Why do I care what other people think!

It is difficult to comprehend ...

2008-03-23T19:43:00.001+01:00

... especially when you are trying to read blank pages.

Conspiracy Theory

2007-03-01T05:53:00.000+01:00

A tete-a-tete with a theory
A little conspiracy, a little fury
Who decides? Where is the jury?
One basic truth will set the world in revelry

In Da Vinci, brown lays down a code
For which Langdon and Sophie rode
Teabing throwing private matters overboard
Private life not so private, yet the public is bored

Saunière's design for Magdalene's race
The holy grail lost without a trace
The church losing a little face
Yet the book ending without a zilch of grace.

P.S. When in bed, stay in bed. Otherwise things like these happen in 8 A.M. classes

a few drops fell.....

2007-01-25T22:24:00.000+01:00

tonight i yearned for a good rain,
but only a few drops fell,
and that too not from the sky ....

Right or Wrong????

2006-07-03T11:26:00.000+02:00

I am back would have to do for the beginning line of this post for the lack of better imagination on my part. Come to think of it the most difficult moments in life is to get things started (for me atleast). When the ship finally hit top knots, it is mostly smooth sailing until you get to the docking station again. Being stuck-at-Intel working on stuck-at-0 and stuck-at-1 faults has made me realize a few more things about myself. As one of my friends put sometimes in life i get stuck at somethings and cannot move until i have resolved them and at times I also get stuck with the resolve of not trying to solve a problem even when I see it would become a major pain if not eradicated all of a sudden.

I have been reading a lot in my spare time now-a-days. A lot means more than my share of quota from the regular semester days. But I have some times realized while reading that the book is going to do more harm to me than good. Nothing has come 'good' out of this my reading habit if you would call it. Except a thirst to devour more and a desire to know where my life is heading?. I am not much of a reader but somehow whenever I read, some lines stay with me and I come to recall them at the most unexpected of moments. Its not like I make a point to remember the lines but if something related comes up I am sure that line would pop out on its own. Right now, the books I have read have left a lot many questions in my head without little answers for them. It all started some years ago. I read that book English August, which left me a little disturbed, no not that, I would prefer the use of the word 'dagmagaya hua' as in the hindi phrase for a rocking ship. How was I to grasp the enormity of what the author was trying to convey when I could not fully associate with what being 'stoned' meant. I reread the book this summer and some how the ease with which the protaganist Agastya keeps on getting stoned keeps me thinking if I could even smoke a cigarette with that much ease let alone pot. Are my sense of morals my own or just borrowed set of ones, ones which have been ingrained into my head? Waise if I am allowed a little leeway, I would say that a book is like a water body . Or types of waterbodies. All of them reflect the state you are in. And you can see anything you want to if you are adept at listening to the sounds of silence or of calm water. Some are like lakes, calm and quiet, some are oceans where the tides rock the shore and some are like rivers, you just go with the flow. I remember identifying 'Old Man and the Sea' as the most pessimistic book I had ever read in one of my not so good moods when on a second read it turned out to quite the opposite. Everything in life depends on from where you are seeing the things. I have also realized lately in trying to understand somebodies else problem the best way is to get into their shoes and see the picture from his or her point of view.

Actually I used to think Hesse Siddhartha had the most effect on me as an individual. I thought that was the book that left the desire to seek myself in this world , a desire to know who I actually was. It has that line about wisdom being different from knowledge which kept me worked up for quite sometime. At one point I used to think that book told me everything that was to be thought about. I mean if I one day I could have wisdom (as If I just had to raise enough money to buy it in some bookstore), I could be hopefully more happy or at peace. But the second Hesse "Narcissus and Goldmund" conveyed that there was no eternal happiness or peace, you had to win over you peace each day little by little. But then I read something by Murakami this week said, If a single book tells you everything you ever thought was to know, then that thing is not worth knowing in the first case. Right or Wrong???? Two more lines have kept me thinking this summer. One is from Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" which said " The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it". Right or Wrong???? The other is from this Krishnamurthy "This matter of Culture" book about "Why is that when we get angry with someone we love, that anger is so intense?". Actually the second question was supposed to be something else but It skipped my mind as soon as my fingers went for the letters on the keyboard.

Which brings to the realization I have had this summer. And that is I am very 'in the moment' kind of person. I read a book and I am into it with everything I have if I am liking it. But if somebody asks me the name of the lead protaganist some time later, 99% chances are I would get it wrong instead of right. Sometimes I come up with things even I wonder later how I came up with. Was it pure chance or luck or what was the source from within me from where the answer popped up? Being in the moment has its pros and cons. I can surprise people at times with the things I come up but sometimes I am also surprised that I came up with them. I desire to be consistent but what I come up with is moments of genius, moments of stupidity, moments of intense passion and moments of intense anger also. I don't know why I yearn for some consistency like some of my friends have or appear to have in their life. I read this line somewhere being experienced just means that you have made more mistakes in life. Right or Wrong????

At one point I decided I will not read any more cause the answers always remained elusive. I can sometimes clearly see what the lock looks like but the key always keeps on slipping away from my hands. But then "Franny and Zooey" came up and said that greed for spiritual , intellectual satisfaction is also eventually greed. So what is wrong in being greedy once in a while. Right or wrong????? Though i think this is a better line from this work

Everything everybody does is so--I don't know--not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and--sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.

I could go on and on . But I want more chai . So i leave you with this question from Sputnik Sweetheart by Murakami.

Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

RIGHT OR WRONG?????

Of things said and unsaid...

2006-04-02T19:15:00.000+02:00

Dramatic Effects often have distant, even subtle, causes. Things that gather momentum start with a little small push. I have realized that I have hurt a lot of people who have crossed me by in my journey in life and not so unsurprisingly I have also been hurt by some people. That is life I agree. There was a time when I believed my way of life was right and I thought I knew my friends well enough to tell them what I thought right according to my way. Then I got into the thought process that maybe I didnot have a real 'way' in my life at all (A little digression, my friend says that once you start 'the' thought process, it does not stop. I hope to the contrary.). And with that I decided to keep my power to affect's people lives inside me. I say so cause I believe everybody affects things that are happening around us, in some small way and another.

With this realization has come another one. How things that are buried and kept silent slowly eat you from inside and slowly leave you hollow. Words, both spoken and unspoken, can leave scars that keep hurting for a long time. An inoccuous sounding comment can hurt more than the speaker can imagine. Some thorns get so deeply buried in the heart that they bring out a side of us we never knew existed when they are taken out. But I have also felt that people get hurt by things that are not spoken when they should have been. Of scars that get caused when people keep things within or tell to late. I do not know which scars hurt more, of things spoken or of things not spoken. I think they are scars of different kinds. People with hearts can take things to heart that were never said. Atleast I do and some times I know it too. And then it hurts me more. Which of the greater devil to side with is a question that I have no answer in words , both spoken and unspoken. I hope there is atleast somebody who knows. I hope one day I will be that somebody.

