The only friend

The only friend you have;
 When happiness shower;
The  one who truly rejoices;
The one who won't be jealous;
When you need somebody;
In the shadows of sorrows;
The one who never leaves you;
Who always stands by you;
Who speaks in a small voice;
"I am with you"; is,
Nobody else; but you.

SOME QUESTIONS - Part 2

Now let me ask some questions about the "wedding show-off". When I was a child, I was bothered very much by the idea of dowry and had taken an oath that I'll never marry a guy who/whose family asks for dowry. (I still have a plan to say a loud "get out of my house" to any stupid fellow and his family who demands dowry to marry me.) But as I grew up, I realized that even those who speak badly about dowry becomes "a traditional citizen (it is shameful to call such persons citizens)", when it comes to their daughter's wedding. As the old tradition (blah , that tradition go to hell), they start viewing their daughter as a burden (Which you can't tolerate, then why did you make the X chromosome pair with the X itself when you were reproducing?) (not even burden as some garbage which has to be dumped anywhere as soon as possible). Well if you want to shove your daughter off somewhere, do it. Why do you have to associate it with your social status?

When I ask this question, I've to mention about the general mind set up of people.
And that mind set up is based on the fact mentioned above. Girls above a certain age are burden! somebody someday lamented this stupid thing and it became the ideology of the society! Wah! And as always the wrong ideas get popularity rather than good ideas like educating girls. Why? probably because education cannot be celebrated even if it actually increases your standards. (I'm not talking about the professional education mania. if you want to know about that mania, please read "Who wants us to be illiterate?")

And the ridiculous thing is that, parents don't want to educate girls for fear of not finding an appropriately educated guy. Plainly speaking nobody will marry a highly educated girl. So girls should be brought up as ignorant beings who will tolerate anything, because by arranging a high cost marriage you are "buying" a supposed body guard for your daughter, who actually will treat her only as his object of pleasure and a source of money and as a servant who will attend to you free of daily wages! And if your daughter opposes to agree to this stupid system and chooses to remain single until the age she prefers as an independent being, the girl is stamped by the "society" as a bad one. Even if her parents support her views and let her to live her life. And the "good society" comprising of parents who "believe" in "traditions" start making stories about the girl!

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The stories these "good parents" make against the girl and the family will be something like the following:

1) The girl is a "bad" girl. When they use bad, they want that girl to have indulged in a relationship with somebody and broke up(if their own son really does all these they won't have a problem. why? Because "he" is a "male"!). That's why this girl decided to stay single!

2) If they can't find any scandal to accuse against her, then they will accuse the girl to be a disobedient person! What they actually want to imply is this: girls have no right of choice. They should eat or gulp whatever crap they are provided with. Why? Because "we the good society" believe that girls are born to "serve men and men only". If some girl proclaims her freedom, the doomsday will be near. They should "take in" whatever comes to them and not oppose the things which they don't like. if so the girl's name should be tarnished.

3) "We the good parents" will do anything to mentally torture the parents of the independent girl and will make it look as if their social status is in question because their daughter has not got married even though she is past the "marriage age". See our daughter/daughters have been married to (Well at this point I've to make a remark about these good "parents". These are parents who will sell their properties and give big amounts as "gifts" to the guy and his financially backward family who had been waiting to find a foolish family so that they will get large amount as dowry so that they can pay the dowry to dump their daughter off somewhere.) "smart" (yes they are really smart [in reality good for nothing] to get a "pati post" without any effort at all, and earn lifelong in the name of dowry, because they were useless fellows who couldn't find a real job to provide livelihood. ) guy/guys who will "obey" us. They will act as bodyguards for our daughters wherever they go. See you have failed to "buy" a bodyguard for your daughter. So you are good for nothing! We have got all rights to abuse you in front of and behind everyone , and make stores about your daughter who doesn't stay inside the limits set by the "traditional, always good society comprising us".

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Now I've something  ask to you dear "good parents". Why do you think that the process of dumping your daughter to the mercy of some stupid person increases your social status? You've to "pay" lakhs to "buy" him off. You have to sell your properties (for example your farm land from where you used to get food crops and cash crops and a sustained income by selling them) to make  a big house/houses to "lure" the "suitors" (I mean bodyguards) for your daughter/daughters, divide the house vertically or horizontally (otherwise who knows when your daughters learn from you and start nagging about money and social status) along with the "gifts" in equal amounts (so that nobody including your daughters complains) and do the worst mistake of your life. 

You marry off your daughter spending lakhs of rupees. Lakhs for the ornaments the girl has to display on the wedding day, lakhs for the huge car (so that the "smart" fellow can travel alone and cause traffic blocks on Indian roads) to be "gifted" to your "daughter", lakhs for the wedding ceremony which lasts barely three hours! Unless you invite atleast thousand people and conduct your daughter's marriage in a BBBBBBBBBBIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGG auditorium, nobody will respect you. Correct. You don't have anything else to become famous or top be known for. You didn't study well, so you don't have a decent job. You don't have special talents, so you can't participate in a reality show. You've inferiority complex when you compare yourself with others in your family. You have nothing else to do rather than sit at home and dial numbers and spread gossips all over and collect news (actually gossips) from all over, the world. So the only way you can become famous is by conducting a "fancy show" by yourself. And the actors are your daughter and her bride groom.

You'll definitely become famous in two ways. Stupid people who don't see anything other than glitter will come and "admire" the saree/costume and ornaments worn by your daughter. They won't even bother to look at the decoration of the stage. Admire here means to count. Those who attend weddings will be experts in "weighing" gold without a weighing machine (isn't it what you want?). they'll spread the word of how many kilograms of gold did your daughter wear on her wedding day. The way is that after all the wedding halla is over, you will be bankrupt and will become famous for that. does your social status increase with all these?

If you've money, can't you use it judiciously? Do you really have to spend it for something which has no guarantee? I mean is there an y guarantee that the couple whose wedding was conducted at the cost of being bankrupt will last for ever? Provide the "banglaa,gaadi,babe" motto of the "smart" guys, can you say that the marriage will not end in divorce? If it does then, wasn't it a bad decision to spend money extravagantly like you did? Why are you laughing at independent people?

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Having a married life and giving birth to a child or expanding your family doesn't increase your social status. [At this point I've to make a remark. If you respect a double mother, then you should respect single mothers in the society, because they are the ones who didn't kill their their children under hostile circumstances and decided to bring them up bravely.] If you have some delusions like that you can keep it inside your under developed useless brain. You are a middle class person. What is so shameful about that? When you lament about the things which you don't have, why don't you look at people who don't have food,water,clothes and shelter. Do you have to sleep on a dirty pavement on a rainy night? Then why are you bothered about silly things like how much gold to be spent to "secure" (infact dump off) your daughters life?


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SOME QUESTIONS - Part 1

In the last post I wrote how I experienced sound pollution in one of its worst forms. This has prompted me to ask many questions, which I've been wanting to ask for a long time, but a festival has made me ask it now. As I wrote earlier, I don't think that the obsession Indians have to explosives is not localized , but it is universal. One reason I had never heard a cracker sound in Mumbai was that, I used to live on the 12th and 6th floors and whatever sounds used to be made would have come as feeble (but persistant and irritating, like the ones when you put music in loudspeaker for a full day and I had that experience in Mumbai). There was a report in Mumbai mirror about a boy of 21 years old, who died from heart attack, since he played holi with his friends for the whole day. Bad age to die. Isn't it? And the saddest part is that he died for nothing! yesterday's torture reminded me of this report. I was wondering if the old people in our lane were so strong and "hard hearted" that they didn't feel irritated by full day explosions.

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Festivals in India are colourful. Acceptable. But why do they have to be noisy and messy? Almost all festivals celebrated in India have religious basis (except the poor, Independence day or Republic day or Gandhi Jayanti which our "patriotic" janta manage to ignore conveniently). So instead of understanding the true spirit of that festival, why do you want to "celebrate" and squander money over it? Is it because your living standards have gone up that you will do anything what you want, without caring about how it is affecting the person sitting next to you? Yesterday I would have heard atleast 500 cracker noises. Notice "atleast". I don't know what is the psychology behind spending money to buy these many crackers. There are not many families in our lane. So whatever crackers were there, were exploded by those limited number of people, who bought gigantic amounts of explosives. One question to the parents : Are you training your children to become terrorists? 

Why do you spend so much money on something which lasts for not even a minute? If you are so rich, why can't you spend it on something else. Buy clothes, buy food, buy gold ornaments. But why do you buy crackers and explode it in others ears and deafen them? Will you pay the compensation if you cause damage to somebody's health? Will you accept your fault if your crackers cause somebody's sudden death due to cardiac arrest? NO. BIG NO. YOU WON'T BECAUSE YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A SELFISH PERSON. So selfish that you just want to show off that you've got this and got that. And you think that you can buy anything with money.

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Dear middle class fellow, I've got a question for you. You are in Trishanku Swargam, neither down, nor up. So you've the privilage of having luxuries, but you don't have them all. So you are the most complex class of society. Nobody wants to be poor. But when you become reasonably rich, you forget your limitations and try to ascertain your social "status" by becoming a big costumer. Market knows this and they exploit you without your knowledge. Well as far as your purchases don't affect others it may be called ok. But when it starts to affect others in the society, it is really bad. And the fact that people become more self centered in a market ruled world is a painful reality. But it is true. And the result? Your society in which you live (actually my society in which I live) becomes cancerous.


Have you ever felt that the increasing number of cars in which there is a single person (the driver) which cause endless traffic jams in cities is like a spreading cancer? I have. Whenever I am stuck in a traffic jam, I notice cars with only a single person in it. Then I ask myself "Why can't they travel in a bus?" There used to be an ad in tv when I was small. It is like this : A group of four people are headed towards an office. Each one drives a car and there occurs many confusions in the mean time. Then the announcement comes that they should use a single car, and they all get into the same car and got to the office. So they save fuel.

Actually that ad was made to promote fuel conservation. I won't tell you to conserve fuel. It is a known fact that all fuel will be used up some day and you'll have to walk then. What I want to say is this. Your parents inject "professional mania" into you, you get into an IT company or some other hugely paid institution, get lakhs per month and your money start aching to be spent. So you'll ache to have "bangla,gaadi and babe". Probably the first thing you'll have is a gaadi. And that too, not a small reasonable one, but a huge monstrous one which you'll take to the unorganised, already cluttered roads of India and cause traffic jams (because you are not the only person has the "bangla,gaadi,babe" motto) giving claustrophobic feelings to poor people like me and scaring poor pedastrians (Where is the pavement to walk?). WHY? Does this increase your social status? Multinationals are cleaver. They pay you huge amounts and salary and they make sure that they get that money back. (Just like the scene in "The world is not enough" where  Valentin Zukovsky pays huge amounts to his call girls and asks his assistant to make sure that they spend them all in his won casino.) But those suffer are ordinary people who travel by bus or train or by foot.



