A Home Where You Are Always Welcome

“Do you know how an oyster makes his shell?”

“No. Do you?”

“Me neither. But I know why a snail carries its house on its back." 

"Why?" "

So that he always has a roof over his head"

A smile on your lips is nowadays difficult to play by, leave alone making an extra effort to make someone else smile. In a world plagued with concerns over Ebola or the growing unrest in the middle-east, one would not hesitate to second such an opinion. After a couple of years as an undergraduate student and a year as an “adult” by now, it comes to me as a great surprise that I should feel content and ecstatic on a day that is completely aloof from my age and activities. A day I celebrated for the first time of my life as the Children’s day.

While I was stuffing my bag along with Zinya and Tarun, I never realized that I was filing it not with crayons and colors but with expectations, expectations of the kids we have so grown fond of. The day indeed matured as colorful and as beautiful as the greeting cards and clay models the young artists had designed, the best out of waste was not the creative things they did with junk around them, but what they did with my day, they made it “best out of waste” indeed!!

It was high school all over again as I nearly was an object of fist fight yet again as Dilip (a 7^th class kid) declared that I was his best friend, but to Ranjith (another 7^th class kid) the statement did not sound pleasing and spoke he his own disposition, my best efforts to make him understand that I was the best friend of both Ranjith and Dilip was in vain, because he strongly believed that one person must be entitled to only one best friend! Finally, the matter was amicably resolved when Ranjith reluctantly settled for Tarun’s pitch to be his best friend. 

The motivation towards volunteering for the NoteBook Drive was my own attitude that a practical interest in educating the children of our country should be one of the elementary obligations that must devolve on every thinking man in India and so, it began. This social activity for me is not a display of sentimental charity, which is ridiculous and useless, but an attempt to perpetuate the elimination of fundamental deficiency in our economy and society, a deficiency that is bringing about the degradation of our country.

But, now what makes me volunteer is not my philosophy but a new relationship that I have developed. A relationship with no demands, a relationship that has made me realize that that I may not be widely loved but I am loved deeply. A relationship that calls me home, where I know I am always expected.

The King’s Court

“Though the rabbit came through the ordeal of the experiment, this must not be taken as an evidence of its harmlessness”

Justice nowadays can be as callous as the men who plot to topple the balance in hands of the goddess of eternal justice. In light of the recent verdict against the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, without encroaching on the rights or wrongs of the judgment, the highlighted fact that this case has been in the dockets for more than one and half decade swaying and meandering between “appeals” and “stays” makes one introspect the judicial effectiveness of the country. Being the largest democracy in the world, have we over-embraced the conception of democracy that the laws that stand to safe guard the citizens who abide by it now equally defends those who break it? Or is it made to look that way by the lawyers hired by these felonious men to dazzle and mislead the jury with legal jargon that is meticulously stitched to expose the case in the grey areas of the law?

 The notion of a court is to serve justice and punish the guilty. Over time, the two entwined concepts have drifted further apart and now have established their own domain in the system. The contentious impression that justice can be served only if there is equality has ensured equal representation on behalf of both the prosecution as well as the defense. A common man is usually unconcerned with the abstruse process involved between the filing of a case and the final verdict, and hence feels cheated when the system itself conspires the escape of an accused, on whom the rabble set little value upon for survival after an ordeal in court. Little would they want to know about the offender who has been hiding behind the façade of a counsel of lawyers, who flaunt their law school degrees, that boasts of their expertise to manipulate the law and also the judgment in favor of their client for a sleazy cut without much regard for truth and justice.    

In retrospect, the famous tales of Akbar and Birbal speak of speedy and unbiased judgments of a Kings court, where the plaintiff and the defendant are brought face to face under the direct examination of the king himself, where they are aided not by a lawyer with successful courtroom victories under his belt, but by one’s own truth, conviction and experience. The system just as simple and effective as it is, it also leaves very little chances of any external persuasions. A court room that in lucid terms defines the rights and wrongs and that pronounces a verdict fearless of any peripheral force. Our quest for structuring and making things as “democratic” as possible has now lead us to construct a system, whose turtle-paced judgments may be calculated for diligence, but seldom seems to achieve the justice as observed in a King’s Court over centuries ago.  

