The College Road Trip

Have I ever told you how cupid played my side of the story, I guess not. So here goes my little love story on wheels.

It was on a cold December evening that we started on our college road trip, but little did I know that my life is not going to be the same again after this trip. In between the cold caskets of December nights with the winter mist casting its shadows on our window and slow tremors of our rather creaky railroad moments bloomed. There were the smiles and there were the looking in the eyes, slow humming and the magnificent feeling of her warm skin against mine. This was one journey that was about to offer much more than my most wishes combined together and it just had one hell of an opening night.  Of the many unforgettable things that happened in this week away, I for the sake of sticking to the mushy stuff skip a few of the things that have my tummy aching  even as I just write about it.

  

Our special moment must be the one we had during our shopping time in Bangalore (formally Bengaluru, but still Bangalore is romantic to me). In the city of gardens bloomed our dreams and I should say for a city of flower it has its jinx on us even now just for the sheer number of couples it generated over a single night. I must say electronic city is the least romantic part of the metropolis and there we were lost, unfortunately I, she and a few very good friends of ours were lost in its many nooks and cranny. For starters we were all there as a group to get a few souvenirs for taking home and among the boulevards and global retails houses we lost track of time and direction. Walking from one giant glass paned window to another is not a good way to know where one is going but who really cares; the world was a truly wonderful place then. After a very long time a huge number of shops we realized the unfortunate truth. The college bus has left without us!

It was a pretty good moment to freak out and since I am writing the story I am going to say I freaked out last but me and friends are yet to come to a conclusion on who freaked out first and both parties don’t seem to want to lose any bit of ground. So since I freaked out last it was rather a scary situation to be, we were in city none of us ever has been to and it was getting a bit dark too. So we called up someone on the phone who happened to get the bus and thanks to him we got to know that we were not the only ones to miss the bus and we also learned that the bus is somewhere far and would be coming back for us in about half an hour, Hweeee talk about a relief. So relieved and happy with an extra half an hour of shopping left we started making our return trip to the boarding point and guess what, there was our bus standing there at our boarding point. We were about a couple hundred meters away from the bus.

We started running all together towards the bus furious at the idiot who misled us and believe it or not just then the stupid bus started moving. Then it happened in the heat of the moment without another thought I took her hands and started running towards the bus. In a few hazy steps I realized what I did and I dropped her hand and I stopped. I looked at her eyes and she was just staring at me, amidst all the yelling and screaming from my ‘lovely and civil’ friends we stood there for a few moments. These are the kind of moments where we go for the kiss in Hollywood style movies but all she did was smile and I was a bit shy to kiss her then with all those guys staring at us.

Oh! By the way we did lose this bus and another bus had to come get us, and all my friends were kind of happy we missed it then. But one thing is for sure amongst all the adventures and the moments of closeness we shared in this trip including dining together many times then and getting to tie a necklace round her neck this is the moment I remember the trip by. It was the one moment that made all the difference in an otherwise coed relationship. Holding hands and falling in the abyss of love only come second to the magic of the moment with all the blurred up lights and kaleidoscopic boulevard of dreams.

We went on to be together all the time in the trip and still very much is happening around us, the magic of that moment may be special to that night but the love is so omniscient now that it’s a Bangalore trip every time I am with her and now… She is my girl and I her man, bounded by more than just a ring and thread.

The Crap They Sell Us at Schools

What is India heading to? It must be total anarchy or may be something worse. When confronted with the question of what I would like to change in the society if I could, I went over an awful lot of possibilities. I considered personal stuffs like changing my hairstyle to my stop biting my nails and universal stuffs like a world without boundaries (we ought to talk about that some time sooner). But then it struck me very of handedly that the one thing that must be changed in India is its Victorian ‘tailor made for slaves’ education system by our huge hearted well-wisher Lord Macaulay. But with all the crap that we are being fed in our schools now one has to ask themselves is it still called ‘education’ anymore.

I must be unfair in placing the blame on Lord Macaulay; in fact I am wrong in doing so. His intension was not to create the entrepreneurs scientists and thinkers who would one day propel the nation to unprecedented heights but his was an even harder job. His job was to create an educational system that would create enough donkeys who would work on the largely underpaid and ‘sub-standard‘ jobs that they could just not watch an English man do. And he was fair in churning out our matriculation system that we still proudly uphold today. One cannot call them schools they must be called cattle farms. He was a complete success in what he did, but we were the real idiots who bought their sinister plot with not a thought going into it.  

But, now our educational system which, I was once a part of a few years back was indeed not all that bad. There were some good things in it too like raisins in a cake. But now it’s just like a nightmare gone horribly wrong. Each person adding his whims and fancies into it doesn’t really give us a comprehensive and informed educational system. When todays educationalist go on to the extent of defining a forest vaguely as ‘a group of tree’ , the doubt starts arising in one’s mind whether they really are educated enough to be called educationalist. I think they get some kind of sadistic pleasure by ruining the life and dreams of today’s bright ones.

We need to revolutionize and revitalize our educational system or at the very least make our ‘antique’ system catch up with the today. What the nation now needs are brilliant entrepreneurs, stratergicians and researchers who would become the corner stone of its continued success. When a nation such as ours finds itself in the middle of a fast evolving world it need to put up its best face to be part of that world and to continue being there we need educated and capable people’.

