Ouroboros...

This is a post about how our lives change during the course of school and college days and is dedicated to all Indian students who have gone through the same.

Until 10th, I enjoyed a cool and collected nature. I could study when I wanted and it was no big deal. Enter 10th. 10th year is board year. And we were forced to study endlessly for hours on end and finally the board exams came and went. and it seriously was a piece of cake. And to think what our teachers said about it. They said it would guide our destinies. Seriously nearly 4 years after it, I have no idea how it did, or if it ever did.

Enter 11th and 12th. 12th is once again board year. But that was not so much of a cause of concern for me. Because once you write your 10th board, you begin to realize that all of this fear that the teachers have instilled in you is just a way to make sure you get good marks and enhance the school's reputation. In reality, it is just an exam like the many that came before it. If you prepare well, you will reap its benefits.

But my real cause of concern was the entrance exams which decide which professional course I could get into.  I had ditched medicine already and so I just had to focus on engineering. Here comes entrance coaching. Every Sunday I had to endure about 6 hours of class. And back then, Sunday was the only holiday I actually got. I was forced to mug up a lot of facts and was asked to speed up my calculations. I never really focused on IIT or NIT for that matter and consequently when I gave the tests, I flunked big time. But I got in on my state entrance.

I have been studying in my college for 2 years and have 2 more years to go, but this is where something else comes in.This is where its deja-vu all over again. Once I pass out, I have a couple of options – either take a job as a software engineer, go for M Tech or MBA, and plus I can do this out of the country. I don’t seem to have an affinity for the always-on-the-edge, hectic and tense schedule that governs a software engineer’s life, and I am no good at management. So the option left it to do my M Tech either here or out of the country. I used to love the fact that I could travel out of the country, but now that I think about it, I am not so sure. Another country means another culture, another set of rules ans a complete transformation. And I am not so sure if that is what I want. I think I’ll be comfortable right here in my own country.

But that requires me to give another entrance exam, and that means it is that time again…entrance coaching. Sundays are going down the drain again. And this just about ruins my bimonthly plans of heading home and relaxing. So a part of me feels reluctant and uncertain about taking the step. But this is the cowardly part of me, this is the part of me that likes comfort. There is another part of me, the competitive side, that is ready to go. Ready to go and extract revenge for the humiliating defeat I endured two years ago. So as usual, I am torn into two pieces with no hope of co-existing. One part has to be crushed down. Or better still one part must endorse the intentions of the other for the greater good.

And it had better be the comfort loving me who gives in.

One week to decide and make up my mind.

But this really brings forth the lies and chaos that we are born into. My parents told me, it would all be easy after 10th. After that they said it’d be better after 12th and you get into a good college. After that they said it would be better after college. And we are again in the same endless loop.

Life is never ending. And along the way, we have to make sacrifices. But don’t ever think that life is divided into semesters and you get holidays. The pressures of life never stop. There is only one way to get away from this. Enjoy everything you do. 

But that is easier said than done.

( FYI: an ouroboros is a picture of a snake devouring it own head and it a mystical symbol of continuity)

Marooned...

No, I was not drenched in a coat of maroon paint, if that’s what you are thinking. I am referring to the other meaning of marooned. The dictionary provides this definition:

ma·roon 

tr.v. ma·rooned, ma·roon·ing, ma·roons

1. To put ashore on a deserted island or coast and intentionally abandon.

2. To abandon or isolate with little hope of ready rescue or escape: The travelers were marooned by the blizzard.

n.

1. often Maroon

a. A fugitive Black slave in the West Indies in the 17th and 18th centuries.

b. A descendant of such a slave.

2. A person who is marooned, as on an island.

It has been a long time since I posted. It was partly because of a lack of inspiration and partly because of  certain technical problems. My modem just quit working. I had to wait an entire week to replace it, and in that time, I was effectively marooned.

But this leads us to think about one of the most ubiquitous things in our life. Something which has become  such an important part of our life, that we fail to see its influence in our lives. Just like we don’t know the value of water till the well has gone dry, we don’t see the value of the internet till you are effectively taken off of the web. I was, and I realized how much I relied on the web. We had a function at our college during that time, and I was supposed to design the powerpoint presentation, and boom! I no longer had access to pictures, or information to do that. I wanted to check my mail for the info the others had shared with me. But hey….you need a net connection for that. So stupid of me. To check out a video on youtube, or for that matter google the results of an important wrestling PPV, apparently both google and youtube are on the web as well, silly me.

I was cut off from most of my life. This has taught me a very important lesson in life. You don’t value the things you take for granted. You only realize their value, and what they meant to you when you lose them. In my case, it was a simple case to restore, but it need not always be so.

Sorry for the Hiatus...

I am really sorry for the hiatus I took from blogger for quite some time. My holidays have begun and I am not sitting around idly for the first time in my life. I have a lot of personal projects I want to complete before I return  to college on 20th. Yeah, that's right, my third year in college is coming right up baby...
You know it is amazing how fast life flows, sometimes you feel as if it has coagulated and is not moving at all, but on the whole, it flows just too fast. It seems so recent that I made my way up that towering staircase ( the Golden Walkway) up to my college for the very first time alone. I was scared and excited of this new, and unknown era that I was getting myself into. But right now, I am acclimated to this new environment, which admittedly is very different from a school, yet preserves most of its features.
But that is a whole different tale. I was talking about my holidays. One of my personal projects was an implementation of the game hangman, and thankfully that is finished. But it is excruciatingly painful to distribute it, because it requires .NET framework, and I can find no other way to get around it. So for now it is stuck in my laptop, with no one using it. ( The .NET framework can however be downloaded free from the microsoft site and takes about 20 MB space). Besides i can think of no one to distribute it to, and so, I have buried my first app and trying to think of a second one.
It's not all programming though. It can get a little frustrating if you code day and night. That's where blogging comes in. Two of my favourite pastimes, coding and blogging, what else can be life??? Oh and watching wrestling ( but the storylines now seem to be too bland).
Will keep posting...

