The last day of the year

The perfect time to stop and think... today’s the last day of an eventful year, and also of my winter vacations. I am not going to list what happened in the past 365 days, maybe because I can’t... never really been a ‘memory’ person. But having said that, there has been a lot to learn, a lot to feel, a lot to reason out, and a lot to take forward. It would probably not be an exaggeration to call it the year of my life so far, not in terms of achievement, obviously not, but in terms of what it has added to the wonderful creation called ‘me’. Ok, that’s a little arrogant. So, leave the wonderful bit out of the sentence if you want you, mine is a completely democratic blog.
Phew, good I got that part away. I have spent the last few days thinking about myself. So, I had to get a little paragraph on it, before I could come to other beautiful things. Now, it’s actually a little weird. I don’t generally leave topics incomplete, but maybe I would here. And it’s not because I can’t or don’t want to complete it, but just because I prefer to wait, to talk about it some other day.
Hmmm.... so that’s like two crucial issues done. The third one, South Africa beats Australia. I had a pretty nice time watching the two test matches. I never had problems with Mr. Pointing, but I always knew Graeme Smith was my favourite (and please it’s not a pun. I mean, even though it seems very much like a metaphor for deeper things, it’s not). And all the ‘reason loving’ people, please don’t ask me why, I can’t be answering this.
Fourth in the list is my recent passion for crucial situations. I have always loved finals, but I love them even more now. It’s good in ways, to be battling against the odds, and springing up surprises for everyone around, not because everyone around matters (only some do), but doing it for oneself. A little tricky, the last few lines... but then that’s how I write, bear with me.
So, I am all set for a brand new semester. In fact, waiting (im)patiently for it to begin. It feels great, I don’t quite know why, but my gut feeling says 2009 is going to be a very special year indeed. So, I sign off, wishing everyone a happy new year. May you all achieve your dreams (or on a more practical side, understand why the dreams were wrong if you don’t actually achieve them :) ) .
Enjoy every second of what’s coming your way!
Love you all
(PS: If you like solving puzzles, here’s a little one for you – The third line is not just a little ‘good to hear’ phrase, it has some resemblance to the entire post...)

The land of the mummies

The good thing about any holiday with Dad is that we are always up for surprises. Independent of what I predict and prepare myself for, he somehow manages to be a step ahead. So, this time it was my trip to Egypt and the UAE. “Egypt!” I said with a little high pitched tone when I first heard it. “Egypt” I say again, this time with a smile on my face... it has been a wonderful holiday to round off the year.
Now, if I start writing about what happened, I can go on for days describing it, so I intentionally keep it short, especially for my ‘lazy’ readers who I value so much. So, we had a couple of 3-houred flights on our way to Cairo. Just like the previous occasion, my ears got blocked during landing, and they continued in the same fashion for about 2 hrs after that, forcing me to use a lot of ‘hun?’ and ‘kya bol rahe ho?’. Ok, so Cairo... my first request to the driver ‘Please through city, to see’ using only key words (I also tried full English sentences in all possible accents, but he didn’t get any of them) to indicate that I wanted to see things and I didn’t mind traffic (‘Come on, the traffic here can’t be as bad as Delhi’ I said to myself). The city of fly-overs, there was nothing magnificent about the buildings (mind you, I had already had some taste of Dubai, so no building was tall enough). The most fascinating thing was the river Nile running through the length of the city (or call it the city built along the river, sometimes it doesn’t matter what the cause is, or how something happened, what’s important is only the result of it all). We spent the next few days going places,

1.The Pyramids of Giza (actually pretty big, and please don’t go inside them, there is nothing there. Yeah, the camel ride is great, more so if you manage to convince your parents to let you ride one, with all the technicalities of turning and controlling its speed)
2.Saladin’s Citadel (largest mosque or something, but the fun part was the wind there, strong enough to blow away shoes! And trust me here for the shoes. Since it was on a hill top, the entire city was visible from there)
3.Cruise on the river. (Slow, a cold breeze to accompany you, some weird food to go along, it was a nice ride indeed)
4.The museum (I almost hated history but the national museum is definitely a thing to be seen. And yeah, no photography inside. Hmm.... yes of course)
5.Lots of shopping, and even though I have had some interest in the field lately, I still couldn’t handle the enthusiasm of my mom and my sister.
6.The highlight of the show, was the left hand drive (Egyptians have the opposite driving convention), and even though I had neither a driving license in the country nor the permission of my parents, in fact not even common sense to justify my attempt ( driving is 90% instincts is what I normally believe), I did actually get my hand on the wheel of the land cruiser (Nice car!)