So you've a gaadi, you buy a banglaa and what next? wait. Your banglaa will be in a quiet place where you park your car on the street. No fear of summer, no fear of rain, you've a car, so you don't bother whether the road is ruined or not and whether the poor people who have to wade through the bad water are suffering or not. And what about ordinary people? They battle with rain and garbage and complain sadly about the plight of the place. Will the corporation do something even if all these are happening under its nose? No. Why because it didn't bother when some hundreds of people came and parked their gigantic vehicles in an area starting from its gate to the middle of the public main road, when some single person came to submit the nomination to contest in an election. Are yaar, why do you have to come with your huge vehicle if somebody else is giving nomination? If you wanted to show your loyalty , your whole group would have come walking (taking pains because you've to walk in a city, and that would have been the real "sacrifice") and waited for your "leader". (If the supporter is like this, what will the leader be? Who is running this country?) 
So much for the democracy. These can be called "big and unsolvable issues." (Well all of them are unsolvable and will become big if you keep on turning blind eyes towards them, telling that you can't do anything about them.)

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SHABDAVALI

Well this name will seem to be weird to you; but I can't find a better word to describe what I want to write. Write? Oh My God! Can I write something in this state of mind? If the post seems to be incoherent at some point, please excuse me, because I'm in a dazed state. Plainly speaking the point is this I had the worst Deepavali of all times, yesterday. Elaborately speaking, it is as follows:

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Like all of us know, Deepavali is the festival of lights, supposed to be celebration of the victory of goodness over evil. Well...... All these are theoretical. In the modern world, I mean the current times, I doubt the motivation behind the festival. I don't know, if it is "universal" all over India (at least not in Kerala as far as I know) or if it is Chennai special (it is more likely to be universal; so this article is dedicated to all who encourage sound pollution). Anyway yesterday I "experienced" what is called "Diwali Dhamaka" aka, "Diwali Nuisance". At this point I recall an article by some stupid fellow who calls himself a journalist who proudly wrote in a local newspaper on the occasion of Durga Puja, how the festival is badly celebrated in other states of India. According to him, the festival is "best celebrated" in the locality! Dear megalomaniac journalist, I suppose you are deaf and blind, that's why you are unaware of the fact that Diwali is an occasion on which the people in your place cause public nuisance by means of fire crackers. Now, if you write an article about how badly Diwali is celebrated, probably this locality will top the charts. :-x


Oh! I should speak about my day of torture. I told about this torture to one of my friends, she replied that we can have "fun" for just a day! Man, if this is your idea of fun, then what is your idea of torture? Fine I understand that this is festival time, and poor children who have hectic schedules in schools otherwise can "chill" only during this ten day holiday time they get once in a year. But why do you have to spend it in a way that tortures others' ear drums? Who told you that Deepavali is a day on which you have to explode crackers non-stop during day time? If that is your idea of Deepavali, then it should be renamed "Shabdavali" or "shalyaavali"."Shalyaavali" because you foolish people with nothing inside your craniums are causing nuisance ("Shalyam") to people in the name of celebrations.

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On the eve of the festival it was something like isolated cracker sounds from some distant place. I happened to see with my own eyes how a boy was firing crackers two days before the festival in a housing colony near to the main road. Vehicles are stuck in the traffic, this boy, uncontrolled (I don't think that the parents would have controlled him anyway, because they are the ones who gave him money to buy the cracker and he might have inherited the trait from them only)  by anybody was exploding crackers freely at such a peak time in the place which is so near to the road that anything could fly and fall on any passerby. A poor dog ran scared from that campus into the middle of the traffic and it was so scared that it didn't have control over its senses. For a moment I thought that it was run over. The poor dog disappeared somewhere in the dense traffic.


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Diwali Dhamaka : That was just the teaser trailer! Picture tabhi bhi baaki tha! And it was a violent picture full of explosions! (Now that I'm writing it I suspect that the so called "super hit" films have their contributions to making people explosive obsessive.) On Diwali morning I woke up  around 6.45 hearing the nasty sound of explosives. I tried to sleep again with curtains drawn (poor things they are not sound proof), then windows closed (poor things again) and finally woke up hungry and angry to the day of torture. I can't say how much irritating it is to tolerate sound pollution when you are hungry. Your stomach is burning, so you've to cook some food to stop it; sounds hazardous to your ear drum are coming practically from everywhere, so you've to close your ears with your fingers for no cotton or headset can reduce it as good as your finger does and you are forced to do so for 5 minutes at a stretch. If you had to do it once, it is ok. Only ok. Not good. But what if you've to do it atleast 20 times a day? And that too on a day when you want to celebrate it peacefully and serenely?

I thought that children were causing all these nuisance (as children left to themselves can behave in all possible ways) and was wondering why weren't the parents advising them not to cause too much nuisance to other people. But on second thoughts I understood that the children couldn't have bought so much of crackers themselves. They don't work, they don't earn. So where did they get the money to buy these crackers? From elders of course! And I happened to see a very curios sight. A girl (or a very young woman) crossing the small road (which makes up the lane on each side of which we live), and placing a cracker and lighting it, and coming back. Then a man did the same, then another woman did the same! The thing is they were keeping these crackers near by the wall of an IT company! It is not their house, so no danger to it, somebody else's property who cares if something happens to that?! There is a shrine sort of thing just opposite to our apartment, and they also sponsored this nuisance! Everybody had been exploding on a public road where people are supposed to walk!

By some 9am there was some rest (ooh that might be breakfast time) and by 10 am everything resumed. Visitors clad in ornaments and silk sarees (man All are completely mad; you explode things irrationally and wear easily inflammable clothes, why are tv channels broadcasting safety ads) and other new dresses land in the avenue and the explosives start again as if to welcome them! And that too lined up in the whole street and everything explodes in series over the road!


I did my cleaning work in the midst of this nuisance and finally didn't even feel hungry (saturated with explosive sounds) and went and slept. Even rain didn't fall down, to stop this nuisance! Again I woke up hearing the damn sound around 17.45! The cracker nuisance had resumed. Along with crackers with light only. I can understand the reason why you want to light crackers with light. But why explode those with no light but only sound? And as if to ensure their social status everybody started exploding crackers in series again by 21.00. And this went on till 22, 23 hours. Even election campaign can't be done beyond 10pm. Do these people think that they are above the law and out of its reach just because they have money? I heard some isolated crackers around midnight.



Finally I went to sleep thinking that the damn nuisance had stopped. I was wrong. Today morning I was woken by the irritating sound of crackers again. No parental control nothing, children of age ten and below are exploding them
in the park nearby! What kind of a land is this? I can't express my rage in words, because I'm in such a state. Yesterday at some point when I couldn't tolerate the damn explosion I just wanted to go and slap everybody and pour water on top of all crackers and extinguish them. Hmmmm...

Strangest thing! Nobody had lightened up their houses! How could they have? Everybody was on the street like mad people. I used to curse Mumbaikars for wasting current in the name of Deepavali, because you can always see houses decorated with illuminations and fancy lamps. But this... This is too much..... Compared to this putting lamps for a week is far better.


I've some questions to ask. And I'm going to ask it in my next post.


PS : It is said that people worship Lakshmi devi on deepavali day. Lakshmi devi would have run away hearing the explosions.

PPS : Everybody had been asking me whether I was going home for Deepavali or not. Trust me, I will go home for Deepavali from next year onwards so that I can sit in peace.

Love and some observations. -Part 3

The real stupidity of love affairs lies in the terrible news which we come across the media at times. It is not funny, but very serious, when you hear that a girl who eloped with somebody was raped and killed or been sold off to some trafficking agency.

Girls this is serious. And most of the times the girls are educated ones only, running off with some random bus driver (infact I've witnessed a bus conductor who was some 20 years old flirting with a school girl apparently in 10th or in a lower class). I've one question to ask you girls. You read about how girls are exploited, in newspapers, still you run away blindly with some random person! Any random person! Don't you have common sense? He behaves like your lover doesn't mean that his intentions are good. Be it a bus conductor or driver or any random aadmi, atleast use your brain to asses your actions! "Love" becomes fatal when you don't use your "buddhi". Filmy heros or worst serial heros will be gentlemen. But that's not your real life. Right? Every person has a responsibility of taking care of themselves. So if any of you are blindly in love, please look before you leap. 


Another of my observation is that radio channels (late night radio programs) / music channels are encouraging a lot of love among young people. Somebody will call up and the jokey will ask "Where did you meet? How long have you been in love? Did you eat ice cream together? AND blah (3)." And sometimes the tone in which the jokey talks makes me feel YUCK. They are making big money out of your love story dears. Please understand this. And even if your sms is displayed on TV during a program, I don't know how the person to whom it is intended will see it! You may phone him/her and tell "look I've sent this sms on TV." No idea.  Somebody please tell me how it works.



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People always talk too many things about being in love. [Even I talked too many things which you will find boring and repetitive.] Truly speaking, love is a very boring affair. You chew the already chewed chewing gum, when you are in love. [Do poor people who don't have enough to eat think about love? I think love is a leisurely affair when you've no other good things to do.]

Do you think that your teenage "loves" were nothing but stupid crushes? If you are feeling so in the age of tweens, then you'll definitely feel that all your affairs now are stupid when you are in thirties and the series goes on. [I've explicitly excluded married people from this, because I've no clue how things work out in a marriage!]

 So in the end , when you are very old, and if you happen to be a single still, you don't have to worry. :) Because a person who loves you the most has been all the time with you, right from your birth. And that's you yourself. If your life is a feature film, who will be the hero/heroine in it? Ofcourse without any doubt, it's you. All others (including your sweet, caring,blissful, whatever "lifepartner") are secondary and whatever you think or do, its still your own life only. So there's no point being in love with anybody else other than you. ;) Anybody can blame me that I'm a narcissist; if I'm I don't have a complaint. :) 

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For the time being I'm stopping here. Will be back with other observations some other time.

PS: In this article I've touched only boy loves girl, girl loves boy aspect of love affairs. 

Love and some observations - Part 2

Last post was for the "lucky people" who are in love. But for the unlucky people who have been rejected in love there are n no:of possibilities. If you are a boy you can roam around like a "Devdas" . But I think that zamana is over when people with  "broken hearts" become alcoholics thus making beverage companies rich.

But there's a very good business opportunity in having a broken heart (the more the no:of heart breaks, the better the prospect of this business).

