I don’t want a Smartphone

The quest for the true purpose of life is an eternal one. Very few people actually get to a stage when they say that they’ve realized their purpose of living on this earth; as a human being. But in this fast moving, tech savvy world where 20 somethings have to chose a career as soon as they are out of school, it is not a question which really matters.

I say this from experience (I am just 20 something old, so I might not have as many data points) that no one I have spoken to has given me a convincing answer to this question. And mind you, I don’t ask them about the purpose of my life, but their own. I bet you’ve had this discussion with friends sometimes; doesn’t matter whether it was a sober discussion or not. The answer to this question is like a key to bliss; or perhaps not. Actually depends on how you define bliss. For some people, bliss means having lots of monetary resources, some want fame, others want power. But make me meet just one person, who says he knows what he is doing in life and that is what he really feels his purpose in life is. I don’t think that’s an easy task by any measure.

A lot of people don’t do what they want to do mainly because, it is not as highly rewarding financially, or it requires monetary investment, or a certain level of risk. A lot of people just do something because it pays them well. And they go ahead and buy nice merchandise which they probably don’t need in order to “keep up” with the society. So they’d buy air-conditioners in Bangalore, Audi cars and super smart 4G equipped phones. It feels great doesn’t it? What do you get out of it?

Bangalore is a temperate enough place that one can manage in a ceiling fan even in the hottest months. Buying an air-conditioner there is wastage of resources. You are wasting the power generated in a power deficient nation. In many villages even today there is no power. Have you ever given a thought to that before buying your fancy air-conditioner? A normal car which is more fuel efficient does the same thing as the Audi. It gets you to your workplace and back. But again, buying the Audi is a wastage of resources. You are wasting the fuel of a planet which is consuming fuel faster than it can ever replenish. So why are these products which we actually don’t need so successful?

The companies manufacturing these products know that people are like sheep. If one rich guy goes ahead and buys their product, the others will follow suit. And they use this as a very effective marketing strategy. So have you ever given a thought about people who don’t have a roof over their heads or potable drinking water or food to fill their stomachs? I don’t speak about socialism or Marxism for that matter. I speak about humanity, and the need to utilize resources efficiently. Being the most intelligent species on the planet, makes us accountable for at least that. Our decisions impact not only the human race but the entire 2 million species on the planet.

So before you buy the latest Ipad, ask yourself whether you really need one or not.

Yours Truly

Most of the time of our life is spent on going about life. We learn about different things, the world, the universe etc. Many of us tend to specialize in our knowledge. But we never stop to learn about our own selves. We don’t have a subject in school or college which helps us understand ourselves better. So wouldn’t it be safe to assume, we don’t know much about ourselves. Some people do try and introspect and learn about themselves, some succeed, for others the search is an eternal one. 

We live this life not for ourselves. We live for our loved ones and close ones; friends and family. The better one realizes this, the happier they’d be. The true recognition of self is also closely related to friends and family. They are the mirrors who show us how we are when we don’t know anything about ourselves. Why do you think, “Tell me about yourself” is a difficult interview question? Well, because we don’t know much about ourselves, that’s why. 

A true friend is one who reflects every bit of your self and makes you aware of your strengths and weaknesses. The clumsy friend absorbs everything, not letting you know. The latter might think that they’re protecting you, but they are making you vulnerable instead. Knowledge is power and knowledge of oneself can lead to salvation. It is weird coming from someone who doesn’t believe in God, but I do think there is something called salvation; eternal peace and solace. 

We are such weird creatures, we seldom know what we feel or want. Ask someone, what they want to do in life and you’d get bewildered looks. Sometimes the question answers itself when you aren’t thinking about it. Sometimes you realize how much you miss someone when you’re not with them. And you find your mind filled with their thoughts and your eyes filled with tears. If you ask me, we humans are probably a marvel, one of its kind race. If there was a superior race and they examined us physically and psychologically, they’d be astounded beyond their wildest imagination.

