Happy Earth Day !

It s been a long time since I updated my blog, or rather even visited my blog. Last couple of months I was just too occupied with my curriculum, dating my books day & night in hope of a decent CG thereafter. It seems dating is not my cup of tea...not even with my books. Marks ditched me and left me & my CG in a condition beyond repair. Anyway, I had a month’s break after my break-up with my marks & I thought I would return to my ever-loyal friend with no complaints & no demands...my blog! My vacations started and I thought of many blog posts but the only place where I spent my time writing turned out to be facebook. Numerous status updates, comments, photo & video sharing kept me busy and I never really took time out of this site to update my blog.

Today, as usual I spent hours on status updates of my friends. Some had silly jokes while some had poems...some heart-broken folks had ‘dard bhari shayari’ where as others had wishes for weird ‘day celebrations’. This is one of the new trends I have noticed on facebook recently. People would just crazily find some weird thing particular to that day and update ‘Happy XXXXX Day’. To add to it, some 20 people would like it and another 10 would share/copy it as their status message without even thinking twice if it actually had any relevance. Well I can list down top 50 crazy things on facebook but I would save that for my next post.

Today I saw some 10 people sharing about following Earth Hour. Earth Hour in India is on March 26th, 8:30-9:30 PM. I was about to share the same but then I paused and thought for a moment. Will I be actually following this? What is the purpose of following this Earth Hour? Is it to save electricity or is it to generate awareness among people and make them conscious about saving electricity. I think this would serve neither of the purposes. Even when everyone strictly follows this, the electricity saved in this one hour would not even be 1% of the electricity we waste daily. ACs in huge offices are on when hardly 10 people are working, lights & fans of each room are running ceaselessly when just one room is being used. Then why do we have to constrain ourselves for that one hour and live without light when we can save much more electricity by being a little cautious one full day and not waste electricity.

If generating awareness is the intention, then this Earth Hour fails even more miserably because many people don’t even think once about the electricity they waste. They just feel happy about the fact that they are also a part of the group that ‘celebrated the Earth Hour’.

There is a difference in the way I use electricity when current is there in my house and when the current is not there & inverter is being used. Not that I compromise any of the comforts when using inverter, it’s just that I don’t waste electricity because I know that once the inverter dies, life would be hell without electricity. It is necessary to believe that electricity would not last forever while using it. Only then will our natural tendency be to minimize its wastage and I think this feeling is missing in most of us. ‘Earth Hour’ doesn’t address this basic need & hence I feel it is not serving its purpose. Any campaign which induces this feeling of resource scarcity can only drive us save electricity in true sense.

I would try and treat every day as Earth Day and save electricity. Will you?

PS: This does not mean my facebook status would have ‘Happy Earth Day’ everyday ;)

A murder or a death sentence?

After being sexually harassed for three years, Rupam Pathak thought her miseries would come to an end and the guilty would be punished when she filed an FIR against the MLA of a district in Bihar. But her wait for justice seemed never ending and in a quest to punish the guilty, she stabbed the MLA to death this morning.

Prima facie it appears as an act of brutal murder. A school teacher is supposed to teach by example and killing a person would be the last example any society would want to set for its children and youth. But then, is it actually an example of murder or an example of punishing the guilty and hence preventing people from committing this heinous crime?

A similar case had been filed by another woman against this MLA a few years back. But thanks to our corrupt socio-political system, he was given a clean chit in that case. Had he been punished suitably in the first instance itself, Rupam would have been saved of her misery. This is not only true for this case but also for many cases being filed in India. We all know the famous Aarushi Murder Case. It is a shame that court has not been able to find the guilty till now. Or rather the guilty is powerful enough to tamper with the judicial system successfully every-time (s)he wishes to. In this scenario, I think Rupam was left with no other choice than to break the law and give justice to herself.

What is even more disheartening is the way politicians and media commented on this incident. Almost all articles have framed the incident as murder and have reported only one side of the story. No one has even hinted that this act could imply that patience level of the public is now peaking and soon such fate might be meted out to other such politicians. They should thus restrict their criminal activities and corruption and concentrate on doing what they are elected for. No one pointed the fact that if justice would continuously be delayed (and hence denied), people would be forced to break laws and punish the guilty in their own ways.