Then, after all this we had a one-hour flight to a place called sharm-al-sheikh. The city with the most beautiful beaches (and this refers only to the water and the marine life) I have ever seen. So, the three days there were spent on the beach side. Ok no, some market again... but it was still like a holiday within a holiday.
Then came Dubai. Speed limit – 120kmph, wow I love the city. The tallest building there is 180 stories tall, called burj dubai, maybe still under internal construction but the structure is up. The attraction of the city was, the palm tree. The only difference about this tree was, that its actually a large piece of land recovered from the sea... large enough for a few hundred houses and a five star hotel. Enough for one post, I care for my lazy readers... let’s leave out the rest for later.

I Love

This is probably the weirdest of all my posts but i had been thinking of put this up for a very long time. So, here is a list of things I love. The reasons arent clear for a lot of them since the liking comes more intuitively than logically. And yes, the order is random...

1. Chocolates
2. Majors ( No, i hate them...)
3. My neighbour's dog (Black labrador)
4. Winning (Yeah boy)
5. Losing (When I am focussed on winning big, I lose out on small stuff)
6. Our Insti nescafe
7. Little diamond earings( i really dont know why!)
8. Diamond earings at night...
9. Six pack abs
10. Slightly uneven teath
11. Brown eyes (i'd love to say blue, but brown takes over)
12. Driving (fast!)
13. Dehradun
14. Rain (and to be out in the open when it's raining)
15. My new phone (brings me luck)
16. Priyanka Chopra (maybe the uneven teath helped)
17. People who think differently
18. People who have an honest voice
19. Changes (both on the inside and the outside)
20. People with substance over people with attitude
21.

I'd leave it there for the time being. I also love the Number 1 and the no. 19, and yes 21 and 26...maybe thats enough.

(PS: 21 stays blank, atleast for a little more time)

Drive the race called "life"

“I had always thought that fast driving was only about going hard on the accelerator. But no, it’s more of how well you change your gears.”

Generally races are long, in fact long enough to allow you a moment here and a moment there, to sit down and think. So, you are supposed to make good use of these moments, not throw them away into nights of partying and gaming, and an arrogant “I don’t care” status message.
The problem is the fact that life has always been kind. You ask for something and you get it, you don’t work for something and you still get it. With time, the feeling of over-confidence grows, and so does the habit of being complacent. It doesn’t hurt, until one day you realise that driving isn’t actually fair. You might have an accident even when it’s not your fault. And it’s then that the entire blame comes on, I don’t know who it comes on...but you don’t like it, whoever it comes on.
I would request you to ignore all that has just been said, I have had a bad minor examination, and I needed a place to let my frustration free. I personally find it a lot easier to write about social issues, or about sports, or anything that lets me criticise the government. But when it comes to writing about one self or about things that matter most, my fingers start receiving diminished blood supplies, my brain panics and it becomes really tough. But then, the best games are the ones that are played under pressure, and I love playing finals.
Maybe, the problem so far has been the lack of patience, of perseverance, and the dominant psyche of not working hard when you can do without it. Things are up for change now, the time is right, so is the occasion, to do a little debugging exercise. It’s time to change, hopefully for the better. It’s time to lift your foot from the accelerator pedal, and press the clutch. It’s time to shift up a gear my friend.

Shopping and me!

People who know me well, know how much I hate shopping. And when it comes to clothes, where everything looks almost the same(except for a few absolute no-Noe's), and its important(my dear) to try a few of them before actually selecting one, it really puts me off. OK, so shopping and me have always been like enemies(I wonder if she knew it). I hate to shop.
This was the story until today. For no reason visible to me(OK ya, there are some reasons I might tell you by the end!), things were different today. I entered the show room- nothing new - I have been there many times. I came out with 3 new shirts and a pair of jeans, to my surprise. But the 'even bigger' thing was that I actually tried loads of them, a whole variety of straight-fits and boot-cuts, of checks and casuals with funny things written on them... and somehow I knew exactly what to buy and why to buy it?
Being one of the 'I need to justify everything happening around' kind, this little otherwise ordinary Saturday has actually left me puzzled. Since, I have always been able to analyse things and come to reasonably good reasons and conclusions, not being able to think about this one actually troubles me. Now I can always give in to one of the three possibilities. Firstly, it's Rakshabandhan, I am generally happy on festivals. Secondly, the music in the shop was cool. I know why these guys pay so much to get high quality music appliances installed. Thirdly, I saw a pleasant face (a girl of course) and the fact that she smiled back was so cute. She was there till the very end, girls are shopping freaks.
There's something which makes me feel that today was a 'quantum shift' day. I have changed today, though not by much, but surely by a significant amount. It has all been positive, a change for the better. It feels great to learn a new art - of shopping, another challenge thrown at me by my Friend GOD- lets see if I can actually master it in the days to come!