Suppose you are a person who has been rejected by all people whom you've loved. And all in the name of a pre-existing GF/BF after having all the emotional fun out of you, leaving you heart broken for a while and a rebel, since you are a person with a good heart (you think about yourself like that, infact everybody does about themselves ;)), you can take up this job. But you've to charge heavily for your services. The advertisement of this job may look like this (ad depends on the gender of the reader and the person who is running this business):


" Dear people who are in search of love. Are you a person who is looking for a girl friend / boy friend? Are you frustrated that your GF?BF is away form you? Are you not sure that you'll never find one in your life? Don't worry there's solution for everything. This is for all those unfortunate fellows who don't have a GF/BF. Please contact in this number for details : mobile: XXXXXXXXXX Landline : XXXXXXXXXXX or visit www.lovefailure.com.".


The basic idea is this. Since you are a person to whom the needy (for love) will pretend that they love you, you can actually run this business. The needy can come to you till they find a GF/BF. Get your services; which include being his/her GF/BF (ofcourse this is an sgreement), loving him/her with all your heart and blah, blah, blah. So in the mean time he/she will find another fellow. If this was a person who already had someone but had to bring back that fellow, or was getting bored on the account of their being away from him/her, you are just filling in the space by acting as a substitute. And when they find the GF/BF you can have the daily drama of "break up" so as to make your contract look real to others. You can have any of the following items in the break up drama:

1) Stepping out gracefully (ofcourse after collecting your payment)
2) Making him/her tell "I'm sorry I already had a lover in my life" (even though he/she didn't have and he/she got one by your luck, (because in real life you are a person who acts as a lucky talisman for the ones you love, in that they soon find a GF/BF after you love them)) and the extreme emotional atyachaars
and so on...

Even if in the mean time you have really fallen in love with your client (Hollywood melodrama) you don't have to worry, you can fix very high charges to compensate for your broken heart. Now, please don't mis read it in connection to any kind of physical relation. This service should be provided strictly for the heart / mind and not for the body. :) Otherwise it will turn  nastier than having a broken heart.


Another of my observations include the fact that girls with boy friends act very strangely when some girl who is a friend of their boy friend talk to him. Sometimes their behaviour is very irritating in that they behave as if you are going to steal him away from her! Dear girls if you are so unsure of your boy friends' thought and if you don't trust him completely that your divine love will win over all hurdles (even if its somebody trying to steal your bf from you), then why on earth do you think that you are in love with him?!!! Please. The girls who are friends of your boy friend have their own opinions and tastes. Your BF is not the best man in this world ("you feel so because you are blind and is in the middle of a love affair; if you go out and look from the top, you'll understand the truth") that any girl will "fall for him". Not every girl is blind like you. And please don't show off your boy friend "proudly" as if he has just won "Miss Universe" title.


Well the same is applicable for boys also. But I think the case is a little bit different here. You boys always suspect your girl friend of being attracted to the X or Y they talk to. And you'll start showing them the size of your ego, thus ending up torturing your girl friend! No wonder if your GF has just ditched you for trying to control her. She needs "space" man! Well this takes me to another observation. Has somebody lately told you that he/she needs his/her own space. Well just ditch that person before they ditch you, because that is a self explanatory statement. They want to expand their "space" by eliminating you from it.

If I don't write the following point my list will be incomplete. Guys (henpecked guys actually with suspicious gf's) always appreciates things which she has done, no matter how awkward it is. Guys please, we can understand your helplessness; that you are trying to make your gf happy by any means. But others are also humans. If you can't keep quite, just take them apart from the sensible crowd and appreciate them for the bad work they've done. And even if you're appreciating them, please don't make faulty comments about a good work somebody else has done. Otherwise the world will call you henpecked on your back. :) [Well since you are blindly in love you are definitely deaf for being called names on account of your gf also and dumb before your gf's possessiveness and authority. :)]

Love and some observations ;) - Part 1

Disclaimer : This is not meant to hurt or tease anybody, these are the observations of a girl who has come of age (atleast in her own eyes). :)


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Since I'm in a very comic mind set up, thanks to my dear office mates and Harry Potter -7 part 2, I have been grinning, grinning and grinning for the past three days. :) I don't know the reason for my sudden euphoria, but I think its a very good time to write down something comic.

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After all the emotional hells, one goes through, one day you will look  upon your life in a new light, which, later on, you'll understand that has always been within you, till your memories go back .The only difference is that one forgets all about it when you think that you are in love with some wonderful fellow (who will turn out to be the most nasty fellow in the world after you break up)! Even if your "eternal blissful lover" breaks (well this post is going to prove that there is nothing like a broken heart or breaking of heart or such crap, but every theorem needs some assumptions at first to prove/disprove it), your heart, he/she is doing a good service to you by bringing you back to your own consciousness. :) Because, love is unconscious, as well as its blind!

So what is that I want to write? Plainly speaking, its the following:

"There's nothing like true love in this world, leave true, there is nothing like love in this world!" Yes. Dear people who "are in love", I'm telling the truth. :) There is nothing like love. All you are feeling is the consequence of your brain function which is inturn the consequence of your brain being a very complicated thing. :) Only hormones control love and  nothing else. [Between; the love I'm talking about is the typical BF-GF love. Please keep this fact in your minds while reading this post.] And moreover what? Its just a business. Yes. Business. Have you started to think that I'm mad? :)

I'm writing this, because I myself didn't believe in these facts until one day it dawned on me that it is so. :) So dear all, who are in the feeling of "divine love", please keep your eyes open, if they are closed for the day when this fact dawns on you. Cinderellas exist only in stories and true love is a fantasy. It exists only in films or in novels. Infact each and every love story can be made into a Bollywood film. Whether it will be a hit or flop will depend on the story itself. If your love story seems to be too complicated, and if you are a girl, you should consider it as a mega serial and especially if you feel that its triangle or quadrangle or polygonal, it will be a hit TV serial (I should add "sop"). :)  If you are a boy and think you love a girl too much and acts a villain and then tries to act hero by sending her apologies and make up excuses for your actions; you should write down your story and produce a low budget film (its possible that you yourself can act as the "hero" in it) which will dive deep into the unknown trenches of the box office. Then if you are either a boy or a girl and your love story is very straight and turns to be complicated afterwards, its a Hollywood story. And if you are two people who are engaged in some other affair and you fall in love with each other, I don't know what to call it. Will it be a Karan Johar story or a Hollywood romantic drama?

Anyway every love story has the scope to be made into a film/serial depending upon its depth and strength. So much for the filminess of affairs. Let me come to my observations as a person who never had any chance to be loved by anybody in life (though my last "broken love gave me the fake feeling of being in love, which was mediated by radio waves"). [People who have read the above line can/cannot tell that this post is a result of "grapes are sour theory"! :) ] These observations may be wrong, but I may make mistakes, because I was never in  love anytime!

The first thing, as anybody knows is that, affairs include a little bit of hide and seek at first, when you are not sure whether the person whom you like will like you back or not. If you keep your eyes open, you can find people admiring you secretly, like stealing glances at you! Well if one uses his/her brain properly (I mean deductive powers) he/she can know exactly somebody thinks about him/her. Well love gurus can put more light into such aspects; they'll lose their jobs if I start telling you all these.

I've seen many people falling in love, with my own eyes, my eyes and brain have the special power to tell at a glance whether something is going on between somebody. And trust me; 99% of the cases suspected to be FIL (FIL= falling in love) were true indeed. (This is true not only for FIL, but true also for other things also.) Since I could see the funny side of these things, I'll write about them.

Everybody whom I know and don't know and who are in love forgive me for my sarcasm towards your "most sacred divine feeling in the world".

First of all I don't understand why people fall in love at all (I'm not excluding myself because the observer can't be excluded in any experimental setup) ! Nobody can blame gravity or newton, nor can anybody apply general relativity theory for people falling in love. Actually "falling in love" is literally correct, because when you fall in love, you really fall; may be from your standards or from your own identity and I don't know from where else do you fall.


The falling will be very comfortable in the beginning, you like the way he/she talks, walks, sleeps, scowls,cries and I don't know what else (I recommend "500 days of summer" to get a feeling for this). And what all will you do in the process of falling in love! You start singing :

"Kuch to hua hai, kuch ho gaya hai,
Do chaar din se, lagta hai jaise,
Sab kuch alag hai, sab kuch naya hai......."

AAh, the sacred feeling has happened now! And then what? I wonder sometimes, would "love" have become such a hot subject among the youth had there not been phones, especially mobile phones? Even mobile services companies provide facilities to talk incessantly to your lover! [Looks at their ads.Commercializing love!] And you talk, talk and talk about even the stupidest thing in the world and even things out of the world! And then, when you've nothing to talk about, you fight playfully, you look at each other playfully. (I don't understand why people like looking,looking and looking at people they love as if they've never seen them before! Afterall we are all made of quarks and leptons and the one you love also is made of the same particles. Its not as if suddenly he/she popped out from the anti-world made of anti-particles that you are ready to "annihilate" (that means "pyaar mein khud ko mitaana") in love!)

I can't comment more on these things, because I've never looked at anybody like that,or if anybody has looked at me looked at me like that, I wouldn't know at any rate! And I don't understand the funda of "being glued to each other" (we can't blame poor gluons). What pleasure do you derive from being "glued" to your so called lover? See if you are going to be together all your life, you are going to be together all the time, then why do you have to be glued to each other all the time? Is love really a function of the physical distance between two people (like strong interaction)? I don't know.

Second thing is not only about "love birds" (man, why do you have to spoil birds' name, even they fly on their own) , who "fall in love" and then get married, but also about those who "marry first and then fall". Very lately, with the advent of orkut/facebook, it has become a general practice to put "we/us/we two/our world" sort of photos in albums. Ok fine. Put photos in albums so that only people whom you really want to show it to, can see it! Why do you have to put duet photos for everyone? Are you acting in a film or what? Is the promotion of your lovebhari zindgi movie going on anywhere?Nobody wants to see your intimacies. Or if you are so keen on showing these type of photos, can't you just enable the privacy mode so as not to irritate others with your stupid poses? Or atleast if you've to put photos like that, please take photos depending on your appearance. Please don't take pictures as if you are in a feature film's promotional poster(when you think you are looking as if in a super hit film, you really may not be).

PS: In the modern times, it is not rare that introverted people with lots of inferiority complexes find some insecure rich partner so that they can exploit this rich person, monetarily and otherwise. In one way it is beneficial for both sides. One side is rich, but can't find any "true love" other wise. The other side is not rich, but is ready to hook up to anybody who is rich and give them the impression that they love this rich partner more than his/her own life!!! ;) Look at the levels to which they fall in the name of love! 

