Complicated

They say Lord Krishna guided Arjun through his mind-battles through the wisdom of the Gita..Christ gave his sermons and enlightened a few...however the mythology goes.."mythology" it remains and probably a way of our own to find something to hold on to..to believe in ..coz ever so often I stand at this point in life where there's darkness around and no matter how hard you look you can't tell where to go. Or there are paths but which to choose is not always the easiest choice to make. Who then guides me? Where is my own God to come give me the wisdom to find my way through my battles? There will be none. And then I shall be told this was His way of believing in me and making me find my own paths because He knew I was capable of it. Essentially the shit I do is my own doing and the good things I do are my own doing but ultimately it will somehow be attributed to "destiny" or God..or some other name you call it. Not that I am an atheist or whatever name you wanna give it, I do believe in the phenomenon they call God. This wasn't even the intent of me starting to write all this.

So let me get to the point. How do you choose when you stand at crossroads where each path you see is the one you want more than anything..yet there are more than 1 of them, ironically..and you have to choose..coz they refuse to merge, and its not their ego, they never asked you to want each one of them, they had always stood there as 4 different paths leading to 4 different destinations, but you chose to dare to tread each one and reach each destination. But what now? you have come this far, given it so much and NOW they ask you to choose?  you can't. you are incapable of doing so. what do you do then? where do you go? none of them wants to help you find a way to be able to resolve this something thats killing your mind and eating your insides. You're numb to the extent that noone around you even notices, why would they care to notice? who are you n why would they be bothered when they have their own lives and crossroads to deal with? but they do choose their paths and happily tread them without wanting to experiment all the other paths too. why did you then have to pick all 4 at once and wish to have them all, you ask yourself. But sometimes its too late. And you're all alone standing there to figure out where to go? The question is do you figure it out? And if you do, do you pick the right path, or do you ruin it all by taking the wrong one...or do you just stand their numb and get run over by something right there n then..at the dead centre of it all..

Let's Walk the Walk!

So this is officially the first post I am making a draft of first before actually straight writing it on the blog and posting it without a second thought, without a re-read, coz I am not even sure of this little thing that I am writing right here! And yes its my birthday in a few hours and I turn 23. I am here on exchange relaxing, literally doing nothing for a whole thee and a half months and yet on track for a perfect gpa for the semester. I have a pretty good job offer lined up for when I complete my MBA and a nice 3 months break before I start that and everything is almost as good as it gets. YET, this is the time when I pretty often, more often than ever before anyways, have thoughts of “What am I even doing?” To me that’s pretty messed up and I think it should be that way too.

Its nothing that bothers me, nothing big, just a lot of little things which I don’t even know how to explain or name, but they do exist and they have existed for a while maybe but I just choose to take the easier way. All throughout my life I was lucky to get things the easier way, put in little effort and get great results, just maybe coz I was gifted with certain things, like everyone is and they make use of it and make the best of it that they can. But, the best things that I have always enjoyed the most have been the ones I really worked hard for. They aren’t too many really because like I said working hard and putting in a lot of effort hasn’t been my cup of tea and which is why I feel I have got a lot of what I have coz of things I just had in me and never put in an effort for. This doesn’t even make sense, but what if I did put in effort, sincerely, consciously and then saw where things go. 

I have said this to myself often, but never really done it apart form maybe in short periods of time where there was a spell where I did put in effort and work for things and they sure did reap benefits and give results. I dream big, always have, to the extent of being thought of in the negative sense of being unrealistic. I have always believed in my abilities to the extent of being thought of as cocky or conceited, as you may put it. Yet, I am proud of both the above things coz I don’t think I have ever dreamt of things that are impossible, nor have I ever been conceited in a way that has been condescending or anyway wrong to me. But what I am not proud of the fact that I do not always give in as much effort as I can, maybe what I do put in is enough, but not what I am capable of. Its not always about doing things that are enough, is it?

 How will I ever tell myself that I achieved what I was capable of, or what I did was the best I could if I never even push myself to the limit? And it does not have to be success, career, or anything in particular, it has to be every little thing that matters, that I think or know inside of me that deserves more of my effort or that I know I can give more to. I think this isn’t a bad time, if ever there is one, to do what needs to be done. In fact I think it’s a pretty darn good time to put my hand  up, own up to it and start doing something about it. And all this just for myself, because nobody I think has anything to prove to anyone but themselves. 

That brings me to another point which totally annoys me so often which is that WHY do we spend 99% of the time of our lives doing things in one way or another to manage/create an impression on others. Nobody but you is who you answer to, atleast that’s the way I like it and that’s the way it should be. But lets not get into that too much for now because that is a topic for a whole different discussion.

