All this while ...

Three years after graduation, I am still struggling to fit myself in this world. Every morning I wake up and there is an urge to explore, to do something new. Then my mind begins to wander about the thing I really want to be. And still I fail to find a perfect answer to it. Apparently speaking, I know that I can be anything I desire to be. But the thought of doing that thing long enough takes away the charm from it.

Some people call it quarter-life crisis, other blame it to my over-skeptical nature. I call it my struggling phase where I find it difficult to choose one over other. I like all of it and I like none of it. There are books which classify my personality type as ENTPs and other call me the Da Vinci Types. Well these very people forget that my personality type hates all classification and characterization of themselves. But even this does not resolve my problem. 

 

Hope I will find my answer soon enough, till then I guess the struggle is on :)

Connecting back

It's been long since I last posted. See my earlier posting got me in so much thinking that I actually resigned one fine day to EXPLORE !!

I changed my location to Delhi and am doing some early crazy job which I never imagine myself doing. Thankfully that wouldn't continue for long too. But one think I must admit, one year now - between loving and hating Delhi, I have begun to admire the Spirit of Delhi. 

On the surface, it appears to be a loud, crowded place where one bus carries people thrice its seating capacity. A place where it is easy to loose yourself in the sham and not-so-sham "glamour". But on looking closely each of these lives has millions of stories to tell. The living conditions - be it weather or the limited resources such as bus space or metro space, are so harsh here that it takes a lot to survive here. I truly believe that in some social experiment, if we put some civilized people in this setting, they would end up  being much worse.

Like all other form of life, in the bid to survive we humans too become apathetic to the needs of fellow humans . Forget about ethics, culture and civilized way of living. The harsher the living conditions, worse this apathy becomes. All one is concerned about is getting one's work done. This gut-wrenching sight is easily visible in the daily life of this city with a humongous population. But complementing this philosophy is the totally contradictory picture. A place where people go an extra-mile to help you. A place which welcomes strangers with open heart. 

As vague as I might sound, one has to be in this place to experience it.  For now, I just hope I will be able to better understand this city to publish more about it :)

An Alternate Profession

On the weekdays,after spending 10 hours on optimizing the code to give a increased throughput, the chances of my mind boggling me with the need to optimize my life are happily diminished. But on weekends with nothing else to work on, this army of thoughts raises its arms against my vulnerable self, pestering me to think if I were not a radio communication engineer, what else I could be. 

Gullible enough, some six months back I fall into this all-too-luring trap. And thence began my greater search to find myself. So all I used to do on every weekend was pick up a profession, place myself in the shoes of the person in  the same field and imagine how my daily routine would be if I were that person. And this led to some exciting, some really crazy and some dreadful moments.

The first weekend I wanted to be travel writer, who would go to some god forsaken places in the Alps. Though now I seriously doubt the existence of such place after Yash Raj Films, being motivated by its philanthropic instincts have decided to film every nook and corner of that place, so that the Indians don't have to waste their lucre going to those place. Anyways, when I was contemplating on being a travel writer, the proposal seems too exciting and I was all ready with a backpack, when I suddenly realised I have one month's notice period, so I have some more time to do research on the what all places I can travel to - like go Java, Sumatra or Baku (this one is the Location field in orkut profile of some of my friends). Postponing these searches for the next weekend, I go to office on Monday and remember suddenly that sine followed by cosine instruction is where all the backlog is occurring. And In this endless bid to make it work faster, I forgot to resign.

Now comes the "next weekend". Since I kept on forgetting to resign for a week now, the patience to wait for one more month before I backpack again, left me. So what else? The thing which Adam Sandler does in 50 first dates seems exciting :) Yeah just play around in the sea with seals and dolphins in the nice balmy weather. Ahh what a bliss ! But what qualifications do I need to be a Wildlife Vet for,I realised that, if it didn't require a qualification everyone would have been doing that . May be it is not that idea. May be I would not be as fortunate as Sandler to go to Hawaii. So next weekend lets think of something less dicy.

