Did I really waste a seat of IIT?

Having graduated out of IIT Delhi, I chose to be a writer. Like most of the IITians, by the time I finished my degree, I realized that I was not interested in engineering. I didn't want to push myself into the assembly line and take up a high paying job, serving someone else for any other sector like finance or consulting and I chose to go full time with my writing. I chose to do that I was interested in.

Once my struggle period got over, I encountered a weird kind of hostility amongst some people for me. I always find people who complain to me that I wasted a seat of my college. If I didn't want to become an engineer, why did I give JEE? Why did I waste government's lacs of money spent on me?

Generally, I do not reply to such an allegation, since people don't realize that a 17 year old guy, who hadn't yet seen the world, who hadn't done anything else other than dating his books for most of his high school, can't decide what does he want to do in life? It's only after he sees the world, gets exposed to different professions, art and cultures, that he could realize what is his real calling. And that's not all, sometimes, even after our college lives, we are yet to find our calling. For some, who know their calling, lack of family support or lack of will becomes the major hindrance.

Having chosen to pursue my inner calling, I would like to enable this feeling of satisfaction of discovering and pursuing what one really likes doing in every student. To accomplish this mighty task, I realize that we need a drastic change in one of the key issues of the youth. Schooling. Not only the primary, secondary and high school level, but also at the college level. The current system of schooling follows promote-the-best-forward ideology, which could be clearly elucidated by the fact considering any competition in which the school has to represent its student, teachers no doubt choose the best suited student for that competition. What about others, who might be equally or more interested in participating in that competition? Just because they could not discover whether they have the potential to excel in the other field, they get sidelined. What this results in is a narrowed development of an otherwise talented student, who gets involved in a particular activity and just because she's good in that, she is cut off from all the other interesting activities which could have otherwise opened her mind and made her personality all-rounded.

To explain with my own personal example, I had never written anything other than my answer papers in my school days. I came to IIT, started writing and realized that I was good at it and loved it. I pursued it, got better and much more interested. The reason I never wrote in school was because nobody motivated me to write in school. There were few students, who were good in English and they dominated the school editorial scene. Now surprisingly, none of those students are into writing. Tell me, had I been in the same environment  all the while, would I ever have been able to discover the fact that I'd a flair in writing? No, never.

From where I stand, I can see two ways to move forward in this regard. One privately, by starting a company which trains teachers in holistic teaching and conducts seminars in schools and colleges to enable students discover their hidden talents, by exposing them to different fields. The other is by promoting a club like environment in schools, which thankfully exists in a lot of schools, where people get to participate in group activities in different domains and take them on tours to witness what professional life actually is and when they say they want to become a doctor, they should understand by experience that it's not just about medicines, but also about carefully handling several lives, being hygienic, and on one's toes all the time.

I think that the current schooling system needs restructuring to impart more holistic education along with more exposure to different professional scenarios, so that people choose what they would really love to do and such digression, like me, from one's primary career line doesn't take place so often, leading to a situation where when a student decides to take up engineering, he actually wants to become an engineer.

Written for Stayfree Time for Change contest for indiblogger.

My experiments with writing

My belief, right from the very beginning has been that being versatile is one of the key ingredients in the making of a good writer. I treat a writer as a musician, who dares to explore different styles, trying to fuse the good things he has learnt with his own innovations.

A person can be versatile only if s/he is willing to let the mind pervade the areas where they haven't been before. Though with time, one may discover that his/her real forte is in a particular genre, but surely, trying different things groom the narrative capabilities of a story-teller.

I started writing as a blogger, with diary-like entries that mostly concerned with already known philosophies, which obviously found no readers, so I moved to describing events - in which I found myself quite naturally gifted, since I could make them interesting, owing to my tendency to magnanimously exaggerate the story. Once started into events, I started penning down almost all the small incidents with a good amount of exaggerated spice in each of those episodes, which turned to incite my blog-pals, since they happened to like it.

This was the time of my peak confidence as a writer, though my experience lacked more experimentation. With ample confidence in my abilities, I decided that it's time to take the big step. It was the time I started writing my novel, with no intention to publish it at all, since I intended to have a short-novel, with oddly 12-13 chapters of 2 pages each. I intertwined all the funny incidents that I had ever heard/seen with an extraordinary contribution from my imagination to make the novel complete, but alas, the novel was no-more short, but rather a voluminous one with 33 complete chapters in it. Miraculously, it had its own destiny, because thereafter, one by one, many things happened, like my chance meeting with the publisher, the agreement and expansion of my work. I was more than happy.

