DEAR DAV, PLEASE TAKE ME BACK…

The Mind: Given a chance, where would to want to travel?

Me: To my childhood, to my school, to be with my friends and teachers… (no exaggerations!)

April 1996 to March 2007… That’s exactly 40 percent of my life and pretty much defines who I am today, what I think about, how I decide things and what I enjoy doing. The journey in DAV Burla gave me my best friends, my favourite teachers, the principles of my life and the motivation to go ahead in life, apart from the strong academics and numerous extracurricular activities. Summarizing a major chunk of my life in a single page is just impossible and I don’t know where to start while writing an article for my school magazine “The Revelation” as an alumni, the same magazine where I used to submit a couple of articles every year, once upon a time.

I very clearly remember my first day in school… Held in the MCL quarters in Anand Vihar, Burla, I was just too excited to mingle with so many children. Little did I know that the journey I was starting would make me up, bit by bit into the person I am today. We saw the school building come up block by block and floor by floor, the same way we were being built up as young people. Transitioning from pencil to pen, from bibs to tunics and from childish tiffs with classmates to lifelong friendships, eventually we transformed from children to teenagers in the sacred bosom of our school under the able guidance and care of our beloved teachers.

The best thing about our teachers is that they never taught us for scoring marks in the exams, rather they infused clear concepts and free thinking into us, which is the reason I can clearly remember most of the things taught in our history and geography classes and rationally build up on the concepts we learnt in science and mathematics. I still harbor the deep interest in English and Sanskrit languages, thanks to the world of magic weaved in the respective classrooms. Studies were never a burden, we studied because we were motivated and interested to study. The arts and music that we learnt in school still continue to be my favourite passions. The active participation in debate and essay writing competitions in school and outside as well as the annual sports and annual function, have armed me with confidence to face any competition in any setup with sportsman’s spirit and to try out any new project or activity with a positive attitude.

The cups and shields I received are my most prized possessions, whereas the punishments and scoldings I got are my most valuable lessons. Today, a small chat with my DAV friends lightens up my day whereas a single message from any of my teachers energizes me immensely. If I were the master of my own wishes, I would really really wish to return back to the simple and innocent DAV Burla days where our day began and ended with prayer and was filled with laughter and fun in between.

The Mind: So did you write all you wanted to, for the school magazine?

Me: I had barely started with random things that the page got filled up. I so wanted to describe the special moments with the bestest friends and the treasured lessons from my favourite teachers, but I think that would fill up a whole book. Just that the nostalgia ignited in me during this trip down the memory lane today will keep drowning me for atleast the next few days to come!!!

MY LIFE, MY PURPOSE

Like any other human being at leisure or otherwise, I often wonder why am I born, what is the purpose of my life and so on. One day, it struck me that my answer will be different from almost every other creature I share the Earth with. Actually, there is not just one world. Each of our minds contains a very different world from the rest. And we think that the world contained within our small mind is actually the world, whereas it is just one out of the so many other versions. Considering just the human beings, we are more than 7 billion of us here on this Earth. Also, there are so so many species with so so many members. So, there are as many worlds as well.

For instance, my cat’s world is how to gather her daily food and how to keep her children alive. A circus lion’s world revolves around the fear of its master and the claps from so many people surrounding it. To think of it, our world is safely locked inside our mind and is composed of the people or events that we mostly associate ourselves with. That is just fair, but considering our own world as the whole world is just not fine. Had I been born in the 18th century, my world, i.e. my daily life would have nothing in common than the case of me being born in the 22nd century. It would also be drastically different in the cases of my birth in Siberia or South America. It’s just a matter of space and time and our thoughts and situation and so on.

Coming to life, I frankly believe life is an accident. Well, not exactly. But the first organism was just a coincidence of the right materials and the right conditions. So, it was a specialized matter with special properties. Long story short, species evolved, becoming more and more conscious and more and more capable of deriving advantages from the environment and other species. And then, slow claps, enters the Homo sapien. Twenty-four hours a day was used up for finding food and protecting oneself. Soon, science and technology developed and we had tools and machines and gadgets and sometimes other species doing almost everything for us and we started having free time.