Truth and fiction

The boarder line between
Truth and fiction is very narrow;
When you are dreaming.
You don't know what is real
And what is surreal.

Fiction seems to be real in dreams,
And reality passes before the eyes
Like a dream.

You meet those whom you can't
In real life, in your dreams.
Then dreams become the reason
To live, to hope.
So you fall into the deepest trenches of sleep
Just to dream,dream and dream...

And then you wake up with a start;
Into the surrounding waters of plain reality,
To wonder if you were dreaming or not.

Meaningless

Meaningless is when somebody speaks
To you in an unknown language.
Meaningless is when you see a script
Which you don't know.
Meaningless is when  you try and try
Without any outcome.
Meaningless is when you think
That you can change the world.
Meaningless is when you expect 
That you can argue with a stubborn person.
Meaningless is when you expect a friend
To keep friendship.
Meaningless is when you feel
That you are in love.
Meaningless is when you hope
That something good will happen.
Meaningless is when you wait
For a shuttle which you've already missed.
Meaningless is when you try to colour
Your life with colours which don't exist.
Meaningless, is the life itself
When you ask the question,
"Why am I here?"
You can believe that everything happens for a reason.
Meaningless is that belief.
Because nothing has any meaning.
That means this poem itself
Is meaningless.
Does it really?
Its better to leave some things as meaningless.

Shift + Delete

I'm depressed. Am I?
Yes I'm depressed. "Why?"
"I don't know why."
This is the answer I give.
But I really do know the answer.
Its because of.....
No I don't want to say it.
I will never.
I'm silently wishing us
To be separated; by fathoms.
Like our hearts are now.
I silently wish I could shift + delete
You from my heart.
Can I ? I should.I will.
Turning the blind eye was for myself.
Not to let you come in.
Go away...go away... Forever...
I don't want ... I don't want...
I don't want the heart to mourn.
It will. But I'll hold it tight.
For its my heart and I don't want
Anybody else to take care of it.

"The final shock"

Its not a coincidence that I came early today morning and started writing this post. Infact I have not been able to sleep properly for some days and my insomnia was at its peak last night. I didn't sleep at all. Whenever such a thing happens , I come to the institute by the first or second bus and eat breakfast! But why is my insomnia related to my post? The answer is as follows:

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The answer lies in "The chronicles of Narnia". Why should a children's book be the motivation behind my post? The simple answer is that the final book in the series gave me a shock. As such the series is very nice and even as a grown up, I likedthe books very much. In between I couldn't help drawing analogies between HP and Narnia, but let me leave JKR for the time being, since I'm a great fan of HP and if at all she has drawn inspiration from the chronicles, she has done a very good job on her own by creating HP and its magic world.

But Narnia is entirely different and C S Lewis had really created a beautiful world! During the course of my reading the books, I happened to read the severe criticism the author was subjected to in the name of sexism and racism and other things. [I'm not going into the details of all that. Anybody interested can google it.] Ok. Fine. I thought. I could forgive the author, for all those accusations because of the simple beauty of the world called Narnia. Land of talking beasts, and all sorts of magical creatures and great kings and queens, Narnia is sure to stay long in your imagination. But. The author himself has washed out all these in the last and final book in the series! It got an award and in many ways it exudes ideas, but the last page of the book was simply unacceptable for me.


This is the book in which Narnia ends and where the last battle to occur there is fought before the end and 7 of the main characters return and that too together. It speaks about a Narnia within Narnia and "further in, further up" which reminded me of a fractal. Fractal Narnia! And by the end of the book I was shedding tears of happiness at seeing Reepicheep the mouse again, and Caspian; and so on and all friends were united. But suddenly Lucy sees the destroyed house in England and it is said that it's England within England! Lucy being sad at going back, leaving Narnia behind is told, how they had arrived there (for in the fifth book it is said that they couldn't return to Narnia;). They had boarded a train in England and that train had crashed and in the "shadow world" of Earth, they all (all seven + the parents of Lucy, Edmund and Peter) were dead and the real Narnia was where they were now! This is one thing which I couldn't digest at all!

After writing such beautiful books, how could the author write a very shocking end by killing his own characters? He might have justified it as reuniting everybody worthy of being in Narnia and all that! But why kill them? ANd leave Susan behind as an orphan? Atleast he could have spared their parents! Probably the Scrubbs would have taken care of her later, for he killed Eustace also. And why have all those nice characters be killed in the end? Is Earth such a bad place to live? Afterall ,all of Narnia is modelled after earth only! Then why did his home land and his own planet become so unacceptable to the author?

 There were times when I wanted to curse JKR for killing Sirus, Dumbledore, Snape and especially Fred (I still believe that she could have avoided killing Fred) in Harry Potter novels. But all those killings had a reason behind them. But the murders by C S Lewis defy all reason! The children could have beeb sent back and could have lived full life on Earth and come back! Why kill all of them in a train crash? I seriously suspect he was a saddist! If I really met C S Lewis I would have gone and slapped him right away (C S Lewis pls forgive me) for this sort of an ending to the series. I appreciate JKR in one thing. By killing all those characters, she has taught the reader to accept life and death as such. But on the other hand, C S Lewis has done his job to make children believe in things like you know, life after death. I would prefer an Arthur C Clark sort of end of the world, rather than a C S Lewis sort of end of the world.

There's one more reason why I couldn't digest this ending. My simple Physics oriented mind doesn't allow me to believe in a place where people accumulate after being created; i.e the paradise , which he defines as real Narnia in the end is a place where, good people over the ages come together and . The whole idea of paradise where people come to but never leave defies laws of thermodynamics. {If I've written something wrong, Physics people pls forgive me.} And he says that Aslan told all that the term had ended and the holidays had begun since they were all dead in England! This is completely misleading especially to make Aslan say something like that! One should never write such things in a children's book, which will lead them to believe irrational things. Again , I appreciate JKR for not raising the dead by magic.



In the end it is said that all the chapters which followed were the real ones and each was better than the other and whatever was written in the seven books were nothing! How boring it will be to live on and on and on! Again I 've to tell this, JKR never made Dumbledore or Nicolas Flemel live for ever! If you read it this way, her novels are meant to oppose the idea of living forever. Correct! You can live long, but not forever. Even a proton decays after 10^32 years! Let me come back to C S Lewis. On the whole, in the last page of "The last battle" he has spoiled his own beautiful works. One should never have ended the chronicles in such a low standard way. Its extremely pathetic to sit and love other worlds, if you are not ready to accept your own existance on this planet as a normal human being. C S Lewis, you shouldn't have made Aslan speak as you made him do in the last page of "The last battle".

Who wants us to be illiterate? - English medium Vs regional medium

 There's a joke which is as follows:
"British came to India and spoiled our country many years ago. We are spoiling their language everyday."

No offense please. I don't intent to degrade any Indian for not knowing a language. But my intention is to bring to the attention of people, a very ugly disease most of the parents have got. English medium mania! When I say English medium, I don't mean the medium of instruction being English, but a different set of schools.

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What is English medium?

Till some years back, I was under the impression that English medium just meant the medium of instruction which one chose in school. As a student who had English as the instruction medium, I had never thought the other way round. But the difference doesn't actually lie in the medium, but in the syllabus; i.e, whether you are following state syllabus or CBSE or any other syllabus. It so happens that poor people like me studied state syllabus in English! :)


I don't know how to put it; if this seems to be abrupt, please forgive, me, I want to write many many things at once. But let me start with my own example. As I said, I was a state syllabus student, who used to score decently and all, but the thing is, when you are in state syllabus, you have both the English and the regional mediums. But in other boards, everything except language is in English! Not only that. There are many schools where you follow state syllabus and there will be both mediums, but the school strictly follows state board only; like my school where I did my high school and higher secondary; others where you have all boards and no regional language medium. [I'm strictly pertaining to high school for the time being, because if I describe my schooling till UP, it will take lots of time.]

So it happens that when a syllabus revision was made in my state, most of the students were changed from state syllabus to CBSE, for fear that the change will destroy their future! [I can't comment much on this, because it happened roughly after my schooling only.] There's always a belief that "English medium schools" are better than "ordinary schools" (no matter how old and established they are; I've two schools in my town,one more that 100 years old and one more than 90 years old, which includes my own school), even if these so called hi-fi "EM" schools have been established just like the mashroom in the last rain! I don't understand this psychology. What is so special about these schools? Can anybody give me an answer about that? Wherever you study, the content you study will be the same! Science, and history are not going to change! Only language text book changes. For all who have a point on this, I'll just say that the English syllabus which I learned from my 6th-10th in Kerala state syllabus is awesome. There are too many good things about those text books which I can write. But as an example I'll just tell about what abstracts they used to put in them. I will confidently say that, had I never learned those texts, I would never have developed any taste towards searching and reading English books (especially classics). 

If English is your concern, then just tell me what is so special about it? Its just another language! A language which can be used for communication just like any other language! Or is it the culture that you are bothered about? Then please tell me how you define culture. Does culture involve just wearing shoes+tie+socks+belt+ whatever other parts your EM school uniform require? Truly speaking I was much relieved to go high school because, till them I used to study in EM schools (not the horrible ones like these days, they were very nice schools, especially the one where I did my UP school) where I had to wear this painful uniform of shoes+socks+tie+belt, which I hated like anything. (Luckily I was never in a school which demanded its students to braid their hair into two and tie up pink/white/green ribbons (there are such schools even if they are not EM schools and follow state syllabus); such a pian!)  How relieved I felt after being in hight school! No shoes, no socks, no tie, no belt, only blue and white uniform everyday. :) Did my standard reduce because of that? Did my achievements in life become less because of that? Did, being in state syllabus close my opportunities in my life? Anybody who knows me personally can answer these questions.

Then I assume that its the problem with the ego of parents, it has not changed after these many years, I think it has only increased. What is so special about your child studying in an English medium school? Is your social status elevated by your poor child (who is forced to put all these junk dress (we can spare mountain areas) in this tropical country through which 23 degree latitude passes) studying in an English medium school? There are good govt schools or govt aided schools out there. Why can't you put your child in that school? Or are you a victim of the idea that sarkaar school are only for the poor and the dumb? Are you so afraid of accepting your financial status that you are ready to take loans to meet the unnecessary demands (like special uniform for special days and you can't stitch the uniform, it has to be done only through the school) made by these new schools? Or do you want to make up for the social status which you couldn't attain (that status should be defined by the person himself/herself), that you dream to show off a lot in front of others by telling "look, my kid is in English medium"? If so then you are doing a huge atrocity towards your kid and the future generation.