So what is the way to realize oneself truly? I’d say it depends person to person. The biggest role of shaping a person is the way they are brought up and the kind of company they’ve been with. Someone can find themselves while playing a sport, others might find themselves meditating, or maybe in a laboratory, or maybe on top of mountain peaks. People who discover themselves are very very fortunate. They discover the true meaning of life. They achieve eternal bliss. 

Emoticons

They walk down the stairs out into the open. They aren’t looking at each other. The walk towards the bus stop. She walks ahead of him. They look content with their lives, or so is their demeanor. They sit down at the bus stop. He takes her hand into his. In a few moments, his arm is around her neck. She doesn’t like it. She is unaware that it is his way of showing closeness. She shakes his hand off. She has hit him in the place which hurts him the most; his ego. He gets up and starts walking. His steps clearly reveal that he doesn’t want to walk away, but he forces himself to walk nevertheless. She calls out to him but he doesn’t even look back. She goes down to her phone and probably calls him on his phone for he is now quite far away. After realizing that he wouldn’t take her call, she gets up and walks towards him. Instinctively, looks behind and sees her coming. He wants to smile, but forces himself not to. She comes to him and they speak about something. They sit down at another bench. They are both silent. He starts speaking to her, probably telling her what his gesture meant, she on the other hand makes it clear to him that she didn’t like the way the gesture was made. His ego is hurt even more and he shows his unhappiness by being silent, but his expressions say it all.

Human expressions are something which is way more complex than any mathematical or scientific problem. It is just that we deem them to be natural and inferior to spend as much money on studying them as other scientific problems. It is the brain which creates the emotions, but do you know that our facial expressions play an unfathomable role not just in displaying our emotions but in their genesis as well. Doesn’t your expression become one of sadness when you see a sad person? Doesn’t a smile spring on your face when you see a cute little infant playing? Now picture this, your brain tells you to be happy, but the smile is the body’s way of telling your brain that you are truly happy. This is why people who inject their faces with excess botox cannot feel emotions after a while.

But what have emotions become today? People log in to Facebook and like something. They write “lol”, “rofl”, “lmao” even though they really did not mean it. They wouldn’t have laughed out loud, heck they wouldn’t have even smiled, but they write it nevertheless. When they want to show their smile they make a smiley. But the technological innovators who introduced the smileys forgot that human emotions are much more complex than just smileys. A smile can mean a lot of things in a lot of different situations. It can be innocent, it can be cruel, or it can be indifferent and fake. But you can’t tell what kind of a smile the person who made the smiley is giving, or is there any smile at all or not.

A few years down the line when you buy a new computer, the computer would take pictures of your emotions and use the same in online conversations. But alas, even that wouldn’t be real. A true smile is a thing of beauty; nothing can ever replace the true emotion of happiness displayed by a smile.

If I were to narrate the story written above with force in my voice, a lot of people would get the feeling that the girl and the guy had broken up and were no more friends. However, if I used a smooth and soft connotation, people would believe that they were a couple facing a few emotional problems which is natural.

No technology can replace true emotions. You’d never feel the same when a person leaves a smiley in your inbox and when they smile at you with their eyes radiant with happiness.

In Plain Sight

I don’t know if anyone of you have ever felt this way; but the more I study and read and acquire information, the less significant and ignorant I think I am. The sheer amount of information and the diversity of it, makes me feel trifling and completely ignorant if nothing else. It seems we live in a world where information is power. However, you’d have to agree that the amount of information that we hold in our heads is not even an iota of the information that can be acquired in a lifetime. Knowledge if not power, definitely leads to a good way of life which is sustainable and has meaning in itself. Most of us however, are illiterate with respect of meaning of life. We just serve as cogs and wheels of the vehicle of society which makes us the way we are.

In this world of utter chaos and ignorance, I feel that even the things which lie in plain sight are not visible as clearly as they should be. This is what I call the theory of Multiple Veils.

Every human being possesses certain perspectives and points of view which are unique. For instance, a person would justify “an eye for an eye” while another would condemn it. Everything which is in plain sight isn’t all that obvious. Let us now list these so called Veils.