Now the question why would I ever want to go put such a post on a total public forum, well although most of the things I put on here are someway related to me. But, its because I have made promises to myself before, and I am the only person that I make a promise to and break it. So, well maybe if I announce it publicly enough, whether anybody even reads this or not, I know somewhere that I said a bunch of big huge things in front of a possible large audience and if I still don’t follow it, then God help me. So well with this I think enough said, and now its time to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. J

The Screaming Silence

The hollow completeness.

The shameful pride.

The happiness in sorrow.

The walking  in stillness.

The loneliness in a crowd.

The caged freedom.

The hatred for love.

The joy in the pain.

The tears behind the smile.

The companion in loneliness.

The betraying loyalty.

The normalcy in disorder.

The nervous confidence.

This dead life.

The Pursuit of Crappiness

I think what I am writing today is to do with the fact that the ongoing end-term exams have just taken my attention back to these thoughts that I have always had. What do these educational institutions teach us? To excel at what we do and be the best at it by learning something new everyday and face new challenges? I believe that that is what they are supposed to teach us but do they get even close? Let me tell you what I think they teach: how to try and somehow get good grades so that you can get a good job where you can again try and get good results so that you may become a success story. But where are we learning the art of doing things? Where are we gaining anything or getting any kind of knowledge? The system is flawed. It can find ways of screwing you each time, to ensure no matter what you do, you won't feel like you KNOW something and when you end up in that examination hall, you will end up trying to get some sort of a peek into the other's answer-sheet, unless of course you have really strong principles to stop you from doing so, which I might add is a rarity. But the question is Why? Its because there is an incentive to cheat. If you do not, you will end up scoring less resulting into a lower grade and hence the whole cycle. Where in the whole process was the learning? Well you might very well argue there are those who still go for the learning and can always extract it from the system, but the truth remains that the system is not designed to do what it should be doing. If it were, it would encourage innovations, learning, incentivise not the quest for grades but the quest for knowledge. What it does instead is give you a few years of a somewhat forced education process which comes with a little learning and a lot of frustration. Like they say the corporate world is full of competitiveness and stress, so the only good thing the system seems to be doing is getting you used to the frustration and the stress probably and in turn making the adaptation process a little more easier. Apart from that the contribution to what it is ideally supposed to do: Zilch.
Why can't there be a change in the system such that there is no incentive to cheat or step over the other somehow and be better than him instead of being better than your own benchmarks each time? Is the system not capable of devising means of instilling principles and values and the hunger for learning in people rather than the hunger for grades and success? Weren't we all mighty impressed by the dialogue in 3 Idiots that said " don't chase success, chase excellence, success shall follow". But is it enough to just be impressed by it or actually try and see what it feels like to actually do what it says? Well, there is a lot more to say and write, but for now I think I will get back to going through the motions of another exam, yet another futile process of what i call "the pursuit of crappiness".

Truth or fiction?

I have never been a story-teller. Nor do I think i ll be any good at it. But this time i wanna tell a story, or maybe say something in the form of a story because sometimes some things are so bitter, you need to sugarcoat them to be able to swallow. It might still be too obvious but then i dont like too much sugar. so here is a mix of some fact some fiction  :)
Well there was this guy, who loved a gorgeous princess and everything seemed so great. There was this maze he wanted to get into, the golden maze which you had to enter by beating thousands of others and you spent a couple of years in there and you came out richer. You had fortunes of money when you came out of that maze but noone knew what happened to a person during those years in the maze. But because the fruit was so sweet nobody complained for the thorns that were in the way. And so he did it. He beat those thousands to get an entry into that maze and was ecstatic. He had to bid goodbye to the princess for atleast a couple of years but then he had the incentive of coming out richer and worthier of the princess, after all would the king be willing to let just another guy marry his beloved angel? The maze seemed all fascinating and amazing as he entered it. He met others like him who had showed some spark to be able to crack the code of the maze and get into it. He hoped that the maze will do something to him that will make him so much better in those couple of years and he so looked forward to it. He made friends in those like minded ( or maybe not so) people and thought he was at the right place and saw so many dreams that he couldn't even keep count. Slowly the dreams still remained dreams and the 'friends' started to seem like not-so-friendly anymore. He couldn't tell though. They would be the most amazing people when around him but when he moved ahead he felt something or someone pulling him down. He didn't know what or who but he knew there was something. But he knew he would carry on and see the other end of the maze for  the riches were huge and his love was at stake..that beautiful angel he would do anything for. So he carried on..endured the burden of the most complex maze and the extra effort he had to put to overcome the mysterious pull that always sucked him into darkness. He knew it was those around him and each circumstance that was making the path tougher and lonelier but he also knew he was strong enough to make it to the end...even if he had to do it alone for the love of the princess was strong enough to overcome as tough an obstacle as didn't exist. And so the journey continued with the darkness growing deeper and scarier each moment , yet the light in him burning bright as ever...............................................................

