BITS Piranha !!

Its not easy to dodge the piranhas. Piranhas are known to have voracious appetites for meat and can smell blood from miles in slow current waters. So when you are crossing a river which are inhabited by these ugly looking all-teeth-no-brain fishes , the only way you can escape them is by dodging them, or eat them alive which is a not-so-good idea since they move around in kick-ass gangs who can do anything for each other. Famous ways of dodging include throwing a lump of meat into the other side of the waters , so that while the piranhas are busy eating , you can cross the waters on your side. Another way which requires some skill is to just cross the river with two things in mind : you shouldn't have any wounds on your body and your body movements need to be smooth. Piranhas can sense wounds on any god-damn alive thing and they just love to complete rip you off in minutes if not seconds...And ofcourse the best way to dodge is to have a boat. :\

Look around you , your life is like these slow-moving South American waters with Piranhas all around.And all you have to do is to dodge them.Piranhas in your life can come around in the form of most stupidest of the days, over-sleeping-n-missing a test day , bad weather days and that-guy/girl-needs-an-attitude-check-or-else-I-will-kill-him/her ways.

BITS has taught me some amazing things , including how to dodge-the-piranhas , which even the most attentive of my teachers here never would have noticed. All the while they were just going over and over the most impractical theoretical fast-forwarded equations , they were telling me how to dodge all that while in the class and still make a decent grade by doing it all in one night before the exam. Or if you're super-afraid of crossing the river , you can request a make-up in which case you have the option of crossing other rivers with more or lesser number of piranhas, but which one? you never know... And then there are always ways to copy others who know dodging-the-piranhas in case you are not game enough. In this case the ghotus are the obvious choice ...Ghotus are those people who will cross all those rivers that have been asked to cross the previous years to make sure they cross it smoothly this year too !!! Teachers love them.

Dodging also implies avoiding the piranhas at all , take alternative paths , not always the waters. Being with the right kind of people and doing the right kind of things , to make sure you feel good always. I have loved doing it , doing just the right things. One amazing thing here in BITS is that you can keep doing your favorite things over and over again , no matter how lame or useless, you will get the friends to do it and that kills the guilt part for ever!... Not to forget, I have met some of the most amazing people here and thanks to my inclination to imitate qualities , this journey has definitely made me someone I wasn't before I got here.

Then everyone has their own ways of dodging , which are not textbook, just skill .Hence comes the dance part, my favorite way of telling the Piranhas to be careful when they bring my name up.I just love to own those few amazing seconds on the stage. I have met people who think all this dance stuff is so over-rated. But frankly, it deserves to be. After some crappy months, if you can just go on-stage and deliver a crowd-puller , it pays for all your sins. I have loved performing here in BITS more than I used to do earlier. And because of no formal training at all , I have always despised the idea of learning the steps to a dance number and then performing it on stage , it makes dance so much seem like an exam and less of an art. Probably one of the reasons , I never wanted to join the dance club. And I just love it when you have a pedigree of performances ,and people know you for something and they expect something better than what they saw last time. Believe me I have two habits any dancer shouldn't have, I never practice my steps before a performance and I have a dance-ego.So, the trick lies in something else, which I won't disclose here. One of my favorite performances would be the last one , just because it was a total impromptu, I love it when all you do is respond to the music and this amazing things remains an art. And really , I just want to thank all those people who have loved to see me perform , thats the reason I keep doing it once every year :) ..not that I have to prove something.

Another thing BITS has taught me is how to be friend with the piranhas. You know all those people you thought were so much thadi 'n stuff or total idiots, then you realize they were actually one of the nicest! . Especially in the my psenti-sem, I have met people who I would have rarely thought of ever going along with, I have done things I have always wanted to do. I have been so much accustomed to dealing with awkward situations than ever before, that things ever rarely upset me.

... The most intriguing part is I hardly remember what kind of person I was before I came here, you know when you've been crossing too many rivers , you hardly remember the first few ones!.. Five years here and its a complete new life after this, this system changes you so much , its hard to get back. I sincerely thought of myself as a total 'geek' before I landed here who could do a bit of this and that. But this pilani life completely changed me , not that now I have super-mutant powers but I have super awesome friends whom I can die for.

Now that this part of the life is almost over , which was better any of the Government's 5 year plans! : ) .. I seriously imagine , like any other BITSian , what would it be like waking up one morning and knowing you won't be waking up in your old-adorable-antique hostel room ever again, its a feeling I would certainly hate to have....and this would be the hardest one to dodge for sure!

Now What ?!!

Almost every year since past few years this random thought comes to my mind about how stupid I was the last year! , this happens with blogging too. When I look back at my previous posts , I always feel I could have written it better , or how cool it would have been if I had rephrased it this way or that way and what not! , Infact this happens with me everyday , like when I get into an argument I generally opt to just keep my mouth shut , but I think of so many cool things I could have said to completely dismember someone's hard-earned dignity... !! :D

So , generally , for lack of better things to do , I was thinking of other things which fit into this analogy.!.. Like when I am in my mentor's chamber , its generally expected as per God-knows-who's code of conduct to keep my mouth shut , ears open , a periodic affirmative motion of my head to make sure my mentor knows I'm listening and a totally dumb "aah..what?" when I am suddenly questioned .! And then you come out of the chamber , thinking about all those geeky things you could have said to let your mentor know you're the right whiz-kid for his project or perhaps to get your name on the next publication.!

