Time: About to be 1:00 am
Tomorrow have MIS and MC.
Songs: Aasman ke paar koi, raat hamari toh, tumse hi.
Feeling: Nostalgic.

Read an article that appeared in the Business Standard. The article attracted my attention as it had the photo I had seen recently. Someone on IP Msngr (The internal communication tool of the institute) had spammed his photo asking his name. The person looked like Rahul Dravid's relative.
The article was from Aswath Damodaran, a guru on evaluation of stocks and portfolio management, a prof at the Stern School of Management, NYC. The article was about the markets. The interviewer seemed to be lacking insight into the work of Damodaran, as he kept on asking the questions which i guess he would have surely answered in his book, like in what ways would you arrive at valuing a loss making company. Damodaran seems a cool guy, taking questions and answering them with the ease of a master, has the manner of a person who knows something about the stuff he is talking about, an insight which others seem to lack. An awesome feeling when you know something which is still a secret to the public in general. Take this from his webpage:

"I am lucky enough to be in a field where a little knowledge and a dose of common sense goes a long way, and achieving guru status seems relatively simple. What I do know is neither profound nor earth shattering, but I would like to share it on this site."

The man seems to ooze confidence, but with the quite smile of the sphinx, like he knows something we don't.

Had the first mid term paper today. The first was management accounting, which seemed quite doable, but messed up in their with a few questions. The other one was that of Social Transformation in India. There was a lot of stuff to be read in the notes, but having heard stories about the prof being extremely cool with the numbers, gave my instincts a shot. Didn't read much and was in the test fending for myself. It didn't go that bad.
Killed some time with friends and then came to the room. Last night a friend had called, so called her back and had a hearty chat. She seemed quite knowledgeable about my ability or the inability as I may put it of not being able to open myself with new people. She had asked about what I wanted to do with myself, I said I wasn't sure, and that was true. But I have one thing in perspective: my priorities. I want to live my life, not getting upset over silly things as the time is too short for that. The opportunities that I get here are aplenty and the worst that I can do is to lie down doing nothing. So here it is to action.
Got two more papers coming up tomorrow - Marketing and Organizational Behaviour.
Marketing seems quite interesting to read as it doesn't feel like reading curricula but a magazine. Organizational behaviour on the other hand is also interesting but only till you take it as play, if I try to get too tough with it, it refuses to seep through the grey matter. Ohh I forgot one more thing am watching heroes currently. Think they could have been better with the story which sometimes walks the tight rope between being classic and foolish. There are some parts which are not that appealing like the way Mohinder Suresh, the geneticist is portrayed. He seems quite a foolish guy, believing everyword the others say, does everything except working on genetics, works on some lousy program his dad had manufactured which just goes on giving random values, but Suresh is working day and night at it, God knows at what. There is an honest attempt to connect so many different characters, but at some point of time the connection is too complex to generate interest. The concept is good, though a major part of it seems to be adopted from X-Men, but the implementation could have been better.

From tomorrow the mid terms start. The mood in the hostels has changed. No more loud songs from any of the first years' rooms, though they can still be heard coming from the seniors' rooms(their mid terms are over). People who were into watching movies, playing games and doing bakar(aimless chatter) have taken to the solitude of their rooms. People say the best way to allay your fears is to face them, I think exams are an exception to this rule. These qualified people who have given exams throughout their lives behave like normal children in their fear for the papers. You can see it in their status messages in gtalk or on orkut, or the topic of discussions during lunch and dinner. No more loitering around the campus.
But there is something else that is visible. The level of cooperation that the students have shown. With the relative marking scheme put into place by the institute one would think that keeping information to oneself would be a dominant strategy for each player. But here I observe something 180 degrees opposite. There are mails giving lecture slides, some of the students have taken it upon themselves to show their passion towards the Right To Information. Seniors are also in a generous mood, sending previous years' question papers, and advice.
For me its just another paper. These things never seem to end. You motivate yourself by saying just this once, after that it will be alright, but then it comes at you once again. I guess there is no escaping. So I have stopped thinking about it. No more wasting of the precious time that I have here to the vicissitudes of student-dom. I am a free soul and will stay free come what may.