Lol yeah this one is not supposed to be completed... just not yet...

The Self-defeating Pursuit

Okay. So I have no clue of what I am gonna write, but I do know that I want to write. Earlier today I had thought of saying stuff that I had in me but the point that i wanted to emphasize doesn't seem worth it to me anymore. There is a lot to be said but probably will have no coherence of any sort.
First things first. MBA. So you begin by becoming a part of this rat-race of trying to get into a great B-school because u suddenly think this is made for you or because everyone is doing it or because you are fed up of what you are doing or because money lures you into it. And mind you, this is after you joined a rat race 4-5 yrs back when you ran to get into an IIT or an SRCC because back then that seemed the right thing, or the thing everyone was doing, or the thing that you were "made for". OK, not digressing from where I was, you start to run this race and you realize oh your pretty good at it and you get these occasional ego boosts when you do better than most in so called "tests" (I am afraid I don't know WHAT is it they test though). And here it is. You have cracked it. Beaten thousands of people to get into that coveted B-school, the one you dreamed of. Or maybe you think you could have been at an even better one. But whatever, now that you're in it, you're in it because you thought it was good enough for you or as was in my case , you thought that it doesn't really matter because you will be you whether here or at a slightly better place.
So here you are among around 200-300 of the brightest minds in India ( or so you like to think and so do the ones who selected you) and so happy and proud of yourself that you have finally achieved something big. Well, the game has just begun. Or I may say it never ends.
So its the same old story, another rat race , this time for grades - "relative" grades I might add and jobs which have place for only the best  ( or again the ones they think are the best). Only this time its a competition between fewer people but all exceptional in their own ways. So is it easier? or is it tougher? I' ll leave that for you to decide. But its a rat race for sure. And then slowly you realize there is nothing really special about what you are doing, its just the usual stuff you have been doing all your life- the so called "quest for knowledge" which for the major part of it ( read 99%) is spent in trying to beat the other and not really learning anything. Of course there are exceptions who don't really bother about all such "materialistic" things but then whatever who cares.
There is a lot more to be said and a lot more to be written but it shall be written some other time. For now the question is where does this really end? Or does it ever even end ? I fail to understand. And the irony is if you choose to not run the rat race , you are thrown out of the whole system, out of the whole scheme of things, because you aren't "fit for the course". You aren't a competent enough rat if said in simple terms.

Why do I look at the moon?

Yeah, weird name for a piece of writing isn't it. I agree. But well, I have been asked that by many people when they find me randomly looking at the moon while they are making "conversation" among themselves. So here is a long due reply to "why" would i look at the moon so often.
When you first fall in love, the moon is that one thing that seems more beautiful than ever before and its your companion for the nights you can do nothing but miss that special someone and think of nothing but her. It's there with you when you take that long walk in the empty streets, alone, with thoughts in your mind ranging from mere nothings to the biggest dreams that you have ever nurtured. It's there still, in some shape or size when you are sitting on a bench with that special someone finally with you, next to you, holding your hand. You might not look at it for there is your own piece of moon next to you, but well its still there. And then there are those nights when you go out in the open at night to find that same companion in the skies that has been there for you , always, but you don't find it, coz sadly enough it doesn't rise every night. It's not just a companion for the happy times, but more importantly it's there for you to look at when things are going all wrong. When you take that walk alone, on the same roads where you once strolled with that one you thought was 'the one' , but alas! she isn't there now, but the moon is still looking over you to reassure you that things are still beautiful, its just your perception that has changed, and that the night will still be as pretty again when you will find the true one someday. The moon is there with you in all those nights that you spent on that bed of yours with tears dripping down your eyes, for a reason only your heart knows and which will bury itself with you.
There is another really amazing thought that comes to my mind when I look at the moon. It is the one thing that binds me and my special someone even when we are miles apart. When I look at it , I know that somewhere she can look at the same serene beauty and that it is a connection between me and her which will hold us close even when we are separated by distances. For I know that it will watch over her and take care of her like it has taken care of me over the years, I can sleep peacefully each night.
Isn't this reason enough for me to look at it and merely admire it and acknowledge all that it has done for me without asking for a penny in return. And well, why even need a reason to look at the moon? Isn't the beautiful thing itself reason enough to admire God's second most beautiful creation?