I made sure that in my novel, which could actually be categorized as just-another-IITian novel, I would not exploit IIT's name on the cover. So I chose an IIT-free title and subtitle, despite all the previous IITians books by my publisher(that were just 2 at that time, compared to over a dozen currently) had those. I even didn't publicise my novel by putting up posters or something in the campus. I made a promotional video, but it didn't spread a lot, owing to my laziness at its promotion. But it found its own readers with time and sold more than 10,000 copies in just 6 months, becoming a national bestseller; 10000 copies being the current Indian standard to classify a 'bestseller'.

Once published, there came a time when I thought I needed to move on. I started noticing plots of stories in everyday life. Everywhere I could observe situations in which twists were possible. I started writing stories. On various themes like humour, sarcasm, emotions, love, twists, human nature, thriller, horror etc. If I now say that I consider myself as a writer, then it's not due to the fact that I am a published author, but because I have seen, breathed and breathed life into stories from in and around my life.

To all the aspiring authors and creative writers, the best suggestion I could give as a fellow writer is that write stories - you could see them almost floating all around you, and you can breathe life into them. You would learn so many intricacies of writing, once you start, such as - How you should start a story? How should you engross the reader to read the next line without getting bored? How should you end with a perfect punch? How you should unravel the mysteries? How to deliver the twist in the tale, with subtlety?

As time passed by, I started writing another book, so that brought me away from story-writing, but that could not stop me from seeing the plots of stories floating around. I've around 35 plots of short-stories in my head currently. The best thing that my life with stories has given me is that now I can see plots for novel, with as many as 7 of them being in my head currently. There is a subtle difference between the plots of stories and plots of novels i.e. the novels have a very long middle, where as it's quite short in the case of stories. So, it gets a little more difficult to enrapture the reader, keeping his/her interest alive throughout the middle in case of a novel.

Half-way down with my second novel, which was not the sequel, but it was with a really unique theme with a novel within a novel; I felt a little bit uneasy. Because my big-ambitious novel was set in a city in which I had never been, with the protagonist as an entrepreneur, that I had not been that time; and being married, that I would definitely not be in the recent time. So I decided to stop. I had written around 31,000 words, but I decided for good, that I needed to stop, since I was not doing any good in pursuing something that requires a broader panorama.

In the meanwhile, I got into poetry. The best thing about poetry was it didn't hinder my story-telling spirit, since all of my poems had either a story to tell or an emotional recount. Somewhere around this time, I got interested into limericks(which are five-line funny poems) and crafted many of those in my notebook, while idling in the lecture theatres.

Facebook gave a strange gift to me. It polished my skill in word-play. I started writing one-liners, which sometimes were profound or witty, or sometimes just mere play of words. This gave me a strange familiarity, since I now knew writing from a completely different perspective. A story can be told in even one-line. How's that for a story? It gave birth to my business idea and made me realize that all the ideas - be it design, literary, artistic or business lie on the same plane of existence, one just needs to change the perspective to catch it.

I started up and am enjoying a lot as a content writer for my website. Meanwhile, urged by my readers, with more than 1000 mails in my inbox asking me to write the sequel to my incomplete first book, I decided to give it a go. In a day, I got the plot. For your information, the word 'got the plot' means knowing how you're going to end the story, since once you know how you're going to end, everything falls into place. So, I started writing the sequel around 1.5 months ago, which clashed with my venture, and I had been fighting really hard to get a state of being with completely uncluttered mind and no tasks on head, so that I continue with the mammoth task with passion. It's currently at 8,000 words and would require almost a month of dedicated efforts to give it the shape of a book.

That's all from my 3 years writing journey. A journey that'll never end. Since a writer never quits writing, he keeps writing - sometimes his destiny and sometimes, history.

Just for interest:

Graffiti - My Stories Blog

Witty Shit - My One-liner Blog

Quantum Leap - My Old Travelogue

Oops! 'I' fell in love! - The Story of Making of my Novel

P.S. To write is to live - with all the characters of all the worlds.

