*Random* Thoughts..

I'll find it hard not to speak the object oriented language in this post. I can only try not to overdo it.

If success is a method, my inputs to it would be "what occupies my mind" and the output I would like to get is "better myself". But the world has a different way of calling it - "what you give it in terms of time and money" and expects "ahead of the crowd".

And at particular instances, when we have to compare the results, I seem to be a weird to the world and weirdly enough, the world seems weird to me.

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Everything you do "online" is called *VIRTUAL* - Existing in essence or effect though not in actual fact. Imagine spending 14 out of 48 hours on a single task of listening to lectures. I was *virtually* at Stanford University, all ears while Prof.Sahami is teaching. But still, I can't either call him *my* lecturer or call myself as *his* student. Me listening to him is a fact, he teaching me is a fact, my knowledge isn't a myth, yet, we don't *know* each other. It would have been a different story had I been in his class, albeit half asleep.

Why presence takes precedence over essence? Why can't anything *virtual* be given its worth?

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I came to a conclusion: I've the right to happiness and it's my duty to find it in whatever way I can. And to let the happiness retain, one should be good at the *ignoring* business.

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Once upon a time, words and silence co-existed. Words were undermined. Silence was over-rated. First, words were killed saying they were never good enough, thus crowning silence. The deafeningly loud silence caused panic. There was desperate search for words.. one or two in the dying stages were used as rescue, before they eventually died. Silence only got louder. Words can be shut out with silence. How about silence?

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Ever known a musician who dedicates his album to the instrument he plays? Ever known a writer who dedicates his work to the table he used to write? Ever seen an artist dedicating his art to the tool which produced it?

I've known Knuth. I found a new world to embrace.

The reading life..

I've always liked being in the company of books. Many a people who are eye witness to my passion for books, keep asking the very old tiring question, "Why do you read so much?" and the "so much" part of the question doesn't actually highlight the quantity of my reading, it is their mere disgust.

"Why do you read?" - is a question that irks me to the core. "Why?" is possibly the simplest ever question to put and the toughest to answer, the tougher when its about something you love. When the answer doesn't seem to match the fervor we know we have, we tend to give exaggerated answers, "I can't live without them", "I can't imagine my life without them", "I'm nothing without them". Not questioning the enormous benefits of book reading, I still dare to suggest that books are always secondary. No matter what kind of subject and what beauty the prose has, the basic needs of human body can't be satisfied by book reading. (All the folks who put up their hands and interrupt, "Hey, I do forgo food and sleep to complete a book, you know?"- my answer would be, "You can afford that. There is a huge difference when you can forgo something and when there is nothing to forgo.") 

"Why do I read?" - Well, I was trying to find out an answer to this for a while now. The immediate advantage of reading lot of books,that the language improves has always abandoned me. Irrespective of the language, reading has hardly helped me in bettering my vocabulary. I don't read to write! I'm not one of those lucky souls who in worse of moods, open a book and get lost in a new magical fictional world and conveniently and  comfortably forget the real world.

For me, reading books can be metamorphical only two acts. When it is fiction, the act is that of sleeping. When it is non-fiction, the act is that of listening to another soul, completely engrossed. All fictional books I'd read thus far, left with the taste of sleeping experiences, say, a profound sleep, a nightmare, a disturbed sleep, incredibly beautiful dream and so on. And when it comes to non-fiction, it is like meeting a stranger on a train and listening to him with undivided attention. I don't know the person and would never have a chance again. Whatever has to happen, happens in that little window of time and then all I have is his memories. I read books for the exclusive bliss of dreaming without sleeping and listening without the compulsion to talk back.

I quite seriously intend to make notes of my readings on a regular basis in this blog. So, all you bookworms out there can take the pain to visit this blog. You'll find something or the other. The others, don't worry! There are many other things to share apart from books. :)

How to think?!

You have a problem, you gotta get the solution and to get that, you gotta think about it. So was I, thinking, thinking and THINKING! The thoughts were straying, they left no mark untouched on the scale of optimism. At a moment, it seemed no problem, forget about resolution. Sometimes deciding that which seems is really a problem turns to be a herculean task. All of a sudden, it looked like I was in a gutter like never before. Because the problem was the first of its kind for me, was caught in the thought, "Am I thinking it RIGHT?".  God! It was pain of some kind, so new to me, and very consuming.

