It starts today!! I am hoping it will be more fun than what I have had all these years.. :)
I'll fill you all up after it gets over :):)
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
ADDICTIONS
Every song has seven notes written over and over again. We find this whole generation hooked to it. We all have mobile phones & keep using it continually to the exclusion of everything else. In fact I have known of friends who simply looked at their mobile phones hoping it will give them solace somehow, as though it will suddenly utter words of comfort or transform itself and give us a hug. I have come to realise that these are much more subtle and difficult addictions to get over.. And so is writing and so is everything that lends pleasure to any of the 5 senses: the eyes, the ear, the nose, the tongue and the skin... And so I, who am an irrevokable addict to the calming feel-good breeze of bangalore, the love of seeing greenery all around me, the love of listening to music, the love of tasting good food, loving the kind tender feel the touchpad of my laptop has on me, the love of writing and expressing myself which leads to further train of thoughts sensually are all Vices I have to be beware of.
Beware of??? Its what I have been doing all my life... You would understand the gravity of my situation if you were as helplessly dependent on any one of these for your day to get along well.. If doing anything else depresses you and drives you to one of these activities...... Say sms-ing in your mobile, switching on the television as a resort to depression.. These are few everyday-life things that we as technocrats are used to but do not understand the grave danger the addiction to these things cause. They all just eat into us and our heads in ways that we cannot understand. It is a virus which does not exhibit any symptoms until the matter becomes very serious.
My father used to tell me a story of one angulimaala (in sanskrit or prakrit this means a person who wore a garland of fingers around him). This angulimaala was a bandit who lived in the forest. He lived by robbing people who entered the forest off whatever possessions they had and then brutally murdering them and then wearing their fingers around him as an honour for having done the heinous act. The Buddha being the fearless and all-embracing soul changes him through an exchange of intellectual dialogues which I have forgotten (forgive the ignorance and the memory failure). After Angulimaala becomes his disciple he comes to the village as all his other disciples and has to live just as they do: by begging for food from the villagers. The villagers livid with anger at his crimes and not ready to forgive him, threw stones at him when he came on his first round for begging. He was severely wounded. Then the Buddha who comes for consolation gathers that Angulimaala has been more injured at his heart than his body. Angulimaala breaks down to the Buddha as the heavy burden of Guilt descends down on him. He explains to the Buddha that he did not bother about how many more physical injuries he sustained but he could not bear the fact that he had committed such heinous crimes and he did not if he was worthy of forgivance at all. The Buddha assures him that much more heinous crimes could be forgiven and all that was required was surrender.
Whats the connection to this and my first paragraph must surely be what you are all wondering. The lesson I gathered from the above story is that crude and simple minds understand through simple words. A murderer who does not understand more than ten words can be brought to the right path by explanation through those ten words. But its difficult to get across to a so-called educated and intellectual mind which knows more than a million words. In other words, these subtle addictions that I talk of: glorification of the 5 senses in anyway is a worse addiction to get over than the murders. Because a thief knows he is wrong but connoisseurs of music who cannot live without listening to music think that they are not wrong. That they are doing the right thing by being addicted to music and even if the Buddha came and told them about it they would probably be very cynical about the advice. They would not heed to him immediately like Angulimaala did. Fancy the Buddha telling a college student proud of being hooked to sms-ing that it is wrong to be addicted so much to a sensual pleasure, he will definitely get a deaf ear. He will also get a few blows if he is lucky. As I hold it, it might take some superman stunts for the Buddha to get across to the present world. The situation is that none of us are looking for a master. We believe we are masters of our own lives. We seem to know where we are to lead ourselves. For example, I would not take one word from my friends to decide which direction I should take my life to (though I seek a lot of reassurances from their side). So whats the point of this excruciating blog?? My point is that we are all addicts in subtle ways we do not recognise. How to recognise if we are drawing the line appropriately?? Keep an alert look out for senses. If they like your present way of life too much then its better you learn to withdraw slowly lest you should become helplessly addicted. Thats what I am going to do.
Beware of??? Its what I have been doing all my life... You would understand the gravity of my situation if you were as helplessly dependent on any one of these for your day to get along well.. If doing anything else depresses you and drives you to one of these activities...... Say sms-ing in your mobile, switching on the television as a resort to depression.. These are few everyday-life things that we as technocrats are used to but do not understand the grave danger the addiction to these things cause. They all just eat into us and our heads in ways that we cannot understand. It is a virus which does not exhibit any symptoms until the matter becomes very serious.