Face to Face

I was busy orkutting today in the evening when my friend Akshay came into my room and asked me, "Do you want to go to teach the street children, for NSS? Hours will also be awarded." Smitten by lethargy and internet, my usual answer was, "No, not interested." Even the greed of NSS hours could not motivate me.

Fifteen minutes later, I was frustrated with the net speed in the hostel and finally thought of moving out. I saw Apoorv going for the Teaching Project. I accompanied him just for the sake of providing recreation to my mind cluttered with boredom.

We moved towards the place in our campus where all the masons who build our hostels live. There were about a dozen children of the age-group of 5-10 who haven't yet touched a pencil. We had to convince all the parents to allow their children to be taught by us. In most of the cases the father would allow, but the over-protective mother would always hinder saying, "Anjaan log se padhne kaise bhej de?"

We told them that we were not strangers but we too were students. We decided to teach the children in their locality only, so that more children turned up and parents could also develop a faith upon us. This was just the beginning. Everyone of us(the volunteers) were assigned with one child to teach. We were asked to be a friend first and then be a teacher.

I was assigned to a girl of about an age of 8 years. Her name was Rani. Inexperienced in the domain of teaching, I tried my best to do my job effectively. I asked her how much had she studied. She told, "Sirf ek saal tak, uske baad ma ghar ke kaam me baitha di."

She turned out to be interested in studies. She told that she knew counting from 1 to 20, she knew hindi as well as english alphabets, she could identify all the colors and she loved playing luka-chupi. She told that she liked to study when she was in school, but her mother did not allow her to go to school saying it was of no use. I was in gloom after hearing that, feeling very very apprehensive.

To change my mind, I asked her what her ambition was, what she wanted to become when she would grow up? After I poked her for some time(she was feeling shy to tell, perhaps because it could be too big dream for her), she said that she wanted become a doctor. Drawing inspiration from the movie Taare Zameen Par, I asked her to draw anything on the paper. She asked me what to draw. I told her to draw a circle, and then a leaf, then a flower and then a face...and so on. She drew almost everything which was constituting our the surroundings. Wherever she stumbled, I helped her out. It was great fun for both of us, especially when starting something from scratch...from the grass-root level unlimits the possibility of explorations. I taught her how to write her name in hindi as well as in english. I talked to her about basic hygiene, about what's the importance of washing hands before meal and cutting nails. I asked her to share all these facts with her family too.

Time passed swiftly, and soon dusk overtured the sky. Our work for the day was over, Before leaving, I asked Rani to do a homework i.e. to draw a cow and come tomorrow. To my surprise, her reply was, "Ghar mein pen nahin hai." I asked her that your Dad might have it. She said,"Baba ko padhna nahin aata hai." . Stunned at what she said, I came to realize the real condition of my country. In the campus of India's best academic Institute, ironically when these people don't even have an access to the basic ingredients for education like a paper or a pencil, then what would be the condition of the remote areas of the country. I looked at her eyes, all I could see was the innocence and an immense desire to learn. I gifted her my pen and two A4 sheets and made her promise me that she would turn up tomorrow, no matter what her mother said!

What more, we had done our work, and probably two hours would be awarded for that(thereby making my hours count for NSS as 54). If I take off my mind from the NSS hours, this day has showed me something bigger than any of my personal desires i.e. my real India : the condition people at the very base.

Look at these eyes, can we be so mean that we don't even pay notice to the fire hidden behind those cute little eyes. The grass-root level has got an immense potential which will remain unexploited until people look forward to contribute. If we look around carefully, we can find numerous Rani waiting for us to show them the way. Often, we want to contribute but we feel insufficient to convert our thoughts into actions. Today, I came to know that we are not insufficient, but we are gifted with a great tool which is enough to bring a radical change in various lives and that tool is nothing other than EDUCATION. YOU and only YOU have the all the ability to reach out to thousands and touch their lives. This one hour of teaching has provided me with much greater feelings for my nation than my entire lifetime life had, and now I can say proudly, "Life is too big than these NSS hours."

P.S. NSS stands for National Social Service.
P.S. Some of my friends had a great struggle teaching kids who didn't even understand Hindi, but they didn't surrender. Hats off to them!
P.S. I have completed just 52 hours of NSS in the first year, of which about 10 hours are by fraud. They ask us to complete 100 hours in a year though.

