronting those facts which we try to avoid throughout our life.The questions that ask us about our existence and the fear that the answer is as simple as null.Or may be talcum powder. I don't know. I cant find it. Probably it doesn't exist.But I do know that its not what we think or want ourself to think.
That its all illusion. Life, success, fun, family, love ,emotions .Anything and everything. That we are all of merely chemical compounds who believe that they are not.That the best of you which you happen to define as soul is also nothing but merely jumping of an electron from one energy level to another.Or may be something else. I don't know.

I don't remember what exactly I answered to Justin,that's not important.But the answer is yes,I am afraid of myself . But I am fighting against it.I am fighting to end this fear.It hurts.But someday I will. May be death will do.
Someday I wont be afraid of the questions. And someday I wont be afraid of even the answers.Someday..

epandit

Had been thinking of writing about college days for a while but never really gathered enthu.Finally its triggered by the fact that one of my friends ,Gyanesh, is getting married.Of all the people in my group he was the least expected to get married first.So,this blog is all about him..
First things first. His name is Gyanesh Sharma, likes to be called pandit, happens to be called gaandu ,and he doesn't mind any of the above names.We call him gaandu.
On one of those after dinner walks through campus,some security guards heard us calling gaandu.After a 2 minute lecture from those jackasses about why boys like us, belonging to good families, should not use such unparliamentary words , one of us simply said that thats the name he has told us.Thats the name we have known and called him ever since we have known him.He never said he had any other name. No kidding.It was true.

They say necessity is the mother of invention.In gaandu's case it has translated to laziness becoming necessity and invention to perennial source of brain.With almost half an hour meeting with Dean , convincing him why he shouldn't be completing his assigned NCC hours on the grounds that he didn't come to IIT to do NCC,he really gave a big hope to all the lazy bastards of the world. No, the Dean didn't ask him if he is doing , what he actually came to IIT for.
I remember ,in an another evening walk, we had our dearest sweetheart,Paromita, on her usual jog.On some level she had become a part of our group,with us stalking her every evening, and she really not complaining about it.Anyways, somehow an idea struck gaandu which was bit different from our usual ,following her and singing songs.Gaandu started walking in front of her and swinging his waist just like Paro. we started whistling and appraising gaandu for his newly found mast kamar.Very much loud to make Paro hear it. After 50m or so, suddenly a car stopped in front of Paro, and she started talking to the man in the car. It took us only a few seconds to recognize the man and a couple more to vanish magically from there.But gaandu walking ahead of her couldn't see it. It was Paro's Dad,one of IIT Proff. Yes, gaandu did get his degree.

There was another incident which probably none of us will ever forget . 3.30 AM in morning, some of us got hungry, and started leaving for the dhaba. Right before we were exiting, we heard gaandu screaming from his bed,"abey kahin jaa rahe ho kya?".we all burst into laughter and said ," tujhe kahan jaana hai". He replied," nahin , kahin chal rahe to main bhi chalta hoon". That was kara B||.Damn the IIT curriculum, to hell with the btps,my time is mine and I will spend it the way I want to.And who better than gaandu to express it.He had a unique way of planning for the exams in which he would sleep till midngiht before the exam so that he can be awake to study for the rest of night and then declaring that syllabus can't be completed in just half night ,so better sleep again.His theories don't end here. How he convinced himself and others that eggs are vegetarian stuff based on his nishechit n anishechit principle is something still to be figured out.But what really amuses me is that this is what we talked and did throughout our college life. No big deals, no big fishing. Those talks in which he would say something, bhaduria would hear something else and then me explaining and establishing synchronization between the statements.Just cant get over them.And then those night long card games in which me and Abhishek bluffing like hell and gaandu being the only one spotting it.And the best time ,of course, remains those drives to gaandu's hapur fields where we would just sit in the fields past midnight doing nothing .Seriously, big things become memory but small things are the ones that make you smile.

Gaandu is one of his kind and his stories even more so.Looking at his biceps for 3 minutes after every 2 mins of workout, drinking an entire bottle of water after listening to some song and then explaining how this is significant in a way, getting an A grade in btp in which he probably didn't even meet his professor, making us walk 3 km in Hrishikesh at 10 in night so that he can eat kaju barfi, not going his home even during the semester holidays just because he cant get off his ass out of laziness; everything is so peculiar and distinct and thats why so him.

With the first one breaking out of the kara B|| group something does seem to be lost...

just like that

wrote some time back...

naakam mohabbat , adhoore khwaab aur tum
dil ka wo rishta jo na hum jod sake na tum
har jahan mukammal karke bhi shikasht hi mili
meri jeet , meri haar aur sirf tum...

to be contd...

Déjà vu

This one is dedicated to Varun Bhadauria, one of my closest friend and the first in my group who dared to dream.Whose puff of smoke, if put in words would read "I am not the road , your yardstick can measure "

Déjà vu
A familiar place and a usual day
but it occurred to me ,I had lost my way
"Where are you heading to"?asked someone
and with a hit of déjà vu ,the flashback began to run

Somewhere in the distant memories
a child filled with uncertain pain
for all those years to come
and a fear of loosing self in vain.

