Getting Back On D Trackkkk .....!!!!!!!

So, it's been long !! I haven't written anything for a long time. It's interesting that a hobby which used to be my passion and to a large extent my identity at a point of life is suddenly abandoned by me without any reason. I have been inactive not just in writing but also in my life. Life has gone stagnant these days, nothing is happening. Past couple months were neither very constructive nor very disastrous. It's queer i have the peek of both the constructive and disastrous time at the same point and now both have gone, nothing is happening at all.

So after few or better say after a lot of troubles and uncertainties I am finally back on track. Life is getting momentum again, it is pretty much like what it used to be in the early days of JEE preparation, but it's CAT now and in the span that elapsed between I can feel the difference what Sachin was indicating, the difference between a 19 year old and a 39 year old. Same difference I feel between my JEE preparation and CAT preparation ( which isn't started yet for the record ).

The JEE days were more like living in a dream world, when you just have hope and optimism, the only fear that u have is induced by the lame lectures by coaching faculties and when you hear about failures of other, rest u just imagine yourself in limelight clearing the exam with flying colors and on the seventh cloud. The preparation that time is also fluctuating, some day you will study a lot, some other day you will struggle to remain positive. There is a healthy competition and you use to take help from fellow competitors a lot. It's pretty much like being a rookie, a newbie , a new fish in the tank when you have no experience just enthusiasm and energy and there is nothing to make you go dull or bleak as you haven't face anything that will make you doubt your own abilities.

The CAT days are pretty much like a 39 year old Sachin, trying to prove that he still has the same potential enhanced with the experience now. But I personally feel that experience demotivates a lot than it helps. You start doubting on your own abilities as you have failed previously. Every new endeavor always begins with the thought that what if I failed. You become more practical and calculative in your life. You tend to decrease the entropy and follow a regular pattern. So life is all monotonous and inactive, you just keep on flowing with the flow. Your fellow competitors are more interested in what you are doing and how much you are preparing rather than your own preparation. Plus there are thousand other ways, with every way looking more lucrative and correct if you haven't chosen it.

Now the big question, what I am doing with my life ?? Seriously speaking, at this point of life; I have no idea what I am doing and what  I should do. It's pretty much like living a lucid dream with the hope that one day you will wake and everything will be alright and moving in a proper and fix direction. I have second thoughts in almost everything of my life. At times I am too optimistic, at times I am devoid of any hope; At times I am full of energy, at times I have no zeal left; At times I am hopeful for something better and positive, at times I doubt everything in life; At times I have full faith on myself, at times I start doubting on my capabilities.

Let's see what turn life will take from here. I am hopeful and curious as I am no where near to the life what I thought I would have when I would be 20 yet I have no complain and only  few regrets. The past few failures and experiences have made me mature enough so that I know what to expect and how much to expect and in social cases from whom to expect. I will try to be more regular and consistent in blogging and writing as it used to give me immense relief once. But after continuous criticism by others, I started doubting on my writing skills, I went to the mode of perfection when you think that once I have learned grammar and vocab enough I will start writing, but I think that time never comes, so I have stop thinking about getting to a perfect mode and then start writing. Perhaps if I had waited for the perfect mode back in 2010, I would never have a blog with 50+ posts. So for those who want to read my views and exchange theirs, they are most welcome. Those who want everything perfect and flawless, WHO CARES, it's not your place !!!!
Will catch you all later hopefully !!

THE SUICIDE

He has finally decided that he no longer wants to continue. “What’s the sense in living if no one wants you or care about you”, he thought giving strength to his newly made decision. He found himself weak now to fight and struggle with the world. He was losing his pace in this never ending race and he feared that he may run alone after a while in a loop reaching no where. “My problems will end with the end of my life”, he thought.

Rohan Mehra, 2nd year student of BE, wasn’t always the same. He used to be a charming and delightful person once who can bring smile and inculcate enthusiasm in any one. But, as it happens with every one he was also in the mob who failed to chase their dream and were now pursuing something that they think is far below their level. His life seemed to be a perpetual struggle to him now, in which he daily dies 100 times but was forced to continue and live without any reason.

Rohan, once a bright student was now struggling to maintain good grades. The burden of his high expectations from himself was now making him exhaust and tired. He was not satisfied with his college, his personal life and his achievements so far. He was fond of comparing himself to other students and whenever he found that any one of them is ahead of him, the competition begins. His desperations to become perfect and better than other always gradually turns the healthy competition into something ugly. And he ended up with losing his confidence, pride and some good people.