The myth of the Phoenix

2006-03-20T12:10:00.000+01:00

'My father liked to wonder aloud whether the phoenix was re-created by the fire of is funeral pyre or transformed so that what emerged was a soul-less shadow of its former being, identical in appearance but without the joy in life its predecessor had had. He wondered alternatively whether the fire might have be purificatory, a redemptive, rejuvenating blaze that destroyed the withered shell of the old phoenix and allowed the creature's essence to emerge stronger than it was before in a young, new body. Or, he would ask, was the fire a manifestation of entropy, slowly sapping the life-energy of the phoenix over the eons, a little death in a life that could know no beginning and no end but which could nonetheless be subject to an ever-decreasing magnitude? He asked me once if I thought the fires in our lives, the traumas, increased our fulfillment by setting up contrasts that illuminated more clearly our everyday joys; or perhaps I viewed them instead as tests that made us stronger by teaching us to endure; or did I believe, rather, that they simply amplified what we already were, in the end making the strong stronger, the weak weaker, and the dangerous deadly?'

credited to Professor Julius Superb
an unforgettable character from the book
Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid

Back to the past: love, lies and laws

2006-03-10T18:49:00.000+01:00

This post is dedicated to all the kids that lie asleep inside all of us and to one special "kid" in particular.

Impossible also says i'm possible. A cliched line, but impossible things do happen. This blog is a kind example (lots of people said in the beginning). If regulars on my blog (if there are any), would have noticed, by the apparent lack of posts in the recent past, I am nearly back to what other people think, and i do not want me to slip back in my cosy little rabbit's fur burrow. Good things have come out of my philosophy of not caring what other people think . and in lots of old things I do not give a damn even now. But Some of my beliefs are changing so rapidly that i do not what i believe in more now a days. And tonight is going to be a post to get my what do you care spirit back.
Around one month back I had read this line which has become my favourite (said for a character Narcissus)
"All was mind to him, even love; he was unable to give in to an attraction without thinking about it first."
And I have applied it without fail in the past losing out on lot occasions, of friends, of moments of happiness and of joys and sorrows. There are some matters in this world where the head does not work and it should not work. What feels right is right. I neither have the desire nor the skill to put what i feel into words. But I must, for until then some fears will exist and fears I know are very difficult to overcome. I am beginning to believe in fate. Life has always been a series of coincidental decisions on hindsight in making what it is today. So it was meeting some one who is so similar to you that you could feel that you could tell all you wanted to say without saying a single word at all. When silence is treasured more than words, when a smile on her face speaks more than thousand words. Somebodies elses happiness has never bought so much happiness in my life. All the past notions have vanished from my head , but some of the new ones are pretty hard to implement in real life. I am tired of fearing people's sly remarks. I am trying. So here goes nothing
I love her for who she is and I do not want to lose her coz of some stupid mistakes.
I will plagiarize Lodha's line " I know I am not perfect (though she claims I am ;-)) , and I know neither are you, but I feel We are perfect each other."
She has given me strength beyond measure, I have gone through tough times lately, taken a lot of tough decisions and some decisions still in making. I have one more reason not to "fail" now, cause she gets happy when she sees the "focus" back in my eyes and I get happy when she feels relaxed and happy.
True to her nature she has resurrected me back . And now I believe finally in my life I have written down a proof for 2+2 = 4.

Taking a bow, Yahoo!!!!

When respect is ....

2006-03-01T00:11:00.000+01:00

gained or lost.... everything else cancels each other out.

Born Yesterday!

2006-02-25T03:26:00.000+01:00

Everywhere we go, we leave imprints of what is special inside us. We are always judged and we always judge people's attitude in one field by seeing what their attitude is in other fields. Sometimes the judgement may go wrong, but most of the time it comes nearly right. And Last night when I entered my room, it suddenly stuck me why that could be true.
The state of things going on in my life can be judged from the scene in my room. When my life is running smoothly, my room is pretty clean and everything is in order . I know where I can find everything I possess just like I know what is going on in every phase of my life. The state of my room is a good model to represent the dynamic nature of things going on in my life. The room starts out as clean after a break(when I think i have thought out what am I going to do) and slowly things start getting cluttered but still I wait. I wait till things start getting out of hand when it takes turning the whole room upside down to find something. So are things in my life, something goes a little out of way, I let it drift for longer than i should and then it takes a huge effort to get things in better also requiring a lot of luck in steering a car with not a good skid control mechanism. I have a friend who's room is clean and ordered despite a large multitude of things in his life and that is how he is in real life too, ordered and well balanced in all things. Another of my close friends has a room which has only the simple necessities and no frills (not even a computer) and so his attitude in life of enjoying simple things.
Now once in a while things start going out of hand and I realize that I can not do anything productive in the state my room is and then I decide to spend some time cleaning it up and putting things back in order. NOW How I wish the analogy was bidirectional i.e.
Putting my room in order would put the things going in my life in order?

Of hopes and sufferings

2006-02-11T08:08:00.000+01:00

At some levels, all of us suffer from some fears and anxieties which are not called for. Some how, I do not want to elaborate on the process right now, through small actions of ours these fears begin to grow and in our thoughts they become the size of monsters. We think some magical act or divine intervention must happen so that these anxieties go away from our lives forever. All of us know that magic can not make a thing vanish into thin air which is already a wisp of smoke.
The power to remove all our fears rests with us. At times we may need a helping hand to point us to the right path, at times we may need to live through the anxiety to realize that it is heedingly pointless. Problems may exist, solutions may not seem obvious but it is only when we start suffering from these fears that we begin to lose the battle in the game of life.
Here is an excerpt from a children's book, which filled me with hope. May be this is why children do not suffer from pointless fears and anxieties.

There is a sign in a shop window in the small town where she lives that reads, ‘DO YOU SUFFER FROM FRECKLES?’ Pippi doesn’t. She isn’t interested in the anti-freckle cream on offer but nevertheless goes into the shop to makes her position clear. “No, I don’t suffer from freckles,” she declares. “But my dear child,” says the startled assistant, “your whole face is covered in them.” “I know,” says Pippi, “but I don’t suffer from them. I like them. Good morning!”

When things do not go how you planned, Adapt

2006-02-02T10:57:00.000+01:00

I do not remember when the spark turned into a fire. I do not even remember which combination of events and my state created the spark. I do not remember how i was, though in moments of tranquility and of utmost peace of soul I see myself, the present, and I have a hazy vision of what is in store for the future. This fire burning inside me seems eternal to me as of now. I get scared of it sometimes. I am afraid that this fire may engulf me and lot of people with me if it gets out of hand . Yet sometimes I feel lucky to feel the warmth it gives off .
The fire will not engulf me , I have a feeling that whispers to my heart. I am not alone in my battle, I feel sometimes a Hand is guiding me, watching over me, sitting quite intently and observing me, even smiling when I make some mistakes, getting angry when i repeat them often, yet not stopping me from experiencing what I should and I know it would be there to stop me if I tried to go beyond a certain limit. Sometimes I wonder, who is guiding the Hand that is guiding me. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the feeling that there is a Hand at all and I think how lucky I am to have it and what did I do to deserve it. One day I am sure that Hand will leave me to move on my own, when it knows that I can find my own path. May be , I would even meet somebody and he/she would think that I was sent by his Hand to guide him/her. The cycle of life would continue. We would wake up, eat, work , sleep. But it is only when one hand extends to the other and in the rare moment they finally shake, time stops itself to applaud the magic of the hand trick.

Weirdos from another planet!

2006-01-28T15:27:00.002+01:00

Today I was reminded of one of the greatest Indian qualities that foreigners often complain about. Indians (and that also includes me) possess this powerful stare which if you are not used to can get you unnerved. Actually even yesterday I told off one of compu waalas in the most rude fashion possible "Mind your own business!" . Frankly I do not give a damn what I have to do keep others noses out of my business. Today my sister and I were the object of public stare at the World Book Fair. This is one of the things I detest about Delhi. People here have this businessman mentality of that a book becomes useless after one read and that money is better invested some where like getting a video game which can be played over and over again. Actually north Indians in general would rather spend money on food and clothes than on books. I would rather spend money on books and food than on clothes. The thing is I believe most of the people see going to book fair as going out for just another outing. The experience is totally different I believe if you have a plan to actually buy atleast one book if you are going.

