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Is the number of days that have passed ...Condemnations flew, people swore, dear ones cried and the world watched. Today, some memories seem to have forgotten - politics, economics, budgets and the rains seem to have taken top priority. A look at the following videos brought back all the hatred, fear and helplessness.

Do not watch the videos if you are weak at heart (it takes courage to acknowledge the same)

I've been a bad boy

In a completely non-perverse sense .... I might have managed to piss off someone real close to me - thanks to a late night "jump the gun" email, which I've already tried my best to get rectified... Hope things get better soon :|

Goosebumps

Watch this ad ...

A different perspective

I wake up at 5 in the morning - there's no alarm clock to do it, but i must wake up early if I wish to live. Go out and do the morning chores before the sunlight arrives - because i stay in the desert and there is no place other than the bushes to give me and my wife some privacy in some of life's most mundane tasks. Then she walks 5 kms to the place where the water tanker unloads. In the meanwhile, I start the pump with much efforts and diesel costlier than my blood starts pumping water onto my field some time later...

I walk all day on the salty land, amidst salty water, barefooted - because the rubber boots my wife made out of some tires could not give me the strength I needed to do my job. I work all morning- while my younger kids wake up and wait for the school to start. They stare intently in one direction - at a hut 6 kms away, covered with some plastic and tin shelters. A small flicker of mirrors by the teachers tells them its time to come to school now - and they joyously signal back with our broken mirror. They hop to school along the desert mud, joyously because the school has some toys, some friends and food to eat. My older kids work with me in the water now. We work till the sun above our heads starts to burn the scalp and the skin, I get out of the water only to see my leg shrinking further. My joints ache when I sit down for a meal, but I put on a brave smile - they say there will be some students from some well known management college in Ahmedabad here to study us today ... Maybe they can do something to explain why my life is so...

Remembering Techfest

I was once a part of the Techfest team at IIT Bombay. That was probably the best group of people that I had a chance to work with. And I see that my successors are trying their best to keep up the name we have striven to create. Looking at the video below makes me nostalgic and want to go back and be there once more; maybe I will, given the extended weekend that IIM strived hard to deny us...;)

And then they came for me ...

Read this article which mentioned the German theologian, Martin Niem"ller. In his youth he was an anti-Semite and an admirer of Hitler. As Nazism took hold in Germany, however, he saw Nazism for what it was: it was not just the Jews Hitler sought to extirpate, it was just about anyone with an alternate point of view. Niem"ller spoke out, and for his trouble was incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945, and very nearly executed. While incarcerated, Niem"ller wrote a poem that, from the first time I read it in my teenage years, stuck hauntingly in my mind:


First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Scary ...

Resolutions ... :)

The last post of the year on the blog ... Came across a very impressive phrase in a book - "There is only one purpose behind speech or writing - to communicate to others something one feels strongly". This is my space to write what I feel strongly about and 2009 will be about that :)

So, to start off 2009 in the most cliche way possible, here I shoot off some of my resolutions which I feel would actually be followed if someone else knew about them...

1. Value Health : Get in the best shape possible, physically and habitually
2. Value Friends: Keep in touch with old ones and not freak out the new ones ;)
3. Value wealth : Start keeping track of where the moolah goes, and be thankful about where it comes from
4. Value education: Where there's an asset, there's a liability - Gotta stay on the right (left) side of life's balance sheet!
5. Value love : They say it's the most beautiful of all feelings, I've been on that verge many a times - it's time to give back as much as I have received

If anyone out there thinks I'm about to break any of these, feel free to punch / bitchslap me (Not too badly though, remember resolution #1 :P)

Cheerios,
Rahul aka Parcel

Shaken ...

It must have been around 7 in the morning today when it all started. Ever since childhood I've been "nightmaring" about minuscule worries like being late to school (far too many times has this haunted me), or falling from a bridge; but the dream I saw today had me shaken the moment my eyes opened - I still am.

I saw a dream where mumbai was being targeted by Nuclear bombs - who sent these, I don't know. And it wasn't just one bomb - but strikes at 3 different places, I could feel the heat on my skin , the flames glaring in my face and it scared me bad... Writing this down brings back the images - I pray to God these images remain imaginary !

The worst part is that I am not in Mumbai, but everyone I care about is ... the thought scared me so much that I called up home on the pretext of inquiring about something as stupid as "has my phone bill arrived?" when I've been paying the same online for ages ...

It is an Indian superstition that dreams seen just before waking up tend to come true - in this case I hope it remains one and I would do anything to hope it stays just a superstition... But I feel helpless and powerless, what use has a so called elite engineering and an elite management education for me if it cannot put my mind at peace !

Shaken, yet to be stirred...

India's 9/11

(All the opinions in the post below are strictly my ponderings - I do not wish to offend / provoke anyone, and I have been and always will be a Mumbaikar to the core)


"It's the day after - and the trains are still crowded - damn, the spirit of Mumbai is unbreakable"

Is a SMS I get from a friend stuck in his office all night thanks to the curfews in the city. I've been hearing about this "Spirit of Mumbai" ever since I was a kid - be it the Babri Masjid riots, the innumerable bomb explosions, the charred trains or the calamitous floods. Praises have been sung about this spirit in media across the world.

