Abandon all hope, all ye that enter here!

Well, long time since my last post, but so many things have been happening that its hard to tell where to start. The happy news first I guess. Well, my inter year basketball team makes it to finals again for the third straight year, and I hope we win again. For some reason we are the perennial underdogs, even after we win. It took a god level game by mallu against the first yearites for us to win, and hats off to him. I have to say my teammates are some of the best that I have been around with, and I hope to stay in touch with you guys after this as well. Next, on the cultural front, well, thats getting over from my side, with me ending my term. I guess it ends a turbulent four years. I never expected to be this heavily into Cultural Society to tell the truth, ending up organizing all these events and all. I mean I am a person who cannot sing, dance, or act, and yet I have been completely involved with it. I will miss it I guess, and all the guys I have worked with.
I realized beyond the first few posts on a blog, its hard to sustain the momentum or keep writing blogs. Your thoughts tend to become repetetive or the motif that you try to present becomes boring as well. I try to keep things interesting by including a song or a poem or so, that way you can increase your literary knowledge plus read a poem or two. Paintings I include as well, especially ones I have seen. Remember most of these are classics and read into them with a deeper meaning. Dont go by what is said on the surface and instead see the angst of the poet/author/painter when I mention something. Evaluate it and think about it. Anyway, for this post's poem I figured I would use something with a wide relevance to the world today, W.H.Auden's Unknown Citizen. This was a classic poem, and it talks about a government who make a statue of a model citizen how he conforms and follows the rules never breaking them, politically correct, never doing anything that stands out. Reading deeper into it, you can see how the poet uses the structure to give a completely different meaning than the one that most people would get from it.

The Unknown Citizen
(To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for he time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

I've always enjoyed this poem as a brilliantly composed portrait of a bureaucracy taken to the excess -- the point where it dehumanizes individuals,its subjects, in the absolute. Auden meticulously selects his words to express the obsessive inanity of this mindless, mechanized State which knows its citzens only by letters and numbers, evaluates their worth with statistics, and has a formulaic standard for virtuous living. The tone of the final two lines -- a spokesperson's spin on the situation -- is both ironic and chilling.
Its a poem against mindless bureaucracy, it could be a Marxist state, a capitalist state such as ours which promotes vote bank politics, a communist state. It also shows how statistics cannot measure things like brillinace, and radicality two important things to any government.
In a similar parallel, I think IITR here also promotes an Unknown Citizen. I mean the adminstration would rather have an Unknown Citizen rather than a person who questions things and fights for his opinions. Also the "citizens" here accept this fact largely and do not question the system that sets in. I am not saying that I am different, me personally being part of the system, but its still not right, and for the time I have left, I want to be a "Known Citizen". Submissiveness in class, in extra cirricular activities is highly promoted by the adminstration here which isnt always the best option available. Anyway this bitter diatribe against this has to come to an end now, as I get ready to go to class again more due to attendance problems than anything else as the sem ends. Have fun y'all and hope the title from Dante's Inferno doesnt put you off.

Life aint about planning, its about livin!

A couple of days since my last post, but I figured i should let people think over what I wrote the last time. Anyway, since the last post, I have been trudging to classes, back and forth, back and forth, kind of like a swinging pendulum, forever doomed to follow the laws of gravity, without choice or say in the matter. The mind numbingness that follows from such activities is unexplainable, or can be explained only from ones who actually put in work I guess. Otherwise, things progress quietly into the night, as day turns to night, and night to day.
So instead of writing a diatribe against my daily life I think I will take this time to appreciate what I have. I wish I could say I thank the stars that I have everything. True I dont have everything I wished for, but I have more than I could ever imagine. Back in tenth, I thought I had a future all planned out. I was living in US, given admission to Aerospace in Cornell, I was good at mathematics, really good, I loved it to tell the truth. It was a life I thought I had all planned out. Then the shocking news came that my father is shifting back to India. All that I thought I knew, out the window more or less. From my cousins I knew of the education system in India. To my parents, I knew it was inevitable, being at whatever maturity level I was at, I never said anything and I think it was the right decision. Anyway, I knew about JEE and all that, I had looked on it as something big, something I never had to do and all. Lot of work involved, something I never really did. All the stuff I did in US really came pretty easily without a lot of work. After I came back, two years through coaching centers of Hyderabad, I was at a place where I could call myself one of the best in India, and this was a point I never would have reached without the help of my parents. Half the credit would go to them for this and for this I would like to thank God for my parents. Anyway, this was some of the best work I had done in my entire life. I became the best at mathematics, not that my marks in JEE showed it. There was an entire shelf of books that I could proudly say I had read through. Anyway, I liked being drunk on the work of feverish nights and burning the midnight oil. That was one of the high points of my life. Not that I measure my life in success or failure but that was one success no one could ever take that away from me.
Anyway, what I wanted to say in this is that life changes all the time, and whatever you have planned for and thought about, it could be really different. So all the plans that you have, just take a moment and realize that you have to be prepared for whatever life has to throw at you.
I guess thats my life's lesson for the day more for myself than anything else. With my first job that came up and leaving IITR, I guess thats my plan but I have no idea where I will be in two months from now, let alone my career plans or anything. I always wanted to be in applied mathematics, but now I am in civil engineering, and about to shift to a career in consultancy in finance. Some change I guess..
Anyway on the literary side, I figured I should put up another poem, one of my favorites, Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe..Its about his love for a girl named Annabel Lee.. She being his mistress and dying young.. Really touching poem and one that expresses love completely..
Annabel Lee
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me -
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud one night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we -
Of many far wiser than we -
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea -
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

