Unreserved

Just today, I was walking down the road i saw these street boys walking, no sliding down the road on these transparency sheets.. and they were just having the time of their life.. they looked so happy! As I walked down the road I stepped over around 20 more of these transparency sheets and I looked at them in wonder.. what ingenuity must have possessed these young boys to use the transparency sheets for such a frivolous but enjoyable task!

And then I thought - would I or my 8 year old brother have EVER thought of using those sheets in any other way? All we might have done would be to pick them up and throw them!

The lateral thinking that those children displayed is not very easy to find.. and to think that 20 years down the line those boys will probably be owning a vegetable cart or at best bus drivers breaks my heart. So many brilliant minds with such great potential are probably out there tilling fields or cooking for a family of 10. Its the complete lack of opportunity that so many could-be Amartya Sens or C.V Ramans are being lost in the web of poverty..

The government is obviously trying, or making a fancy show of it. The heavy caste-based reservations made sense in the early years of independence when the maximum population below poverty line were in these SCs or STs or OBCS.. but now, most of the population who belong to the SCs and STs and are using the reservation to enter the colleges, are from as good a background as the non-SC an non-ST population. In fact, one of my batch mates who is an SC is now going to IIT though his classmates who went to the same coaching classes isn't despite him being much higher in terms of merit.

Does it really make sense to give away to students the seats that they could have earned through the general category.. Would it not be much more beneficial for the aid or special help to be given to those students who cannot afford the education? deserving students who cannot pay the comedk fees? or maybe income based reservation?

If its not blatantly obvious by now that the system is unfair at best, Its got to be worth considering atleast to make some basic amends to the current education system!

Wanderlust - 5 More Barca ...

In the process of "absorbing" city life, we toured the La Sagrada Familia - Anton Gaudi, the greatest Modernisme architect the world has known. The Familia is his piece de resistance, an as yet incomplete work - left so because of his untimely death due to being run over by a tram. What an ordinary death for so extraordinary a man. It is said that in the last 10 years of his life he became so obsessed with his work that he no longer cared for food or clothing. His hair had grown to disguise his face beyond recognition and it took over a week for his dead body to be identified.

The work in itself is like no other. There contains not one straight line in the whole structure, everything is a series of curves. The stairways are winding and steep to the point of inducing vertigo, each tower leaves your mouth gaping and head aching with the unusual. Its funny how we marvel so much at variations of the same structure time and again. In Italy or The UK, different versions of the same gothic design are photographed copiously for their "architectural brilliance".. Why?! They are al the same with a tower or a spire placed in a slightly different location. Here we have somebody who literally invented a whole style from his own imagination. And more than half the world has barely even heard of him. That, I think is a great tragedy. In fact people have gone as far as ridiculing his work-in-progress as grostesque and lacking all aesthetically pleasing element.

I think if they came to see the Familia at night-time, they would beg to differ.

This evokes another interesting question on art - is art about innovation and creativity and creating something that's absolutely fresh and new and never seen before, or is art just about pleasing the eye. Unsettling things are hard to get used to , so now there is a contradiction born.

However, once a new, refreshing idea is used time and again, it grows on the eye and becomes pleasing to watch. In my opinion, art should be more about innovation even if it lacks a certain beauty to it. But that, i think, is a question for artists to resolve.

wanderlust 4 .. the Barcelona!

After much delay, Barcelona finally arrived. On the flight, we reached a point where all the clouds were right below us and the sky above... the puffs of white stood out like perfect bleached cotton candy and it took almost everything I had to restrain myself from breaking the glass and jumping into those gorgeous pieces of heaven. The urge to touch as beyond overwhelming. at the same time, it was scary. The clouds resembled snow-capped mountain peaks so closely and the turbulence added to the feeling of running into a massive range. It was the most unusual sight to see. Just shutting my book and watching it seemed to be the only thing I could do.

Once we landed in Barcelona (heretofore referred to as BCN), the shops were again jaw-dropping with their colourful, unattainable displays... Sigh! the city was a whole new story. It was so perfectly clean so distincty european with absolutely nothing marring its oh-so-perfect facade with buildings right from the Medieval period to Gaudi's Modermisme with were both strange and irresistible simultaneously...

In our quest for our room, we arrived at La Rambla, the biggest and most famous street in Barcelona with roaring nightlife, quaint cafes and flamenco dancing - basically, the works.

The Montmartre of Spain! We turned into our apartment road and we were greeted by grafittied walls, skateboarding punks and africans with dubious motives. It made me wonder what it must feel like to live in a city like this, perpetually surrounded by beautiful things wherever you turn. Does one live in eternal awe of your city, like a tourist at home, or does this sort of extreme loveliness just grow on you? How it must overwhelm - every single day!

But there also lies the flipside of this coin...The city is filled with immigrants from Asia - Filippinos, Indians, Pakistanis who own souvenir shops, restaurants and groceries. They are barely citizens, living forever on the peripheri of the city and not belonging. They would always remain outsiders and life for them is a grapple for the hook. They don't belong. Its one thing to live in poverty in your native country, but its another to be in a foreign place where you know neither the language nor the culture. Just talking to the Indians there, who's eyes filled with gratitude and joy to be able to talk in their mother tongue to a customer made me realize that no matter where int he world we go, where we live and what we do, home for us will always be our country... Its the only place we will always feel truly wanted and like we belong. Anywhere else, we will forever remain outsiders. And the life of an outsider is rife with pain and confusion. Of course , it is more exciting, but not for life... It would always remain just another exciting adventure.