My father used to tell me a story of one angulimaala (in sanskrit or prakrit this means a person who wore a garland of fingers around him). This angulimaala was a bandit who lived in the forest. He lived by robbing people who entered the forest off whatever possessions they had and then brutally murdering them and then wearing their fingers around him as an honour for having done the heinous act. The Buddha being the fearless and all-embracing soul changes him through an exchange of intellectual dialogues which I have forgotten (forgive the ignorance and the memory failure). After Angulimaala becomes his disciple he comes to the village as all his other disciples and has to live just as they do: by begging for food from the villagers. The villagers livid with anger at his crimes and not ready to forgive him, threw stones at him when he came on his first round for begging. He was severely wounded. Then the Buddha who comes for consolation gathers that Angulimaala has been more injured at his heart than his body. Angulimaala breaks down to the Buddha as the heavy burden of Guilt descends down on him. He explains to the Buddha that he did not bother about how many more physical injuries he sustained but he could not bear the fact that he had committed such heinous crimes and he did not if he was worthy of forgivance at all. The Buddha assures him that much more heinous crimes could be forgiven and all that was required was surrender.
Whats the connection to this and my first paragraph must surely be what you are all wondering. The lesson I gathered from the above story is that crude and simple minds understand through simple words. A murderer who does not understand more than ten words can be brought to the right path by explanation through those ten words. But its difficult to get across to a so-called educated and intellectual mind which knows more than a million words. In other words, these subtle addictions that I talk of: glorification of the 5 senses in anyway is a worse addiction to get over than the murders. Because a thief knows he is wrong but connoisseurs of music who cannot live without listening to music think that they are not wrong. That they are doing the right thing by being addicted to music and even if the Buddha came and told them about it they would probably be very cynical about the advice. They would not heed to him immediately like Angulimaala did. Fancy the Buddha telling a college student proud of being hooked to sms-ing that it is wrong to be addicted so much to a sensual pleasure, he will definitely get a deaf ear. He will also get a few blows if he is lucky. As I hold it, it might take some superman stunts for the Buddha to get across to the present world. The situation is that none of us are looking for a master. We believe we are masters of our own lives. We seem to know where we are to lead ourselves. For example, I would not take one word from my friends to decide which direction I should take my life to (though I seek a lot of reassurances from their side). So whats the point of this excruciating blog?? My point is that we are all addicts in subtle ways we do not recognise. How to recognise if we are drawing the line appropriately?? Keep an alert look out for senses. If they like your present way of life too much then its better you learn to withdraw slowly lest you should become helplessly addicted. Thats what I am going to do.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Selfish
Face it! The world is full of it. Not even a soul who doesn't possess this vice. And I am not going to be a holy saint who preaches to people saying "My dearest children, we must not be selfish and kill each other". There is never a sentence in calvin and hobbes that is wrong and hobbes is right! "We are here to devour each other".
Now why does it require special mention? All of us are grown up enough to know we are not good people and we dont require a "Hi Everyone :):)"blog to tell us that. Lets rewind our lives back to the time when we were innocent children (yes even if you knew everything about life then you were still innocent!). Ask a child and it will tell you that it wants to work towards the environment, it wants to do good to the society etc., As a kid I too wanted to do good to the environment. But look at me now. I have become this painfully mediocre person who does not care about anything other than herself. A full day will pass and I would not get even ten seconds to think about what good I am to the society. Maybe I am wrong but at least in my friends circle I see people working hard everyday and achieving well, not to do good to the society or the environment but to themselves.
Yes thats how it is. The world has become a savage place. But if we have the slightest inclination to save our future generations then we would think about whether we should be so selfish after all.. Fossil fuel reserves will exhaust very soon, CO2 levels will increase to unprecedented levels. An appropriate evaluation is a summer in Bangalore. 4 years ago a summer in bangalore would be equivalent to a winter in trichy or chennai. Now, its only slightly better than a summer in chennai. This is what each of our selfishness put together and magnified does to our society. It can make a "pensioner's paradise", a "garbage dump".
In another year, I am going to graduate as a chemical engineer and all my friends will graduate as some engineer as well. But I dont know out of the 700 of us who are going to graduate how many of us will involve ourselves directly in the good of the environment. (hardly 2 or 3, and I am being very generous) And we are supposed to save mankind in another 20 years, during the prime of our lives.
I did not blog to say we all should drop all that we have at hand and work towards the environment but we can do little things that can save the community. We can segregate plastic waste. We can switch off an extra luxury light that we may be using. In future whatever work we do, maybe we can set aside a portion of our salary towards this cause. But something has to be done!!