contd. from the Morning Rigour

When we had landed at the orphanage, we saw a place bristling with life. Actually the place, spread over an area of 13 acres, was an institution in itself. It had a school for the deaf and dumb, a school for the blind, a school for the orphans, vocational training facilities, hostels , a playground, training facility for the teachers. The place was started by Mr. Moinudeen Koya, retired ADM of the city, in the year 1977. The place had grown into an institute serving 350 blind and deaf and dumb children and about a 100 orphans.
When we got to the place I was wondering to find my way through people who spoke only in sign language (there were no teachers around as the teaching hours were over already). We managed to find the principal's office. He welcomed us with great warmth, and answered most of our queries. Then Mr. Koya alongside Mr.M. Mohammad, the secretary, came to us and gave us information about the institute and its working. He took us to visit the place and showed us around.
There was much more life in their than a normal educational institute where people keep sitting on their computers, either playing games, watching movies, or surfing the net. There was much more life in the place, hardly any students stayed inside the hostel once the classes were over. They were out into the fields playing. Even the blind were out in the cool breeze that was blowing outside and didn't keep to their rooms.
We met with Razzak, a blind guy who sang for us in Malayalam. They were eager to know about us and meet up. I was told that the world does not accept them as it does not have patience enough to know what they are communicating. But these students seemed so easy to talk to and so much more open to people that we made friends with them in a jiffy. Then we met up with a girl Ayesha, she was talking to Mr.Koya in Malayalam, I didn't understand a word but she seemed to throw out warmth in some way. She was about 3 feet tall, very lean and blind from birth. Were told that she was 12 years old. We curse everyone for our small misgivings. Here I saw people who were disadvantaged physically, but were mentally more at peace with themselves. The seemed so genuine and accommodating that when we went to the school for the mentally challenged we were greeted by handshakes and smiles.
When we left the place I was no longer tired, felt rejuvenated and ready to take whatever came.

Today I had to visit an orphanage. I was volunteering for the Social Services Group of my college, where we were to help out NGOs with structuring and management, provide them consulting to work better. When I had volunteered I thought I had the gusto in me to go all the way, but like other things in my life I thought I would be better off watching a movie in my room, or hang out with friends, especially after we have had a whopper of an accountancy paper.
I slept at around 4 in the morning, woke up at 9. I didn't even had the usual choices of either bathing or having breakfast, had to rush to the class to be on time. We had to prepare for a case which I had not done, prioritizing the quiz over the case. Somehow managed to read the case between the classes, but when the case class started I was too tired to even open my eyes. The class stretched to a half an hour more adding to everyone's misery, as it left no extra time to see the notes(they would have been no use had we only seen what was coming).
After a quick lunch, had to rush to the class for the quiz. 20 minutes later everyone was wondering what hit them.
The time was 3:00 pm and the meeting with school was scheduled for 4:30. God also seemed to be testing our commitment. It started raining while we were in the class, and it continued during the lunch break. The place was a good 30-35 km from the campus and going by a bus seemed an improbability in that weather. So we called up a cab and started for the place.
Managed a quick nap in the car. The cab seemed to be going on and on. We wondered whether we had lost the way. But an hour and a half later we were there.

contd.

People wonder where the society is heading. They point out flaws in the system just for the sake. The other day an erstwhile professor, a doctorate in sociology, was pointing out how the concept of feminism is exploited by the media and the advertisers to show woman as a mere object of desire, how women are portrayed as sensual beings, how their body is used in subtle ways to convey the same cliched meaning time and again. He was pointing out that educated people with whom we expect good intellectual and relevant advertisements exploit the same stereotype of the skimpily clad girl leaving nothing to the imagination, to sell their wares. Let me ask a question: If you are selling a lipstick what aspect of the product do you want to emphasize upon. What does a lipstick represent? Desmond Morris in his book The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal, says that lipstick is used by women to fake the appearance of the labia in their private parts to attract the male partner. With this implication of the lipstick how can one not associate it with anything but sexual feelings. It is a sexual signal as much as a fashion statement. It has deeper meaning than the mere mechanical application of just another cosmetic. So if an advertisement is showing that putting lipstick enhances your odds of getting a mate, then I ask what is so obscene about it? I do agree that the meaning of feminism is twisted sometimes. But in today's world where women have equal rights the mention of insecurity is sometimes absurd. True, women has been abused in the past but this age has empowered her to join the workforce at an equal level with the male, girls get opportunities to study in the premier institutes of learning. The cultural mix of the east with the west is helping the girls shed boundaries, be free and independent. So if you are hearing sir, Mr. Nutty Prof. you were awesome with the knowledge quotient but I beg to differ on feminism in the 21st century.