Wanderlust -3

So, on the same morning after, i sat in the (old) Airport, waiting for my flight to take-off. I was more excited about the 9 - hour long journey to LHR more than the actual holiday that I would be taking! I have always been, and will always be , a sucker for in-flight entertainment on all long haul flihts. And I had not read a novel in too long for my won good. I had lined up a few good reads - some intellectual stimulation and the emotional challenge to pander to my varying plethora of moods.

After 9 hours in the BA flight, shuffling between economy and business class and 2 adrenaline filled movies and TV shows, we finally arrived at LHR. London is one city I am an eternal fan of. There is something so comforting and welcoming about its cold heat and frigid cold that makes you want to stay despite everything. Its like the city, through the sunny fog, stretches its hands out to you, just beckoning you to come , no matter where your origin lies. That is the beauty of this city, not ignoring the obvious jewels that it has handed out - like Hyde Park and the Tate Modern.

At the airport, we spent the four hours in the business class lounge which my mother smuggled me into. It is a waxy heaven, so perfect , so idyllic, that for a short haul, its the perfect place to be but for any longer, you begin to wonder if you are being enveloped into a world which you don't belong, no matter who you are. its perfect but artificial. All the food is overwhelming, yet tantalizing and the multi-nozzle showers are like a temptress, just waiting to be showered in, with the branded shower gels and shampoos. The single best thing about the Lounge is KETTLE CHIPS. the single greatest creation by the international junk food federation. The name sounds fancy , but it tastes even better. The whole experience is worth going through at some point in life for all of us.

Duty-free airport shopping, is quite a deceipt in word-play. The prices of all the big brands are so high that any concession that "duty-free" could offer are more than nullified. But this again hails from the same waxy worth that I spoke of earlier. So perfect, so covetable but yet so unrealistic that in the long run it is just not worth it. Everything about the LHR is something like that.

As we waited for the connection to Barcelona to arrive, albeit late, I was thankful for small pleasures such as this, where one can escape from any semblance of reality and just exist, in a n environment so perfect and FREE!

The morning after

4.40 am, 12th May : On being so cruelly dragged out of my bed by my multi-snooze alarm, I brushed my teeth about propped my pre-sleeping-bathed-and-dressed self on the dining table. It was then that it all slowly dawned on me once more - who I was and what I was doing and under what circumstances. The thing that struck me the strongest was : I WOULD NEVER HAVE TO STUDY AGAIN! ... Even if I wanted to, I could not study, because I had no clue where I was headed or what I was doing. It seemed like the perfect situation. I hadn't felt this free in nearly four years. First there was NTSE coaching, then studying for the 10th boards, then more NTSE coaching, then IIT coaching. ANd finally the nail hit my head and I realized that I HATED science , and then there was Tuition for CBSE and then LST and now finally it was DONE with. I was off on my holiday and there was no guilt whatsoever.

Ever since I was in the 8th grade, I'd been cringing at my father's constant admonisions, "Go study, you're acting like your 12th standard is over"! And now finally, after everything, it was! There was nothing anybody could say that would dim my spirits.

The morning after - it could not have been better. And the best part was, it did not feel like a half- hearted attempt. It was not some excuse for hard-work or effort. It had been a consistent stream of work and I was satisfied.

Indulgence indeed

Short -comings and goings

A recent discovery I made was that great people are not perfect. Big Surprise!

I was going through an article in Fortune magazine about Steve Jobs, a veritable God in his industry, and my gosh, he is just like the rest of us! He is mean when he's in a bad mood, he shouts at his employees, is arrogant to a fault... This article came as quite a revelation to me and at quite an opportune moment when I was grappling with the sudden and monumental realization of how terribly flawed I am, and everybody else is...

That cliche - Nobody's Perfect, finally made sense to me.. Its not the people who are perfect who become successful or content or leaders in the world, its those who pull through despite their flows. They seem to accept the flaws and leave them aside, not letting their shortcomings become them...

It might seem like I am adopting a preachy tone, though I certainly don't mean to be, but the whole event just came as a complete shock to me and I was left knocked out of my senses. Suddenly, I found myself trying to see how I should accept the fact that I tend to be self-centered at times and impatient and if I want to stay who I am, I need to just learn to live with it and, if possible, make occasional amends wherever I can to make life simpler for myself and everybody else around me.

And quite often accepting your faults and learning to live with them are far more difficult than actually deciding to change them. Because when you decide to change, it seems that it will all be better and different. In this alternate scenario, however, all your flaws will be pointed out, time and time again and try as you might to want to change, you'll know deep down that its a part of who you are and that is how it will remain till kingdom come.

Interesting.

Colds in Summer

Like a very poorly immune fool, every so often, I get a cold in the summer. I don't know how or why.. its not the ice-cream, its not the rain, its nothing ... Its just that. And its killer.. for some reason it feels like the sign of a weakling. Not one cold all through winter and monsoon, but when summer dawns.. Tada! *achooo*

That reminds me... as a child I was called "akshu" which unfortunately sounds very very similar to "achoo"... whooops.. wait tillmy friends find out, that's gonna be one long laugh riot.

And, yes, going on holiday is a good enough sxcuse to neglect a blog. Fear not, it will all return

Goodbye to everybody!