We have always bought books and is one of the things that has been encouraged by my father since we were little. So there we were, carrying 6 bags full of books between us while families of 8 -10 people were coming out of halls empty handed and giving us the stare. Frankly I really enjoyed it. We were the weirdos who carried "WOW, look at the that"number of books. I sometimes think if I would have a lot of money one day , then the time spent in book shops would not be so fun as it is now. How I love the smell of books, the smell of the freshly printed paper. Put a constraint of money on top of that. So you sit inside the shop for hours trying to find out books from the clutter that would be actually worth the money at that moment. What saddens me is the way most of the people run their bookshops and were running the stalls today. I have on two occasions found books which the shopowner had themselves claimed that they did not possess. Lucky me, I can do magic. I wish for book stores where the person knew where all the books were kept, he knew what the books were about. I met one such people today and that person really made me happy. I have also been to one such shop in CP (people tree) where the old man looks wizened and totally aware of the books he possesses. One of my wishes in life, is to open a small bookshop one day. I got really happy when I saw two sisters looking through books , trying to find the perfect one and finally deciding to put off the book for next year as it did not fit into the budget. They said to each other that they would get it next year. Oh the simpicity of childhood where you could plan ahead for a year and then also go onto execute it properly. Children give me hope, they also give me strength but my heart pains when I see 5 year olds trying to catch a running bus to get back home without having a single pence in their pocket.
Life goes on, life tries to balance it self between hope and despair, between happiness and sadness, between moments of sheer brilliance and moments of absolute dumbness. Life is a great leveller. Currently I am trying to find the fulcrum point to stabilize mine

Long lost feeling!

2006-01-27T22:55:00.000+01:00

Long long time ago, I used to have this feeling inside in my body that I was pretty sure of what I was doing. But I do not remember exactly when that feeling started fading away from my system. I have accidentally or delibrately, I donot know which one, created a scenario which has forced me to admit the existence of the feeling which was right in front of me, screaming to be answered, to be taken care of and I had tried with atmost sincerity to deny it. Others suffered from it, not I, was my reply. But I do suffer from it , atleast at some levels.
It is so simple that it explains most of the things in my life at this stage. Occam's razor does work. But I am not able to explain when the transformation happened. I am still looking for an answer, most probably I have the answer some where inside me, what I am looking for is words to put it in.

Another Debut

2006-01-25T13:02:00.000+01:00

I have added another illustrious first to my already long list. My first kick out from a class in IIT. "Get out of my class, I only want serious students in my class". I am a serious student Mam. I was just reading a book sitting on the last bench. I should have seen her coming. But I did not . The geeky me tried to apologize so that I could stay in class , but something took over. I did not want to stay. There was nothing I was going to learn in that class anyways the ways things were going.
The timing of the event is perfect in the scheme of things that are developing in my life. Just before the class one of my friends was asking why do I attend the classes if I only plan to read something else during the class. I have no answers to that except a perfect conditioning which used to prevent me from doing that. And this when I promised myself I would not go out of the way to sc**w myself academically. The desires and wishes conflicting each other. I have another class at 6. I do not know what I plan to do in that. Hopefully I do not get into a streak.
Somehow I do not feel like reading the tech books since I have been in IIT. There is something in the air in the campus that prevents from doing that. I had realized during the last four months that I even enjoy reading the technical books, but IIT seems to take it out of me. I can not read something just because some body is going to test me something on some section from the same book. The system only encourages the feeling of trying to get grades, not the feeling of trying to learn. May be the sytem does encourage learning but the message seems to be getting distorted now a days as it enters my ears.
One word seems to symbolize me now a days "conflict". For every thought I have, I also have another which negates / contradicts it. May the force be with me to resolve it.
On another front, I am looking forward to becoming a more serious student and hence planning to get improved arsenal at the World Book Fair this weekend. Watch out Neuro Computing, I will be back .

When you bite off more than you can chew!!

2005-12-18T00:28:00.000+01:00

I just said quit after a very very long time. I am saddened. But there is no going back. Sometimes you take things more than you can handle. Is it wrong to go back if you think you are not capable enough of handling the thing at that time and returning to it later???

I have spent the last two days in absolute agony trying to make my mind and even putting last minute herculean efforts. But I think I started off with more than I could handle. I took the advanced DSP course and it was tough for me and I called it quits 5 minutes ago (unregistered for the exam) cause I did not put enough time before with other courses and last minute does not help if you have only beginner's skills. Still I can see a positive, it has made me learn Signals basics pretty well and also it has taught me the lesson to not to bite off more than I can chew. And since there was nobody online at this hour , I decided to blog to ease my pain. I wanted somebody close to talk too but they are all sleeping. I hate quitting on something. I do not know why. It makes me feel like I am not special. It makes me remember all the times I have left something in between. It hurts where it hurts most. I know I have enough credits for back home and this was only an attempt to test my limits. I do not know if this was good for me or bad for me, but I remember reading "if the mistake does not kill you , most probably something good will come out of it". After two days, I feel a heavy weight has been lifted from my head. Sadness can ease pain sometimes instead of complete denial. I have one more exam to give and studying for both of them was getting quite a thing.
Now I head back to the books , cause in order to make up for this, I need to perform well in the other. Best of luck to me.

The moment ......

2005-12-16T21:21:00.000+01:00

Life is made up of moments. Moments of happiness which can turn into moments of sadness , moments of triumph which can turn into moments of failure , moments of solitude which can turn into moments of lonliness and moments in which life comes to rest.
I sometimes try to recall my childhood and what I can come up with are merely moments. What you remember about life is like a zero-hold sampled signal ( gosh i hate DSP), even though life itself is continous what you remember about it are discretely sampled points( incidents) which some how got registered into your memory. I have collected lot of these moments here during my stay.

I have had ups and downs during my stay, moments in which my senses have experienced heavenly bliss ( and I am not taking about drinking;-) ) and one of these ups have come recently when I realized that I am a pretty lucky person. I have been to Kiruna, a place in northern Sweden which is located above the arctic circle. Why did I want to go there when it was freezing -20 degrees. For the simple reason I am crazy. I wanted to see the norrsken (aka aurora borealis). So all geared up with every body part covered up with atleast two layers of clothing I flew into Kiruna. It was cold but it was also very cool ;-). We were tired by the evening and were thinking of calling it quits for the day when we decided to venture out into the cold. I had not paid good money just to sit in a heated room. So out we went. It had been cloudy when we reached there and people we had met had not seen the norrsken even after staying there for 5 nights. But by 8 the clouds had disappeared and it was the most awesome view of the sky I have had for a long time. So out we walked, playing in the softest of snow checking out the sky from time to time. We took a tour of town, we were getting tired and thinking about heading back when one of us spotted something green in the sky. We had gotten lucky!!!. It was like a green dragon that was flying in the sky. It started out as faint on one end of sky and within a minute it had become dark green on the other like they were meant to be the dragon's flame. And then they were gone within 3 minutes of their starting. To be sure we even asked a local to confirm if those were the northern lights.

This made me think (sorry mr mithrandir could not help it), about moments. But what if we had decided to stay in?? Then we would have missed the moment and like most of the people leaving in the hotel would have said that they did not happen during their stay. Life is defined by some key moments and it is upto us to make our moments by our selves. If you do not decide which moment is right for you, life can just keep on going on continuously but then you would have nothing to remember it by cause you only remember the spikes not the monotonicity. What if I had not filled in the form for coming here on the last day? What would have my life turned out to be? While writing this one more question has arisen in my head, what if you realize later that you have missed a moment?? The moment stays with you but it can easily turn into one of those things you start to regret. Luckily or unluckily I can recall only one of these moments in my life where I have realized later that I missed the moment.