In my view, Rupam has given an apt reply to these sucking politicians and the sick judicial system.

First Date !

They waited eagerly for the class to get over,
looked at their watches more than the teacher.
Imagining his first date for the hundredth time,
he looked at her and then the time.

As the bell rang, they slipped from the room in a flash,
while others were still packing, discussing about the class.
They just smiled and walked side by side.
Suddenly she stopped, & in a moment even he was petrified.

They stood close as the tiny drops of water touched their cheeks.
He could smell her sweet rose perfume,
and she could count his loud nervous beats.

He stared at the sky,
fearing she may refuse to go out
and wished the rain to stop.
Closing her eyes, she prayed silently,
'let this rain continue' and
imagined them holding hands & walking in the rain.

As the drops became bigger and faster,
'Let's go!' he said and held her hands to go back.
Still her eyes closed, she started running out,
With hands held tight and smiles running wide.
Enjoying the fresh water droplets hitting their face,
they ran for their wonderful first date!

Dreams are all I have!

It has been a long time since I scribbled something here. A lot happened in the last few months. There were many days when I thought I would update my blog but somehow all my time and energy was spent only in writing about myself in hundreds of forms. I wrote so many essays during this placement season that I swore I wouldn't write anything for 1 week after placements, the only exceptions being chatting and giving attendance :P

There were so many things about which I wanted to write in the last few months. On some topics I even structured and wrote the entire post in my dreams! This reminds me of another interesting topic I wanted to write about. I have observed that after coming to this place, I have started recollecting my dreams and the frequency has increased to a disturbing level. This could be either because I hardly do any physical work & thus no sound sleep or because I do so much of mental work that my brain refuses to rest even when I sleep. Almost everyday I wake up with a strange dream memory. Some days it is an entire 2 hour interview with someone, some days I watch movies in my dreams, I relax on beaches and just stare at the waves on some days.

Today I woke up with the most interesting dream...a dream in which I was made the placement committee head at Hogwarts! As the place-comm head, I laid down rules for the spells which could be listed in their CVs, conducted training sessions on what magic to show when asked 'Tell me something about urself', the mock interviews with interviewees casting disastrous spells etc. It was a 'dream' dream!!

And as the famous saying goes 'Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them', I am hoping that a few of my good dreams do come true.

Friends Forever !

Will our paths ever cross again?
The mere thought of this is a pain

Even while treading on paths that never meet,
you would find me there in times of need.

It takes just one sight to fall in love
but it takes years to find a friend like you.

You may have a hundred friends like me,
But I had just you & I will have just you!!

exam TIME !

I am not sure of the relation between speed of light and time. The only relation between them which I can recall is the explanation of time travel. In simple terms, if we can travel faster than speed of light then we can travel ahead of / back in time. Does that mean speed of light has a direct relation with speed of time? Weird doubts.... I dont even know if there is a term 'speed of time' but I just meant the speed with which the time passes. You must be wondering why the hell did I start writing about speed of light and time relationship. Well, to cut the long story short... I was just trying out if I could 'globe' on any given topic..!!

Here, time passes faster than I could have imagined. As soon as I somehow complete one thing, I can hear the knell of another deadline. And swinging back and forth between accomplished and unaccomplished deadlines, five weeks are over! It truly teaches the most important lesson of management - time management and keeps us on our toes.

It's exam time again and as usual, I have been promoted from a day dreamer to a visionary (sounds better,is more motivating and is applicable for night also!). My mind is flooded with new ideas in various domains as soon as I open any book. The only problem is that they are not in the remotest way linked to anything mentioned in the book and is only taking me away from marks. And what better example than this post, the idea of which I got as soon as I opened the book for marketing!

PS( for all physicists out there): I have not googled the basic meaning of time travel and the post is solely based on what I vaguely remember. It is not intended to contend with the meanings/importance of these terms.

Roses remind me of the sweet fragrance life always has in spite of being surrounded by thorns. It's bright color overshadows the colorless thorns. It's soft touch heals broken hearts. It shows that someone still cares for me.

Thanks for the roses !

PS: Cake and the chocolates too have an equally significant contribution in making my life sweet... Thanks :)