A word called India

At 11:30 am, I got up from my deep slumber fully rejuvenated, and thanked GOD for providing me this holiday. I loved being free for a day and that too a weekday. After doing my business of the morning(which was now tending to afternoon), I broke my long gap of 14 hours(for me its really really long!) by signing in my orkut account with my strange ID - quantum.harsh and an eleven-lettered password(which everyone pronounces incorrectly). Orkut homepage took 3 seconds to open, and what I observed was that there was a new scrap from a friend of mine, he scrapped me, “Happy Independence Day”. I realized, “Its Independence Day that bestowed me a 10 hours of sleep”. I wondered why the hell is this guy wishing ME? After all, it isn’t so special day of my life.

After 10 minutes of wandering in the profiles of the ‘few’ people in my friend-list, I saw about hundreds of profiles on orkut which had the Tricolor as their picture; which said “Happy Independence Day” with two smileys enclosing the caption in their profile. I was impressed by the patriotism of my friends, their love for the nation was extraordinary, for they got up this day quite early inspite of it being a national holiday and also they are utilising this leisure time by wishing their friends and bigwigs - Happy Independence Day. Strangely, where does this love for nation go in the remaining 363 days of the year? (one day subtracted considering Republic Day)

Sincerely asking, how many of us, in the remaining days of the year, have even thought about our nation? We just have one task to do in the remaining time of the year and that is to criticize the system, to disrespect the motherland by comparing it with other nations, to abuse our motherland for its prejudiced society, becoming more and more inclined towards western style of living but we have no time to contemplate on this freedom which was stamped on our personality right from the day we began to exist. India has become just a word for a vast majority of population living in this country, with the feeling of love for it being aroused only during national holidays.

Today is 15th Aug. If its not your birthday, then certainly you can think of something else for which this day holds some importance. It’s about it being the day of freedom. Freedom once it was achieved became a commonplace straightaway. We took it for granted. But the bitter truth is we still do not value this independence, we don’t still know the meaning of this word freedom.

The meaning of this word ‘freedom’ needs to be elaborated. The lexicons have found the meaning of freedom as the ability to pursue what we want without any second thought. But I personally think that is a very superficial definition. This word freedom has many hidden meanings which need to be stressed. If I ask a straight-forward short-answer question, “Is India free?” The one-word answer that will splatter out of the most mouths of Bhartiya Nagarik would be “YES”. But the question of the moment is - Are we really free? Still we are over-burdened by superstitions and prejudices, still there are stigmas like caste system and regional discriminations in various parts of the country, the political dominion is majorly motivated by personal goals and nepotism and yet we are rejoicing for the fact that we are free. Freedom means being free from all these biases and irrationality. Freedom means freedom to dream big and even bigger and our surroundings encouraging us to capture that dream. Freedom means freedom from hate, anger, violence and jealousy; freedom to do anything we like but taking the consideration of society also. Freedom does not imply having 10 kids and still be in the arena of ministry of the country and thinking for the progress of the nation. Freedom has an ingredient in itself of personal fulfilment as well as social responsibility.

It’s not about becoming respectful to the nation on a particular day but to change the course of our entire actions so that it affects our nation in a positive way. That action maybe as simple as throwing a chewing gum wrapper in a dustbin to returning a lost wallet to the person who lost it; it can be helping destitute with their medicines or stopping bribery wherever it occurs; from removing a brick lying in the middle of the road or preventing embezzlement of hostel funds; from having true insurance claims to speaking truth to your life-partner about your previous relations. The list goes on, these things are very simple and straightforward but it requires immense grit to be able to do them. The effect these actions have on this country may be very subtle to notice, but it will be quite visible in the long term. I am not an idealist who loves writing essays to provoke the mind of people, but I just want you to be aware of your nation and your responsibility to it. Just scrapping “Happy Independence Day” in my scrapbook and thereby incrementing my 5000 scraps by one, does not make me(and even others) feel happy, but your actions in some way or the other has the ability to make the entire nation happy. One day patriotism is like a new chewing gum which loses its taste as time progresses.

P.S. If you have read it, then I appreciate you a lot. Thanks for reading it. Please do comment to make me know who amongst my friends truly value their nation and did not get bored reading about it.
P.S. It was not meant to hurt some real nation lovers, it is just meant for fake people for who INDIA is just a word.