The first veil which covers our eyes is the veil of society. When you think and act upon something or take a decision, you think of how people around you would react to that. Your decision may be influenced by this. This is the first veil; the veil of society. So while looking at something with your own eyes, you prefer to see it with the eyes of the people around you first; judging yourself. For instance, a rich person would never let their kid marry a poor person, however caring, loving or productive and ambitious the person might be because it would be frowned upon in society.

The next veil which clouds our perfect vision is the veil of religion and cast. If you ask me, man himself made God and not the inverse. And if you ask why man made Him, it’s pretty obvious. In times of desperation, impoverishment and need man needed a being which he could look up to. Something which could give him hope and solace. This was the advent of God. And yet, we let ourselves cloud our vision with something which has been “tradition” for the past thousand years and why? Because someone someday in the past acted in a certain way and we are expected to act the same way they did. So when Hindus condemn cow eating Christians, they forget that they themselves kill chicken or fish which are living beings too. However, since the cow is holy to them, they wouldn’t kill it but resort to killing chicken or fish. This is what I call the veil of religion.

The next veil is a very thick one; so thick that it’s very difficult to look past it. It’s the veil of money and materialistic possessions. All our life we are taught that the more we own, the bigger and better persons we are. We are taught that in order to be happy, one has to be rich and not just rich, filthy rich. So in order to be happy, we base our day to day decisions on money and materialism. The sole purpose of our life is to acquire earthly possessions.

The last veil that constitutes the clouding to our vision what I call the Veil of Circumstantial Convenience. This veil is what every decision we make in our life boils down to. We might condemn something which we might promote otherwise had the circumstances been different. We base our decisions the way we feel is best at that very moment. This veil is almost always connected to the prior veil of money as that is the sole motivation behind the decision and that defines circumstantial convenience. So we make friends based on who would be more resourceful to us in the long run. We work in companies which pay better and leave the job when we find some other company which pays even more.

In short, all the veils combine together to provide us the perfect shielding against clearly looking at something from a true perspective. So it is not untrue that what we see is seldom the complete truth, but just what we want to see.

 

Last Names

It was the first year in college. A desolate place with lots of friends. All the people in this picture are good friends of mine. I wanted to find another photo which had even more of them, but I couldn’t. So I had to be content with this one. This photo was taken about 6 and a half years ago in BITS Pilani. Sadly enough I am not in the pic. But this pic reminds me of those beautiful days which I spent with these people. Every moment is worth remembering. The skewed bog to person ratio (4 for 32!), the laid back attitude of people and the genuine innocence, as you can clearly see on the faces. There is an anticipation of what is to come in future. I so wish I could go back and relive all those memories. :’(

So in the hostel wing, we had this custom; never call anyone by their first name. However easy the first name might be, or however difficult the second name might be, it was always the last name which was used to identify people. 

Abhinav Banta was just Banta, Prateek Yadav was just Yadav, Arindam Sarkar was just Sarkar (though he had a lot more names ) Anurag Jaipuriar was just Jaipuriar, Ashutosh Mehra was just Mehra, Nikhil Sabharwal was just Sabbu (short for Sabharwal). There were of course exceptions to this rule, but no one knew why the exceptions were there. I guess we never got used to the last names of a few people. “Jain” being a very common last name, new and innovative names had to be invented for people with this last name. Sanket Jain was baba, Vidur Jain was VJ or jaini and so on.

I remember there had been a complaint by the chowkeedar of the hostel to the warden because he had caught a few people going on the roof to sleep in the summer. Apparently that was not allowed. There was a lot of tension in the wing, because the matter was escalated to the Chief Warden who was renowned for his stringent and intolerant attitude. “DC mil jayegi be, kya karenge be” such phrases were being uttered. We all decided that we would go and face the chief warden and see what he has to say. Well, we went (a few of us) and were told to attend a lecture on spirituality and Bhagwad Gita. I still remember, very very few people actually made it to that lecture

Those days the hostel used to echo with songs like, Aashiq Banaya Aapne, Zombie etc. And we thought we were singers and sang karaoke style. Speaking of singing, only one name comes to mind. Mohit Bhambri, I am sorry, that is just Bhambri. This guy used to be the Bryan Adams of the wing. Whenever he had to go to the bathroom, he used to start singing as soon as he left his room. To top it off, his room was almost the one to the rightmost of the wing, so everyone in the following rooms were his audience. 

