Latest:
1. Went on a trek to Rajmachi. Enjoyed it.
2. Finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
3. Finally learnt swimming. Can now swim without the annoying "red-cap" on my head. :-)

Do you think Policians are doing their job properly? If not what reforms do you seek from them?Hmmm.. makes an interesting topic. Alas! a straightforward one and absolutely worthless if put in a debate. Politicians, here or anywhere, have never won the satisfaction of the people they govern.

So, do I think they are doing their job properly? The answer to that has been, is and will be NO. Also, let us understand what constitues a politician's job. The answer to this can be either subjective or objectively given. Let us explore each of those aspects one by one.

Subjective: A person comes to me and says, "Hey there! I am Tam, you are a Tam too. I am an Iyer, you are an Iyer too. I am a Hindu, you are a Hindu too. We have always been neglected by the government.These blah blah.. rules are against our interests. VOTE FOR ME. I will ensure we people get JUSTICE."

Another one comes and says, "Hey there! I am a fellow citizen of this country. I see there were so many poor people living in the slums. I want to bring their standard of living up. I want to provide them proper shelter and food. I want to give employment to the unemployed. Btw, I do not have any specific agenda for any specific community."

And I think.. boy! the first person is doing so much for me. What the hell do I care for those people living in the slums. If I am able to get the blah blah.. laws twisted in my favour, me and my children can lead a better life in the society. Let me vote for him/her. The first candidate gets elected, does whatever he had promised to me to ensure that my loyalty to his party does not digress in the next election. The poor are left where they are. I am happy and I do not care if the candidate, in the meantime, has creamed off some of the government money.

To me, the politician works just fine and as long as he is in power, I am happy.

Objective: This is an extremely difficult answer to give. "It is impossible to keep everyone happy all the time". To understand and appreciate what constitutes true progress of our society, even if some of our own individual benefits are hurt in the process, takes a lot more than just literacy or awareness. To me, society is like a huge team where we all are playing a part to take the team ahead. Team-work is the key here. Anyone who gets individualistic hampers the working of the entire team.A few things that an average Indian lacks today are discipline, education (mind you, this is different from literacy), patience, self-esteem and contentment. Most of us carry a tendency to break rules especially when one is asked not to. Most of us are not educated enough to think rationally, scientifically and intelligently. We all want quick results, and will do anything to achieve it. This is evident in reckless driving that we all face on our chaotic roads, crowding at a ticket counter when a queue is mandatory, bribing officials to let our applications through the official machinery faster even though the machinery is fast enough etc.

Also prevalent is the tendency to foolishly and fanatically follow any individual or organization without analyzing their activites, falling at their feet and go on to cause trouble to others, if confronted. The great ancient Indian quality - Contentment is something that we no longer carry. We would still need the best shoes, the best car, the biggest TV, a big house, the best jewelleries, the best clothes etc. We support capitalism (which I equate to pure greed) that leads to exploitation of every available resource around us. But hey, who cares as long as I have all the materialistic pleasures in the world.

Without the above essential ingredients, it is impossible to even expect people to form a notion of what it takes to propel a nation forward. As long as an Indian looks at one's benefit and convenience before others', we will continue to elect politicians who will have self-centered outlook towards the people, soceity, their duties and towards the nation.

Hence, an objective answer to the question whether our politicians are doing their job properly is difficult.

To surmise, I can say politicians do what their people want. To take care of their self-interests. If tomorrow people were to wake up smarter, things would change. It is difficult, especially in a democratic setup, for a government to function against the wishes of its people. Politicians are selfish by nature. They would indeed even work for the welfare for the entire soceity and the country, IF ONLY THE PEOPLE WANT IT.

How do we improve the situation? Well, the initiation for this has to come out of us. We are the new generation. We have to improve ourselves, our outlook, our mindset. We have to think beyond ourselves and think for the country. Not only this, but also propagate this attitude in the next generations. Only then, would the situation improve. It will take some time, but it will definitely happen.

If one ever needs any reason to understand why there are millions in this world who still listen to Ghazals, here are some of them:

1.

Ranjish hee sahee, dil hee dukhaane ke liye aa...

aa phir se mujhe chhod ke jaane ke liye aa....

Oh darling! If you are upset, at least come to admonish me. If only to leave me again, you must come to meet me.

2.

Maikade band karen lakh zamaane waale..

shehar mein kam nahi aankhon se pilaane waale.

The world might close all the wine-bars.. but there is nostopping me from getting intoxicated by the sheer beauty ofa woman's eyes.

3.

Tere pyaar ne mujhe gham diyaa, tere gham ke umra daraaz ho...

Voh zamaana aaye khuda kare, mere pyaar par tujhe naaz ho ...

I have suffered in your love, may you equally suffer too. May Godmake you understand the importance of my love one day.

Try as I might to maintain the emotions of these "Sher"s in the English translation, they can never match the sheer beauty of the original language.