I guess, my theory of "balance" works to perfection. You can't be low or high ALWAYS! Soon after a low, there would be a definitely a high in the wait. No fool would put in special efforts to traverse from high to low, but every optimist out there would try to get on the top, when going gets tough. Not denying any appreciation to the efforts, I wonder if it really requires it at least in special cases. A low would be followed by a high, you have sometimes nothing but to wait. Or a simple gesture can get you out of the mess. That said, I'm now even wondering, what's low?? Hmpf!

Well, the last paragraph was just to drive to the point that when all was going so bad, I could get out of it from an unexpected corner. A nice chat at a coffee break has lightened me up, though there was serious stuff in it, what matters is how I felt at the end of it. Light as a feather! Dialogues help you, and when you try and kill them, it takes a toll on you. Anyway, as a part of talk, got to know about this book called, "TEACH YOURSELF TO THINK." I've decided to grab a copy soon!

But what I really look forward is a book based on "How not to think" or even better, "How to stop thinking?" Blessed are the people who go through the phase of "thoughlessness". I, very surely suffer from thinking! Or atleast excessive of it. Hmm..

Feminism..

Had I not been tagged on the topic of Feminism, I'd never blog about this. It is one of the topics I'm most confused about and wonder how much my cumbersome writing adds to the chaos. Mahi, this is just for you.

Before I even start writing about Feminism, let me introduce the kind of person I'm.

This was two years back I guess, fresh in my first job, was juggling with the heavy equipment that I was supposed to work on. Quite over-ambitiously tried to place a weighty server from one end  of the room to the other. One of my colleagues, who was keenly watching me until then, came running to help me and had he not been that prompt, I would have surely injured my hand. Instead of thanking him for the favour, almost took to him saying, "It was my work, why the hell you wanna come my way?" He was startled enough, but then knowing me pulled me into a conversation..

"So.. you don't help me. Even when you are struggling, I shouldn't be helping you?"

"Yes, that is supposedly my work and I'd do that. You needn't bother!"

"So.. you think women and men are equal?"

"I don't know all that. All I'm sure is if someone wants paying me less, just because I'm gal, I'd.. I'd.. whatever.. I'll never accept that and would fight with them. When in office, you and I are same, if that was what you were looking for!"

"Then, why do women need reservation?"

" I don't know.. I'm always against that, all kinds of reservation to that matter. I never wanted it, you know.. go and ask people who fight for it, not me."

"Okay.. I had the same question to my sister and she answered that, wanna know?"

"hmmm.."

"She says that, though men and women are equal and we have to accept that as a fact, women were left behind for various reasons, be it socio, economic sphere or anywhere. For them to come forward and match men shoulder to shoulder, they need some special attention or help now. And these reservations are exactly there in to enable women get out of their shells and prove themselves.."

He did say a lot many things, the bottom line being reservations are helpful in narrowing the differences between the males and females.

Now, the other reason I cited this conversation is that, at that moment and also a long while after that, I never thought I should be called a feminist. It took sometime for me to know what is not feminism and I'm still very unsure of what it is.

What's not feminism?

• It is not an "anti-men" philosophy. If you are feminist, it doesn't mean you've to necessarily hate men. And if you can empathize with men, befriend them, that won't stop you from being tagged as feminist. Simply put, it is NOT "fight against men."
  
• Feminism isn't an "antonym" for chauvinism. Chauvinism is a more or less a cultural trait, whereas the former was a "movement" against the cultural trait. 

Then, what is it about? Fundamental principles:

• Men and women are equal 
• There is systemic and systematic oppression of women imposed by the society. 
• Women need to stand up for themselves because no one else would do it for them - not their father, husband or son. 

"If you really wanna know about feminism, please do take time and read the wiki pages on it"  was the advice I never heeded to. All I did was to skim through it and know a li'l about the phases in it. Talking about waves of feminism, the first two waves victories are what we are enjoying today.


Forgetting all these terminology for sometime, here are my serious suggestions for the 20-somethings of the 21st century.

• Follow you heart, do what you wanna do. And while following heart so religiously,  don't let the mind wander. Make sure it gets to the business as well. 
• Better restrict the generalization of  your experiences. Don't ever go on saying, "all gals are like this.." or "men will be men" kind of statements.  They do no good, and everyone person is special in many ways. Be it a gal or a guy. There is only one "me" and only one "you". Note that. 
• Respect others on merit of their personality. I've seen people running away from "lady" bosses. Be sure when you are doing that is what I can suggest.
  