When is it, that people will realize that freedom is more than just the right to cast a vote in an occasional election but the fundamental right of every single human to live their own life? And when will they realize that one cannot live their own life as long as political and economic influences dominate every dimension of life? And the judicial system that’s very own existence perpetrates to justice feigns to be as blind as the goddess of eternal justice, who is but a silent observer in every courtroom of the country, blind and deaf.

Mars needs MOM(s)

Photo Credits:- Abhinav Jain

“Let’s stand here” Tarun said after making out the silhouette of the crudely drawn lines beneath us.

“I guess that’s pretty much the ISRO logo” I replied to him, and took my place next to him; soon Pankaj joined us with a banner held above his head congratulating the ISRO scientists on their success.

I was dripping wet as I stared up at the main building where the photographers were poised to capture the students who had formed ISRO logo in the quadrangle as J N Tata stared down at us, drenched but equally proud, clutching the main building close to his chest.

It was a festive mood as over hundreds of IIScian’s had turned up to celebrate the successful entry of the Mars Orbiter Mission into the Martian orbit that too on the maiden attempt, a feat unachievable by the attempts made by many others. Already tagged as a cost effective mission that has mocked the movie “Gravity” for spending more money than the amount invested by India in this mission, our little invention will soon be in proximity with “Curiosity”. 24^th September from this day hence shall mark a day that witnessed a historic moment that has by all means satisfied those Indians like me who wanted to witness atleast one trice of our country’s rich history.

The unexpected and unfathomable surprise of the day occurred when a few of our alumni who were scientists now at ISRO turned up and excitedly shared their triumph with us. The hundred is not a mistaken figure as it was evident from the rapidly vanishing sweets that I was distributing along with the others. One last sweet was left in my box and I gave it to Javed, who commented “half-half” and gave me half of it back which I happily ate.

The thrilling prospect of exploring the red planet, our closest neighbor and the quest for extra-terrestrial life, possibilities of which have been over exploited by authors and directors, is soon a reality! The proud Indians finally dispersed back to their labs, where there knew one day soon, an achievement awaits them, that will serve as a turning point as today had been for our country. And with high spirits they would work now.

Everyone was gone, the faculty hall was locked, it was time for us to leave too. I and Tarun started walking away from the main building.

“I guess the posters we put up in the mess really helped” I commented beaming.

“Yeah! So many people turned up, inspite of the rain” 

We were walking back to our hostel, proud and with a silent promise and overflowing excitement to meet Dr. Radhakrishnan, chairman of ISRO during Samanway 2014.

Road to Reality

The road was overpopulated with vehicles; it was a hard ordeal to maneuver my bicycle between autos and cars amidst angry honking, as I hurried to catch up with Sabreesh.

“You can write about today in your blog” he mentioned.

“I intend to” I replied and had already made up my mind that I would, as we hurried back into the campus to attend our humanities class.

It was my second visit along with the members of the Notebook Drive (NBD) to a school nearby to teach kids.  I was very proud of what my fellow students did as a part of NBD and I felt this practical interest in educating the children of our country should be one of the elementary obligations that devolve on every thinking man in India.

Once, inside the classroom, I could not help thinking about the new little friends I made today, the buzzing activity, their excited voices, the pleading innocent eyes that wanted us to stay for some more time, the hesitant goodbyes and the silent promise to meet them again the next week.

In retrospect, I was reminded of my own childhood and it made me wonder, have they got dreams like us? Do they tell their mothers that one day they want to make rockets or a time machine? How would their mother respond? Does she smile and nod her head in agreement? Or does she kiss her little child and reassure him saying “I am sure you will”? Or was she so busy with her chores or doing some odd jobs to raise a little more money for her family that her children lay neglected. What about the Father?  Would he be a kind and an understanding man? Was he a man who could look beyond the misery of the present day towards a better future for the prodigy? Does he understand the value of education? Or is he a hated man who maltreats the family in a fit of drunken rage?

How was the ambience at home? Was there a possibility of learning any lessons at home or was it just restricted to what little the young citizen learns to read and write at school? How was the influence of the teacher, how were they perceived at the child’s home? Were they highly spoken of or were they being denigrated so much so that the child is more inclined to insult the teacher and disregard respect for the human surroundings?