I once happened to hear form one of my friends that in their coaching center they were told that CBSE students were smarter than students who were in  state syllabus! If I get the person who told this, in front of me, I would like to ask him/her some questions:

1) Are you a good teacher?
2) Why are you practicing racism?
3)Were you in CBSE? If you weren't and if you were a state syllabus student, are you desperate because of that the fact that you became a coach at an entrance coaching centre other than becoming somebody else? If so, its not the fault of the syllabus and you should not pass such foolish ideas to students. 

[Actually I want to slap that fellow, for telling such stupid things to students who are teenagers and thus making them degrade themselves. Such people should not teach anybody. :-x]

I don't understand how can anybody make such an awful remark! Worse than this, I've heard people telling that those who studied in English medium can handle English better than those who were in regional mediums! Common yaar, its not true. I know many people who speak/write bad English, despite being instructed in English all throughout their schooling! As I said its just another language, and like any other language, it ought to be studied properly. Then only will one be able to handle it well. Ofcourse I can tell whether a person (a Malayali) was in English medium or Malyalam medium by the way in which they speak English, but how does it matter? There are millions of people around the world, who don't even speak English! [In that way Indians should be proud of themselves. Even in rural areas, people can communicate with bits and pieces of what they know. See I said rural area; how many EM schools are there in a typical rural area in India? Infact I once saw a man, whom most of the stylish EM worshipers would have laughed at, speaking very good English and that man did the most unlikely job anybody could imagine, (if my memory is correct) he burns dead bodies in Varanasi, and I saw him in a documentary in Discovery or NG. How did he learn to speak such good English? Was he in an EM school? He didn't look like a rich man, and definitely looked like one who would have had to face lots of hurdles in life.]

CBSE schools are necessary for parents with transferable jobs. Ok. Fine. People who are forced by situations go to such schools. But why despise state syllabus? Why make fun of it? Why make excuses like 90% in state = 75% in CBSe or other syllabus? See the student who scored 90% in state didn't score it with mere luck or with the help of the grader's mercy or cheating of any sort. He/she did so by working hard only. And you should accept that. Its not like this syllabus is better and this is worse. These sort of racism in education is unacceptable.


I want to point out one incident about which I heard, at this point. There is a provision by India GOVT, where poor students' education will be financed fully by the GOVT, schools should follow this , by admitting poor students into schools and providing education. A principal in one famous school in a city sent letter to all the parents in that school (obviously it is one school where rich people's kids study) telling that all poor students are KDs and dumb and will disrupt the peaceful environment of the class where their brilliant and good kids study and so all parents had to protest against admitting such students! Isn't it pure racism? And that too coming from a principal (I don't know whether the principal was just a puppet in the hands of the management this thing)?

Its high time that we re-evaluated the standards of the schools where our children study. I remember reading Stephen Hawking's biography. The best thing he said had happened to him was that he happened to study at a very ordinary,lovely, not hi-fi school in his childhood. I agree completely with it. Because the best thing that happened to me was that I was always in schools which gave enough freedom and space for a person to develop, when I was very young. I'm thankful to my parents (especially my father) who never put me in jailer schools and brought me up as an ordinary student. I hope parents now also will do the same; give some space to the kids to breath, dream and imagine.

"Give them some shunshine
Give them some ray"

So that they won't say

"I wanna grow up once again."

Who wants us to be illiterate? - 4-Entrance mania & expensive is better

From the title itself one can guess what I'm going to talk about. Yes I'm going to talk about something which I never let into my life and which all the others of my own age or younger than me did/ are doing and will do for a long time.

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When I was a kid, all I wanted to become when I grew up was an Astrophysicst, because I had read about our solar system when I was in 4th std and I was in 4th in 1994 when the celebrated "Shoemaker Levy" collided with Jupiter. So even from my 4th, I had an idea that I was going to be a scientist (in between I started bird watching and all, afterwards I became a nature lover, and wanted to become an environmentalist, but my love for stars grew up along with me; I wish my childhood would come back). And in general I don't care for any competition until I take upon an interest in it. Also, I had somehow tried to figure out what class to study after what class and I found out when I was a child about UG and PG (one reason is that my father was an employee in university, so I used to hear a lot about these stuff, but never had any idea that there were two fields called medicine and engineering). So I had almost decided that I would do Physics after plus two, anyway I knew that I wanted to go for higher education in this subject. (One of the other reason for my interest in science was "Turning point", I've met the two wonderful people who used to anchor the show, to my great pleasure :) [that's because I heard what my heart said]).

So when I was in plus one, my mom asked do you want to go for coaching, I said no, and one day by the end of the year in plus to, my mom again asked "what do you want to become"? I was really surprised at this question because she was asking it at when the public exam was to start. As I said earlier, she wanted me to become a doctor (and if I became on I would have become a neurologist, because I like brain very much :) ). But I knew that it was not what I wanted. I wanted to be a Physicist. Again after exams (when I was free for 3 months which I enjoyed reading my favorite book about my favorite detective, she asked again, "all of your friends are going, do you want to go atleast for a crash course"? I said no. Because I didn't want to go. I had applied for the exams, because writing exams are fun (I do that even now ;) ) and I used to study bits and pieces when I pleased. :) But I got some rank around 6700 (the funny thing is that, I got a call letter to join B.Pharm!) with my own lazy studies. My Mom used to believe that I would have become a doctor or Engineer if I had gone for proper coaching. But that not my way. So didn't go. I used to wonder, still I wonder, without the extra burden of coaching I felt that the classes on Saturdays, which were exclusive for higher secondary students were tiresome. One can't even sit and relax or enjoy  pleasant weather at home even on weekends! I feel sorry for all those students who have willingly or unwillingly taken up this burden. If you really are into it its ok, otherwise there's no necessity of toiling hard (it will give you rewards some day) and letting your /childhood pass away in crawling colours. [May be you've are enjoying life with friends in coaching classes with friends, I don't know.]

 I've written a lot, except not my point. So 99% of the science students go for entrances and severe "coaching (torturing)"  classes and most of the time, don't pass the entrance and may be try again if you are so much insistent and after that give up all the torture and go to BSc(last aid). If they are rich and can harvest money from trees, they go for Engineering and Medicine by paying huge amounts of donations (bribes - good field to implement Lokpal bill; but first the "Jan" who want the seats will go in) and fees. Thus comes the difference between merit and management and hence reservation (mostly based on the religion or caste of the management which runs the institution) and self financing. Well finance your own education (like finance your own job post; pay 5 lakh (this is old number) donation in the school/college run  by a management which belongs to your "community (see here community has to be assigned especially to "caste community or religion community" instead of a student community") and get the teaching or whatever post. Argument : "Settles life. 5 lakh repaid in 5 years as salary." That means for five years one has to work without salary, or be "self employed under an institution with a name"!) To study the course which you (in other words "to study a course which will supposedly "raise" your and yours parents' "social status", you've to lower your financial security to a fatally low value! (Fatally low, because it will be mostly an education loan (from nationalised banks it is a bit better, because the loan is fatal for the banks actually; but if you've borrowed from a blade bank, it is fatal for you)  and if you read newspapers you'll know the consequences.)") Do you really love the course? Who knows ?Do you really know Engineering or how to treat a patient? There was a record breaking news about a batch of medical students in a very famous (notorious) private hospital which became a self financing medical college, that all of them failed in the public exam! Just imagine, the danger these "doctors" will pose to the society. [Razor sharp cutting business of doctors is another issue, not to be discussed now.]

Couldn't they have gone for some other courses in which they had interest and talent, instead of trying to carry the gigantic course of medicine which needs skill since you're going to deal with the life of a person? Who is the culprit? Parents or the institutions which pop up like mushrooms in the late night rain, with the intention to get rich by exploiting the human greed for status and name? Or the students who don't or can't muster up the courage to stand up to their dreams?


"Bachpan to gaya
Jawani bhi gayi
Ab to ab humain
Jeene do jeene do..."

Can't you tell these if you are feeling burdened? What is the need of being victims to unnecessary competition, the part of which you don't want to be? If you want to become something you like (not a bad person or profession), become that? What use is there to fill up the world with same kind of people? Even statistical distributions are not uniform in real life. Then why do you want to reduce the standard of your living and quality of your understanding by doing following the crowd? And why do educational institutions have to set up higher and higher cut off, that even the best students won't get admission and will be forced to live the life of one who has to "finance his/her own studies"? Is this move for privatising the educational sector, so that only those with money whether they have brains or not will be able to "study higher"? Oughtn't education be doing good such as teaching and help learning good values instead of reinforcing an ugly culture that only money can bring good, there by increasing mental depressions and teaching chasing indirectly so that all good values in life are forgotten?Its really bad for the future of our country. No matter how hard you try to tell that India has become this, and that, if you want to keep the achievements, you've to give education to all whether the taker takes it or not. Atleast people who call them educated and sit as the heads of these institutions and implement foolish things like this should understand this fact. Unless you've all sort of students, you can't call yourself a good teacher, because you are a good teacher or your institution is good when you make even a duffer come up in life.

To be continued................................. 

 

Who wants us to be illiterate? - 3

Grading system was introduced to reduce unhealthy competition in the name of marks. But people are so smart that they started the trend of highlighting all A+ or all A!

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Why did it happen? Our country is not a very rich country that everybody who wants to have education is not gifted with a chance to have as he/she (especially girls in my opinion) pleases. One hindrance is financial one and the other is social one. Or atleast education has been made the most expensive "product" in the market! What market? The market for status. It is not a new thing that certain courses are considered to bring more status than the others. For example, professional courses (all professional course students forgive me). When I decided to go to BSc after plus two, many people asked me; "are you going for BSc"? You know what? BSc is considered as a very low level course! I even had a classmate who did BSc for one year and left to do some medical related course only because somebody asked her "Are you doing BSc?"

It is sort of rule of thumb that all those who have scored distinction in plus two science (since I'm a science student, its easy for me to talk about it), must go for either Engineering or Medicine! I knew a girl who scored distinction in 10th, wanted to learn commerce, but her family refused her to do that! What is this? One of my teachers had told us once in class that a student's interest or career is determined in UP school itself. So if a student wants to do commerce or humanities even when he/she has scored distinction, why can't you just let the person learn whatever he/she wants?I'll talk about the entrance exams later.

I'm very sorry to say that the attitude of parents regarding the education of their students is not a healthy one. They may be people who have never learned any Engineering or Medicine in their lives, but want to force their children learn what they don't want to. My own mother wanted me to become a doctor, which I never approved of, I didn't like learning too much physiology or chemistry, I liked Physics and Maths, so why on Earth would I go to do something in which I had no interest at all. Thanks to my own strong decisions, I never had to be sad like "Oh My God, why I chose this" or to have struggle mentally to cope up with something which I didn't like.