What say y'all?

Well, with the weekend getting over, mind you this being an extended weekend, the plans going into it were quite extensive, about how I would turn my life around, doing constructive activities and all..Guess thats out the window..This weekend was more about finding myself more than anything else, with me going back to do what I do best.. Writing, I guess one of the few activities I have left without being bothered by what other people think..Freewriting, I guess inspired by my sophomore English teacher, Ms. Eldredge, was one of the pure joys that I discovered. Every class we used to spend the first ten minutes just writing whatever came into our minds and discuss about it.. That one year, I learnt more about English than I ever had..My writing had improved from a childish level of writing to an adult style.. I was able to enjoy what I wrote for the first time and discover the joy of doing it..I was able to write stories for the first time..Ah the good old days..Since then, the loss of the computer for three years and then responsibilities on campus prevented me from writing.. I always believed that writing is the art of saying more with the right word at the right time..its not about using fancy words or using words that no one understand..The content and how you deliver the message is what is important.. Thats what she drilled into me, as the bootcamp throughout the year, writing 5 page reports every three days on different topics..I hated it back then, but that might have been the most important year of my life..That was the last time I was in US..A long time ago really..

So moving on now, I was just reading Conspiracy of Fools, a story about how Enron rose and fell..Really a fascinating story of how men can be easily corrupted, hopes raised, fortunes made..Gives whole new meaning to Balzac's saying, Behind every fortune there is a crime.. I mean I have to admire some of the people on that though..Jeff Skilling, who became CEO at 30..Andrew Fastow, CFO of the year at 37..How Jeff was able to convince SEC that mark to market type of accounting is correct in the energy industry and should actually be done by other companies as well..All the accounting gimmicks, not that I condone them, which not only fooled the investors but the regulatory bodies themselves..I mean the presentation skills that Skilling possessed to pull this off.. Really brilliant..This book is a must read to anyone!

As you might have guessed by now, I really love reading books and I read vociferously, anything and everything that I can find. I have lost count of the no of books I have read and the different kinds of authors..I have read classics, epics, biographies, non fiction, business, you name it, I would have read it..One genre I am not able to bring myself to read is Indian authors, whose themes are generally to do with loss of innocence, or social themes in India. I have respect for them, and what they are trying to do, but somehow I am not able to identify with those issues. I dont support the statement that one shelf of English literature is better than all the Indian literature either. In fact Indian literature is very fascinating in the way it uses form and function to create a setting which brings out a message. Western literature misses out on this aspect. The words in India are designed according to the way language flows rather than following any particular rule and it gives authors poetic licence with the language. Western literature closest similarity to Indian literature is probably found in poetry rather than prose, where poets like ee cummings, or Langston Hughes or Sylvia Plath, emily dickinson experimented with forms. The only author who was able to pull off poetic license in a book is probably James Joyce in Ulysses, where his own invention of words lead to an entire revolution. Anyway, I appreciate Indian literature, but I cannot bring myself to read it.

Speaking of Langston Hughes, the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers comes to mind.. Beatiful poem about how the neglected groups of society had always been there with the flow and ebb of time and tide.. I have included here for everyone to read..and the spacing and the way the words are arranged is also important..So read it slowly and imagine a river meandering through time as you read this poem..

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
     flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln 
     went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy 
     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers

Random passing thoughts!

Hi Dear,

That is what life is.. Nice blog.. :-)

Roorkee is just like that.. makes you learn what life is.. in a complete form, not confining to something specific. Had it not been Roorkee and any other IIT, I do not know how much you learn.. (as I never was a part of any, except Roorkee)

You rock,man.. Liberate your thoughts and keep them on paper (here, blog :P)

Best Wishes,
Vani.