And in this process what happens to their dream? Was fate so cruel, that it tiptoes in, at first unheeded and wearing a prosaic scabbard from which, later, emerges a fiery sword that cuts the last thin thread that holds their small dreams above the ground. Was there any hope to escape the clutches of the goddess of fate that firmly held them in her hands and threatened to crush them any minute now? Whatever happens to our next Dr. Abdul Kalam and his wings of fire? That is when one starts to look out for something to reprimand and that is when you tag them as the victims of a system, and the natural scape goat happen to be a politician.

Politicians had promised to fight, fight illiteracy, fight poverty, but of course, they cannot fight, because you fight for something you love, for loving something you must respect and in order to respect, you must have knowledge of it. And this knowledge cannot be attained from the heaps of folders jam-packed with mathematical figures and diagrams dumped on the desk of a man too busy fighting for his own survival. Nor could it be gained by ”visits”, for which so much hype is created about. Such conventions lead only to superficial talk and sentimental delusions. The former never ventures into the root of the problem while the latter simply evades it. Both meaningless and unnecessary and therefore would serve no better purpose than for a heart touching campaign speech to move voters with a meticulously stitched glitter of words.

Were we politicians, we would have probably left the kids to their own fate or would have made them the instruments to highlight the inefficiency of the Government to propagate our own cause for the elections. Fortunately we aren’t. We are the ones who have realized not to rely on the men with power to act, for they are too busy trying hard to stay in power and in this course have marred their own sensitivity towards the others.

Our actions may go unnoticed; our actions may not bring about a grand change; our actions may have little significance on a longer scale but atleast we ACT!

Sangam: A Symbol of Unity

We are surrounded by bureaucrats, quick to their feet with a diplomatic answer, meticulously stitched glitter of words, to dazzle and mislead the inquirer, who is convinced thus by the high sounding phraseology offered with an air of profound wisdom and prophetic assurance.  It is indeed difficult to distinguish between empty appearances or brutal manners and the inner nature of people who outwardly appear thus or maybe the other way round, a person with reserved manners and a pleasant smile who are pros in the art of twisting facts and presenting them in a deceptive form. Cunning men they may be, but Fall they will by the very bullet which they themselves helped to cast.

Someone hit the switch in the narrow hallway near the jury room, and the lights went off. The auditorium became dark. I closed my eyes and sunk into the seat between both the conveners, Swapnil and Milo, while Kallol was busy pacing up and down unaffected by the darkness, probably already calculating upon the next GRAND event the Students’ council will organize. A silence hung in the air. Was it because I and Varsha were no longer at the podium welcoming the dignitaries or was it because Sourav and Shalini were no longer presenting the slides of various clubs? Or was it the empty stage that stood witness of many cultural performances for both the days? A silence we would have wished for during the incessant discussions during the past two weeks, where every spoken word would result in a new work that needs to be done. After all it had to be GRAND!!

In students lay the essential ground work of creative thought, which blossoms out in ideas and actions with an endless fertility and enthusiasm and hence furnish the building materials and also the designs for the future of the institute and country. And everyone knows it, the dignitaries who spoke, the others who did not speak, you, me, and even the low intellects outside sitting through silly diktats who for their own fight for existence have long ago killed their sensitivity towards the others.  

I might have been just an anchor on that day, decent clothes, careful of my speech and reserved in manner and nodding politely to compliments of “nice job”, “well spoken”, and “looking good” by the dignitaries and others. But I have been so occupied thinking about my present lot and future that the immediate surroundings seemed to be of little significance. Someone said “problems exist in our life not to boggled but to be surmounted” and I had responded with a Chinese proverb “If your problem has a solution, why worry? If your problem does not have a solution, then why worry?”  But then what if you don’t know if your problem had a solution or not and what if the solution you had, required you to act, and what if your action is to be in the interest of a larger group, like, your scholarship? Your degree?  Mess subsidy? And the likes.  Would you act? Would you fight for your fellow men and women? You can only fight for something you love, for you to love you must respect, and in order to respect you must have some knowledge. And hence the objective was clear and for that I worked for. Now you know, yourself and your fellow students, and you know when a rallying cry is made on whom shall you place your trust on. Because, you KNOW.