He was now in a panic situation and was getting unstable day by day. His parents never leave any chance of reminding him that what they thought of him and what eventually he had become. He was only a source of bragging to them, a show piece that once enhanced their reputation and now was a rejected piece, a reason of disgust to them, a blot on their parenting skills. The girl he admired and fancied, the only source of relief to him in his bleak life had left him and preferred some other guy whose present qualifications were much above him, this further put him into an interminable inferiority. The atrocious pain of rejection continues to slowly assassin the chunks of happiness and confidence left in him.

Further, his future plans, his only hope to excel were putting lots of pressure in him leading to a never ending turmoil. He was in a stage of a dog chasing his own tail, putting huge efforts but reaching no where. But, the most painful thing was his worst nightmare has turned into an appalling reality. A state of having no identity, since childhood he had lived in a heroic stardom. The presence of limelight has made him insecure and afraid of darkness of a common life. He always preferred that people must know him by his name, but now he was just a part of crowd, running in a common race. He has no name, no identity no existence.

The day of his supposed doom started like any other common days. But he wasn’t worried or afraid now as he knew that his problems and pains too have a short life span now. He got up cheerfully from his bed as he was convinced that after this he would go directly into his death bed into a painless sleep forever without any worry of waking at the correct time and rush to go somewhere. He watched his face clearly in the mirror after a long time realizing that how much he has changed in all these struggling period, but physical beauty didn’t matter to him anymore.

Breakfast was having the regular things like taunts and reproaches from his parents. But today he regressed and rebelled. He didn’t put his head down like always listening to poisonous arrows from his dad. Today he was having the courage to argue with them because he knew he won’t be there to face the repercussions. He shouted on his parents and screamed as he never did and he was prepared for the return screams and drama but surprisingly it wasn’t there. Instead, there were tears, in both his mother’s and father’s eye. Tears, not because of being hurt, but tears of regret. His mother hugged him after a long and apologized for being hard on him when they should have been the most supportive. His unintentional rebellion has opened some doors which were locking affection and care of his parents.

College today was also like teaching lessons of life. He was no longer worried about getting low sessionals, scoring less in exams, having proper image and impression in front of teachers. All he wanted to do was just to emit out all the frustration and so he did. He did all the mischief and argued with every teacher providing entertainment to whole class. He argued, was kicked out of class many times and he didn’t care. He was enjoying his revenge, perhaps for the first time college appeared to be any fun to him. He realized that rock bottom was the best place to throw away all the load and enjoy. As things couldn’t get any worse than enjoying the worst would be the best option perhaps.

He was amused that how the last day of his life was revealing new dimensions of living to him. He also met the girl he admired. But today he was not angry at her, neither he was feeling inferior or rejected by any mean. He had forgiven her today as he thought it was just a part of life. He had forgiven her finally, he had let her go, freed herself as well as himself from something useless and painful. Something, he was remembering just to satisfy his ego.

So the time had come, he was about to write his suicide note. He first began with writing that no one must be blamed for his death. A thought occurred in head suddenly, that if no one is meant to be responsible for his death then why is he dying ? He continued that he was hopeless in his life and can’t continue with the struggle and suddenly he realized all the fun he had in college today. He was not sure whether to mention anything indirectly about his failed love life and suddenly he realized the look on his girl’s face, the silence apology from her and the tranquilizing feeling of forgiving her.

He was taken aback by uncontrolled conflicting emotions flowing throughout his body. Many thoughts running parallel, the situation of his parents when they would see his body hanging, the reaction of other friends who care for him though they never showed it and the most disturbing thought was not giving a final shot to his ultimate aim and thereby the ultimate failure. He always believed that when he would die he would have made his name strong enough to be remembered by others and now he was here, on the verge of meeting his death in an oblivion state, even newspaper would have the headline that a boy hanged not Rohan Mehra hanged himself.

Somehow he stood on the stool and just when he was about to hang he watched the scene of beautiful sunset from his window. The sun getting dimmer and dimmer but still shining red. The sun, soon to be overshadowed and captured by darkness for hours. But it would rise again and fill life in every motionless creature. Little birds returning back to their nest after a long tiring day. But the noises and chirping of them were reflecting an urge to rest for a while and then continue again the next day. Slowly the sun vanished from the horizon but even after it was gone, a bunch of rays were still lighting the horizon. He was tranfixed by watching the scene of a few rays fighting with darkness. After a while, the darkness would capture the entire sky, but in the morning the rays would come back and vanish the darkness.