There was also one more thing, there were a group who stood in the cold for nearly 4 hours but did not get their sight cause they were looking from the place where the whole sky was not visible. Some times you have to change your position to get a better view. Sometimes just taking a step more is sufficient sometimes you have to move a lot. And sometimes you just get plain lucky!!!!!

Sometimes shoes do not fit!

2005-12-03T02:08:00.000+01:00

Sometimes you get better at things with time and then you seem to enjoy them a lot more. I had this amazing feeling in my body when I could skate on ice with reasonable speed and grace ( considering it was my only third time doing it :-) ). But what I want to say started with my first experience at ice skating.

I wear a shoe of European size 40.5, so the first time I went I rented a size 41 (after trying 44,43,42.. it had become really embarassing) and so they did not fit so well. My balance was not perfect and 30 minutes into the experience, my feet were hurting like hell. But I remember enjoying it for the first 10 minutes or so before my feet started hurting really bad. So the next time I went (I have become addicted to it), I tried a size 40 and I improved quite a lot. But at the end of one hour, my feet were still hurting a little. I was pretty tired today so had decided not to go. But at the last moment, my friend called up and asked me not to be lazy and just come to the place. So today, when I went, I confidently asked for a size 40 skate. But to my astonishment, they would not fit. I kept on trying for 5-10 agonizing minutes before my friend suggested that I should go and get a different pair. Thankfully I listenened to him and went and got a different set ( size 40 again) and this time they were this snug fit like they were designed keeping my feet in mind. And it became a lot easier to skate today. It was amazing. And at the end of 1 hour 15 minutes I was still going strong, feet not hurting and fully energized with the result that my friends had to literally force me to leave the rink.

Ice Skating is like taking a long drive. Some how it seems to clear my mind and align my thoughts. And while I was skating, I thought, what we do for a living in life is also like picking a pair of ice skates. No matter how enjoyable and exhilarating it seems in the beginning, if it is not meant for you, it starts to hurt sooner or later. But once you find a pair that fits, the experience becomes more enjoyable and it gives you energy while you are at it instead of sucking energy out of you. Everybody has to try for himself/herself and get a feeling to find a pair that fits. But just wish making decisions in life was as simple as going to the counter and asking for another pair.

What do you call problems......

2005-11-30T21:17:00.000+01:00

How long does it take to touch a chord with some one? A moment, a minute or eternity? There are some people you instantly fall in love/sync with. You become comfortable with each other as if you had known each other for a long time. This is not going where you are thinking .... but this is about one of my swedish friends. He is twenty, tall and this lovable character. He wishes to be a doctor one day, gives half as many re-exams as the exams, sucks at flowers, though loves biology in general. One of those easy go lucky guys. We hit off together the first day we met. Why am i talking about him? cause he coined one of the amazing terms I have ever heard.

We were having dinner together and he started telling me how he had problems deciding whether he should go to hungary next year for prep school or he should stay in Sweden to study by himself and save some moolah. Also he said he was having problems deciding if he should go with his friends to Italy this weekend . Then he started smiling and said that "Do you know what my father said when I told him all these problems . He said, what you have my son are not problems, they are LUXURY problems." How very true?

Do I have any major problems in life. I do not have to think where my next meal is going to come from, I do not have to work in pitiable conditions and not getting paid for it enough like many people in India. I have so many friends and lots of love in life. Then why the hell do I think that I am having an unhappy problematic life most of the times and only some times I feel really excited and happy.
I do not have any problems with my life from this day onwards. But you could say that I have been bitten by the bug of luxury problems and it itches some times.
Thanx Darius for giving me those words.

A notice!

2005-11-26T17:27:00.000+01:00

It is quite remarkable that if we start noticing something new and our alert most of the time how we start coming across that thing. It has happened to me that when I look up a word in dictionary , magically I come across that word in something different I am reading. It is the same with with my thoughts, a thought comes in my head ( waise do you come up with a thought or the thoughts come to you??) I see the same thought across in many writings or in a movie. It can not be purely coincidental. And while I was thinking about it, I remembered something some one told me long ago (and yes he is same some one as the last time ;-) )

"If you give importance to little things in life they begin to grow. Its upto you to decide which things you want to grow and which things you want to remove like weeds from the field when they are tiny".

Now how did this thought come into my head, I had gone shopping today for gifts and souveniers for friends and family and it was a tough job . First it is difficult to find things that you can carry easily back home and then when you find them they are so freakingly expensive. I saw this amazing piece of swedish crystal and immediately fell in love with it. But I was momentarily stunned when I saw the price . 5000 Kronas. That is nearly 30,000 rupees. For a piece of rock. And that made me think about money in life. I have never felt the need to have too much money, partly coz my parents can provide for more than the basic needs . It is not important to have obnoxious amounts of money in life to be happy, you must know how to spend it on right things. Sometimes a 5 rupee flower can touch more than an expensive necklace/ipod/watch/(______ fill up anything you like). Really like the mastercard advertisement
"There are some things in life money can not buy. "
I have to remember never to let the thought of having lots of money grow on me.
Now what was amazing was, once I came back and resumed my internet hopping, I came to this article ("A path of glory" ) which some of you might have already read. There are some people who struggle all their lives just to get a decent standard of living. The big dreams which people used to have, they have become of little importance with globalization and time. Earlier it was owning a car, now it has been replaced by having a Mercedes. The simple pleasures have been taken away.
I have also made one more observation, that only a few people in Europe realize that they are the same as all the people in the world, except that they were LUCKY enough to be born in a developed nation. Actually it was not an observation i made, but something pointed out to me by one of my sedish friends. A human being in Sweden is no different from human being in Africa, so why the prejudices. Be aware of the fact that you are one of the lucky ones and utilize the opportunity. I also had one more quesiton in my head about which I may or may not write. Sometimes I feel that why do we have to pay in life for being born in a particular country . Do not take it to be that I regret being an Indian, I am proud to be an Indian but the country has still a long way to go. It is so ironic that you do not even decide how and where you begin your life. I am beginning to believe in destiny. Here I come..........

The Art of Estimation

2005-11-24T22:38:00.000+01:00

I have noticed lately how bad I am at setting estimates for finishing a particular task. It is the only case where I should take the worst case time and plan for my schedule accordingly but I take the best time and then do it. I always think on a surface level that this task should not take me more than 'xxx' (just for the fun it, using 'x' as a variable is so boring) hours when I know deep down that it would take me more than that.
I keep snoozing my mobile until the last moment in the morning. I could get up 10 minutes early and not rush through everything. But I always estimate the best times, 30 min to get dressed up, 15 min to make lunch and have breakfast and so on and so forth. And I have noticed how even when that particular task is not finished I start planning for 4 more things. I feel so excited to start a thing but it takes a lot out of me psychologically to finish it. Guess i was never good at finshing stuff, one of the many mortal ills I have. But I have noticed that Indians are very optimistic when we estimate something. As if we have this temporary gift of optimism when we are planning. 'xxx' activity should not take more that this much and 'yyy' not more that so I should have my evening free and watch a delightful movie. If I am wrong, please GOD give me the answer to why I am like this. And if you do, I promise I will start believing in you apart from not doing the above mentioned thing.
The second thing that is that I have received 'comments' (or as I see them compliments) ( first from shivam da and lately some of my closest friends) that I was not this person when I was back home and they find it hard to relate this blog to me. I think there are many reasons ( read this). I admit that it I have become more vocal, but my thoughts have not been dramatically changed by this stay but I have come out with the thoughts that I had in my head for almost an year now. I no longer wear a mask to pretend that I am sure of what I am doing at IIT and where my life is heading(as one of my friends put it). Some people are looking forward to meet this new me ( thanx tote for the talk that day) and I am thinking that I may have not changed that much to really surprise them. As I always say, your imagination can make you expect things which are not really possible and that can leave you sometimes a little disappointed.

gosh, this IIT!