P.S. Country needs you. You just have to look up.

A forthcoming revolution :

Let us join hands to create a movement :

• People afflicted with physically disabilities should not be called physically handicapped but rather we should call them "Specially-abled"
• It has already been accepted that the word "blind" has been replaced by "visually challenged".
• The art of making a sad person happy is the best form of art possible. It is above any prayer and above any deed.
  
• Being judgmental is the worst way of wasting time. It can't persuade other people to correct themselves and neither can it help ourselves, just we get to improve our vocabulary by some 5-6 bad words.
  
• Sometimes, just being there means a lot more than saying something. Silence speaks louder than words.

When the power of love overcomes the love for power, the world will know peace.

I can create a difference in their lives :

Compassion, one of the greatest virtues is intriguing me once again. This morning, this particular feeling has started pinching me, for I remember myself being judgmental for many deprived people. I remember myself getting irritated by the beggars, by the kids asking for money to feed themselves, by a malnourished 5 year old cobbler in tattered clothes who annoyed me continuously asking me, "Sir, poliss kara lo" and me chiding him,"Bhaagta hai ya maarun?".

Being in educated class, it is our duty to have a place in our hearts for these heart-swirling happenings around us. We need to be touched by all this, we cannot be so heartless and so indifferent that we don't pay attention to these. The cause of this deprivation is nothing more than their fate, they had been born to poverty-stricken family and this is not their fault at all. If we can't help them then atleast by being compassionate we can treat them as human beings. Why are we so adamant to draw boundaries between ourselves and them? Before anything to categorize us, we all are a subset of a universal superset of "Human Beings" and after that we all are citizens of the same motherland. If we help them, then it will be indirectly helping our nation to break the boundary and class divide. We have the best tool to fight this penury and deprivation and that is "LOVE". Love can win all the wars and can bring radical change in the society. Only if we respect everyone's existence on this earth, we can make our existence worthwhile.

Just a simple pledge can make a difference :
"From this day, I will not only understand the pain of the poverty-stricken but also feel that pain. My eyes will reassure hope in every needy who comes to me."

Astrology : What's that?

Scientifically, the effect of the gravitation forces of the sun, moon and the planets is equivalent to the gravitational force exerted by a piece of pea suspended in air 20 metres away. It is totally absurd to say that the gravitational force of these celestial bodies will have any effect on our lives.

Quoting "Autobiography of a Yogi", Yogananda says that astrology is such a great science that even a real astrologist who can see the future of a person instantly on seeing the face will never ever dare to tell that person his/her future because no real gyani will ever play with the will of God. He will let everything happen on its own.

So all those people who hold the so called post of astrologist or palmists are mere frauds who have discovered a great technique of extracting great money from the naive and gullible people of India.

One should be rational and scientific. I am glad to note that our former President Mr.A.P.J.Abdul Kalam clearly wrote in his autobiography, "Wings of Fire", that he cannot understand the reason behind astrology and he does not believe it.

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Yoga : In its Truest Sense

Search google for Yoga and of the ten results that will appear almost 8 of them don't exactly point to what Yoga really is. Its disappointing to see in a country like India, which is the birth-place of the divine science of yoga, that people misinterpret yoga with pranayamas and asanas. It shows ignorance seeing people buying costly books titled "Yoga" which contains photos of a slim and trim guy or girl performing different asanas and stretching exercises. And thats not all, these people flaunt that they are doing Yoga or that they have learnt Yoga.

Yoga, in its broadest sense means union. It implies union of mind, body and soul. It comprises of eight steps : yama, niyama, asana, pranayam, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. The latter four points to the subtleties of the human mind. Of these eight steps, what people like Baba Ramdev are teaching are just Asana and Pranayama. No doubt they help a person to become physically fit, but this is not yoga. There should be a clear boundary between yoga and pranayama. Hundreds of books and CDs, especially of foreign writers, are available in the market titled Yoga and what they contain is nothing more than several asanas and stretching exercises.

The sad point is that the essence of Yoga is being lost in the country of its origin only. Just as Kung Fu originated in India and now China owns it, similarly Yoga is being lost from India and that too much due to our own ignorance. Yoga is not just an exercise, but its a science : the science which leads to enlightenment.

Understand this and safeguard its true spirit!

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