The awe of LAN, IP messenger, Counter Strike and GL Tron dazzled us for quite a bit. Classes were bunked by most. Those who attended classes slept, I for one slept in a lot of classes

I had the time of my life with these guys. I will never forget those days. This post is a tribute to the whole of Alpha-Q group. And the origin of that name is still a mystery today

Martyrs

I was just browsing facebook as usual. I came across a photograph of a lady officer in uniform saluting a coffin of a martyr. The caption read that she was the wife of the deceased who had died in the Kargil war. I wouldn’t lie, it gave me moist eyes. I couldn’t help think about the mental state of that woman, who was so strong that she did not even shed a tear. I couldn’t stop thinking about how she could contain herself in such circumstances. That my friends, is the stuff the Indian Army is made out of. They may not have the best technology, they might not have the best air support or the best weaponry, but they have the best and strongest people on earth.

This makes me remember my trip to Goa in the past year. I had gone to Goa with a few friends for 3-4 days. We found a suitable place to put up at a reasonable price. It was January 26th and I didn’t want to miss the glorious republic day parade. So I turned on the television and put on the channel it was on. The award ceremony was going on. We were just about to turn to another channel when they announced a Param Vir Chakra for one of the officers who had lost his life in battle. My fingers on remote stopped and relaxed. They further announced how the valiant officer had died trying to protect his country. They informed the public that he was survived by his wife and parents. His wife was asked to collect his award. I thought, if that were to happen, one could expect a lot of tears and crying on the stage.

I was expecting a lady clad in white saree, to come to the stage and shed tears. I thought she’d have to be consoled and hugged. Instead, I see this lady in uniform. The announcer told us that she was a serving Captain in the Indian army. She came to the stage and calmly received the award from the President of India. There was not a single emotion on her face. Her eyes as cold as ice, her face as strong as steel and her emotions hidden away quietly inside. It was so touching that I had tears in my eyes. How can a lady be so strong; I thought.

I am myself an army kid, so I know how it is. They are not just giving their time to do a job like normal people. They are giving up their entire life just for the sake of safety and integrity of the country. I know how it is to stay away from my father for years seeing him only once in a while. I know how it is to not know if I would see him next time or not. I know how it is to see my mothers face as the same question crosses her mind. I know how much she has had to sacrifice just because she is an army wife. And even though we think they’re well paid and provided for, they are not in the slightest bit. You can’t possibly buy someone’s life with money. But they give up their lives voluntarily. I have seen the misery they have to encounter while defending their country. I have heard stories from my father which would send chills down anyone’s spine. And I realize how indebted we are to these brave soldiers; how underrated their service is.

This post is dedicated to the brave soldiers who don’t sleep so that we can sleep in peace. For those who give up their peace of mind so that we can be at peace. For those who just give, and don’t expect anything in return. For those who will never die, but live on as a flame in our hearts as long as we let them.

Eye of the Beholder

It was one of those weekends which start lazily waking up in the bed and not wanting to get up. I had stayed inside for almost the whole day. At nightfall, I got fidgety and decided to just go out for a walk. The thought of a walk brought memories of her walking with me. But I knew I would have to go alone, for she isn’t here now. Nevertheless, the desire to breathe fresh air took over and I got dressed to go out for an evening stroll.

As I walked out into the open, I felt fresh air in my lungs, it felt good. I started walking not knowing where I was going. At this point a notable thought crossed my mind. The journeys which are the most memorable are the ones in which you don’t know where you’re going; life for instance. Smiling at this thought, I lengthened my strides.