The serene beauty of the scene and the feeling that he should also rise himself were inculcating new hopes and energy into him gradually. He realized that he was a part of crowd indeed, a faceless entity, but many other of the crowd can only dream of the life he is living. He was in a good college in a country where many were deprived of primary education. He was having a perfect healthy body and a sound mind, which many lacks. Many handicap person fought and succeeded and he inspite of being blessed with a perfect body was quitting. He was having prospects of future and no pressure from family while many have to cease chasing their dreams and take responsibility of family.

The only thinga he lacked was confidence and hope. He hanged the dead and hopeless part of him that day. He understood now, that life could have been worse for him, may be it is not as good as it should be but it isn’t as bad as it could be. May be he would fail again but there is nothing such as a last chance, there are always new opportunities, new hopes, and a better tomorrow. Every day comes like a new chapter of life. The suicide note has become a psalm of life to him and he was born from his ashes again. A new transformed, optimistic, ready to struggle guy who won’t quit who won’t die, as life is much more than just a bunch of failure. He was ready to give life a shot again as it is always better to try and fail than failing to try.

Frenemies.... you can't avoid them

So you think you have more friends than you have enemies or more enemies than you have friends. But guess the correct case would be having far more frenemies than both friends and enemy. Now there isn’t any lord Voldemort in your life so that you can tag someone as pure enemy, friends may be there as shown in movies, but one can never know what they think about you. But frenemies, they are everywhere, quite responsible person, as they have to act like friend in front of you and enemies behind your back.

Now, how to identify a frenemy? The problem is that, you can never identify them unless someone else reveals their true colors. A frenemy, no matter how dumb and stupid he is in real life, is always at peak of wisdom when he is playing his game against you. A frenemy has excellent pretending and faking skill and they never give rise to any situation so that you or anyone else can point their finger on them.

So, how to solve this growing painful problem that can’t be identify as it has no visible symptoms. For this we have to look at the origin of frenemies. Frenemy usually originate from misunderstandings. Misunderstandings originate when either you have not given enough space and confidence to your friends, so that they can talk with you anytime or you didn’t choose right friends who can’t trust you no matter what you do. Frenemies multiply like deadly viruses. They keep on influencing other people and soon you have a large mass against you and you have no idea of it.

So only 2 precautions could be taken if you want to fight or better say avoid frenemies. First, give a close place to only those people in your life whom you can trust and they can trust you in return. Second, avoid misunderstandings and try to clear things as soon as possible as you can. People knowing you better can hurt you best, as they know exactly where to hit so be careful people. Even true friends can’t save you or make you aware of true frenemies.

The Construction Phase.........................

Destruction, though an intimidating word but it rhymes, with and is antonym of the word construction. For several days I was thinking to update my blog with a good post, but lack of constructive and creative thoughts was restricting me. On today’s morning, when I was analyzing and inspecting the construction work going on my house I came with a very awkward yet interesting analogy between the construction of building and our own mind.

Have you ever felt broken inside, with a reason or without any reason?? Mood swings without any reason at regular intervals, getting depressed again and again and having just negative approach for everything. Sitting alone in your friend circle or avoiding contact with them pretending that you are lost somewhere else. With every new day there seemed no new beginning, and sunset seemed more prominent than sunrise. The things which used to give us happiness, sounds illogical and scary and we just wanted to run away from them. We all have definitely gone through a very bizarre period in our life where life lacks something, what we don’t know? But the essence of enjoyment and enthusiasm is lost and we just flail without any control on our mind and mood.

But for some new construction or building of a new monument, destruction is the first part. You can’t create something new on an existing thing. Even for a slight modification something has to be destruct first. The same concept is applied on thoughts also. In order to clear your perspective and make way for new thoughts, the old thoughts and prejudices has to be destructed. You have to erase or wipe incorrect pages of your life book even tear them apart so that a fresh page can be created to write a new story.

Now, the mode of destruction and the initial phase of construction are not very comfortable. Comparing it with construction of a building, first the view is damaged and there are broken pieces everywhere. Same in case of our mind, our old mindset and opinions are damaged and we have to change them. Everything in the home is scattered and nothing remains at its right place, same with us as our mood and thoughts are scattered and even our mind is not at its right place.

We have to adjust our sleeping and eating-place, similarly we have to adjust a lot when the destruction phase is running in our mind. When something is broken, the sounds are very annoying and cumbersome. When our heart is broken, the beautiful memories of happy moments of past are also very painful and disturbing. Soon we became frustrated blaming our decision for this construction phase and remembering how good our building used to look and how comfortable it was in past? But we know that we are helpless and we can never have our old building back.