Another nice sunny weekend in Bangalore, and my love for books bring me to Landmark. Oh Yes. Now I know what I could be. I could be someone like JK Rowling, writing some fiction for kids. See not many people write for kids anyways and with Harry Potter series coming to an end, I have a good chance of making big in this profession. And thanks to Microsoft Word Spell Check, I wouldn't be needing too many people to do proof reading. Done then. All I have to think is What all characters, what the plot should be like and other such sundry details. I can centre the first book around a girl (Another Harry Potter is not a good idea after all ). Lets call her.. hmm... having studied in an All Girls' Convent finding a name should not be difficult -- Aditi. But it sounds more elite name. Let it be Meera then - a more docile name. But what would she do? May be next weekend I can think about it, starting afresh Lets complete the outline of the plot by next weekend.

And so on and so forth. The height of this crazy search reached when I was dancing in the baraat of one of my cousin to the beats of the dhol and suddenly the perpetual enthusiam and smile on the face of that dhol wala made me think - How his daily routine has to be?

It was then I knew I have to stop, else next thing I would be wondering would be about the daily routine of the ward boys in a mental asylum :D I guess like other people,I should stick to browsing orkut and facebook from now on.

I Me Myself

There are days in one's life when one wakes up and feels the need to connect with something deep within,for everything else seems hollow, artificial, illusionary.
Today is one such day of my life when this meek little voice, which I have comfortably ignored for days now, is not letting me rest. As I was flipping through the newspaper, I came across the interview by Jean Marie Gustavo Le Clezio, the Nobel Laureate for Literature,2008. When the question:
"Is there some unifying purpose in why you write?"
His Reply:
"Literally, writing for me is like travelling. It's getting out of myself and living another life, maybe a better one"
This instantly drives my thought train to my blog where I sign as a "Traveler" and 10 minutes later I find myself writing this post and since then has mind has become a emotional cauldron, where I am exhilarated, thoughtful and regretful all at the same time.

Exhilarated because I am being a traveler again, this time traveling through the labyrinth of my deep, suppressed corners. I realised that though I was never a regular blogger, but suddenly one day, I just stopped writing. The activity which gave me an opportunity to "connect" was lost. In retrospect the only reason that I can think of for this insane decision was the fear of turning into "just another blogger", just another person.

But I have realised that it is not that bad to be just another person as long as one is doing what one loves to do. The desire to be "someone, someone else" has hounded me for long. But when I talked about it to my friends about it, to my dismay, I was not the only one in that queue. Was this the manifestation of other more mundane desires- desire to be rich, famous, powerful? Though these desires are now subsided by my passion for the work, but it continues to amuse me how almost everybody is vying for same thing. As if when everybody is born the doctor secretly whispers into our ears "Your purpose in life is to seek Fame, Riches and Power".

But if a close attention is paid to the achievers of these most coveted goodies, one would realise that people who are actually famous (I am not talking about 15 minutes fame stories) are the ones who never wanted to be famous. It is like they shunned it, spurred it and Fame came looking for them like a dog seeking its master.

No, I am not saying I don't value all these things, it's just that I have stopped worshiping them.

May be it will take some more crests and troughs in my life before I reach a final decision on this one, but one thing is for sure, blog writing is back wid me :)

Happy Anniversary

It's almost an year since I got into the grind of salaried job. This one year was a roller coaster ride for me, witnessing the deepest satisfaction, tumultuous frustration, outrageous ego clashes and boisterous laughs. This all was intertwined with restlessness, urge to move out and get something done.

One of the most amazing thing that I realised during this while is that not everybody wants to grow. People/ organizations find pleasure in maintaining their current position and would like to continue doing it throughout their life. These things are either too contented or too concerned. Who knows for sure !!!This came as a hard bite to swallow for me, but nevertheless it is true.

Another interesting thing that I confirmed for myself was the cliched belief that one should always be doing things which one loves doing. That way you will never be working and rest of it does not count. If you want to do something different, first check your own motivation and strength for the same. Because in the long run, you will find yourself running your own race in a vacuum and it might be a long long race. Pretty cliched right !!!

Well the list is long and I will like to put more concrete results sometime later :) Presently I will just like to raise a toast to myself for surviving through this time.

