Mumbai is a city of about 10 million people! 10 million forms about 1 percent of the population of my country. What is it about this city that brings people here by thousands everyday. With every passing minute, the city grows; grows in every direction; horizontally, vertically, commercially, population-wise. A walk on a street and by the time one comes back home and collapses into one's chair, one would have probably seen close to ten thousand faces; faces that one cannot even recall. They are just faces in the crowd, insignificant, unattractive, unimportant. And they live on, in their unending routine in their bid to survive and feed themselves and their families. Imagine yourself walking through that crowd and think how many heads would turn to look at you and how many of them would actually remember you at the end of their days. The picture to me is analogous to the army of ants that treads about around the door of my room labouring for their daily piece of bread, sugar, honey or whatever they can get their hands on. We disregard their existence. One can walk over them, stamp them, kill them and not feel a thing. They don't make any difference to the world. They are born, they live and they die. How different are we from them? What difference does the privilege of possessing the sixth sense make to distinguish us as humans and not just another species of insignificant animals inhabiting this place.

I ask myself this question a lot of times. And now, standing at the crossroads of my life, where I wish to choose a path to tread upon, this question has come back and hit me with full force. For the first time in my life, I am terrified with the realization that I do not have an answer to it. What is the purpose of our lives if we are just born, study in school, do a job, earn money, struggle throughout our life and die without anyone knowing about it. It would seem probable that even our relatives won't remember us after a few months. Do I really want to live a life like this?

What makes people great? Great people, huh! A few names crop into my mind, Gandhi, Newton, Einstein, Mozart etc. What is it about them that they have been conferred with the rank of greatness? Why is that people still remember them long after they are dead and people who are not just their relatives or kins or family members. What is it about Adolf Hitler, Alexander the Great and great may tyrants of this world that people care to remember them? Frankly, I could think of only one answer - These are the people who have made a difference to mankind, for good or worse. They dared to think different, do different, succeeded immensely or failed miserably but they stuck to their convictions, braved the world, society, believed in themselves and went about doing their work with utmost determination and passion.

In my life, I want to be one like them. One, who has made a difference to the world, for good or worse, though my efforts would be directed towards the former. I want to be one remembered for centuries. Maybe, through different eras. I want to have my name on the history books in a million years from now. I want to prove that I deserve to be called a human - a species that made a mark in the Universe through its gift of intelligence!

But for now, the question remains - How?

Its four in the morning. I am sitting in my lab with a book open in front of me that, ideally, should be commanding all my attention. But strangely, the fear of examination has not yet made its unwanted, but inevitable, presence in my mind. The ecstacy that followed the success of my stage II presentation is still showing its after effects, duly keeping the exam jitters away though there is also this ever increasing realization in the sub-conscious level that an extended stay of this ecstacy can cost me a course! Yes, the examination is tomorrow and the impending doom accompanying it is already creating reverbrations in the annals of my brain. A compromise on sleep is worthwhile on most accounts and especially in sensitive situations as these. However, in my case it does not hold any meaning as it is lost in the frantic battles of Age of Empire or the adrenalin-raising races of Need for Speed. Finally, as the birds wake up to welcome the sun and witness the crack of dawn, I begin to understand the futility of this exercise; my eyes, along with my sub-conscious have already lost the battle to sleep and the mind, well, convinced by the heart that it can and will do its best tomorrow. And with this hope, I bid adieu to this looooooooong day. Hopefully, the new morning will bring new zeal in me to prepare to combat the challenges of the exam day.

Yaaaaaaay! The slides are done. In another 5 hours, I will be sitting nervously chomping away my nails to glory. The presentation is due in less than six hours now. Waaaaah! I am scared. I am not scared that I may be snubbed or battered by the barrage of questions that might be hurled towards me. The biggest worry that I face is whether I would be able to convince the examiners about the fruitfulness of my work. The most nightmare-ish question for a researcher is "What is the use of your research? It is pure rubbish. It is not anything great or significant" or simply "You have wasted your time, son! Don't fool us by showing us this crap". Whoa! the presenter will definitely piss in his/her pants and I don't intend to wash any of my clothes for at least another week now. Anyway, now I gotta go and prepare the talk well. Damn! the time does fly quickly especially when you want to run along with it.

Sigh! So much to do and so less time! I wonder whether I should go to sleep nowand get up in the morning and complete the rest or should I pursue thistill the break of dawn. There are questions like this that will arise inour lives in different contexts. The answer to each one of them must besame. In my opinion, it arises out of only one phenomenon - Discipline. Inour efforts, we should exhibit enough discipline to keep us focussed toour work and not get easily distracted from the desired objective.

It is like running a marathon race. Wandering minds will make one thinkabout whats to be done in the coming days or what may be cooking in themess tonight resulting in de-focussing from the goal that lies ahead.

I want to develop this discipline. I see a way to do this in Chirag'sapproach. I will run Crossy from tomorrow and see if that helps.

Meanwhile, I wish myself the best of luck for my Stage II presentationtoday.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of man would be the most virtuous man. What qualities should one possess to be a member of this exclusive club? I looked around me for a while, peeked into my soul and asked myself the question. Pat came the reply, "The most virtuous man is the one in love".When a man is in love, he is sincere, honest, kind, spreading happiness, generous, calm, brave, patient etc. He attains a status of bliss where he is lost in a wonderland of extreme happiness. And petty things like jealousy, desires, anger do not matter to him. He doesn't see the usefulness or need for these. All that matters to him is the love of his woman and the pleasure of sitting with her, watching her, lost in her eyes, listening to her sweet voice, the frangrance of her hair taking you into a trance making you forget all the sadness in this world.

Maybe, this is what was meant by Moksh!

There are two kinds of people in this world. One who work very hard. The others do research.

Whenever God gives, he tears the roof and gives. And then you spend the entire sum repairing it...

My friend walked into the lab and sat on a machine..... then came a sound "CRASH" ... he vowed never to sit on a machine again. He'd rather use a chair.