But the thing which I was talking  is a different one, though not entirely. So children should be given the freedom to choose the course they want to study. So if somebody with whole heart wants to be an Engineer (like Rancho in Three Idiots (I recommend that film to all of you), he/she must be given the chance to become an Engineer. Its not fair to refuse a person's opportunity just because that person doesn't belong to a particular socio-economic-regional-lingual-caste-country-gender class. Because education is everybody's birth right. Rights should be sold and one should be aware that they belong to one. The "neo-urban-stylish-I don't care for the other one society-patronising-f-s and all other sorts of words"  of India will not agree with this statement, because they are privilaged people who have always had their rights. But dear people, India is mostly rural, even now, and as Gandhiji said (I don't know whether you know who he is, or whether you believe in his principle) India will develop when the villages will develop. (One more point to be added about this particular kind of urban people (not all urban people); you are definitely stylish, can speak English (big deal)  and talk eloquently about self reliance and all (not that you don't need that) but do you know anything about endosulfan? (One of my "urban" friend trashed an article which I gave him about such issues as endosulfan.) If you don't know, I can't help. Probably you may not even want to know. Sorry to say this again. I've 268 friends on facebook. Nobody reshared a post about endosulfan from me. Nobody cares unless they become unprivilaged. That's not a good trend.)

 So if a child in an underdeveloped rural area scores 80% or 75% after studying in a school with no proper facility or cracks an entrance exam without any coaching mania, then that 75% shines more than the 100% of an over privilaged urban child. Not that 100% has value, but when this 75% waala/waali who is really brilliant wants to come out and study his/her opportunity is being refused just because of the score.


To be continued............................................

Who wants us to be illiterate? - 2

When I was a child, I never cared about all these things or in other words I never bothered anything about my status in class. I remember that I never scored anything better than a silver medal in class (or A grade, which means that I was in the above average group) and if you told me something like first rank, I would ask what it was! But as I grew up and changed my school, in UP, i.e from my 5th std, I suddenly found myself in a limelight! I started becoming first in my class! From then onwards I found myself hurled up into the run for top position! Same happened again when I was shifted to high school also, but in the long run, I somehow used to manage to get to the first position almost everywhere and in everything which I did. So I was sort of enjoying the first position, when suddenly after BSc I became second and the hell I made out of it was so horrible that, I didn't believe in myself for a long time, due to which I made a hell out of me during my MSc also. But there's a lesson to be learned from what I had experienced when I was 20. Because, I was supposed to be one who will make it to the rank or something, which I knew I'd never make, but others had placed their genuine/fake expectations on me. So what is the lesson to be learnt? A person who scored 95.5% in her BSc started hating her mark only because she couldn't score 98% which she wanted to, (but other people thought I was a super girl or something that I'd score 99%!), and she had started rating herself on the basis of her marks only! Sorry to say this, but I learnt the lesson that one should never estimate one's own quality based on marks which they score in exams. Infact retrospecting truly I find that I'm a happy go lucky fellow who really wants to enjoy life and learn things not score, but who somehow got caught up in the "being brilliant" business just because I'm a bit above average! But I learned another very valuable lesson in life, that even when I was never a rank holder all over the state or all over India, I always went for higher studies. Its like not being the top scorer in each level in a game but a person who scores enough to go up the levels in it and be able to play it till the end. I hope I'll keep going. :)

What I wanted to tell using my own example is that, it doesn't really matter how high you score, because you've to be able to go up in life. So when the institutions put cut off of near cent percent, it is like setting unrealistic goals for people. I don't believe education is not something where you should encourage (directly or indirectly) unnecessary competitions. I've seen people copying in their exams to get high scores in exams. Then what is the point of having studied upto some very high classes? Score are not everything. If somebody sets 100% cut off and somebody score by treachery, the one who scored 60% or 80% by hard work or truthfulness is being subjected to injustice. Right? Its not that all who score are cheats. But young people should be subjected to so much pressure in the name of scores or excellence or whatever stuff. In my opinion those who had enjoyed childhood (when I mean childhood, I'm including teenagers also, because at my age, I feel that they are children) well have the best chance of blooming up in life. One should definitely study, and as the "above average student" I'm for studying, but not beyond a limit or the children should not be forced to study beyond their capacities. If one doesn't use his/her capacity to the full amount it is bad, but even forcing a bright student to score beyond his limit, (like for example, you score 95 and people tell you that you should have score 99%) one is very likely to be a victim of the following thoughts :

1) I scored well, even then my parents don't appreciate me. They love me only for my marks. :(

2) Nobody accepts my talent. Then why should I be talented?

3) I worked hard this much, even then I scored this much only, there's no point working hard (or even working) in life at all.

Consequence:

1) The person loses self confidence.
2) Feels distance to everybody and starts to turn away form everybody.
3)Stops doing the hard work/work he/she used to do.

Extreme step, thinks about suiciding.
Second extreme : depression.

So my question is this: What is the real purpose of education? To enlighten people and fill their lives with hope, or to hurl people into the realm of unhealthy competitions and expectations and depress them to the point of thinking about taking their own lives?


To be continued................................................

Who wants us to be illiterate?

Disclaimer : I'm not an expert on this matter, but I can't help expressing my own views in this, because if I ever try to turn my thoughts away from it, I'll be doing injustice to me; if I don't express my views, it is even more injustice to me. Out of the 25 years of my life, I've been a student for the past 22 years.
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My motivation comes from latest news about the impossible cut offs for admission set by some universities and about the prospect of implementing a common syllabus in Tamil Nadu. I'm not going into the technical details about the news, but I'm going to write on what I feel about the matter.

First the cut off thing. Universities set conditions that a student should have scored 100% or near 100%marks in plus two examination, to be admitted for degree courses. Excuse: "It is to select the best students". So isn't atleast above 90% a good mark? Or , are the students who score below 90% dumb? So, doesn't the hard work of a student who has worked hard to score near 90% or above 95% have no value? What is this? Is the trend going to be so that, in future you've to score 200% to get an admission in the so called universities or places which are "hi-fi" ?

Isn't it a renewal of cast system in one way? I mean the society is already divided drastically by economic standard, then by standards like those who are "stylish" and "simpleton". Then again according to those who do "highly paid white collar jobs" and "lowly paid mean jobs". Education was supposed to be a divine thing. And lately it has also become a criteria for diving people! 

As far as I can remember, the division of students who study in "English medium" and "regional medium" has always been there. And then even in an English medium class, those who were "below average,average, above average and brilliant" were there. (Along with the general belief that all regional medium students are poor quality students! I don't know the origin of this belief, but I'm sorry to say that many of the very brilliant people I know have studied in regional mediums during their schooling.)

To be continued....... 

Broken threads

When do threads break?
Nobody knows.
Why do threads break?
Nobody knows.
But everybody knows,
That threads do break.

The answer may be found,
Within the deepest corner 
Of the heart.

When one translates his
Memories in time,
The space when there were unbroken
Threads comes into mind.
Then he remembers.
This many days/months/ years ago,
I shared space with this person.

Only memories remain,
Persons will have gone.
From our lives or the world itself.

Some threads can't be joined
If ever they break.
They broke because they were
Very fragile.
Some threads break because you swerve them,
Deliberately, because they are too strong to break themselves.
Pain remains in heart, tears swell in eyes.
But you ignore both and move on.
You have all memories in your heart,
But you try deliberately to erase them.

You may succeed, or may not succeed.
But you will try for ever.
And its better to swerve certain threads.
Or else you'll be accused of being connected,
To somebody who is somebody else's.
Its good to swerve threads,if they give you the
Burden of being attached.
And when you break them, you feel free;
Of course it pains; but there are no pains
That time can't cure.
For even memories will be erased as time passes,
And the threads will cease to exist.

A Silent Farewell

Good bye friend,
Forever, for we won't meet
Ever again in life.
Not even by chance.
Our times together
Were over long ago.
And now gets over our
Short acquintanceship.
Because our paths are
Different and life has,
Taken us to different shores.

Whether I'll be in your memories,
Is out of question, since we had
No memories together.
Always surrounded by someone or the other,
You've forgotten me.
I don't complain for that
'Coz that's what you chose to do.
So where's place for me in your heart?
I don't dare even ask.
For I know the answer beforehand.
And that is ; "nowhere".
So dear friend, let me bid
You a silent farewell;
For we have lost words
In the deep silence between us.

Pain

Once there lived a man;
He had no nerves; to feel;
Neither touch nor pain
He fell in love.
The girl said "I will only love a man with nerves".
Then he felt what pain is. 

PS : Translation of a Malayalam poem I wrote.

Some thoughts on Malayalam

Well, I don't think that what I'm going to write will be an authentic thing, because I myself have doubts about it, but I can't help expressing my views on this matter.
Even though this is about the status of my mother tongue I don't feel like blogging about it in Malayalam because the transliteration option is very difficult to post long things (atleast for me) and I can type English faster than Malayalam.

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This idea got into my head because of an edition of Mathrubhumi weekly, the theme of which happens to be the state of Malayalam. I happened to know from the articles that Malayalam is considered as a dying language or fundamentalists think that Malayalam is facing extinction! ( I don't understand how a language spoken by atleast 3crore people will become extinct.) The main points struck me (though these are from different articles by people who have different opinions) are these:

1)Malayalam doesn't have many works in the field of literature, but it doesn't have anything (or anything major) in the field of science.
2) Malayalam is facing grave danger from English since parents are eager to send their children to English medium schools!

These are points on which I anted to comment, because I'm a science student and I studied in English medium. When I say English medium, only my medium was English, all my schools were where ordinary Malayalam speaking students studied, unlike "the English medium schools".

Let me start with my education. I'm a Malayali and I'm damn proud of it. [Though I don't admit it at home. ;)] When I was a child I was crazy about Hindi and I took effort to make sure that I can handle my national language well. I don't regret that. Because it still is one of my favorite languages. I studied in English medium schools right from LKG, (well the fact that I studied in LKG implies the fact by default) to tenth. Why tenth? Because, after tenth, everybody is in plus two, where the medium is definitely English (atleast in Kerala). [This is one thing which I don't understand, if people are so crazy about everybody learning in Malayalam medium, why not make higher education too in Malayalam? ] But I always had Malayalam to learn and I never felt any difficulty handling that, except I was slow in writing it. But it never meant that I couldn't or can't or won't be able to convey my ideas in Malayalam. I had classmates whose English was horrible despite the fact that they were in English medium! I even had a friend who studied with me till 7th, and after we changed school, he was unable to cope up with the medium and had to be shifted to Malayalam medium. So what is the hype about being in English medium? I don't understand. As far as I remember I hated the shoes, socks, tie system of the schools where I studied and was extremely happy to be in DBHSS where the only compulsory thing was blue bottom and white top.  Is it that you can boast that your child is in English medium? After all English is just another language. The only thing which makes it different from other languages is that it can be used globally. But as I grew up, I started suspecting that too, because natives of many other countries don't even know English! In that way Indians are well advanced! They can use a global language and it saves them from being a closed system. People should be ashamed or make so much hype about saving languages in the name of making education compulsory in mother tongue. Because saving a language doesn't mean that you've to educate children in your mother tongue. I've a good example to present. That's me. :) The fact that I studied in English medium didn't stop me from reading Malayalam or writing in Malayalam. [This is a funda which I don't understand, why should I not read things in my own mother tongue. Some people had asked me whether I know my mother tongue. I had always felt that it was a ridiculous question. Why shouldn't I know my mother tongue? May be its time to change that thought considering that there are people who want to make it a point that they don't know their mother tongue.]