Simply copying any educational system from the west may not be a very good alternative. Though highly successful in generating quality research and enriching potential, the cultural aspect and the mindset of the prevalent society play a significant role in its success too. What we need is not a ditto copy, but of possible inclusion of its best practices to our educational system and make the exaggerant focus on marks must go dim. It’s true we need more quality people but that doesn’t mean more people with maximum marks but we need more people who understand what they do.

If one thing must change about the mindset of the people then it must be this, the parents should stop pursuing the career of their children. They should realize that they can’t live their child’s life too. They should give their children a chance to live out their dream. Children may not be best judges of things but they know their hearts and their odds, if they believe they can succeed, shouldn’t they be given a chance to try. If this one factor about our society does change, there will be a reciprocating change in our educational system and a transformation in it for the best. The only thing that drives entrepreneurship and research is passion and its severe shortage is what the nation is suffering from, and why is that? The simple answer is the overwhelming focus on a ‘safe career’ forced upon today’s children.

Indeed our educational setup is plagued by a hoard of problems; the only reason for it can be the lack of timely changes that never happened. Now we are faced with a problem, whether to radically alter our system or slowly change it such that it can play catch up at the cost of valuable time. I incline towards a radical transformation, I believe a couple of unrest in the department will be all the resultant problems from such an action but it will produce the desired results in time. But I need not be the final say in that matter. It is a complicated and sensitive issue and requires an equally though-about and subtle solution. But one thing is sure, we have already reached the precipice now all we have is total oblivion or a resurrection and the choice is ours to act about.

Nuclear Years

An animation by the artist Isao Hashimoto which depicts every nuclear bomb explosion from the year  1945 to 1998 that ever took place. the video though very succinct is an eye opener, often rather profound.

After all 2053 is a very large number when it comes to nuclear explosions. The video depicts the worlds deadliest 7 nations and their arsenals of doom.

The Many Colours

Red, Blue, green, yellow, Pink, [purple and I lost count as I looked on at the countless vibrant dunes of colors in the shop. ‘Holi’ the day of the colors is here and it’s a nightmare to be out on the street on this day. They won’t leave any one out, and no one knows an escape from the clouds of colors that rise from every nook and cranny of the street. It is mayhem and its totally unpredictable. It’s the one day you regret ever making friends as you don’t want them anywhere in a one mile radius near you. You don’t have a single safe place to hide safely from their sinister intentions; they infiltrate everywhere including your bedroom. The streets are the worst, you have no idea from where a bucket full of colored water will hit you and you have no escape from the rogue pichkari bearers running lose on the streets and what not.  You are under street from the two foot toddler and they are more dangerous and reckless than their adult counterparts.

In short it is a wonderful and colorful day to live and its one hell of a festival to be part of. The celebrations are heart warming and the sense of brotherhood reverberating. Huh! I can hear the foot steps of my friends approaching my door now and guess what I have a surprise planned for them. Poor chaps they are expecting to a me hiding carefully from them and they are in for a surprise.

Happy Holi and let the colors lose and the spirits free.

PS: I have to see their faces! He! He! He!

The Day of the Women

Every once in a while when something sinister happens, we start talking about, their security, their safety, their lives and the several clichés that we so randomly use. The only exception to it ought to be this and a handful of other anniversaries. And now I am not going to be doing the same here just because it’s a cliché.

There were many women in my life and quiet a few are worth mention. And there are of course a few that I will not talk about ever, not even a passing reference or a unwelcomed memory. But in the making of the man I am today there are quiet a few skillful hands that that belonged to the some very lovely ladies all along. I must be very thankful, rather indebted to these very special souls.

I don’t know what being an women would come to mean and how it feels to be being the daughter of Eve. I can only imagine and my imagination ought to be highly restrictive. After all the key is to a women’s thought is yet to be identified. But it must feel wonderful to be the one to possess the gift of life a rare and divine responsibility that the heavens entrusted to them. The continuation of humanity ought to be a very demanding responsibility.

When we talk about women, its just natural to talk of fertility, the wonderful gift of giving birth and ‘The Mother’.  For centauries we have worshipped this divine gift and have always embraced it close at heart. So I am thankful to my very loving Mother whose sole love and care and the occasional scolding and scorning made me into the made of value I believe I am today. Then there is her mother, my grand mother who with her love and unbelievably tasty magic made sure that I was always full and stuffed to the brim. I must thank these two wonderful ‘one hell of a woman’s but I wont, I just love them and I will leave it at that.

Women have a heart so big, yet so small. It’s heard to get out once you have found your way in and its hard to find your way back into it once you have been thrown out. There are many women I love and I loved in the many (twenty one) years I lived. There are the ones that require a special mention and the ones that may have a passing reference, but irrespective of that they all have made significant contributions to the big and small things I have done and became. I have two aunts who were my world when I grew up and they are quite amiable too. And one of them I solely remember from her photograph on my grandfather’s desk and the weekly call she made to my grandparents house during my stay there. The two women own much of my construction and rightfully so.

Falling in and out of love is not a prerogative of men, women do it to often with such deceptive elegance and for a chauvinistic argument they do blame it on men always. But we both know the truth.  Then again its not the breaking and breaking of love that matters but living it. And from all the romantic relationships I have had and all the wonderful souls I have been with and the angel whom I have decided to share my life with (officially and officially she doesn’t know yet) I have had a life’s worth of wonderful experiences.

I have been blabbering for too long now and I don’t intend to take it any further than this. So for all the wonderful ladies I missed but not forgotten. All the teachers, friends and acquaintances and all the wonderful time they cared to spend with me I have just this to say.

Sorry! I missed to mention you

And

Thank you! For all the things and times you cared to share.