With all ignorant climbs up the hill
the soul trying to reach the sun
An unthought wish to achieve
the little boy waiting for his turn

A silent moan and a loud sigh
just one tussle and the last try
No one to stop , no one to judge
To find a place where dreams survive

"There will be a way "the boy kept saying
and the fogs of reminiscence began to clear.
"There is the way " stranger's finger was pointing
and the déjà vu ended as I recognized the stranger.

The Question

I was in 6th standard then , and it was my school annual prize distribution.I was to receive the prize for standing 2nd in class. Pretty much insignificant affair.I got back from play and started rushing towards school for the occasion.My mum said ," change your clothes before you go". I said " I am fine."
Mum asked, " What will people say seeing you like this."I replied ," I don't know ". I thought it was a question and answered it honestly.How possibly I could knew what people would say ,when in the first place I didn't even have the slightest clue who actually those people were, about which we were talking.It was not a question, but an information that people will not think pretty about me.Of course, if they decide to think of me at all.I was obedient.I changed my clothes.
Its been years. The question hasn't changed.

I have become disobedient.

Acting

Its so weird.I mean we start thinking about something, and our mind switches between things so fast that within a fraction of second we even forget what was the initial thought we began with.Typically we start thinking about future and end up smiling at past.
Last night , while cooking, the word "Acting " popped up in my head and disappeared.Disappeared because I was busy with cooking. In the hours that followed I tried hard to remember which word it was but couldn't .
Then all of a sudden ,while watching TV , it appeared again. But this time I was prepared. I switched off the TV and started thinking why it clung in my mind. Then I got the answer. Arun had written me a recommendation today in which he mentioned about my acting in a skit I did in my last company.That was one horribly scripted skit I will never forget . It won the first prize. I was amused to see how stupid people are in judging things.I felt good. But very soon it backfired. The skit had won the first prize because of my supposedly good Acting. Now I couldn't laugh. But we won cash prize of 500 bucks each. That eased things a little bit.
"Delhi Times". Another word popped in my mind. I wrote down "Acting" on a piece of paper so that I could come back to it again after figuring out where the fuck this "Delhi Times" came from.
Back in college days, the only thing we used to look in newspaper was the Delhi times.Rest of newspaper was junk, not just according my thoughts,but in general TOI has always been trash.
Then all of a sudden an interview talk flashed in my mind that I read in Delhi Times.Some bollywood actress spitting some crap about her life. I cant figure out exactly why I would have read that interview. Probably I was staring at the actress picture and was expecting to read in her interview that she is feeling like a big idiot standing in the pose viewers are seeing her right now.I do remember of that interview or may be from some other similar interview that the actress said that generally people think that actors get undue money and appreciation . And that they work really hard for this. They do acting for like 15 hours a day , so as to finish everything on schedule.

Then my mind went into further past. As a 10 year old I asked my brother how come a labor who carries bricks on his head throughout day in Sun get so less money while someone who sits in office get more money. The typical childhood question with which we
grow up. My brother ,two years elder to me, had said that the labor cant do what the office guy can do but the office guy can do his work and he is capable of doing labors work as well.I was happy with the answer.Although that might not have been the exact answer, but it was true in itself to some extent.I tried relating the labor officer logic to what the actress had said. That the actors can do what most of us can do. But vice versa is not true.Didn't fit. I didn't try hard to think. Probably I knew that I knew the answer .But all this while that I had been thinking, my eyes were fixed at the letters I had written on paper. Acting.

And all of a sudden everything was clear. And that the actress was right . They are certainly fairly paid.Its such a tough job.
Acting as someone else ,15 hours out of 24 in a day is definitely one hell of a task.Take 6 hrs. out of 24 for sleeping . So, out of 18 hours they are not themselves for 15 hours. This is crazy. How can someone not be himself for almost every moment of his existence. And on top
of that some of these actors even go to the extent of saying that they like acting.I wonder what it could be so bizarre and disgusting in their own existence that they prefer to be like someone else. Some even say that they like doing diversified roles which means that they can be anyone but themselves. But whatever it is , they certainly need to be compensated for it. In any way they want. They certainly make a better sacrifice than the soldiers on border.Dying is easy. Living is tough.And to live like someone you are not is....

Life Divided by Death

life - l ,death - d
10/ 2 means how many times 2 has to occur before 10 is crossed.
conclusively ,l/d is equivalent to how how many times one has to die in his life.
Of course, this factor is individualistic. Most of us have it approximately equal to
365 * years that one lives. Approximately because some die many times a day while others die once in many days.

we come to life when we go to sleep and die when we wake up.

Although ,vice versa can also be true with an equal probability.In either of the cases, the duration of life or death is never generally more than a day and cannot be as a rule ,more than 5 days. A person can live without water for 5 days but not without sleep.

we have to die in order to live again .

some might say that life and death are not just numbers . Okay , lets give a direction to the life,as most like to do . Now,its a number with direction attached to it.

A Vector.

A vector divided by another vector. Doesn't make sense mathematically ,as such ,but its possible to write an expression like

Vec1 / Vec2 = t

but this holds true only if Vec1 and Vec2 are parallel and t is just a scalar.

Using life and death as vectors ,having both magnitude and direction,we find that
life and death are parallel.They have the same direction.

whether we live or die; its the same. Doesn't really matter.Not to time .Not to space