OOpsss. I've drifted far from my point. The point was the lack of Malayalam's contribution to science writing. I admit that as a science student who did here schooling in English medium, I don't know the Malayalam terms for any of the scientific terms. For example I still can't distinguish between "prevegam and twaranam". I don't know which one is velocity or which one is acceleration. [I think the former is velocity and the later is acceleration.] And what happens in science education (for I don't know what happens in arts education) students who learn things in regional languages ( I think there's no point telling regional language, because I asked my Bengali officemates about the names of integration, differentiation, velocity and acceleration only to find out that the words are the same, "Sankalan, vyavakalan(I'm supposing vyavakalan is differentiation, he gave me "avakalan"), veg and twaran"; which means they are not any regional language's own, they are from Sanskrit! [This is my conclusion; it may be wrong too.] So what is the point? After learning "vibhanganam (my search shows that it is diffraction), aakernanam(dispersion),vikiranam (raditation)" etc upto tenth, they are suddenly forced to learn diffraction or dispersion  or radiation! Why? I used to wonder "why this double trouble"? Why couldn't students be taught those English names in their syllubus, which would eliminate the need for an extra learning when they came to higher secondary? I found the answer (or atleast I think I have found the answer) to this question. There's no science publication in Malayalam! [Or atleast the bhashavaadis say so. When I read about it I too agreed completely, but after sometime I had to disagree by 1% because I grew up reading a Malayalam science magazine whose name happens to be Sastrakeralam. (Atleast there's a Sastrakeralam as a Malayalam science publication.) ] Why would anybody use these seemingly tough words after school or higher education? ( I must admit that it would be fun collecting these words, because once you understand the proper meaning they won't sound difficult; may be that's the case with those who had learned them in their syllabus.) Tell me one thing, what is the English word for "tara samuham"? Its galaxy. [I got this from an online dictionary. Pls don't blame me if its wrong.] To me galaxy sounds mesmerising than tara samuham. And it saves time. Right? Pls try speaking out these words. I think the English ones will take lesser time and lesser effort. [I think this is an opinion of my science mind trained in English.] Ok fine, I searched for pulsar, quasar, active galactic nuclei, quarks, leptons and the names of the four fundamental forces. I got "Vaidyutakaanta sakti for electromagnetism", "gurutwakarshanam for gravity " and "sorry we couldn't find anything for "strong force and weak force"! and active galactic nuclei ". Probably I can define "weak force" as "asaktabalam" and "strong interaction as sasaktabalam". [But I got the definition of strong force as "ശക്ത ന്യൂക്ലിയാര്‍ പ്രവര്‍ത്തനം" from a a site which gives its translation in different languages! The same site gives me the meaning of galaxy as "tarapatham"! Who knew tarapatham meant galaxy (better than tara samuham)! There's so much ambiguity in the different meanings I find that I don't want to believe any of these and concentrate on my good old English words which I'm familiar with.

Even if I want to write a pakka Malayalam article (ie. where I'll call my neutral current events and charge current events ( now it strikes me that I've never read a malayalam word for charge! And now I can't find any equivalent word for charge in any of the Indian languages. So we can adopt charge as charge to our languages. [There may be some word, I don't know.] [Are! Just now have I  remembered that wikipedia has regional language pages! Even there I couldn't get the apt word for charge.] [Wow! Wikipedia doesn't have regional pages for things like "Flavor-changing neutral current"! ] I can't figure out how I'll ever do that! [Probably I'll become the biggest contributor to Malayalam science writing after that! :) ]

[It might have happened because of the fact that most of the modern science things were developed in the 20th and 21st century and by that time people might have given up the effort to translate things into regional languages! I don 't know whether this seems correct or not.]

So, coming back to my point. After tenth everybody leaves Malayalam terms behind and embraces English terms. And 99% of those science students end up going to Engineering or Medicine where you don't have to bother about "galaxies, neutral current or ring fields" [though this is a very crude approximation {now, I'm searching for the Malayalam of approximation, but I can't find it (probable because its Malayalam analogue couldn't be shortened as approx, I started using approximation}!  And, even if I write a purely Malayalam article, how many kids would read it and decide to persue pure science? [It happens that out of some 50 students who subscribed for Sastrakeralam in 8th, I was the only one to continue it till my post BSc days.] My father usually tells me. Write something and send to Sastrakeralam. How am I supposed to write? I can write a science article easily in English, but in Malayalam, it will be a "Thumbiakkondu kalleduppikkuka" process. [See this is the peculiarity of Malayalam; I can easily find literature analogues or std literature expressions in Malayalam. And I can express my most cherished feelings or my most painful feelings beautifully in Malayalam, when I fail to do so in English at times. It has become an extremely poetic language in the sense that one can pour his/her heart beautifully out, in it but it becomes sort of awkward when one tries to write something as matter of factly as science, in it. Its not that it is impossible, but it is difficult. It needs extreme patience to do such a thing . Even for Malayalam blogging one needs patience. But isn't it a wonderful fact that transliteration to Malayalam is available and that Malayalam fonts are available in document editors?

Now my 2nd point; about Malayalam facing threats from English. As far as the issue of death of Malayalam is considered, it will live as long as there are Malayalis. Even when there are Malayalis who don't know how to read and write Malayalam. Well you'll find Malayalis even on the moon, then how will this language die? And why should one hype about making primary education in Malayalam only? It would in some way make a closed system. I'm not telling that English medium education is better (not am I supporting that show off, where you've to pay huge fees and suffer to show off that your kid is a kutti sayipp), but everybody should be given the freedom to choose the medium. Those who study in regional medium are not fools and those who study in English medium are not show offs. What ever be the medium, the knowledge one acquires is what matters in the end. And I don't understand why people are so ashamed of studying in regional mediums. My parents studied in regional mediums, my cousins were in Malayalam medium ; that didn't reduce the amount of achievements they have had in their lives. That didn't make them dumb people. And I don't  think that my being in English medium had made me extra super or whatever or spoiled me. Nor has the same happened to my other cousins who are in English medium. And we all appreciate all kinds of things in both languages. I still read Mathrubhumi, which I had started from my 8th std, I still watch Malayalam movies. And my greatest luck is that I have friends with whom I can talk in Malayalam, where ever I go. Afterall when you have a severe headache the first language which comes to your mouth is your mother tongue. :) Atleast I find it very difficult to communicate in English or Hindi or Tamil when I'm suffering from one. :)

So, my sweet language is not going to die at all. It needs a little bit of makeover. That's all. :)

THE EPIC SAGA; OF A WORLD CUP

I'm very excited; so excited that I can't even find words to type. Reason : India won the cricket world cup yesterday. And that too, after 28 eventful years. Now I too can be proud that a world cup came home during my lifetime. :) But the longing for it had been very intense. :)

It so happens that this is India and cricket (men's cricket, nobody even remembers that women too play cricket and there is a team also) are inseparable. Cricket is the new age spirit that keeps the diverse Indians together, irrespective of all criticism towards the game or its fans. There is really no other game which can make the people euphoric and extremely sad, there isn't one for which they'll take a half day leave and go home to watch the live telecast. :) Well everybody knows about all these, what I want to tell is my own thoughts about the game.

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I didn't use to be a big fan of cricket, I didn't even know what its rules were. I knew Kapil Dev from my childhood and many others whom I don't remember now, for I used to see their posters in my uncles' room ( All the walls in that room were covered with posters of cricket stars! Many years later when there was a painting, those posters were removed. I don't know where they are now. )

The first memory of I watching cricket is about a match of India and SriLanka, sometime during my summer vacation when I having my 5th to 6th vacation. I still don't know which match was it. Later on, I somehow took interest in the game and started following it. It was by the end my 7th std, and after sometime, I had a decent cricket album with  photos of many stars in it (ofcourse Indian stars). My favorites were Dravid and Ganguly (of whom I later became a great fan and still am, I still freak out on seeing him on TV ;) ) and my cricket fanship began with India winning a tournament in Bangladesh (guess who was the star? Ganguly of course, I was very impressed by his sixes and fours. :) ), that was before the front of our home was renovated and our TV set kept unused for many months. But that couldn't restrict my budding love for the game. :) I used to collet news and pictures and make albums (again star of the album being Ganguly). At that time, we didn't have a cable connection (in fact we didn't have one till 2003, i.e it came after I passed plus two). I still remember watching India's tournament with Zimbawae (when Andy Flower and Grant Flower (is that right?) were in their team, a in 1998 Novmber (along with the edition of new SasthraKeralam, which was the second edition I got after newly subscribing for it) after the renovation was complete and TV restored.

Then came the 1999 world cup. I used to watch each and every match Inida [layed and that six by Ganguly in the match against Kenya is still in my mind. Actually I had dreamed that six, right on the day my cricket fanship started, (that Ganguly had hit a six which crossed the stadium buildings). I don't remember the order, but I watched match against England and when electricity went, I was sooo tensed that I prayed for it to come soon (see world cup usually occurs in March or April and summer rains will be there, with thunder which makes watching TV impossible if you care for your picture tube. I was cheering for India along with all other Indians (who cheered for them) and was happy when they won matches against Kenya, England and Pakistan. I remeber being tense for the match in which the batting line up collapsed and Inida lost for 3 wickets, because of Henry Olonga ( whom we alll cursed for doing such a thing to Inida), but I can't find that match in any record in the net! Anyway that world cup made had the most memorable match of SA-AUS semi final, which the then AUS captain Steve Waugh had made memorable, and for which I became his fan (really Steve Waugh is a good man ). In my cricket album I had their picture lifting the world cup.