This factor which amused me at the start and gave me a certain sense of pride is now forcing me to rethink my perception of the "spirit". Conventionally, a spirit is something that is obtained after the death of a living creature, and that is precisely what Mumbai has long been - dead !

People move on back to work after such disheartening occurrences not out of bravado or the spirit of showing the miscreants that we are "invincible". On the contrary, people move on because they can't afford to stay and mourn... Life has to go on only because life depends on daily livelihood - quite literally in most cases. People feel bad about what is happening, badmouth the media, curse the administration, blame the Gods and damn the terrorists - and get back to their lives as if nothing has happened. How will anything be accomplished if the cycle of events is this predictable - when only those who have lost their near and dear ones shed tears and are hushed by the promises of monetary compensations. Will there ever be a collective uprising against injustice in Mumbai, or any Indian city for that matter?

They say the public memory is short - let's see how short it turns out to be this time !!!

For voices from fellow bloggers on the Mumbai terror scene, check out the list at Indiblogger

Grim times lie ahead

Just an advice to all those big fish who are the rulers of the pond - although the sea will give you many smaller prey, it is a monstrous place with unexpected and dark currents and bigger fish waiting to feast on you ...

A clarification on this dark metaphor the next time !

The bitter truth of life

They say it's always good to be a kid at heart ... try doing that and see how life spits at you in the worst possible ways.

Consider this situation :

Who would u choose if a mad judge gave you the option of choosing 3 ppl from your mom, dad, brother and sister and the remaining one goes to the gallows?... or that all 5 of you rot in separate cells, who would u choose ??

Quite similar to the choices I am facing right now !

This ones for all the baaps, bhais and bacchas from IITB ...

Here u go guys, the repost from Algo when I left IITB ;)

Half an hour before ALGO was “finally” sent to be printed, I was requested out of the blue to write a ‘senti message’ on behalf of my batch… 30 minutes to sum up nearly 4 years of experiences, 30 minutes to pen down the perceptions of around 80 of my hostelmates, I thought I would hit a dead end writing this but somehow words are overflowing in my mind…

A very cliché way to begin would be by saying that I remember my first day at Hostel 13 … my first day at IITB - I remember the day I gawked at the beautiful hotel-like structure that stood before me, I remember the relief I felt when I found out that my room was not be shared with other species of the animal kingdom, I remember the fear I felt when some seniors said that H13 had no culture and the thrill it gave me to go through the welcome document compiled by the first freshie batch in the hostel, unfortunately meant for us … the last freshie batch of hostel 13. I remember the thrill it gave our huge freshie batch to sneak into SkyB after 10 to watch the most tattimax movie ever made – and the scolding the GSec gave us after that… I remember the roars of cheers 13 had, which deafened one and all in the LT…

We were titans … rightly so, there were just 2 groups in the insti, one was from 13, and everyone else against it … I remember the things our group of freshies & our seniors did … We swam with cramped legs, we anti-cheered with such zeal that even fifthies were put to shame, we forgot about quizzes altogether to work for the PAF, we ran cross-country races not to win, but just to put others to shame – others who claimed that 13 was good only for numbers and had no culture, others who shouted things like “insti ka dustbin” (!) … I remember the GBMs we had in the skyB where groups of freshies questioned even the warden, I remember the fights we had in the comproom over miniscule things like chatting v/s acads and the water fights we had followed by all of us, both crackuA1 and phoduC1 cleaning the hostel on our knees, I remember people coming to 13 from all over the insti to study before the exams – the inverse never held true, afterall we were titans, the brightest and the best…

The sophie year separated many of us from each other… but gave us access to a wonderful batch of seniors, seniors who up until a year ago had been kids, seniors who stepped up and metamorphosised to make sure we did all the chutiyaaps we could as sophies… seniors who took us to treats and who took treats from us … Sophie year was the first time I truly felt that a valfi was time to bid adieu, say goodbye to some of the most closest people in your lives, time to take leave of your second family…

The third year was one of power, the power Team Techfest gave me, the reverence of the ignorant freshies, the awe of the fresh sophies entering the home of the Centaur5. The academics went haywire with seminars, projects and electives alike... but then there was a certain feeling of knowing the workarounds that gave u reassurance!

It is almost time to go now… I speak for every single one of my batchmates when I say “We will miss the life we had here, the liberty to walk up to any door at 3 in the night to ask for some company, the freedom to trust anyone with some of our most hidden aspects, the chance to start anew everyday of our life here, the balls to speak up and question anything that upsets us, the groups to crib about some of the most miniscule of things, the teams to stand by us even when the rest of the world isn’t, the seniors who would lend us their fundaes without a qualm, the juniors who respected us and took our words without a question, the loyalty we had for H13, the home we found in IITB”

--

Rahul S. K.

H13, IIT Bombay.