Well, Vani, I have to say thank you for that! I do agree with you about IIT Roorkee!
This was the one place where i got to reinvent myself completely, be different from who I was before. I knew no one from before and no one knew me. I made the greatest friends, met the greatest people, whom I will never forget. I wanted this opportunity to say thank you to all of them. They are so many that I can never name them all. The guys in civil department, the guys who live along my lane.. All the womenfolk in SB who still talk to me despite the sexist jokes I make about women being given preferential treatment and all.. Seniors whom I owe a lot to and still have a lot to learn from.. All the juniors whom I have worked with and hope to stay in touch with later..Throughout my four years here, if I want to be remembered, I want to be remembered as someone who was fair and treated everyone fairly. I am not expecting universal support in this area but I tried to be fair to everyone I met, friend or supposed foe. I learnt a lot at IIT Roorkee about people and their motivations. How the smallest of things that I think do not matter, but other people care a lot about it.

Anyway, onto other things, out of sheer boredom, I have decided to make this blog writing thing a habit considering that there is no other outlet for this stuff and the only one intelligent enough to comprehend this is me. I was just looking at a painting by van gogh, starry night.. The wavy curls of colours that blend into the sky over a town and looking over a cliff. I could stare at that image and come out with a different meaning everytime. I saw that painting in real life once in the Boston museum, and it is really breathtaking.. There was this Van Gogh exhibit once there, and those paintings in real life speak to you. Its as if the painter is behind you whispering their meaning and the reason for its existence, every colour, every line, the perspective, everything..

So moving on from arts, I wanted to talk mainly about the raging issue around the world today, the Olympic torch run across the world by China and hostile reception it has received. This being done in protest over the treatment of Tibet by China. China has to resolve its identity issue between the Mainland and the Hinterland which is dividing it. Using the PLA to govern is not a solution considering the fact that there is a reason why you seperate the army and the police. The army protects you from enemies outside the state. The police protects you from enemies of the state. Once the army controls the police, the people tend to become the enemies of the state. (this being taken from battlestar galactica). This is the issue facing China today. It had used the PLA in the case of Tianenmen Square in 1989, and faced international condemnation and again not learning from history using it against Tibet. It is a more fundamental issue they need to recognize their identity as a communist state. The economic policies that they follow are more liberal than the democratic countries and causes a huge gulf between the rich and the poor of China. With over a billion people, the largest army and one of the largest countries in terms of size, the disparity is apparent. Its inhumane one child policy and killing of babies before they crown, causes further discontent among the people. The leaders of China no longer are in touch with the reality of the crisis they face, hoping that a few gimmicks on the world stage can resolve an internal issue. The vox populi across the world condemn this treatment and China should well take notice of it. With globalization being more than a buzz word and a phenomenon, it could have serious repercussions on their economy. This Olympics has more in common with the Berlin games of 1936 than ever with these issues being identified with it. It is a very symbolic gesture that the people have taken against China. I just hope that this does not become a page in the newspaper but a step towards China being part of world's community. A little side story here..The guy in the photos who stopped in front of a tank in Tianenmen square, he was arrested and shot as a traitor to the country. They billed the family for the bullet they used to kill him. I think something akin to the embargo placed by the world on South Africa in the case of apartheid is the only way we can get China to recognize human rights.

Political Activism is banned on campus and I have to ask is it correct that it can be so? Freedom of expression is a right granted by the Constitution. Banning it on campus is not only wrong but also stifling. As long as the activism does not disrupt the functioning on the campus, it should be allowed. This is the only way we can get things to be noticed. Considering that many people who are here are going to go on forward to occupy important positions both in private and public life, it is important that they be cognizant of the social issues that dominate the world. To put this in perspective, many people have died to get these rights for the people and we are giving it up willingly. There should be a proper outlet for the collective anger. People here have a right to an opinion and they should be given a way to express themselves.

As I am writing this blog I am listening to the song by Bob Dylan, Times they are a changin'.. His voice and his lyrics are probably one for the ages..Never again will there be one like him.. "Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen, and keep your eyes wide, the chance wont come again and dont speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin.." This captures the mood of the moment and this is more relevant than before.."..Get out of the way if you dont understand!"

Early morning blues

Everyday in the morning when you wake up, you usually think whats up for today, or what am I going to do today. Ever miss the days when you woke up and your only thought was, whats for breakfast or what cartoon is going to come on tv? Well, I do. Now its read the newspaper, drink coffee(a coffee lover me, so I dont exactly complain) shave, and move on with the day..

Ah, the good old days.. When someone refers to them, I think about why do they call it the good old days. We never had it so well..The entire world at our fingertips with internet access and all..TV in HDTV format as well, mobile phones to make sure we stay in touch with our loved ones etc..I mean what was there in the good old days that people miss? Lower prices? Or is it a loss of innocence that people complain about? I dont think its either, I think its the mythification of the past that people are interested in rather than actually looking at what they have right now.