Scripps National Spelling Bee 2012

The most prestigious spelling bee in the world today, the 85th version of the Scripps National Spelling Bee concluded just minutes ago. We have crowned a new champion. Snigdha Nandipati took the championship trophy in a final that lasted nearly an hour and 45 minutes. In the end, she spelled guetapens, a French derived word meaning ambush, snare or trap to clinch the title. This marks the 5th time in a row that an Indian origin speller has claimed the highest prize.

A couple of fan favourite knockouts in this year’s bee included Vanya Shivashankar, sister of 2009 champion Kavya Shivashankar, who was eliminated in the semi-finals. But hey, she’s got a lot of years left in her to return and claim her trophy, and you can bet that she does exactly that soon. Nicholas Rushlow made it to the championship finals, and tied for fourth. This is the last time we will see Nicholas at the mic, but it certainly isn’t the last that we’ll hear from this phenomenal young man. Arvind Mahankali was next to go, being placed third. He still has one more year left in him, and be sure to watch out for him next year. Snigdha and Stuti Mishra battled it out for some time, but in the end, Snigdha won it.

But the trophy is just the way competitions go. In my opinion, every speller who tried to that prestigious trophy is a winner. This goes with gold studded letters for the semi-finalists and finalists. What we see out there, on that stage, is the lives of these spellers. Pure unadulterated dedication, the passion to do whatever it takes to get on top, and the ability to brave the biggest guetapens of them all, pressure. This is all they need to make it big in their lives. This is success personified. In my opinion, all of them are winners.

Because having a dream, and having the ability to focus and work for that dream, and at the same time never letting go of your other pursuits, that my friends is the key to success and happiness.

Trying to Rise

Ever since I nearly flunked my digital lab exam, things have been going downhill for me, and life's been souring fast. A slight mention of someone not passing, any side note about a failure makes my heart go limp. It seems as though all of my blood vessels are constricting and I am being squeezed into nothing. Something goes off in the bottom of my stomach, and I feel reduced to nothing.

My self confidence has been severely mutilated, and right now I am not sure I will amount to anything in life. The only thing I had for all my life was this, my ability to always deliver, always get good marks no matter what the circumstances, and as and when I lose that ability, I become nothing. I get reduced to a worthless piece of crap.

See this is how writing helps you. Once I typed the above lines, I myself enunciated my problem. I began to associate my accolades and accomplishments for me. I began seeing the two as one and the same. I went to such a level that they were inseparable. For me, the only reason I exist is because I can achieve something. The second I cease to get good marks and all, I cease to exist. I began to think that I need the approval of everyone around me, and for me the only way to get that approval was to be the topper. I had put myself into a world of trouble, and I had no idea what I had got myself into.

See this is a problem that comes to a lot of people. Ego. Often we mistake the ego for our true selves, and that happened to me too. The ego needs the approval of people around us and seeks to gain it by any means whatsoever. If it doesn’t get it, it reacts. It reacts by making us feel bad, it reacts by putting us in a desperate state and gently nudges us to do something to gain the attention of others around us once more. What we don't realize is that we do not need the whole-hearted approval of everyone around us. We can feel secure within ourselves. Once we do that, we reach a place where we are not bothered by the results of our actions. We know that no matter what happens we will always be ourselves, and that none of our mistakes can diminish what we are really worth. We begin to perform with only one thing in mind, and that is the action. When Sachin Tendulkar goes to the ground to bat, he doesn’t think about his centuries, he doesn’t think about what people will think, he thinks about just performing. Sure, he gets out for a duck, and sure he hits centuries. But all that doesn’t change the fact that he is the best there is.

That is all easily said than done. What has been programmed into us for years is not necessarily erased in a day or two. It takes consistent hard work, persistence and dedication. We can't change what has happened. We can't erase the mistakes that we made. We can only try to live without repeating those mistakes again. We can change our way of thinking. No one can evaluate or rate us without our consent.

In fact I am glad this nervous breakdown came now rather than later. Now I can analyse what went wrong, and change myself. Sure it is going to hurt when you poke and probe into an open wound, but it is better to probe it now and clean it than leave it to fester later.

As someone said,

"Only through weakness can a soul gain strength" 

Dead Again...

I nearly flunked my digital lab exam. I couldn't get a full output. I got only a partial output. I am dead. I lost. It is over…..

Safari...

  The animal safari was in a jeep, open on both sides. Each jeep seated about 6. The route was by tarred roads, lined by dense forest on both sides. This was part of a tiger reserve, and you had a fair chance of catching wild animals here. We saw peacocks and peahens first. Some were shy and ran away quickly. Still others were determined to pose for the cameras. Then came the wild boars and elephants. Herds of deer ran here and there. But there was something missing. Monkeys.

It was only on our return trip that we saw a large group of monkeys and languor. Nothing much to say here, see for yourself...