2005-11-23T16:25:00.000+01:00

It does not rain but it pours. That is what happened to me when I read this at phoenix blog and the rest of the links, bombarded with the news of the suicide of an IIT guy. I am too lazy to link upto all of them but I think phoenix does a pretty good job. I feel sorry for the IIT guy though, ending his life when it could have begin in another year atmost.

I can not tell about all IIT so everything I say will be my exeprience at IITD and of other IITs generally. The point is there are some over-hyped notions prevailing of IIT(s) in this world. And we IITians ( did I mention how it pains me every time I use this word) are partly responsible for it. Do not we sometimes use the name to our advantage even though we know that we have nothing special except doing well for a change in one stupid test. The problem is always the same , demand and supply, if you have little of some product the prices go up. So is the case with IITs. Have more institutes of the same quality and then the stress would certainly go out.

Second thing is that people(IITians) do not know which branch they really want to do except for a few. The answer is still the same that if you had to stand in a queue to get a bowl of rice in a time of famine , you do not complain if it is basmati or not. You just eat . The thing is that most of us give up on a few things we like to do for a matter of 2 years to get into this institutes and then we want to do them again when we finally enter them.
But i was startled at reading this at varun's post
"The stress on an IITian can get even worse. Back at home they are hailed as if they came down from planet Krypton. Parents, relatives & peers expect them to keep outperforming just as they did in school or in IIT-JEE exam, what they don't consider that here the competition is many times tougher. Such expectations put a student under immense stress. For most of the students in IITs, IIT is the first place where they are challenged academically. Till then, during school, they were among the toppers - without breaking a sweat"

The thing that bugs me is that we do not stop competing with others once we get into IIT. Should not these institutes cultivate an environment in which emphasis is on majority of people doing something good instead of some people doing something exceptional. It is the system that claims to select only the exceptional people RIGHT? So should not we be helping each other out and trying to learn in a group. The thing I have seen here and realized is that we Indians are always trying to prove ourselves all the time, showing that we are better than the rest around us . Asking a question to which you already know the answer to!! We are not taught how to work together in a group. We may be better individually, but always remember that sum can be greater than its parts.
This is the primary reason that Indian companies are not doing stupendous jobs, cause we keep the ideas to our selves in the fear that our colleagues may take credit for it. In IIT , you do not have to be challenged academically, you have to be stimulated academically. We get into this trap of scoring a GPA that we forget that sometimes it is more important to learn that to score.

Regarding the attendance thing, I can not comment cause my department never has any attendance requirements so I am not entitled to comment. But there is one thing an IIT prof told me in my first year, (paraphrasing ofcourse) "If I teach something in 14 weeks and you claim that you can learn all of it in a day, then that does not speak highly of the way I teach. So learning is a continuous process "
There are some people who are great teachers even if they know do not know everything and there are people who can not be great teachers no matter how much they know. We always complain that we do not have great teachers, but how many of us think of becoming teachers/professors as a profession. You can miss a class but can a teacher miss preparing for a class?? One of the problems is that professors have their own research to carry on, teaching is a demanding and time comsuming profession. So respect it.

There is a thing that we regard medicine and engineering as only professions worth going to (the old indian mentality some people call it). You have to be stable first in life, have roti, kapda and makaan. Will somebody who makes ends meet with difficulty try to make a living by being a swimmer or a tennis player. These professions of medicine and engineering are our symbols of stability and respect. That is the thing. Do not complain about them just coz you are more privileged than your previous generation. Think about it, how many of us would be where we are if our parents were not in the position they are now? Yes some of our next generation may surely take deep sea diving as a way of living, but then we have to pass them the baton in the reac of life where they can run this distance.
Always remeber, there is something good going for you even if you do not know it.

First Time Charm!

2005-11-20T00:37:00.000+01:00

I have seen snowfall for the first time in my life and like many other things in nature it has made me realize the importance of something someone said long ago( whenever I say this I speak only of one man ;-) ).
A little digression. The snowfall is amazing and I am extremely tired from the snow fight , so this will not be coherent for I have slept only 7 hours a day this week (poor me !!) .

The thing is that only people who had not seen snowfall before had come out to ENJOY it. NO swedes of my age, no germans and they were giving the facial expression of .."Where do all these crazy guys/gals come from". But then there were two Swedish children having a gala time in the snow. I believe they were around 5 and 8 and hence this was not there first snow.
Which gets to me the important saying " Learn to enjoy the little(routine) things in life". Actually it should go only as "Enjoy the little things in life" and Learn that you need to follow this rule. The child can enjoy as many times. But when you are a little old, something called the first time charm kicks in. The thrill of doing the things in life for the first time. Why is not we do everything with the same enthusiasm as we did it the first time? We are losing out something if we are not following this.
People can argue that at some tasks you get better over time and then it would be like starting over from scratch but I am not talking about expert tasks. It is about enjoying the walk from the insti to the hostel no matter how much work you have. It is about being aware of the surroundings as you walk by it. I have noticed it in me. During my first month here, I used to go WOW everytime I saw a different colour on the trees. But in the second month, the WOW's came less frequently, It had to be extremely something spectacular to draw attention towards it . It is like addiction may be at some levels. I became so habitual to it that i needed it more for it to work. But why do we have to have this habit. Can not we enjoy it as if it was "first time".
I am completely aware of another thing that goes " That you can not step into the same river twice coz the river itself has changed during that time". But can not we step into the river each time with the feeling to experience the experience of stepping in completely. That should make us happier maybe. I think this post is getting self -contradictory in parts or I am too tired.

Second thing that confused me was me reading on some blog (sorry i do not remember whose, I am too tired) that you do not learn from your mistakes or you have to relearn the lesson many times before it becomes internalized and becomes a part of you. So this is what i was also thinking about.
Finally read it some where
"I would like to do everything in life atleast twice. For maybe the first time , I may be a bit nervous"

A toast!

2005-11-15T00:49:00.000+01:00

But surely in all irony of history or in the history of irony, there has been nothing so strange as the tribute of dynamite to the peace of world.

I went to the Nobel Museum recently. Though I was disappointed by the size of it ( it is very small :-( and it is more about Einstein coz they are celebrating the centennial celebrations of the year 1905) it turned out to be quite good food for thought. I do not know what most of them got there prizes for but I would give them for a few lines some of them said. Though no photgraphs were allowed, I remember the text and will reproduce it.

I search not , I find . - Pablo Picasso

Happiness hates the timid, so does sceince - Eugene o Neill.

We haven't the money, so we got to think. - Ernest Rutherford.