Bangalore

This is the best of the times to be in Bangalore. A place thronging with people; people- with dreams and aspirations, with passion, courage and hope to turn every of their dream into reality. A place where opportunities galore and possibilities appear infinite. A place where people are mostly in early to mid 20s, all trying to be as maverick as they can be, all trying to push themselves to their ultimate limit.

Meet them and in the BLINK of the moment what you experience is a strong undercurrent of restlessness, some unabated force.

Meet some of my seniors from college, who have quit their jobs only to follow their hearts and start their own ventures. Ventures which they can bring up and nurture just like their child, which can add value to the life of the people. Something which can narrow the difference between technology and people (this).

Then meet my gym instructor, who, born and brought up in the conditions where he had barely hand to mouth to live on. But now day and night, he lives with the dream to have his own gym. The way he amiable, energetic and relentlessly push people to go on, it is not very hard to see that he is definitely inching towards his dreams, every single day.

Also meet a friend of mine, for whom all the juggleries of technology have become a passe. Who goes to sleep everyday thinking -- all what I am doing might be very stimulating for my intellectual self, but what I am doing with it -- How I am helping the people who die of hunger everyday or who are left by their own folks? May be he will be able to answer all these questions for himself one day.May be not, but he thinks, which may be a good start, to say it to the least.

I may be sounding a lot gaga about the whole thing. May be I am seeing it all through the rose-coloured spectacles but somehow I can only experience the force which is unstoppable, invincible -- all pushing upwards.

Dreams ...

I wanted to write about this for a long time now. But somehow could not get enough heart to do it. Finally, last sunday when i was skimming through the Sunday Times of TOI, I read about mid day meal scheme, how popular it is becoming in attracting children to the schools and how more money should be pumped into such similar schemes.
I agree that such schemes help in drawing a large number of children and teachers alike to the school. But are we not missing the BASIC point here? Is the basic motivation for all this - just to draw students to the school? Is it not to impart elementary skills (reading , writing) and basic knowledge about themselves and the world around and how they can use this knowledge to their advantage? Is it not to make them feel less alienated in this world? If it is all this then I don't know how many schools are actually accomplishing it.
The one that I visited almost an year back was not.

This particular school- a small ramshackled building in a narrow serpentine lane, was located in a village near my college. During a last semester of B.Tech, with lot of time to while away, couple of us, decided to go there and teach the students in afternoon. But what I saw there, stirred up medley of emotions (helplessness, pity to name a few) in me.

It was a primary school till 5th standard, with just two teachers for all the classes, all subjects.
Most of the students (barely-fed and dressed) came to school, motivated by food. This is good in the sense that they get to have atleast one balanced diet a day, but the problem is that the school lasted only till the time food lasted.

Agonised to see the whole thing, we decided to teach them anyways. When i was interacting with some 5th standard students, I was shocked to see that many of them fumbled and faltered while counting till 100. Though we gave them some basic lessons in counting but I don't know how much of one day's gyan will help them. Gradually I began talking to them about array of other simple things which used to intrigue me as a kid. Like how clouds are formed, why sun always rises in the east, how our earth looks and moves. For the last one, I used my right hand folded in a loose fist and tried explaining them how it is revolving around sun, with other hand posed as sun. The curious gleam in their eyes and their awed smile was enough to convince me that they were enjoying the whole process and I can go on explaining.

Then suddenly, I dont know what motivated me to ask them the question--What they wanted to be in Life. Zapped !!! Most of the kids where not very sure of what I was asking, some of them , could not see how is that even related and others just could see their teacher's as the best job in their location.

I remember, at that age when anyone asked me that question... there would be some 100 different, unrelated answers I could give, all at the same time. I wanted to be an astronaut so that I can go on moon, I wanted to a doctor and an IAS officer, Miss Universe and a film actress and thousands of other eclectic stuff. Each of these dreams has motivated me during different part of my life and has given me a reason to be what I am presently.

Then it struck me that may be, just may be I can quip them with dreams which they could nurture and get motivated by. But all in vain, cause I could not get my brain to churn out a decent, intelligent answer.

I don't know who could be blamed for the way the system is presently, but what people like me can least do is fill them with real dreams ... It helps, or so I think.