Soon, the concept of work and division of labour was formed. Starting from barter, goods in exchange of goods and services in exchange of services, the concept of money as a medium of exchange came into existence. Thus, the concept of job and career was launched. Life became kind of a predictable schedule: get educated, find a job, make a career, have a family, own some assets and then die. So, basically we began to believe that we are meant to do so and so in life, so and so is right or wrong. Then, we began to find the purpose of life, many theories and many philosophies. I would like to add of the plethora of the existing assumptions about the purpose of life. The views expressed below are just my reflections.

I believe that life has no purpose. Evolutionarily, the only purpose of life is to spend the time between life and death without any mishappenings or loss. Just because we have a lot of leisure and a somewhat powerful mind, we are thinking of a purpose. From a slightly different angle, the nature is constantly trying to make us evolve, to be happy, which in fact is nothing but the absence of bad incidents and bad influences. So, we can say the sole purpose of life, evolutionarily and naturally, is to spend our lifetime just being happy and doing whatever makes us happy, nothing more and nothing less.

I always feel that this world and this life are gifts from nature, from evolution. It is our chance to see and experience the world, limited by time and space. We are made to be happy and see the world around us. Everything else is just an illusion of mind, a manifestation of our narcissism which believes us to be the the most evolved and the most powerful species.

THE LIFE... THE RACE... BUT WHY??? FOR WHAT???

It was just another normal day in my very normal life. I was roaming in the beautiful garden in front of our house, when I saw a small caterpillar struggling its way through the leaves. Instead of getting angry on the little creature for spoiling the lustrous leaves, somehow that day my thoughts raced in a different direction. This struggling caterpillar would one day metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly and fly high. That’s the order of nature, I thought. Just like the human babies learn to walk, talk and then one day, they too transform into wonderful beings and fly high with their dreams.

At this thought I shuddered, as somehow, it didn’t feel quite right. Are human beings indeed growing up to be happy and lively living beings? Yes, they are successful and technically more advanced than they used to be a generation ago. But are they happier than their forefathers? Maybe or maybe not; they don’t even have time and patience to analyze that.

Human babies don’t grow up gradually in a world of competition, rather they are born straight into it. When they are barely a couple of years old and haven’t even realized their existence, they are made to appear for interviews into pre-nursery and then, nursery and what not. They are seasoned to believe that they are worthless unless they top their class. Even if they top, they are taught not to be satisfied until they top the next level and so on.

They take heavy tutions to score great grades in their schools. Then, the academically sound students would most probably take up the Science Stream, then, either the coveted Medical or Engineering lines, then, the respective Post-Graduation and so on. Hence, they manage to get a good job and decent earnings. The race just doesn’t end here. After that to keep up their social image, they buy a big car and a big house and end up exhausting themselves to earn more so as to pay the huge EMIs. In their quest for more, they somewhere lose their main purpose: happiness.

Every time I see these small kids running this rat race following the person in their front without knowing where they’re headed towards, I remember Einstein’s precise words, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, then it’ll grow up believing that it’s a fool. At this tender age of innocence, friendship for them is no longer about befriending someone good at heart, rather it’s about nurturing a give-and-take relationship with the person who scores more than you so that you can grow. They play, not out of their free will, but because they have to win some Badminton or Tennis Tournament. They hardly get to analyze the world as a harmonious place of co-existence. For them, it’s binary, either they win or they lose. We all are gradually becoming a part of this very rat race. We lose little moments of joy in this tryst to win. We don’t realize that even the winner of a rat race is still a rat.