Oooh

So, I have finally managed to write something for my blog. It's been a long time, and I have gone through a series of days when I had a lot to say. I can continue to curse myself for not putting it down in ink(or on hard disk)... but the fact remains, none of that will probably come back. And the real amazing thing here is that I am finally typing in words, even though I have absolutely no idea what I want to say (I generally do - my ego), and the keyboard here is sticky. I am in a lab and I have other terminals available, but I still continue to stick to this one. The moral of the story, if you are unable to do something, its not because things and people around you stop you from doing it, its because someone inside you doesn't want to do it. Its pretty much a twisted version of "Where there's a will, there's a way", but I have never understood it the way I am doing it, right now.

I suddenly feel a lot more positive. I have something to say (alright), and I hope nothing has been lost in the past one month. You can call it a gush of energy if you like, God works well for some as well, but something or someone has really caused a shift of balance here. I wasn't in a particularly bad mood either, but it was nowhere close to the one I am in now. And I cannot but stop myself from believing that its only a glum period that leads to a really bright one. And you can still argue that it sounds very similar to another famous proverb, but I have the exact same words to repeat, I have never understood it the way I am doing it, right now.

The 'Jwala' in me

“Jwalamukhi”, I said with a smile on my face. The word means more to me than just the reply to a common question “Which hostel?”. It has been a year, even though it seems as if yesterday I received my admission letter and with it the name of my hostel – “Jwalamukhi”. My curious first reaction to it was ‘fire-E name’. But almost to my astonishment, things have changed really fast. Today , Jwala is home – a place where I live, a place close to my heart. This really makes me wonder, what’s so special about it?

The last year has been great. I turned 18, but more than just a turn of age, it has been very much a turn of attitude, maybe ‘growth’ in its real sense. I have come a long way in a rather short span of time. Looking back, I can recall a stream of memorable events. From night-outs to day-sleeps, from bunking classes to messing up examinations...it’s been fun. Beating up friends on birthdays is perhaps the weirdest of traditions I have ever seen, and even though it defies most people’s stretch of logic, the joy it brings to everyone is amazing. What would you do if you have an assignment due and you are badly stuck, well...get a game of ‘CS’ or ‘AOE’ to get yourself going again. If you want to see some of the ‘hostel spirit’ go to the inter-hostel competitions, push your throat to the limit or even further. Quite surprisingly, you end up being happy about it all, independent of whether you win or lose, and whether you can speak for a week or not. I remember celebrating holi with a hosepipe, with an exam waiting that afternoon. There is something about everything we do here, as long as we do it together. You realise the meaning of caution less living, taking innumerable risks, learning a lot from success, and learning even more from failures. Hostel life at jwalamukhi is magical in many senses, and I can say this with great conviction having tasted it myself.

Perhaps, more than the freedom we get, and the amount of time we have purely at our own disposal (despite our classes), what fascinates us more is the idea of living with people who share the same ambitions, same goals and most importantly the same zeal for getting ‘more’ out of life. IIT-ians are supposedly the best minds of India, and IIT has lived up to my expectations, and probably even exceeded it. As I sit in my room, having had a near dream run in my first two semesters, it feels great to see ahead and find three more years to come, and at the same time my heart gives me a little twitch, boy! you now have a year less....it’s difficult to imagine the day when I pass out. I’ll take the easy way out, and think about it only when I need to. As far as the present goes, Jwalamukhi - I look up to you, to be all that I have felt you to be, and all that I want you to be. One thing is rest assured – ‘Jwala’ is going to stay with me forever, close to me, and with a place just as prominent as it has today.