• It hardly matters you being tagged as "feminist" or not. All matters is what you think about yourself and how you wanna go about life.
  

That is all I can speak of feminism as of now. Yeah, when things work out, I may really get to deeper insights of feminism. For now this is all, if it makes sense. :-)

Ahem.. Sachin spoiled me too..

My day has been full of cricket. Having nothing to work at work, I've been mostly in cricinfo site. And sharing the "wows.. oohs.. aahs" with people in (gtalk) and around (me). So.. India won, won convincingly enough. That's good news, but the post isn't about that.

Out of the blue, I dug out my gmail chats to find out the link recommended by a friend, sometime back. He stated it pretty clearly that it was about the way we group watching cricket, it was by Siddhartha Vidhyanathan, that it is a must read and a lot other things. Being busy at that point of time, just kept it away. The only thing I do with something postponed is to postpone. Now the news is, I READ it! ;-)

And the bad part of the news is that I feel like talking / blogging / writing about it, just as Siddhartha did. But how to start and where all to touch, wish walking down the memory lane was easy. So, what I'm gonna do now is, just copy, paste few of the lines that I loved in the post.

Sachin Tendulkar spoilt us. He commanded that we sit in front of the television sets. He ensured we got late with homework, he took care of our lunch-break discussions. He was not all that much older than us, and some of us naïve schoolboys thought we would achieve similar feats when we were 16. We got to 16 and continued to struggle with homework.

For me, he was more than all this. (Just like he's for everyone else too.) Being in an all-gals school, and talking about him all through day, I was kinda "pick the odd". Hero was supposedly Shahrukh or Aamir, only few had an idea of Sachin, thanks to his endorsements. Atleast during the 96 WC that I found hard to share the excitement at School. Things then changed, cricket penetrated so deep into everybody's life, that like it or not, you had to live with it.Thankfully, gained a lot of friends just because of cricket. To date, if I've prayed it was for Sachin Tendulkar. I pray whenever he plays. I prayed for his health, for the serious backache he had halfway through career. Was li'l grown up, but yet worried a lot for his tennis elbow. And I prayed hard, that he shouldn't be part of any scams and scandals.Had he been associated with any of these, my trust about humans would have shattered forever.

I never ever tried to emulate him, for the simple reason that I was never keen on playing the sport. I seriously wonder, why couldn't Sachin inspire me to pick up the bat. But the lessons he taught, were all helpful in making me better person. What amazes me is the "BALANCE" he achieves, be it on the field and off it. Watching him bat is like heaven. I desparately wanted to whistle for his super shots. Alas, that's something I can't practice. That way, he leaves with me a sense of nonaccomplishment.

Did Sachin spoil me or not?  Without him, my childhood would have been deprived of much joy and happiness. Not sure if Sachin's retirement would mark an end to the first quarter of my life or any such things, but surely he's the one who would let the child in me intact. Which means, I can be a kid whenever I feel like and that way, yeah.. he did spoil me. It's tough for people around to handle me as a kid, and when going gets tough, people just start complaining.  ;-)

(This is "half baked" stuff from me.  Supposed to be posted on Nov 17th! Untimely too.. )

Oh.. these farewells!

Just got started with "Catcher in the Rye" by Salinger and was pondering on the following text.

..I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.

For the past three years, I've been so busy bidding adieus. Many walked in and walked out. I wish they just did that in and out business and never left such indelible impressions, that made farewells, a lot tougher. To reflect on the past three years and capture them in the words, would be a real tough task! Anyway, lemme keep this post about not individuals, but about the business of doing so.

Farewell, is the most inevitable, yet so tough to handle. Sometimes, I tend to feel that, let there not be any farewells at all. We never celebrate someone walking into our lives, we even don't know when they have walked and when did they become that significant for us; we never really plan and celebrate the moments we have together. It's more or less, like getting along the tide. Then why farewells?

But yeah, the above text has sense in it! Good or bad, it helps to know that you are parting away. Hopeful or hopeless about meeting again, you're sure of that this has come to an end. You most probably would meet again, and start again, but this particular thing has now no future. And having a sense of that, though awful, is a must.

PARTING AND MEETING ARE THE WAYS OF LIFE!