I could go on and on but I have to come to Robert B. Laughlin's speech. It is nice to read and even better to hear. Listening his speech made me remember what I had planned to write some long time back.
It is about my behaviour of taking the people who are close to me for granted. The people I love, my family, my best friends I really miss them when I am away from all of them. But I have this monster inside of me, the same devil with the red horns who comes out and makes Tom do all the crazy things in Tom and Jerry ( Yes , I still watch the show :-) ) . I turn it into this obnoxious mean beast who wants to show that I do not need them. I can survive by myself in this ghastly world. I try to show that I really do not care about them and so they should stop caring about me. When actually I care, When actually I know I need all of them and I would not be here without them. How my mom used to look forward to having me each weekend home and I used to go back and sleep and I had more important work to do. Something more important than five minutes undivided attention to my mom. How when my father used to call, I always was busy. Cause that was when I used to care what people around me used to think about me. 2 min for the two most important people of my life, I did not use to take them out.
The first part of killing the monster is realizing that you have a monster residing inside of you. I know the people who know me still like me for what I am. They know my moods and send what I say in my moments of anger, madness directly out of the system. But how precarious is my situation. What if I lost them in fit of temporary insanity, for that is what it is. No better still , it is recurring insanity. It is amazing that how careless I can get with the people who care most about me.
That brings me to my second conclusion, Multitasking is not that good a skill to have for a mortal. It is too hard to learn in its true sense. The ability to give undivided attention to one thing at a time is a trait I would like to have. That's what makes a person a good listener, isn't it? I will start practising this art from this moment onwards. So no more multi chats and no more doing some thing else while talking on the phone. You can save loads of time they claim but I have enough I think.
Finally, as Laughlin, this post is a toast to parents. I would not be here but for my parents. And I have never ever thanked them for this. We thank everybody who helps us out even a little bit in trouble but we never thank our parents, our brothers and sisters. It is an English concept I know and I hate borrowing it but why do we hold it back. When all of us are grateful to our parents, Why do not we show it? We should mean it finally. We do not show our emotions that often. Why the need to hold off your emotions most of the time. When was the last time you actually said to your parents that you loved them?
I have not said it for a long time and so I say it here : Love you Mom and Dad, and You too Sis and thanx for everything.

Lastly
Born originals, how comes it to pass, that we die copies? - Edward Young

arigato!

2005-11-11T03:06:00.000+01:00

From 'Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi'

Nothing that happens, is ever forgotten, even if you can't remember it.

I am so happy right now that it feels like that I am like a child again.

When You were growing up..... ?

2005-11-05T23:54:00.000+01:00

When I came here I was surprised when people could guess correctly what i studied. You are an Indian so you must be studying IT/computers. I was amazed in the beginning but on thinking back I am surprised now that I was surprised. But one of the most difficult question to explain is why IT? You have to explain the whole system to explain that one did not have any real choice. The JEE forces the people who do well to choose between computers and electrical and the less unfortunate to hope that the get the course of their choice. We never choose what we want to do and once we realize what we really want to do , few of us have the courage to chuck away what we have achieved so far to start afresh.
The longest I have taken to answer any question was when I was asked by a girl in my corridor What did you want to be when you were a kid?. Now I was like, woh, what do I say to this awesome unexpected question. I wanted to say that I do not know what I want know, how can I tell you what I wanted as a kid. I was thinking for two minutes, the two slowest minutes of my life, what did I want to be when I was growing up. Blank, Blank, Blank, that is what my mind kept on coming with. I finally said that I wanted to be a construction worker who build houses. I used to build houses with my blocks all the time when I was kid so may be that is why I said this as my option. I did not even know what an engineer was when I was a kid. But the more I have been thinking about this question , the more it troubles me. I have forgotten what it was like to be a kid. I have lost my childhood in the maddening rush-hour traffic.
What i can remember most about my life is the last two years of IIT. The remaining of my life seem hazy. Is this the part of growing up, to forget your childhood, your past. I wish the mind had USB add ons for extra capacity hard drives. I want to store every feeling, every thought and have them sorted, categorized so that I could look back on life with surity. Then my two years of engineering would be of any use. I look back on life like a hazy picture, best described in terms of certain major points which decided my course of journey. I wish I could see the small steps I took to reach where I am today.
I wish I remembered what I wanted to be when I was a kid. Sometimes I wish i was a kid again with no worries for the past and the future, just enjoying the present. My child hood is lost and I am searching for it. Some body show me the light.

I wish I knew !

2005-11-02T22:28:00.000+01:00

I wish I knew all the answers in this world.
I wish I knew the right questions to the above answers .
I wish I knew why I am the way I am.
I wish I knew why the others behave with me the way they do.
I wish I knew why I am good at things I am good at.
I wish I knew why I mess up things I mess up.
I wish I knew what to cook each day.
I wish I knew how I feel right now.
I wish I knew where I am heading with my life..
I wish I knew something or anything at all.

The fraud that was, The fraud that is!

2005-10-25T00:42:00.000+02:00

I just finsihed my first set of examinations in Sweden today. And I am not relieved but saddened by it. Its not that I performed bad and hopefully I shall pass in both of them but it is the general feeling that has sunk in. Written Examinations are a fraud , everywhere. PERIOD.
The part of the reason is that if they are too easy then you are feel sad for being let off too easily and if they are too tough then you do not do well in them and hence the sadness. They have to be done like pasta. el dente. And paper setters are never great cooks and hence never get it right.

Most of the exams I have given in India are either too simple but long or either too tough. Most of the time you are left with the feeling If I had more time I could have done better. I had thought that would be impossible in Sweden with 4 hours for the exam. But today I did not realize how 4 hours flew by. The exam I was taking was Artificial Intelligence : Principle and techniques and It was like a full day assignment to be done in 4 hours. I did it the Indian way i.e. what ever comes to the mind at first write it down. The first quesiton was a knowledge representation and modelling question and the remaining quesitons were all based on this question . So may be I will do very well or not pass at all. So not fair at all.Written exams can never check how much you know. All courses should have tough assignments, labs and practicals but no exams please. The other course I took Inbygdda System atleast had tough lab part but not so difficult a paper. So Swedish examination is not better. I would say worse because the agony is for 4 hours and not 2 hours.

The second thing is that we should not expect a lot when we go to a new place. When I came to IIT , I had heard it was the best technical university in India but some how I had expected more. They are not better in terms of teachers ( I am not talking of my department alone but in general), though some of them are really good . It is wrong of us to expect all of them to be good. IIT may be the best coz they can provide you with more facilities at a lesser price ( it is subsidized DAH). The same thing a swedish friend had told me that when he had come to KTH he had expected more out of it because it was the among the best in Sweden. But he said this great line, " if the best feels like this to me, how would it be in the universities which are not considered to be among the best"? That is all , I had expected more, May be i still got it but not in the form i expected it to be.

Common thoughts!

2005-10-25T00:21:00.000+02:00

I have had the most scariest thought. For a long time I thought I was different, I was unique. I have thoughts entirely different from others. I am an individual not just an entry number. But I have realized through (blogs/mails/general googling) that so many of my friends , some of my enemies or some other unknown creature have had the same thought over time or are having them just as I write this now. Everything I wish to write about, someone has already written about it and better than I ever could. So how am I an individual if I do not have unique thoughts?
It scares the shit out of me.
But it also gives me peace that I am not alone. So many of us experience the same feeling of frustration, anxiety and doubt about where our lives are heading but never tell it to some other person. The weaker of us write it down, the stronger of us share it with a closed one. The strongest of us come over it. Why do I say the weaker of us? It is because that is what is what I feel . It takes more courage to say it to the face then put it on a piece of paper.

Which brings me to the question why do we have to rethink what somebody else has already taught out. Why can not we just believe in aristotle, plato or anybody at all? Why the need of experience?

I have the answers to somebody else's questions but not my own.
And it scares the hell out of this devil.

Some eyes to make you laugh!!!