Anyway, moving on with the day, I have to ask about my insti mates and their motivations. Just how important do they think all this stuff on campus is? I mean all these extra cirricular activities and all are? Do they think five years from now, anyone would seriously care whether you were part of one thing or the other or the head of it.. I mean, guys remember that you do these activities for fun, not to just fill up a resume. Being in an IIT already fills up a large part of the resume. The rest depends on how you present yourself. However, with all this politics and all, you do no more than tear the ties that bind you. These are not professional organizations where cutting throats and stepping over dead bodies gets you anywhere. If its finances you are after, you guys dont think about the future ramifications of your actions now.. Mostly in the financial world, lot of the deals and projects each company gives to each other is based a lot on personal relationships and going for a small monetary gain now is pretty shortsighted. This is the last chance you have to make open networks based on friendship and trust and killing that is just foolishness. If you have a choice between a person you dont know and a person whom you know had done financial misdeeds at your insti, think about whom you would choose to deal with.

However, this morning waking up to the beats of Layla by Eric Clapton got me thinking..
"Let's make the best of the situation
Before I finally go insane.
Please don't say we'll never find a way
And tell me all my love's in vain."
These beats have a mind of their own and they are so captivating that each time he says Layla, your own heart shouts out the name. These lines here are more like what represents my life at IITR i guess. Despite all my misgivings about this place, I actually do like it. Despite all my taunts and jibes about this place being a village and a prison both, I have to say I really love this place..

Anyway peace out for now, will talk later!

First Blog!

Ok, my first blog on the net and I have no idea whatsoever to write about. Being hit by writers block is pretty hard to overcome to tell the truth. I am a decent writer but as i sit down to write, nothing comes to my mind. Its a blank nothingness that i stare into but as i look out i am reminded of all the things around me. Everything i do is for the last time on campus at IITR. But before we start off with that, a little bit about me first I guess. (All those guys who say blogging is for writers and those who like to write.. But i am writing for the sake of just being on the net, and express opinions about stuff later on i guess..Again all those who expect deep philosophical stuff from me on the net, sorry look again elsewhere)

About me.. Well currently i am in my final year at IIT Roorkee in civil department..(again when i look back, i probably will reminiscence about it).. Fate i guess led me to write this blog one day before the JEE exam in 2008, that being the exam i got thru, rather scraped through to reach here.. Good times that, three years of my life spent in studying and i guess more studying..but i made it..Worked out well i guess, four years of memories i wont forget.. Anyway, more about me..I like to read books(a lot and i read very quickly), play basketball and like to be involved in organizing events.. Ok, this reads too much like what i would write on a resume..but i am coming off a host of interviews for my campus placement, and I have become politically correct in all these things..I am also a sci fi loving, trekkie, tv serial show watching, weird litta knowledge loving person and there a 1000 little oddities about me, like the fact that i have a coffee machine in my room and i make my own coffee even though there is nescafe rite outside my hostel and the saving i make is probably at 50 paise a coffee..But i make it just to know that i am master of my fate, captain of my soul..
Now about the events that dominate today..
The cultural society interviews..after sitting through a boring set of interviews of about 50 people, whose results were predecided by each of the sections..Its like being stuck in a Chinese torture machine, as each person comes and goes, comes and goes..Again for what purpose i do not know..I have worked in program management, part of cultural society for four years..Since the results are fixed and everyone knows it, i dont see why we couldnt jsut submit a list..
Apart from this, it feels sad that I had to end my tenure as secretary..To tell the truth, I liked being head of a section..Like being in charge i guess, even though I am a lazy person..Somehow the campus reward the extroverts on campus, but I think the introverts are better suited for leadership..I am not talking about me, but a leader has to think about what's right some times, not be afraid to hurt other people's feelings sometime, and be confident to deal with people..I dont know but I havent been exactly been able to do that..I have tried to be a good person, but sometimes to be nice, you have to be hard..

Anyway, enough about that problem..Going on to other problems..
Well there is the quota issue...I, not being from an OBC category, obviously hate it, but I think I its social justice..Generations of being wronged, I guess we can try to fix it, and this is one way..The general people shouldnt complain i think because these are seats are being created not being cut from the seats existing presently..We should think of them as extra seats which were never available anyway.. Also I think a bit of economic barriers to this quota, would be a bit more fair.. short of giving all the economic cost of the labour extracted from them by force, i think this is a small way of giving back.. Its easier to implement this at higher education because of the order that exists at this level.. Its easy to say that we have to implement at the primary level but its much harder and i think a top down approach is better in this case..Also this could be an election gimmick but its the correct way to go i think...Again short thoughts on this issue..Contentious as it is, it shouldnt be such an issue.. If you are brilliant enough, you can overcome all obstacles...Thats the price of being called exceptional..
So with malice toward none, gracious loving to good looking females and charity towards guys, more on this blog later, I have a lot of things to get off my mind..