And this happens with me a lot. When I am about to go home , I think about all the cool things I could do when I get there. Although the excitement is half-murdered traveling in a TATA Bus for almost 14 hours , by the time I reach home I am alive enough just to give warm hugs to mom-dad and siblings. So half of the time I thought I would invest in meeting old pals , watching TV and getting to know cleanliness better (..thanks to Pilani ) is brutally wasted in just...sleeping.! Half of the meals I eat at home are a break from my marathon sleep pattern, so I almost forget what I ate by the time I am in senses. And when its time to watch TV at night in that warm homely quilt , I think about how stupid it is to watch TV , I mean come on there's no buffering involved , everything is just plain simply running..how boring ! . .. So when I get back to Pilani , I am still thinking about all those things I could have done at home but didn't .. !

... And ya that reminds me of one more wanna-be analogy .I am sure , on the first day in Pilani , all of us would have roamed around campus and vowed to see the Museum one day ... which till today after more than four years is left untouched !!...sweet ! And I know atleast a dozen fat/tiny folks ( no offense to those who should take offense) who were once determined to shed weight or gain weight respectively but till date they have done nothing better than ....just look worse every new semester... :D

We should probably give a name to this phenomenon , it happens with all of us right? , It sure does! .. Things we all wanted to do but didn't because we are just plain lazy or just not creative enough at the right time!! Hail psenti-semites and the wanna-be's!! =)

Yahoo-ligans! ....and Symbolism!

It is now very apparent that the thin line between observing and then executing has been widening now. Even though all the cumulative efforts of the intellectual lot of the human race over the period of couple of thousand years were directed at more vivid and clear understanding of observation skills and the required actions, we have miserably failed to comply with it and have ended up being symbols.

It is not only visible in world politics, public and social environments but also very much pervaded in our own lives. Being morally conscious has just become a part of wider symbolism. All our customs, traditions and religious rituals have become very symbolic in the sense that they all inklings towards the teachings of our prophets and the men we consecrate.In a very lucid sense, we are all now what we were told that we are , when we were born and not actually what we are meant to be. We have adopted lifestyles and routines that are more rewarding and more lucrative during the time we practice them but they slowly turn into totally worthless habits of selfish desires when it all ends someday.

When I say 'we', I am not addressing anyone in particular but those who do understand what I have and will be saying.. are getting self-addressed here. The magic wands of our leaders in form of eloquent speeches serve the purpose of assuring the country men that we will eventually be safe someday, but they fail to execute it to the level where we start witnessing the change actually. The fault not entirely lies with them. When the sheep are all indifferent , the shepherd's authority is just a symbol of worthless power.I hope you understand about the prevalent symbolism in every human endeavor I am talking about.

It exists in our lives , in our education system and every model that is attached to our lives. The protests and wars over country borders , state borders , separate independent extremist struggles , struggle for minority emancipation and struggle for much more are all part of a wider term called symbolic-protests. All these protests are real to start with , become horrible when violence chips in but end up being symbolic when they are not helped or their demands not realized as they should have. As they say "One side's freedom fighter is other side's terrorist", so you are never sure which side is right, its relative . The two political sides pounce on each other and don't actually take into consideration for whom they are actually working,that is "we". Talk about our own Government, even though things don't look that bad in the context of the present, but over a period of time, this so called democracy has just been a foul play.As I said in my previous posts, if you put worms and flies together and elect a beetle as their leader there is meant to be a chaos.In situation like ours, where our Government is concerned about the Maoists , the Telangana problem , the North Indian power struggle, the J&K border problem, the Gorkhaland problem, the Marathi chauvinism in Maharasthra , the Orissa and Gujarat riots, Arunanchal Pradesh border problem and the countless extremist organisations like RSS , VHP and Bajrang Dal who are venomous, India is a perfect potpourri. But it doesn't get worse even then , our prime minister still has the courage to deal with all these problems and still go to Copenhagen climate summit at Denmark and claim India will cut emissions. Like the poor care if India would cut emissions or not, they are smart enough to know that out of all that is possible , this is certainly not their revival plan. One way or another, India does not stand for highly popular three words 'unity in diversity' , but it stands for a country still living with its cuts and wounds and would continue to do so as long as we have diversity.In this sense, diversity becomes our strength, it atleast gives us a reason why there are problems in India unlike other countries who have a single religion and closely bounded communities and still fail to prove "unity in uniformity"!!!

Symbolism in the world is very prevalent, lets leave aside India. Take the United States, they stand for power, thats their symbol if India's is "morality". So everything they do stands for power.Even in the recent COP-15 summit, USA was meant to dictate the terms at the table, Obama's symbolic great speech's were meant to influence the great leaders present. This symbolism of 'power' has been existing even at the Israel-Palestinian border, Indo-Pak Border ,Afganistan and Iraq .

The problem that the world faces today is that its too much of symbolism and no action. The governments know that the protesters will ultimately tire down, some might even be killed but eventually nothing would happen, protests have become a 'symbol' and actually do not influence Governments anymore, take the case of Maoists who are protesters-turned-militants. Take LK Advani's Rath Yatra through which he pervaded Hindutva through the lengths of the country but not making much sense since the country has five more religions!.. probably he forgot it and in order to appeal to the Muslims later, went to Pakistan and praised Jinnah!! Indian politicians eventually end up opening the Pandora'a Box. Even in our own lives, though we endorse greener environment , we actually do not actively involve in it, we just support it like that would help, our thoughts have become 'symbols' which are moral but eventually are failures.

Symbolism in India has affected it much more than many other countries if I talk of. Symbolism combined with action is what we really need. A good example is Gandhi's Dandi March to make Salt , it was symbolic as it struck at the core of British economy and was obviously very practical. We may learn small and big things from life about relationship, society , cultures and more. But it makes no sense if we just follow our religions and our cultures just for the sake of symbolism, we have to live through them and carry them forward through actions, which was what I started this post with.If we want changes, we need our own actions and not mere protesting. You are not XYZ because you were born XYZ, if you don't like XYZ... you better be ABC , I don't care but then be an awesome ABC ..!