Slowly, we recover and adjust to this construction phase. We start plotting for our new and better monument. We tear the old pages and start afresh, filling colors in the sketchbook of dreams. An optimistic person may be opting a mistake again, but its human nature. We can’t remain depressed and sad for long, either by our own willpower to rise again or for the sake of not reflecting a weak image and creating emotional drama everywhere. In the last phase of our construction phase, we tap our back or thank our destiny that after a short uncomfortable period (which never looks short when we are passing through it) the future is better and brings more happiness than what we thought in past this unfulfilled present will.

Aarakshan : movie review

Finally, I had watched one of the most awaited film of mine, ‘aarakshan’, yesterday. The promos were stunning, the topic is one of my favorite and something I had discussed the most and in depth. And when prakash jha is on the director’s chair, the expectations are always high. I thought to write a review for this movie after I had read some of its review. There is nothing much to hype about this film. The way it was marketed makes us curious about the content in the film. But the story is much different. But anyway it’s a great effort and this movie is a must watch.

Firstly, whatever you were watching in the promos comprises just a minor part of the film. 90% of the promos are taken from just first half hour of the film, the rest is completely different. Amitabh Bacchan, has played or I must say lived the character of prabhakar anand, principle of a college. Prabhakar gives utmost priorities to principles and ideals in his life. He helps poor and backward kids and give them free coaching. Even he has reserved some of the places in his college for backward institutions which give rise to a controversy as the college is private and there is no reservation policy in it.

People belonging to upper class oppose on his policy of giving entry to backward people but not to them even for trustee or management quota. Lots of people became his enemy but he remains firm to his values. He favors and helps Deepak kumar, a backward student, played by saif ali khan in every part of his academic life and even give him a part time job in college. Deepak is in a relation with his daughter poorvi, played be Deepika. Poorvi and Deepak are friend with Sushant, played by prateik babbar who is son of a rich man and trustee of college.

The scenario of enjoyable and peaceful college life suddenly changes when supreme court approves the decision of 27% reservation in government colleges. Sushant, who was sure of his admission to mass communication in a leading government college got disappointed and annoyed, when he failed to secure an admission. His fury and panic lead to differences between him and Deepak. There is a massive dialogue and argument between him and Deepak on the topic of reservation. Mithalesh Singh, played by Manoj Bajpayee is the vice principle, who runs 7 coaching classes and has partial and negative thoughts about backward people. He taunts Deepak for his success and comments on the lack of competitive spirit in backward people, and using reservation for an unfair advantage. The fights goes vehement with both sides exchanging lots of personal comments. Prabhakar, suspends sushant and had a hot discussion with Deepak, leading Deepak to separate his path and further breakup of Deepak and Poorvi.

This section comprises the first half hour of the film, which seems controversial and provoking to some extent, but if you wish that entire film is based on this then you are wrong. The rest 2 hours are based on Amitabh’s struggle against private coaching classes, his fight with Manoj and his inner power of sticking to his values. After resigning from college, due to conflict with mithlesh, Prabhakar’s home is illegally taken by Mithelesh to run his coaching. Prabhakar starts a free coaching for all the students, Deepak and Sushant also joins him, soon they have an army of lots of people giving their free services and the Mithlesh coaching business suffer and eventually collapse. The end of the film is diplomatic and has nothing to do with reservation. It ends with having free coaching classes in the college campus for poor students.

So this was the story. Now talking about reviews, firstly I don’t understand why the movie is named as aarakshan, as a major portion of the movie has nothing to do with it. May be it’s a good marketing strategy, or may be if Prakash has extended the reservation part. Political parties may have burned his creativity before the film has reached the theatres.

Prakash has kept an equal perspective for both parties. Dialogues, which are both entertaining and thought provoking are said for both parties. There are some minor characters and stories which gives light to major problems, like a bramhin whose father is peon, not getting admission in a college despite having 86% as some ST student has taken a general seat. It shows the faulty rule of reserved people having the right to take seats of general people which results in destroying the future of a bright talent. Sushant not getting admission due to reservation policy is another thing. The bank manager not getting promoted and his junior getting promoted due to reservation policy reveals another loop hole.

Manoj Vajpayee, saying that reservation policy would lead to flourishing of coaching classes further seems the most strong point. As general people have to join coaching to compete due to shortage of seats, and even in the reserved class, those having money would enjoy better luxuries and resources and would easily beat the poor ones. That’s a reality, Prabhakar’s wife saying that reservation is not the solution of injustice and if you want to give them a chance, then give them better resources in the beginning, good primary education so that they would be able to complete with general people is another great thing.

I would recommend all the people to go and watch this movie, as its both entertaining and thought provoking. You would have fun and will really enjoy the way this sensitive topic is dealt with covering all the essential issues. It’s a must watch movie.