If there is one quality that separates Human Beings from other creations of God on this earth, it is the ability to communicate with peers. From the times of cavemen, when Men (pardon me for my chauvinism; considerate people may read it as Men/Women) started painting on the walls of his cave or invented other extraneous signs besides the natural gifts of sounds or facial expressions that natured has bestowed upon him, was the wheel of communication set to roll, the termination of it is unimaginable as the end of time. The advent of a script to represent verbal language added a new dimension to communication. But the beauty of communication has never been better expressed than from one's own mouth. Even today, expression of one's love for another finds its way out of heart more often through the mouth than the hand.

Human creativity reached its peak, when he added dimensions of time and scale to his speech and invented something that has become such inseparable part of our life that its presence is almost taken for granted. This, which I dare term the greatest invention of Mankind, is Music. So integral to our lives has Music become, that life without it is something that I even shudder to think. It is a universal language; one that touches the hearts of millions regardless of the inherent differences that most Humans would like to believe they carry with respect to another specimen of the same species. It is indeed amazing how a sequence of notes can make one cry, laugh, or jump with joy.

It is a gift handed down to us from our ancestors that we must cherish and preserve.

There are certain moments in life when one has to make some very difficult decisions; decisions that may make or break one’s dream, alter the course of one’s life and possibly other’s too. Dilemmas, in their ever-annoying form, shake the confidence of even God when confronted with situations from which there is no pre-defined escape route. It is then that one is compelled to choose one among the two paths in front; one, that is easy, convenient to follow as one knows the way, but certainly will not take one to one's goal, and there is one that is difficult, unknown, unexplored, yet will provide one immense happiness if it takes one to one's desired destination. Moments like these make life what it is – an unpredictable, unseen, exciting adventure.

What is it that makes dilemmas an annoying, nerve-wrecking experience when the choice before one seems to be so obvious as to merit immediate attention and not result in any hesitation at all? Ironic it is! Fear, in one of its innumerable forms, takes its toll here too. Human Being has always sought convenience. The undying hunger for increasing convenience propels the mankind toward creating and identifying new methods to achieve his or her ambitions. Convenience could be material, emotional or physical. Fear of losing it is overwhelming enough to make one stop and re-think the path that one has chosen to follow. What is it then that gives people the courage to take the plunge and set about on the unexplored path that is so conveniently left, well unexplored? What has made people over the centuries to brave the current and swim in the other direction? The answer to that lies the in golden gift from God to mankind – Love. It is the dream of attaining the immeasurable happiness at the end of the ordeal of the unexplored path that propels one towards it.

However, following the other path does not always guarantee paradise. This is where the gamble of life comes into play and this is where one has to take one’s chances if one has any intentions of winning anything out of it. One may end up on the losing side but then unless one tries one may never ever be able to attain something that one so desperately desired.

In our lives, there are a few moments when one experiences a strong sense of love, desire and passion for someone when one dreams about a wonderful future with the other pictured in it. There arises a feeling of an ever-lasting relationship with one’s beloved; a relation of love, caring, belonging, trusts etc. It is truly amazing how the beauty of one, physical or otherwise, enchants the other to such an extent. While there is one school of thought that seems to attribute this to Fate, there is another that discards this idea of a super-natural role in our lives. According to the latter, love arises out of acquaintances, of the close nature, when one spends an adequate amount of time with the other to understand and appreciate him/her. To some, seeds of love are borne in a friendship.But is falling in love, in the shroud of friendship, justified? Is it not cheating on one’s trust? One who trusted you with all that a friendship demands suddenly faces a question that requires one to discard all the notions and trust that one had built around you and start afresh, only this time with an added ingredient of intimacy. Seems far-fetched, and justifiably so. This is where the fear makes its unwanted appearance. A relation that was convenient to all, where everyone was happy with the course of things, had to be jeopardized for one person’s desire of that extra love. One fears the loss of a friend for want of the intimacy that one has so desperately wanted over a period of time and that one desires to receive from the other person. And that is when the seeds of doubt are sown and a dilemma is born.

The obvious convenient path would be to compromise oneself with the existing situations and tread upon the known and tested path. The other, of course, would be to follow the unknown and wait for the outcome. If it is success, the joy has no bounds. If it is not, then one has to find new ways to achieve it. Upon what theory then should our efforts be based? What would ensure success in situations as these where the probability of a loss, which would be colossal, is much more than the success which would of course be unimaginable? The answer to that again lies in the words of wise men – Honesty is the best policy. A person with a clear conscience has nothing to fear. So long as men have practiced honesty in their efforts and intentions, they have had none to fear, not even God. A voluntary disclosure of one’s love for other as and when it happens is the only way the sanctity of friendship as well as the purity of love can be maintained regardless of the nature of the outcome. A pure mind with a pure heart is blessed by God’s love and all that one requires to do is keep the faith.

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.

well... i don't have exactly much to say now. currently have a project to complete.. so till the time it is over..nbd will get better of me...