We are generating a generation of passive youth, who hate the mornings because of their distaste for the upcoming day, get bored in the afternoons for their intellectually non-stimulating routine work, get tired in the evening though they believe they haven’t done anything worthwhile and feel depressed during the night wondering over what’s missing in their life. We are creating people, who would love to walk under and park their vehicles in the shade of a tree, but, won’t ever plant a tree. We are manufacturing people, who value an asset by its price tag, choose friends purely for benefits, build a majestic house but don’t appreciate beauty and judge their accomplishments by their society’s standards even though they don’t believe in being social.

It took ages for human beings to evolve and yet through the advancing times, we’re de-evolving to machines. The early man created the concept of job, probably as a means of division of labour, but, we’ve made it our lives. Everything was done is a search for happiness, but, we’ve forgotten the main aim somewhere in the way. In our fast-pacing lives with big bungalows and fast cars, we don’t know a moment of leisure. What about all the dreams we cherished as a child? What about giving back to the society? What about caring about our mental status as much as we maintain our social status? Do we still understand the meaning of love, care, selflessness and friendship?

Endless thoughts were bombarding my mind from all angles as if I was questioning anything and everything in this world. Then, gradually the caterpillar walked its way through the leaves and went out of my sight. Maybe, the next time when a beautiful butterfly flutters by me, I’ll wonder if this was the one which took me away from the reality for a while. Then suddenly, it dawned upon me that that it’s time I rush to work. Now sometimes I wonder, was this short break from reality indeed a break or was it a shocking tryst with reality instead.

MAAA...

Main aandhi to tu Hawa
Main zehar to tu Dawa

Main aag to tu hai Suraj
Main daldal aur tu Pankaj

Main shor to tu Sangeet
Main Al-Quaida tu Masjid

Main lehar to tu hai Nadi
Main resham aur tu Khadi

Main chaudayi tu Gehrayi
Main hungama tu Karwayi

Main baatein aur tu Matlab
Main yaadein to tu Kartab

Main dar tu hai uski Jeet
Main chanchal par tu Thik

Main uljhan to tu Sujhav
Main josh aur tu Prabhav

DEEP DIP... DEEP WITHIN...

In a deep deadlock
Through my dead luck

In a long falsehood
Under my false hood

Knowing it being crucial
Did ever my crew see all

Before it did assasinate
My mind's Ass Senate

Finally at dawn a Sun
Did leave a donation

By the steep rock lamed
Silence loudly proclaimed

My mind would reel if
I were to sigh in relief

No self anger to release on
But protesting still my religion

...JUST WANDERING...

“Who Are You?” asks a friend of mine

            A smile on my face I sit to imagine

Lost in a world I create and I dwell

            I presume to be myself all that seems well

Am no kite with however long a string

            Controlled in the wind by some other being

Am a butterfly fluttering high purely at leisure

            Spreading colourful wings in a beautiful weather

Am no timid rabbit chased by hounds

            Running fearfully fast with no sound

Am a Cheetah fleeting fast with passion

            Chasing myself in deepest forests of nations

Am not a leaf to float silently on pond

            Witnessing same scene for times to come

Am a drop racing freary turns of tornado

            Embracing unexpected newness in each go

Am no street-light be however bright

            Switched on without will as nears the night

Am a firefly proud of my special torch

            Depending on none for direction to move forth

Am the opaque clouds able to hide the Sun

            Am the terrible rain to freeze people at home

Yet I am the Sun to outshine clouds dark

            Yet I am a child to enjoy all rain blasts

I LOVE YOU GUWAHATI...!!!

Far at home they scorn the terrible Sun

            Here a little drop just begins to run

Onto the Earth and into my heart alike

            And hence follows its hound with pride

Free and clear indomitable in spirit

            Splashing the lakes and hills with might

Bathing every leaf with a melodious patter

            Maddening every enthusiast getting pleased and wetter

Sky getting darker and noisier then

                            Pours the rain as a hose pipe from Heaven

Some exclaim it’s disgusting some romantic

                            Some blame its monotony some praise it as magic

Scene worth luck of a lifetime I often feel

                            Carefree moments to make your tension nil

Guwahati- I love you for all the rain
                 
                           You shower upon me every now and then