Entrance Exams & Coaching Centers: A Retrospect

Mother Nature herself in such matters has been prejudiced; as she concentrates her greatest devotion not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding of offspring in order to carry on the species, a silent ploy by nature to topple the balance in the hands of the goddess of eternal justice with complete awareness of the fact that she is blindfolded, so how is it wrong if humans, a product of Mother Nature herself, have inherited this trait.

I considered myself lucky when destiny placed me among the top 1 percent of the students in such an exam, but this gives me neither reason nor a passion to speak highly of this process or enough experience to question the existence as such. When entrance exams was taken as an example to explain the survival of the fittest after successfully clearing them, the underlying irony never had a chance to be glimpsed upon as any attempts were drowned with proud smiles and nods and satisfied faces as they knew very well, they were all safely set apart by ditch called entrance exams that ran very wide and by fortune they were on the safer side of that ditch.

In all the hatred, fear and anxiousness surrounding the entrance exams, therein lay a spring that never dried up, and that spring in other words are the over ambitious coaching centers. Remember, coaching centers are here not because you need them, but YOU need them just because they are here.

These were the ones who understood the juvenile spirit of parentage and how they respond to a rallying cry of their child’s future, thus to the parent is the rallying cry first addressed. And hence, the child is made to enter into this vicious game. He arrives with little broken pieces of a dream, slowly, they clean up, dry him out, put him back together, piece by piece. They clear his heads, teach him confidence and discipline, and prepare him. They probably do a good job of this, but then there is the threat, fragile as he still is, and somewhere in between under pressure from school and parents has a break down, what he has worked so hard to produce is now past.

He now loiters about and passes senseless comments. He comes first to take position in the last bench and has a restless time waiting for the short ten minute break between the classes and then after the break prays for the teacher to be late. He begins to start drifting to the lower social level and mixes up with a class human beings through whom his mind is now poisoned, in addition to his mental misery he now lunges into a road to physical misery as well. Of course, the people who regularly ensure his fee is up to date know all this as well, and they still turn a blind eye, for the child comes at a cost, a stiff one indeed. Hence, they do their best, and strike the parents blind and make them stand near a corpse that bleeds with every sign of decomposition with a blank promise that these were indeed signs of renewed vitality of their dreams. Hence, the parents are made to spend extra resources on more materials, test series and counseling sessions, which the child takes on maybe not to his natural liking yet he joins in it out of sheer indifference.  Hope, he feels a hypocrite for even thinking the word.

I saw this happen maybe for a hundred times right before my eyes and the longer I observed greater was my dislike for such coaching centers which greedily attracts students under its tutelage just to break them mercilessly in the end.

This probably was one of the many reasons I dropped out of coaching classes in spite of threats, protests and laments from my parents. Guess I was after all right in what I did.

Note:- I have nothing against coaching centers as such. Some of them and maybe certain branches of the famous ones are really good. My advice here is not to encourage anyone to stop attending coaching classes but to tell them make sure you attend one when you have a clear idea about how to take an advantage of the guidance provided and the system.

Secondly, generalizing the student as a “he” may make you feel like I am gender biased or maybe that girls are spared of a similar fate, but both the beliefs should be dismissed because my experiences had been with a majority of male friends in this regard that’s why I used a “he”. 

Tick-Tock and yet another day goes by

“What do you know about Time?”

“Nothing” after a pause “Nothing at all” said the dark black statue, even though nobody spoke to him.

A handiwork of Gilbert Bayes in an attempt to immortalize a great man with an even greater vision, who till date clutches the IISc main building close to his chest of fear that even the tiniest of negligence on his part be responsible for Swami Vivekananda turning restlessly in his grave. Of all the ones in the campus, I pity him the most, for he stays there during sun and rain under heat and cold, of all these agonies the worst being the one pervaded by the crows, pigeons and any other kind of bird that have more right than us to call IISc a home.

As someone who stood there counting probably over every single second of his century long existence, yet no one could have a sound sleep after prefixing upon him a blame for knowing “nothing at all” of Time. Time, which according to Albert Einstein subjected its flow whether you lay your hand on a hot frying pan or on a hot woman, had by far shown no mercy at all as it ticks away busily exposing the limit of our very mere existence.  