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My cricket fanship continued inthat I used to follow everymatch, but I was in 10th next year. But by the time I had become a fan of hte SA team also (reason I got a poster of Kallis and Gibbs along with sporstar and (oh! I forgot, my cricket fanship had made me a subsciber of Mathrubhumi sports masika, with which I used to get beutiful posters of cricketers, well of Saurav Ganguly too, :) ) because of Lans Klusner ( I didn't like Klusner for his cricket, but I liked him because he knew Zulu; well people are pretty crazy in their teens :) ). (I once hated Hansi Kronje for defeating Inida in a final, but later I was very sad about what he happened to him. It was very sad. ) So the most memorable match I saw in my 10th was a match of India against Australia I suppose and why it is memorable is because of this: I think it was the time when Yuvraj was selected to the team. He hit such a six that it broke the glass of a vehicle. (Yuvi you are wonderful.)  And it was on Mahanavami and the day on which every student is restricted from studying anything.

Well I don't remember much of the things in 2001 and 2002, then came 2003 and the world cup, of course Saurav Ganguly was the captain. And it was the time of my public exam! What will one do? Study or watch cricket? India's first match against Netherland was on the eve of my Biology practical exam. I was chanting experiments all day (even in the bathroom when I was bathing, and was thinking about how to see the match. Finally I got a way around, I  will study in the hall! So that I can walk from one room (TV room) to hall and back and in between can switch the TV on and watch. ;) Anyway India didn't seem to play well against the newcomers, finally I decided to study well for the exam. :) Then came the news, that fans back home were furious and had poured black oil on the captain's cut outa along with showing fury to all the players! Thanks to Inidan fans, Inida didn't have to look back after that. The semi-final was on a rainy day when I had our Physics exam. I remember listening to the commentary (since I loved my picture tube) and being happy when Inida won the match.

Then came the mega event (i.e final with Australia). Newspaper published the picture fans had made using Lagaan poster "La-again" with Aamir Khan replaced by Ganguly and the rest by the other Inidan team members. ( I forgot, there used to be colorful tabloids, and in the final one, there was a story about Bret Lee.)  That mega event was on the eve of our Maths exam, and I went for my tution class, only to find a group of people glued in front of the tv screen ( it happened that it was the marriage of our Teacher's sister's daughter and many friends were staying there). but before I went, India after winning the toss had decided to field first and that's the moment when I cursed Ganguly for the first time in my life (see cricket can cause extreme liking and extreme hatred in a fan's heart to the player, often the fans forget about the player's feelings, though the fan feels sorry afterwards). So everybody in our class was sort of doomed. To cheer us up, our teacher reminded us that its Australia and we ought to acknowledge that fact and concentrate on the next day's exam and be consistent like Australia. She gave us payasam also and we concentrated on our matrices and probabilities.

Everyone was sure that India was going to lose the match, for the Aussies had scored the huge score of 359 (thanks to Indian bowlers) thus setting an unbeatable score in front of the Indians. At home, when I was unable to concentrate, my father scolded me for wasting my time for a losing team who would get payed anyway. Finally I gathered the courage to switch on the TV only to see the last wicket go ( I think the last man I saw was Nehra , but he was not out). Anyway to reduce the grief, I watched the presentation ceremony and Sachin being declared as man of the series. That was the day when my dislike for Ponting (before that I never liked Ponting) began. Along with it began my dislike for the Australina team who won match after amtch becoming invincible. Good that it was not Steve Waigh who was the captain then. I can't afford to dislike a man like Steve Waugh. :)

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But Inida continued to play good matches, both tests and ODIs and I was in college, cable came, but only to be cut during my exams! I used to listen to commentaries on radio (thanks to AIR) and still be a fan. But then due to the scandals and match fixing things, I lost interest in the game and stopped following everything. The 2007 world cup never registered in my mind as a world cup at all. It was just another "Aussies' winning occasion". I even didn't follow the 20-20 world cup (though now I feel a bit sad abt not following it) and almost lost all touch with cricket and its euphoria. I began viewing cricket as just another game or the game in which people made big money inside and outside (by being brand ambassedors of products and playing in IPL) the field.

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I had not even known that this year's WC was jointly conducted by India, Bangladesh and SriLanka; I don't know how I came to know about it. My uninterest towards cricket continued and during oour science day celebration, when everybody was supporting Inida in its match agaionst England, I sat calmly and queitely as if nothing of it bothered me. Not because I had lost all my interest in cricket, but because I doubted the Inidan team. And finally during our dinner in Zaitoon, two peole were running to watch the score and were happy when it was tied! Oh my God1 Give me a break. It was mere luck. And I totally lost faith in Inidan team (as if I had faith earlier ;) ) when they lost their match against SA. So I decided to cheer for SA in the upcoming games ( of course India's chances seemed to be sparse at that moment for me). But SA crashed out of the tournament and Inida won the match against the West Inides decently, to meet Australia in the quarter-final. Well it was 2003 again in my mind, thuogh the team was different. And I wrote on my wall "India's way out of world cup has been opened." That was the desperate thought of a fan who had watched Inida crumble on the eve of her maths exam 7 years ago. Everybody was frantic. Well to me, it was like, they should defeat Australia, not only because I am an Indian, but also because I wanted somebody other than Australia lift that cup. But Inida won that match and everybody was happy. Thank God. Atleast somebody else would win it. :) (After the match Harsha Bhogle said "Atleast somebody else would lift it this time." (I think he really meant India, but didn't say it. :) )

Then came the historic match of India against Pakistan, history being India always winning such a match. India kept history. It was a day when my lost fanship came back because Inida got into the final. (Well it had come back a little after Inida's win against Australia, but I was never Euphoric, considering India's inconsistency after being praised by media.) Ayyo1 I forgot to mention that mail which my friend sent me befor the India-Aus match. It gave the reason why Inida would win that match. :) Well Indian team had "RAJNIKANTH" in it. Anybody who knows about Rajni jokes will understand this. :)  I was very happy that Inida won the match, (by that time the mail had tansformed form why win against Aussies to why win the world cup) confirming its seat in the final. :) But I still am against the euphoric media, which hailed the 29 run win as "storming into the final". My faith in Yuvraj had become strong by the time and I was sure that he can work magic at a sinking stage. Still I'm against the media, which unnecessarily gave publicity to that match, afterall its a cricket match. And as Inidans you definitely wanted your country to win, there's nothing else. (Media often makes contraversies and most often the private channels. They don't know how to keep decency in broadcasting. Good that they were banned in the finals. :) )

But the final was against SriLanka and they were really really a good team. [Even Pakistan was good, I was scared for Inida remembering about how they had wrapped the Windies for 112 runs to ensure the berth in the semi-finals and during the semi-final, I kept my breath till the last over, though there were celebrations during the last over when everybody knew that India was going to win the match.] So still doubting Inida's consistency I didn't dare to watch the match. SriLanka had chosen to bat first and Inida seemed to bowl weell in the begginning, but later when I saw the final score card, I was shocked. Oh My God! That was going to be 2003 again. :( I lost all hope, resolved to watch Shin-Chan instead of the WC (its not like I was watching it continuously). After Inida's batting began and I after I saw 11/1, I confirmed that  I should not expect anything and finally a bored me decide to take nath and get fresh and go for dinner. Like I became active Indian team too became active after that. I went to the lab, sat t here and browsed, looking at the score in between, when tha score was at 135 I felt relieved and then it was 150, then 223 something and 243,then 253, so I felt like "yes we still have a chance unless Inida messes up" and wrapped up my browsing and went to the room. I should not miss the momwent incase Inida won. :) India needed 17 runs out of 18 balls, I was praying, praying and praying, we should not lose after coming this far. DD was showing that only two teams had won the WC chasing a score, if Inida won ,it would be tghe 3rd. :) Finally it reduced to 11 ,then 7, then 5 and then Dhoni hit a six and came the moment. Inida won the WC after 28 years. Kapil's devils did it it in 1983, Dhoni's dudes did it again in 2011. I woke up my sleeping friend, sent sms to my mom, and friends and there started the night party. Well "RAJNIKANTH SAVED THE DAY! :) for Dhoni's naiyya thi Rajni ke bharose."

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Well SriLanka too played well, kept their calm, hats of to you Sangakara. :) You spoke well for your team.

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Finally Sachin has a WC to his cap, winning it in his home town :) , and Yuvi got MoS (as expected, he became raj from Yuvraj :) ) and Dhoni brought the WC home.I don't know whether anybody has noticed this: Inida got WCs with captains whose popularly known surnames start with "D". :) [Though Kapil Dev's original name is Kapil Dev Ramlal Nikhanj; he's known popularly as Kapil Dev. :) ] Each player gets 1crore bucks and coach and others get 50lakhs. :)

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For me the party was not a real party, it was an e-party. People sent sms as if it was a festival, every Inidan was congratulated, and each and everybody born after 1983 (including me) was happy to see such a thing happen during our life times. :) There followed the outburst of euphoria in facebook in the form of status updates, comments for those updates; one liking the others's updates and so on. One of my friends had written in his facebook "We want SriLanka in the finals." His wish came true. :)  I couldn't sleep till 2.00 (though it is my usual time ;) ) and was glued to FB listening to songs in my ipod. Whether it was because I was happy about Inida winning the WC or something else, I found all songs extremely lovely and peppy, and couldn't help grinning till I slept. :)

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After the euphoria, when I tried to steady my mind, I simulated the situation after football wc. But then corrected myself, its a wholly different affair, more global than cricket. I wondered about the people of other countries. This is nothing for them. Then suddenly I thought about the Japanese (for there was another reason too; I had watched 2012 on Friday; one nation is celebrating while the other is trying to rebuild itself and I felt guilty. I'm not blaming anything, but I really wished that those who won did something for that country (its not sympathy for Japan, but as a human I ought to do so) (afterall they are getting 1crore from the tax we payed :) ) as thanksgiving. It would be better than just being stupidly happy. :)  And more thouhgts came to my mind. Why was I so happy? I didn't play the wc, I just watched it, wished with all my heart for their victory and it happened. 


  Then I thought about the security people who worked hard to keep everybody safe (though they too are Indians who love cricket :))? I wished them all safety. Well this is the after effect of rational thinking , I suppose. :)

Still I won't lie that I'm genuinely happy and the reason for this post itself is my excitement (I was so excited this morning that I couldn't sleep even after deciding to sleep, my heart was bursting out to be poured out as words.) Aamir's tee shirt and Rajni's presence worked (it seemed that Rajni had come to know about that mail :) ) as well as every other Inidan's superstitions (including mine :) ). Congrats Inidans, we won! :) 

I wish India the same in all sports and all other fields in the coming days also. :) Proud to be an Indian. :) 


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PS : The final was in Mumabi, I was in Kolkata! I can't believe I was in Kolkata when India won the WC! :)