Inspired by the Dead poets' society....

Long long ago,

I don’t even remember when,

Someone told me to go,

Beyond the mountains seven,

To that eternal spring,

Which sprinkled the scented essence,

That salvation will bring,

To the sinned soul and the muddled sense,

I was too young to think,

Hence did what I was told,

And I ran and ran to the brink,

Hoping for the secret to unfold…

Until one dewy morning,

I realized, my life was passing me by,

Without even a warning,

And my mouth turned dry...

Oh, to think of the wasted time,

The wasted life,

When I should have dined,

On the nature’s rife,

From now on, I shall grow,

Not pursue, not run,

Just suck on life’s marrow,

In this new life that has begun!

A s(l)ick definition of our lives...

We live in a greedy little world--

that teaches every little boy and girl

To earn as much as they can possibly--

then turn around and

Spend it foolishly

We've created us a credit card mess

We spend the money we don't possess

Our religion is to go and blow it all

So it's shoppin' every Sunday at the mall



All we ever want is more

A lot more than we had before

So take me to the nearest store



Can you hear it ring

It makes you wanna sing

It's such a beautiful thing

Lots of diamond rings

The happiness it brings

You'll live like a king

With lots of money and things



------ Shania Twain's Ka Ching...



Contradicting this, what come to my mind our thalaivar Rajini's definition of why we earn any amount of money at all...



Nalla sapadanum

Stylaa dress pannanum... thats all our motivation is all about!!



(eat well, dress in style... )

Makes me think!

And to think we live in the same world!!

This post concerns our maidservant back at home ... an old woman of around sixty but who looked much older, with cracked, parched skin covering old bones, permanently bent over with age and fatigue and big teeth stained black with incessant chewing of the tobacco... one of the few pleasures of her life...



She still works to support her grandchildresn after the untimely death of her son.... If you think she will be a cheerless woman worn by the roughness of life's dealings with her, you got it all wrong... She is a smiling woman whose issues of life and criterions of happiness were soo different from mine, that it made me thank god for giving us all a scope for happiness...



Well, coming to the point, she was telling me this story about how the people of her community brought the God to their abode (translating to building a small temple among their huts...) Its a big ritual involvong all the important people of her village who went to Samayapuram (a very old renowned durga temple in Trichy, our hometown), after performing several pooja's , got the God (this time the idol which they will plcae in their temple) to their place... (The details of the story involved some men who were trying to hinder this process, but her language was so befuddled, I couldn't make out much), but with a triumphant smile she says "But the GOD belonged in our village. So inspite of all the hurdles we brought him!!"



And when I spoke to her (I could never help my awe at the face of such innocence) about whether she really believed in god and stuff, all she says with a shocked face is "what questions you ask child, of course, god is everything for us!!"



I did not know whether to be shocked at how different our thoughts and issues were and or send a silent prayer up to the God she believed in for making such faith possible....

Home...

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in."



No more sentiments... its that simple...

when you are desolate, you turn to your home and they will take you...

Its immaterail whether you are rich or poor as long as you have a home..

nothing else matters... not even a feeling of belonging... Just the cock-sureness that a place called home exists where you can take refuge, no matter what...



ha, how wonderful the re-assurance!

Just to reiterate....

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep....



Somehow I have this terrible conviction that my life slowly passes me by... without my ever having the time to stop and cherish the moment and not worry about a future or reflect about a past... just stop and exult in the nature's beauty... a clear dawn, a brilliant star-studded night sky, the incessant lapping of the waves, birds chirping, the slight drizzle cooling the earth, deer racing across the meadows... so many moments waiting to be enjoyed..



are the promises really worthy of keeping?

Neither out far nor in deep....

And the people look at the sea.



They cannot look out far.

They cannot look in deep.

But when was that ever a bar

To any watch they keep?



------- Robert Frost



yes... When has the knowledge of our ignorance, stopped us from living??

But the worth of such a life is an entirely different issue... perhaps only gauged by the person who is living it... hmmm...

Awareness...

The one thing that is very conspicuous about Indian society is its seeming lack of awareness.... about any issue which should have been first priority if we all cared at all about the future... And this indifference stretches across the different classes, and is present irrespective of education or exposure....



IIT, the supposed cream of the society, the elite group which gets royal treatment from the government, has a lamentable lack of this awareness... I do not know whether to be dejected or digusted at this indifference....



I would like to recount some happenings here which has grieved me greatly...



1) Power Conservation: Its common knowledge fossil fuels are depleting. An average IITian knows the rate at which it is depleting, how long it will last, the inflation because of this depletion, the problems we are all going to face less than fifty years from now, when there will be no more thermal power plants, industries will come to a grinding halt (as we don't have the technology yet to replace petroleum and coal).. We know that fossil fuels is not an income to the country but a capital.. which has to conserved with at most care...



Leaving aside the fact that the fact the government has not done much to encourage power conservation, we would expect at least the educated to be more careful. But as I walk along my hostel corridors, I see most locked rooms with fan and light running behind them.... When I write a notice addressing the residents to just switch of their lights and fans and urging them to act more responsible, all I find is the notice missing an hour after I stuck it there! Reason: Shaastra (a technical festival here which brings a lot of students from other colleges) The hostel doesn't want to lose its face by displaying such notices which gives it a bad image by exposing its inadequacies.... I gave up. Here people are not concerned about the issue, but their name! The name which they have because the country expects them to responsible..... IITians don't deserve it... We don't deserve it.



2) Deforestation: IIT campus is a beautiful and green spot, an anamoly in this polluted city... But the rate at which we are losing our greenery, it would no longer be one... Is there a student rally? A protest against this damage to this beautiful campus? no... students go to college, and mind their business as if its of no concern whatsoever to them... Is this the education we have to so proud of?



I would say that an intellectual society with no interest in social causes, is as well dead, for there what is the use of intellect without a concern for the future generations?



I can only cry "ARISE AND AWAKE!!"

To think or to do?

Sometimes, I think, that we do so we may not think....



We set targets, achieve them... we don't relax to bask on our achievements, oh no, we set another target and go about it till life becomes an incessant cycle of setting goals and striving to reach them... and when we die, we know not, how our life passed us by.... whether we truly lived... whether were happy, happiness as defined by us or as held by the society... We know not how to measure the success of our lives, we rely on others to say that to us...



Is all this doing an way escapade? from thinking? For if we ever sit to ponder and reflect, we shall come up with so many questions, that we have no answer for... We shall find our motivation to do taking a poor second to our urge to find out our purpose our existence and what we are on this earth for....



It is to evade the fundamental issues, for it scares us to answer them, that we set to work... giving us a false sense of purpose and pride. The society has evolved the way it has for this precise reason...



you desire ==> you work==> you get less time and more money==> you buy what you desire, but you can't indulge in them for you don't have time!! What a vicious circle!!

You are paid for your work, which is mostly drudgery... and you are wasting your time if you spend it thinking!



After all what good is it to think??

Henry David Thoreau : Life without Principle

The following are some abstracts from this American individualist's lecture... And I happen to share his views on the subject he talks about...



This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or seared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for—business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business....



If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!



Why have people forgotten the aim of life? To live as one wants to? Whe do we wake up in the morning hating the day and the work which comes with it? waiting for the night to come and drown us all into our sweet dreams again? Its as if, we are allowed to life the life we want only in our dreams... how sad that is! Why should ambition and adventure clash?





Why can't adventure itself be life's ambition??