The complex equations on pen and paper, for elucidating the anonymity of time does no justice in explaining to me how quickly time has gone by. It seems just like yesterday I had my first class and was easily cruising through Newton’s reckonings and here I am today struggling to understand the abstruse mathematics behind a counter-intuitive world of Quantum physics and still wondering where the past two years have vanished, and by now I also have the misfortune of being in possession of average grades of my four semesters which will hold little value in Ivy league if not for a research paper soon to come. And according to some, my continuous dedication to my blog may as well get me admission in Ivy League but for some degree in English!! After all that Physics!!

The serenity of the campus has probably veiled the restless timepiece that seems to govern everyone, an inevitable passage of a precious quantity never reclaimable, as our mind and body races between assignments, classes, lectures, research or maybe a talk by some Nobel Laureate who happens to join us from time to time.

The worst part of the day happens to be the time between bed and sleep, when the past comes back with a vengeance- the mistakes, the misery, the could-haves and should-haves. Try as you might, you simply cannot close your eyes and go to sleep.  That’s when I ask myself, how was all of my time spent today, was it the lectures? Or was it the endless assignments? Or was it the leisurely walk I went on holding some girl’s hand? Or was it the demands of a healthy investment in a long distance relationship?

And at that time you simply wished you could stop the clock for some time and take it all in and then probably resume it, for yet day another had gone by.

 
Photo credits: Abhinav Maurya
For more Abhinav Maurya snaps:Click Here

   

Me, Science ‘n Father

“Checkmate!” my friend across me exclaimed. We were sitting in the veranda of the main building referred to as the faculty hall of the Indian Institute of Science with a chessboard between us. The Bangalore evening was as always pleasant, and held a silent promise to eavesdrop on any retention I wished to have from my past.

“Checkmate”, a term to indicate the climax of a battle suddenly seemed to bring a recollection of many other such skirmishes in my life, won with or without strategies and maybe sometimes by sheer determination and stubbornness and disobedience.

I remember, whenever the topics of my career cropped up, me and my father exhausted all our pieces and moves, and the struggle would become a stalemate. The loss at the battle with rooks, horses and bishops might be accepted in good faith but I had now another battle to fight, a serious one. A battle with egos of a man, who still has a strong memory of the hard road which he himself traveled, had contributed significantly to make him look upon a career in science as a waste of time and talent, and hence accordingly he set little value on them. The battle of “NO” and “NONETHELESS” originated since the first time he asked what I really wanted myself to pursue, the resolution that had already infested my mind expressed itself without any hesitation. He was suddenly speechless, maybe he was wondering that he might not have gotten my words correctly or maybe he thought he must have misunderstood by what my idea meant.  When I repeated myself, and explained the plans I had in mind and the moment he realized how serious I was, he exclaimed, “Physics! Pure sciences?!” and he opposed them with blind determination as was characteristic of the majority of the Indian parents. For, they would have already decided upon a career for their child. Their own hard struggle in making their own career has led many to overestimate what they have achieved and as a reason has led to stubbornness in this regard and also a strengthening of their belief that their experiences have placed them in a position to facilitate their child’s advancement in a similar career.

Maybe he wondered whether I was in a sound state of mind to think this way, for he felt, his decisions seemed simple, logical, definite, clear and in his vision, his plans for me was something that was supposed be taken for granted. A gentleman of such a nature, who has risen in life by means of his own hard work and determination and the struggle for existence, the idea of an inexperienced young man allowed making his own decision regarding career, where my future lay concerned seemed to breach his characteristic sense of duty as a parent. And the idea of standing silent and watching as I made plans would have been grave and reprehensible weakness in the exercise of parental authority and responsibility. His concern and longing had been genuine; he wanted me to advance in a career and save myself the tough ordeal he himself had to go through but as the rough corners of youthful crudeness began to wear off, he must have known that his longing has been in vain, for the future had to be otherwise. The seeds of future had been sown long ago and it was a premonition that he could never have foreseen at that time. For the future had to be otherwise.

“Checkmate” my friend repeated again.

“No, Not yet”

For the future had to be otherwise.