I had always garnered hefty ambitions for myself. When I was a kid I hoped of making it to the Indian Cricket team, played cricket in clubs, was a tad good at it, but got a rude shock when I was diagnosed with a problem in my right knee which prevented me from doing what I liked the most, bowling fast. Thus ended my cricketing career. A teacher once asked in class what do you want to be in life. I stood up and answered 'an engineer'. It was the only profession I knew back then apart from law and medicine. I thought of engineers as people who make bridges and tall buildings(never had this crazy idea that they sit in front of the computers doing nothing more than ctrl C and ctrl V in some plush air conditioned office). when I came into standard X I thought the only aim of my life was to score a good percentage in the examinations, which I thankfully did. Had not seen too much into the future back then so I just went with the tide. Took up science and started preparing for engineering. Got into engineering taking a branch which I had not thought I would be taking in my wildest dreams( I was a computer guy in school and took up biochemical engineering in college). But the stuff sounded exciting and really meaningful. So now I saw my future as some crazy scientist working with some more crazy people who meddle with the ways of nature. The college experience till the pre-final year did one thing to me, if I was lazy before, I was more so now, more than ever before. Being a scientist required reading a lot of stuff and updating myself with the latest in the world of science. But now science did not appeal to me at least the practical aspects of it. I was still interested in the theoretical part though. When the placement season was about to kick off in college I decided to sit for the IT services companies that make their rounds every year. This did not involve much work and at the end of the day I had to justify my parents' investment in me by picking a job from the campus. This got me started on preparations. I guess that was the part which helped me a lot as it changed my outlook towards many things. This was the first time I was having a prosaic perspective of things rather than the mere theory of it. I looked at things in a whole new light. A decent amount of preparation saw me through the placement season. I landed up with an offer from a top MNC in the services sector. I was too happy and overjoyed. A feeling as if I had accomplished something in life took hold of me for a couple of days. As the time passed I realized that something was missing still, as this was not what I had been dreaming about all along, it was intensified by the fact that the normal academic rigours of the final year did not appeal to me, and I thought of maintaining this new found excitement, the excitement of competition, the excitement of knowing that if and only if you could give your best shot you can make it. I realized it later that after all the true competition is not with an external person but with the internal one. The one who lies there inside you, who perhaps takes a nap for sometime, but if it goes into slumber it takes quite a while to awake him. Once awakened it can take you places you never dreamt of. I realized that I had to awaken this person inside of me. Sometimes everything seemed quite within the grasp and everything seemed to come naturally, at other times it was a toil, when nothing would seep into the hard shell the brain would become. It was a matter of going on, not stopping because I had a few bruised heels, but thinking of the rewards I would reap if and when I reached the destination. The question of 'if' was still there because till now I had been a fish in a small pond with little flowing water. Beginning from now it was a sea where there were waves and dangers aplenty. Where you always had to be on your toes to survive the day. I realized one thing, there was no point in throwing up my shoes. I had to try with every muscle in my body, with every cell in my brain to come up and beat this 'if'.

contd.

Here I am talking to myself again, thinking if I write will I be able to write an original piece or will I sound cliched because it has been really long since I wrote something. I remember sitting in the english class trying to come up with quotations and nice brownie point winning words to impress the teacher and earn a few marks more. But as I grew up the writing habit receded into the background. I was more into reading academic stuff interspersed with a dash of philosophy and biographical works. But the writing habit wouldn't come back. I lost the reading habit too coming into the first year of engineering, when I tried a couple of things. Tried to come first in class, I couln't, tried my hand on a few sports to see if I can make it to the teams, I couldn't. So I turned to my new found hobby of watching movies(as I had got a new laptop from my father, I could view movies at will, God I was so happy!!). Then in my second year of college my cousin and J.K.Rowling reintroduced me to the pleasures of reading. I was so much into Harry Potter that I read the fifth, sixth and seventh books on my laptop as an e-book, never taking my eyes off it. But this got me started and I continued with a couple more.
Now, here I am,engineering is over, my first job is over as well, am back into college for doing my MBA, but that one thought still haunts me that I discontinued my writing habit. With this blog I hope to rekindle that lost flame and try to crawl again in this amazing world of self expression where the boundaries are as limited as your imagination. With this start I hope to continue to discover the amazing worlds that lie inside me and unravel the same to you in an honest way.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold,
service was
joy.
~
He who wants to do good knocks at the gate;
he who loves finds the gate open.
~
I have spent my days stringing
and unstringing my instrument
while the song I came to sing
remains unsung.

Stillness soars as a mountain peak,
Seeking its greatness in height.
Movement stops in a silent lake,
Seeking in depth its limit.
~
The fish in the water is silent,
the animals on the earth is noisy,
the bird in the air is singing.
But man has in him the silence of the sea,
the noise of the earth
and the music of the air.
~
There is a point where in the mystery of
existence contradictions meet;
where movement is not all movement
and stillness is not all stillness;
where the idea and the form,
the within and the without, are united;
where infinite becomes finite,
yet not losing its infinity.

Man goes into the noisy crowd
to drown his own clamour of silence.
~
Man is immortal; therefore he must die endlessly.
For life is a creative idea;
it can only find itself in changing forms.
~
Man's abiding happiness is not in getting anything
but in giving himself up to what is greater than himself,
to ideas which are larger than his individual life,
the idea of his country,
of humanity,
of God.

The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?.

-- Edgar Allan Poe

Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when
 I try to break them.
 Freedom is all I want, but
 to hope for it I feel ashamed.
 I am certain that priceless wealth 
is in thee, and that thou art my best
friend, but I have not the heart to 
sweep away the tinsel that fills my room

 The shroud that covers me is a shroud 
of dust and death; I hate it, yet
hug it in love.
 My debts are large, my failures great,
 my shame secret and heavy; yet when
I come to ask for my good, 
I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

 -- Rabindranath Tagore

Hello people
I believe yoga is a way of living and it is not for the lazy types. Yoga tones your body , shapes and calms your mind and creates a space inside that illumines the whole existence of the individual. It requires strict discipline and routine . There are so dimensions to our personalities that most of us never explore in our lives and die ignorant of them . We live as though to drag our lives and grind them daily for instantaneous benefits but ignore the picture as a whole and only come to realize the bigger picture when time is not on our side and are left empty handed.
Think about it people until next time........

Hello Gudakesh

Hello World How Are You