Now why does it require special mention? All of us are grown up enough to know we are not good people and we dont require a "Hi Everyone :):)"blog to tell us that. Lets rewind our lives back to the time when we were innocent children (yes even if you knew everything about life then you were still innocent!). Ask a child and it will tell you that it wants to work towards the environment, it wants to do good to the society etc., As a kid I too wanted to do good to the environment. But look at me now. I have become this painfully mediocre person who does not care about anything other than herself. A full day will pass and I would not get even ten seconds to think about what good I am to the society. Maybe I am wrong but at least in my friends circle I see people working hard everyday and achieving well, not to do good to the society or the environment but to themselves.
Yes thats how it is. The world has become a savage place. But if we have the slightest inclination to save our future generations then we would think about whether we should be so selfish after all.. Fossil fuel reserves will exhaust very soon, CO2 levels will increase to unprecedented levels. An appropriate evaluation is a summer in Bangalore. 4 years ago a summer in bangalore would be equivalent to a winter in trichy or chennai. Now, its only slightly better than a summer in chennai. This is what each of our selfishness put together and magnified does to our society. It can make a "pensioner's paradise", a "garbage dump".
In another year, I am going to graduate as a chemical engineer and all my friends will graduate as some engineer as well. But I dont know out of the 700 of us who are going to graduate how many of us will involve ourselves directly in the good of the environment. (hardly 2 or 3, and I am being very generous) And we are supposed to save mankind in another 20 years, during the prime of our lives.
I did not blog to say we all should drop all that we have at hand and work towards the environment but we can do little things that can save the community. We can segregate plastic waste. We can switch off an extra luxury light that we may be using. In future whatever work we do, maybe we can set aside a portion of our salary towards this cause. But something has to be done!!
Friday, March 13, 2009
Transcending all communication barriers!!
Three years of engineering in this place has taught me loads.
For example even if you get up at 8:15 you can reach on time to class at 8:30 but you have to sacrifice your breakfast. You can still finish ten experiments in your record note book if you start at 11:20 for a 1:30 lab but you have to sacrifice lunch. Its completely justified to while away all the remaining time.
Apart from all such trivial things there's one great lesson I learnt from the college. You should never evaluate a teacher based on his/her language.
Mrs.C is one of the best teachers we have in the department. A typical class of hers runs somewhat this way:
"How it is that that is you will do this way?? You should that is know what you are doingu.. ('u' is that typical tamilian 'u')" It never matters to us that she talks this way because she teaches mass transfer really well. "Partial Condensation will that is give more efficiency" It does not really matter that she said that in a not so perfect english. We still understood that partial condensation gives more efficiency. But Mr.A, nickname shushu by a mr.10 of my class :), has an additional problem. He has to breathe out and hiss like a snake in between every sentence. So a typical sentence in his class will sound like:
"The reaction.... ssss.. will reachesssss... (breath)... completionssss... (someone laughs) (so he goes to his place and hisses and than says) are you understanding or not?? now whats microfluid and macrofluid?? (thats a long sentence so one more breath and..) ...ssssss..."
But still I understood that he wanted to say that a reaction reaches completion.
Thats the most precious lesson that I ever learnt... That i can transcend all communication barriers now :) Which is why you definitely need to be a part of an institution like this :)
For example even if you get up at 8:15 you can reach on time to class at 8:30 but you have to sacrifice your breakfast. You can still finish ten experiments in your record note book if you start at 11:20 for a 1:30 lab but you have to sacrifice lunch. Its completely justified to while away all the remaining time.
Apart from all such trivial things there's one great lesson I learnt from the college. You should never evaluate a teacher based on his/her language.
Mrs.C is one of the best teachers we have in the department. A typical class of hers runs somewhat this way:
"How it is that that is you will do this way?? You should that is know what you are doingu.. ('u' is that typical tamilian 'u')" It never matters to us that she talks this way because she teaches mass transfer really well. "Partial Condensation will that is give more efficiency" It does not really matter that she said that in a not so perfect english. We still understood that partial condensation gives more efficiency. But Mr.A, nickname shushu by a mr.10 of my class :), has an additional problem. He has to breathe out and hiss like a snake in between every sentence. So a typical sentence in his class will sound like:
"The reaction.... ssss.. will reachesssss... (breath)... completionssss... (someone laughs) (so he goes to his place and hisses and than says) are you understanding or not?? now whats microfluid and macrofluid?? (thats a long sentence so one more breath and..) ...ssssss..."
But still I understood that he wanted to say that a reaction reaches completion.
Thats the most precious lesson that I ever learnt... That i can transcend all communication barriers now :) Which is why you definitely need to be a part of an institution like this :)
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