I reached a trail which ran parallel to the road and overlooked a cattle farm. I started walking down the trail. There were orange colored street lights lighting up the path. Light from those fell down upon the path to give everything a tint of orange. I noticed how the grass was no longer green, but some other color. The orange light gave it an altogether different appearance. I stopped to appreciate the beauty of the fact that how small changes can alter our perception completely and even without us noticing. To see is not to perceive, perception happens deep inside in the sub-conscious.

I suddenly came across this thing which seemed like a serpent. For a moment I stood awestruck, but then my awe drained away as I realized it was just a shadow of a electric pole. The moon was the culprit. And then I noticed the moon shining in all its glory. It looked beautiful in its completeness and radiance. I have always had a thing for moonlit nights, I sometimes think that I am a creature of the dark.

Continuing to walk along, I saw a few Americans playing basketball. They played extremely well. I started thinking of how fit the americans were as compared to Asians. They were clearly more athletic and strong. It seemed as if there was a special built in gene which made them the way they were. Or maybe the lifestyle, I can’t be sure which one of the two. And then I thought of the gym I go to. The people who come to train are well built and sculpted. However, if I go to a gym back home, only the potbellied are to be seen in gyms.

In the distance, I could see a few cows. They were standing and chomping on grass in all likelihood, waiting to be killed and eaten. It somehow doesn’t bother me. The Hindus condemn the practice of killing a cow because it is deemed holy. Well it serves a lot of purpose, but then a lot of things do which aren’t deemed holy. The trees, the land we live on, the air we breathe and the water we drink are the very basic things which define our subsistence. But these are not deemed holy. We cut the trees down for making them serve us, but we don’t condemn killing them. We live on the earth, breathe air and drink water to survive but these are not deemed Gods. So why is the cow deemed holy? Why can’t we recognize that it is just another being which has life. I don’t endorse cow killing, neither am I against it. I believe everyone has their own viewpoint and should be free to do whatever they choose to do. Just because someone eats or doesn’t eat something, doesn’t mean they should be condemned or outcast.

Thinking all this, I saw a car chase; my first in the US. The speed of the police car chasing was beyond my imagination, it moved at such a high speed that on a road stretch of about 100 meters, I saw it for barely a couple of seconds. The culprit was going down for sure, there was no way he could have given the cops a chase at that speed.

Suddenly I became conscious about my train of thought. In just a few minutes, I had thought of subjects completely unrelated to each other. This is probably how the human mind works, jumping from thought to thought. And then I walked back home in the moonlit night thinking of all the things that I had thought of.

Matrix

You know when they made the Matrix, they were not making a fictitious movie to make a statement in terms of awesomeness of SFX. They were making a point; one which all of us failed to see.

So how does matrix resemble our world, you’d ask. Well except the human machine war, the matrix does exist. Except that here it is not a computer program running the world, well metaphorically it could be, but not literally. So you say that there is no such thing called the matrix which controls the universe and makes you believe things which are not true.

Let’s face it, we live in a world where information is a very important tool. We feed our brains with information and perform certain set of actions which define our subsistence. Do you know where the major chunk of the information comes from? It is something called media, whose major share today is taken by the internet of course. See now you’re reading this post, that is a form of information intake that is happening. So the media plays a very important part in delivering information to you. We listen to the news broadcast and believe it. It doesn’t occur even once in our head that whatever information is being provided to us by the media could be fabricated for all we know. “Couldn’t be!” would be your reaction. Why? The media isn’t God. It comprises of human beings like me and you. We all make mistakes. We all have the potential to be corrupted by some sort of material incentive. Remember the guy who wanted the matrix world back, so that he could taste the chicken? Yes, we human beings love luxury don’t we?

So now we can safely say that the media could be manipulated very easily. That means whatever information we are being provided by the media is false in all likelihood. Well not entirely false but certain sections of the information could certainly be fabricated to arouse speculation and gossip. I recently read an article on one of the media control websites saying that three different Indian newspapers published a single news item in three different ways. So, who do you trust in such a case?

Let me now draw a co-relation line between the matrix and the real world. The matrix is a world in which the computer program feeds human beings like us with false information so that we can act in a manner which is favorable for the matrix. In fact the matrix is using humans as 6V batteries for it’s own needs. All this, and we have no clue of what’s happening and in turn are having the time of our lives.