2005-10-21T22:20:00.000+02:00

Are you one of those who make a checklist for everything you do : groceries, things to be done and other weird activities. Now I always check if I have enough pens for an exam ( the number will not be disclosed) before an exam and this is the list of all things ever used in an exam I could come up with before my 2B1446 Inbygdda System exam

1. Reference Book (if allowed)
2. Enought pens
3. Two pencils
4. An eraser
5. A calculator
6 A ruler
7. A compass
8 Mathematical tables
9. Chocolates to eat in an exam more than one hour
10. Water/ Juice / Any Drink which works for you

After the exam i have added one more thing to the list which will be discussed after a little while. Now swedish exams are usually 4 hrs long and you have enough time. Now the exam under mention had 20 questions which required not more than 1.5 hrs to do them in IIT time. Now yours truly was on the way of achieving this time (they may not be all correct!!!!) when suddenly something fell with a DUHH! on the table before me and I wanted to scream: what is the matter with you swedes, I am trying to finish a paper here. Before the scream found a voice, I noticed that i could not see clearly with my right eye. then the realization came to me : the right lens of my spectacles had fallen out and created the DUH! Now since I can not see clearly without my glasses ( I have a power of -8.5 dioptres for those who do not know), I stopped doing the paper and started to repair my glasses. Since I can not see it was not an easy task and neither in the end was i successful. After twenty minutes of this labour, I gave up since a guy decided to hand in his paper. I started doing the paper WITHOUT my glasses. Imagine the sight of me having paper so close to my head that I could smell it better than I could see it.

The ordeal ended in 2 hr 10 minutes with this conclusion and the following item in my list
spare glasses or a spectacle repair kit.

Btw I travelled back without my glasses 45 in subway though i confused the time for next train as 11 min when it was only 1 minute. I reachedd safely home and repaired the spectacles while wearing my other spectacles.

Have a laugh at the expense of inhastajar for I also laugh when I imagine my state in the exam.

Why IIT?

2005-10-17T20:07:00.000+02:00

"Put Harvard, MIT and Princeton together, and you begin to get an idea of the status of IIT in India."
“The IITs probably are the hardest school in the world to get into, to the best of my knowledge,” says Vinod Khosla, who got into IIT about 30 years ago.

I wanted to right about the IIT-JEE. Then I googled and thought it has already been done. God I hate Google. But the more I hate the more I love it. I will do this some other day when I can do it better than today.

But then I will put up this little question:
If this Mr Khosla is right then "How did I end up here?" with a rank in 2 digits among 2 lakh people and that too only scoring less than 60% on the exam they thought was the toughest in the world.

Over achievers or Under Achievers??

2005-10-16T22:20:00.000+02:00

For a long time in my life I was the idle student: who did his work on time, learnt all things by heart, tried to answer all the questions in class trying to show off my knowledge. In short I got good grades or the best grades. I topped my class for 8 years straight. I was the guy who set the examples for the others. They wished they could be like me, score like me and how I now wish I was not the student I was.
It is a phenomenon. I think it is experienced by lots of toppers or "over achievers" in India. I am going to talk about those people about which people think " man , he could not have it better in life, he has the best grades". He/She is going to make it big. Many of these toppers have had unfulfilled wishes, of the things they wanted to do, the music the wanted to compose, the paintings they wanted to create , the books they wanted to read or the sports they wanted to play But they never did. Because they thought they could lose all they had : because they believed that grades are all that mattered in life. Ever taken one of those free fall rides. They take you on the top and let you go. The feeling that you get in the stomach 1 sec before they let you fall, experience that. Now think that the ride malfunctions and you stay on the top for a very very long time. Not a nice feeling. That is what it feels to be the topper. The fear of falling is so high that you never feel the joys of falling down. This is only my theory but I think you can find lots of these achievers who would validate my gut feeling: of missing out on things. I can not be alone, I am sure about this. It is the affect of society and society moulds its individuals and individuals in turn mould the society.

I had this talk with a swedish professor about 4.6ers and 4.9ers. ( they have cgpas out of 5). This guy told me he had often come across better individuals in research who were 4.6ers than 4.9ers. Now I asked him can you explain why. Now he told me the individuals who have experienced failure and have learned to respond to it are better equipped for it are the ndividuals who succeed in research. Then he said and it is usually the case that the 4.6ers have experienced more failure. But he also said that in the 4.6ers there are people who like doing a lot then knowing a lot. You could know a lot and do nothing with it. But then i asked him " How can you stand those peopl who like knowing a lot but do nothing with it.?". Then he remarked : "It is there nature they like knowing a lot, they can not help it. Why should I care then?". Meeting this man made my day.

But this is my request to all the people who belonged to this category of "over achievers" once. You must have surely missed out on some things. Start doing them now. It is never too late. If you lost contact with your old friends coz you were too busy with the books, Call them up. If you missed out on playing : start playing. DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING. You may not become what you could have had you started out earlier. But it will open upto you ways of living you thought were never possible.

What are you waiting for?

Why are we afraid?

2005-10-16T16:42:00.000+02:00

Why are we afraid of coming up last?
Why are we afraid of making a fool of ourselves?
Why are we afraid of falling in love?
Why are we afraid of the future?
Why are we afraid of the past?
Why are we afraid of losing what we have?
Why are we afraid of change?
Why are we afraid of doing what we love?
Why are we afraid of losing the friends we have?
Why are we afraid of not having enough money?
Why are we afraid of letting go?
Why are we afraid of wisdom?
Why are we afraid of following our intution?
Why are we afraid of the good in people?
Why are we afraid of the bad in people?
Why are we afraid of finding out who we really are?
Why are we afraid of being afraid?

Yes Yes, No Problem?

2005-10-15T12:52:00.000+02:00

Now why i had the longest day in sweden was this : I wanted to attend the India Day at KTH ( the university I study). This is one of the nicest courses any university can come up with : basically they choose 10 students in their final or prefinal year from different disciplines and ask them to choose a country to study in terms of sweden's investment and relations with that country. Now this group (which I had met in India) christened their project : Project India 2005. So i really wanted to listen and I also decided to help them out a little like passing out flyers and stuff ( can not help my self) . Before i forget , passing flyers in country like sweden is difficult then it seems. But i really enjoyed.
Now the group had published a book about their views on India and the book title was " Yes Yes No Problem?". which I know can mean a lot of things but if you add the Indian sideways head shaking to it, then it symbolizes the Indian eagerness to help others no matter what situation he is in. Now i thought the title was a little sarcastic but the book turned out to be true in some ways so I have no grudges against them. (Thinking about putting up article on Education in India if i can find it).
But they said one of these things :

There are people who are in India for a day and on returning home write a book about it.

There are people who stay for a week and on returning write to the editor of newspaper.

Then there are those who stay for a month that on returning home they are so awestruck and confused that they choose to remain silent.

I also heard this great thing from the Indian ambassador here : Mrs. Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa about population in India : At one time we were embarassed about our population but no longer now. This is one thing that is changing. The confidence in India. Somebody even tried to give explanation for this. Because the price of knowledge has become so low, the advantage of developed countries is slowly fading away. Indians are realizing people all over the world are nearly doing the same thing. Some famous indian said on outsourcing ( i am not good at remembering names) : "we just do not want your dull boring jobs, we want your fun jobs.. the good jobs... you can send your dull jobs to china." jatte bra.

Finally there was the typical thing which said what can sweden learn from india and vice versa: this i will not go into detail cause that will be done after four months.

At night i even met a nice prof who said " There is a difference between knowing a lot and doing a lot". What a great line. More about this later.