In the real world, media feeds us with information which is questionable. It manipulates and fabricates information for us to act in a certain way to benefit itself. In fact the media uses it’s power(which rests in the people) to change the fate of the world. We could possibly not come to know of it, because every media source has another source and this goes till infinity. So we are happy with what media is doing not knowing of how it affects us.

Today we don’t know whom to trust. It takes minutes, even seconds for rumors to turn into classic headlines. I don’t even know if what I learnt in history books is true. Who knows if they fabricated that to make heroes out of themselves. We would never know if Galileo really did invent the telescope, or Einstein did really write the theory of relativity, or was Hitler as bad as they say he was. We don’t know because what we know is from the books. And the books were written by God himself? No it was human beings who wrote the books. So they could be wrong, or corrupted couldn’t they?

The discussion about alternate reality and parallel universe is all fancy, we don’t even have any idea of what’s going on in our own universe, forget about the parallel ones. I wish I could say it would go all away and Media would be a free entity one day, but that can’t happen. It will get more and more corrupted. Who knows they may start a religion on the name of Kasab someday!

Walk With Me

As I drive through the gates,

As I get past the driveway,

As the raindrops hit my face,

I remember the day.

 

 

 

The day we first talked,

The day we first talked,

The day you held my hand,

The one day at Wonderland.

 

 

I still remember the old times,

The ancient buildings, the distant chimes,

The long strolls I had with you,

I still remember, Do you?

 

I remember the touch of your hand,

But it wasn’t my hand you touched,

Your hand was in my hand,

But it was my heart which you felt.

 

I wish I could bring those times back,

Just run away and come back,

I wish you are waiting for me,

Holding your arms open for me

 

But one day I will be back,

The memories will be fresh again,

Our strolls and walks will blossom again,

There would be only joy, no pain

Attenuation

I once worked at an Optical Fiber manufacturing company. They used to say that one of the most important steps was to minimize the attenuation of the signal in the fiber so that most of the information could be successfully transmitted. I feel that in today’s world, what we believe and think is an attenuated form of what the reality is.

Not digressing from what I want to discuss, let us turn our attention to festivals. So what are festivals? To some, they are just days when one doesn’t have to work. People can catch up with sleep and relax. To others they are a chance to showcase culture and tradition which has been followed since ages. However, isn’t that tradition also attenuated in many ways?

So, why do we celebrate Diwali or Deepawali? Lord Rama defeated Raavan and returned home to Ayodhya on this day. Although it is impossible to determine the exact day when he returned, our astrologers have us convinced that the day arrives sometime in October-November. So he returned to his home and people lighted lamps to show their happiness at his return. What do we do on Diwali? We booze, gamble and burst firecrackers creating noise and air pollution. I don’t see how the attenuation is not evident.

Speaking of festivals in general; someone of high significance performed something to be remembered on the day of a particular festival. What do we do? We are given leave from the office, we kill time and sleep. Shouldn’t we take the occasion to perform deeds of significance on a day of such importance? Shouldn’t it come from within?

Attenuation of culture and tradition has made a significant impact on our lives. Today all that is left of our festivals is taking a break from work and doing something which doesn’t even make any sense in the cultural way. I wouldn’t blame anyone, but it is food for thought. Great leaders and visionaries have never failed to inspire us. And we make a mockery of the inspiration on their birth anniversaries.

The day is not far when on being asked of the significance behind celebrating Diwali, a kid would reply, “We burst firecrackers on Diwali!” The culture and tradition that makes us so proud, has attenuated in past and continues to attenuate. If people choose on being ignorant to what happened on the day of a festival, they should probably refrain from celebrating at all rather than ruining the significance of an important day. The true significance of festivals is fading away fast. If we believe in our cultural values and take pride in them, we probably should step forward and educate ourselves about our own culture. So that the future generations don’t live a life of cultural ignorance. The base of our civilization lies in our culture. We’d lose our identity if we lost our cultural values.