And as Mahatma Gandhi said :
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you and then they fight you and then you win."

Longest Day in Sweden

2005-10-13T01:15:00.000+02:00

For the first time in Sweden i have been woken up from my slumber. Just had the longest 2 days of my life in Sweden. This is a tip for all people planning to go outside for studies : Never ever take a course with a Lab component. Since nobody gave me this tip , i did 2B1146 at KTH a course known as inbygdda system a.k.a embedded system where I had to right some programs for a soft processor (NIOS II for all the nerds) and download it on the board. But the problem is that you only get the board in your own lab turn and it takes too much time to get it checked. Its not that the experiments take that much time , it is like they do not have enough people to test it. So the thing was I wanted to skip class on wednesday ( for things i will tell you shortly). So the scenario was that I had to get 3 labs signed (out of 4) on last day. So i woke up early in the morning and went to the lab. But i am not that lucky. No extra boards. So wait on. So I sit in the lab and write code for the 4th Lab ( which i have not done) . At 1 i finally get i board and start working. Now this chinese Phd student is who is supposed to sign on my sheet to say it is done is like a real pain in the arse. I am done with the lab and he asks me an answer to this bull shit question in the preparatory tasks. Can the Lab setup produce CD quality???? I am stumped and i say i think the answer is no. Turns out the answer is correct but he wants to know the reason so that i do not know. So i Google ( google is god). Lab2 done.
Lab3 i run my code and call Him again. I tell him i have some error , Can you tell me where it can be. So he goes with his set of test cases and finally after 2 minutes says : This program is not right. Shish, " You are a genius" , i say in my head I had some bug with fixed point numbers so i had to study them and correct my code. But i finally managed to figure it out and did it. The chinese fadda asks me how can the program work right now when 5 min ago it was wrong. Dah????
But the final lab i was clever and waited for the professor. They are so much nicer and he just ran the code asked two questions and was done. Then finally I went for my swedish class. Never ever learn languages for fun. They teach you too much grammar. I HATE GRAMMAR. Finally my plight over at 9 in the night , i trudge back to my apartment, put a pizza in the oven eat it and do not go to sleep. I watch a movie and then go to sleep.
Nice day.

Learning??? Who cares??? I do....

2005-10-06T21:50:00.000+02:00

I was reading this boring book on AI when this quote appeared to make the reading a little more interesting. The quote is by Aristotle and it goes like " In order to learn to do X we have to DO X." Try to substitute X by things you want in life and this sentence makes lot of sense. For example in order to learn to swim you have to swim. Or better still In order to learn how to live you have to do only one thing LIVE.

A month in Sweden has made me realize that Indians some where in their history forgot how to live in the present. We have a habit of living in the future. If I do this now , I can do something 5 years down the line and then I will live the life of my dreams. Life is not what you desire, life is what you have. Live it. Its like feynman's explanation of where the energy in the electron comes from when it moves from excieted state to lower state. It is not there in the past or anything, It comes from the process. Its like the bag of letters for words never ends. The same is with life. Learn to live first and then you get more life back. Smile at a person you do not know. He will smile back ( if he is not a devil like me). No time in life comes twice. If it is gone, say Bye Bye to it forever.

Some people say a lot of crap but they somehow unknowlingly or knowlingly say some awesome lines. I wish I could do that. The line that make me think about this is that "To learn something new first unlearn". I don't know why we live in the future. If somebody knows i am all ears. Study hard to get into IIT, then come and study so you can get a good job, MBA or GRE.. the wants and desires are useless. And I see some people who chose to follow their desires and then i see people giving up on things they really want to do in life and working to get a life to pays well. The choice , the doubt of whether the things you really want in life are REALLY the things you want is like a spider web at the age when the person is in the incubation period of thinking about these things. The Greeks did two things for themselves - they played a sport for the physical fitness and played a musical instrument for the fitness of the soul. When did we decide to leave out the things that really mattered in life? Friends, Family and more importantly the self. So to live in a new way we have to unlearn the old way. I donot know it. But i am trying.

Swedes do not give a damn about others. They care as much about their family but for no one else. ""Me first. You never. I don't care what you think. I live the way i want to. "" Indians go this way "You first. You right. I may be wrong. I care what you think. I live the way people want me to ". One of the things i have learned that you do not have be sorry. Swedes seldom use the word please or sorry. I am my master nothing to be sorry about. But the swedes say a lot of thank you. But then they carry no debts or something. Done and said for , move on. Also if you live by yourself you need more than one chance to find the truth. And here where swedish excel. They believe in giving second chances. How many times can a swede sit for an exam . 10 times and no need to do the lectures and assignments again. Just the exam. Exams and numbers do not determine learning. There is no social stigma on failing. Fail, try again... until you succeed. But we have so many people which makes the attitude ..." You failed once, What are you good for".
You got a chance and you failed. Live with it for the rest of your life. I DO NOT HAVE TO and I DO NOT WANT TO. I want to live and experience life to the full not start living it when I am too old to live it.

thats all for today. Life calls. I venture out in the dark in the direction of the light. Wish to find you somewhere in the dark.

I don't care anymore...

2005-10-05T15:32:00.000+02:00

First a set of warnings to the readers of this page....

On retrospection you will not find anything new in this blog which you have not already read or heard somewhere before. So DO NOT waste your time unless you have lots to spare.
It may get a little boring ( ok Lot boring) sometimes coz i tend to go on and on and on and on.......
Finally it may seem to random and unorganized for I love to live in chaos and i type slower than the speed ideas sift through my mind.

So if you are ready to take the plunge take regular deep breadths and read on...

For a long time in the dictionary in my head there were two words that came up in my head when i tried to describe myself in one word ( one of those questions you get everywhere). But then one day i learned this new word ambivert which you can guess is a mixture of qualities of both introversion and extroversion and that is what i am. I was not one of those who was going to share my deepest darkest feelings with every luncatic who wanted to know what was happening in somebody's life for i feared what that person may feel about me if we ever met in person. That was a fear that kept me from blogging for a long time. But now i do not simply care what others think about me.

This has come about during last two months in my life in which i have had time to think about all those mind wrenching questions that people consider philosophical. I never understood that crap. The rubbish way of trying to explain life in words that no body understands but no I know that life can not be put into words. Period. It can only be experienced. I am not a well read individual but there is no greater joy than reading or hearing the write thing at the write moment in your life. For the first time in my life I am not in a race. A race to run faster, a race to run farther and a race to run for running sake. For I am lost and too tired to run. I have no destination to run to. So I sit down to enjoy the view around me and I am loving all I am seeing.

There is also one more word that i can be described with ( not that i like the description very much). I am an IITian (how i would love to kill the person who coined it). Not a person or an individual but an IITian. But its the place i can both simultaneously hate and love. The place has helped me experience so much life that i love it. I hate it for the price i had to pay to get this experience. And now i am away from that place i love it even more but i also hate it even more ( to be elaborated in the future writings).

This blog will also serve as a log of my days in sweden. I am going to follow somebody's advice and write the experiences as they happen instead of writing them about later after too much thought. There is one word that i love about Sweden. It is the word lagom which means not too much and not too little. In every aspects of life the word to follow - Lagom. Think about it.

Finally the last word ( i promise) that describes me is Shaitan Raj. For i will not let you live in peace while i am still around and i will force the dead to come to life and live again. Also i thank the Two Great people with a lesser mortal who christened this name.

More to follow from the devil in heaven..... So keep reading....

P.S. The warnings indicate that i still care what other people think but now its only lagom.