"A" Class Apart

The sun shone high; bright was the noon
60 new faces lit up like a full moon
Singles and couples; buddies and brothers- It went all so soon
The date I remember was 16th of June

Red and pink; Yellow and blue
There was a multitude of colour- brand new
Fresh faces, enigmatic eyes, scintillating smile
Everyone seemed so jocund and sublime

From Punjab to Kerala; Assam to Maharashtra
Bongs and Marus ; Punjabis and Mallus
All got woven into a common thread
Of love, friendship and shared interests

The birthday kicks; the party highs
The gossip kings and the innumerable controversies
The movies, the night outs and Counter-Strikes
Each time I think about them, my heartbeat spikes

From roomies to friends; pals to buddies
People found not just love but brothers and sisters
Everyone, while they missed their home
Found a family so close to their soul

Energy ran from the classroom to the food courts
From hostel to the grounds
Books, Music, dance and drama
All forming a part of our Nostalgia

The carnival which begun with high hopes
Moving across the ups and downs; crests and troughs
Expectations were belied, hopes were in shambles
But each of us just said, “ Aaal izzz Welll(s)

As I look back on the roads we traversed
The paths and milestones we covered
Resplendence was redefined; Dedication defined
Perspicacity personified and Majesty magnified

Time Flies as we try reaching the skies
And as an ERA comes to an and
I just don’t wish to move on and part
For this is our very own, “PG A ---A CLASS APART”

--Sriram

Is Success Self Defeating !

The moment we enter the school for the first time, we knowingly or unknowingly enter the mad rat race. Right from the Monday test to the half yearly and finally the end term examinations; we are put under this constant pressure to perform. As we grow, we are made to believe that all that we did earlier was just a small base. Now begins the actual work. When I was about to take my class 10^th exams, all the teachers explicitly showcased their expectations. One of them even said, “Whatever you have scored till now holds little importance. In the long run only the score of class 10^th will be considered.” This same line was repeated by another teacher of mine when i was about to take the final examination marking the end of the school days. Time flew and in no time i found myself out in this unknown city trying to keep myself together and do what i came here for. Once again it was reiterated that all that i studied in school was only to decide the name of my college. Now they are all history and if i screw up now, my future is doomed.

Well the point which makes me ponder is, “is there a finish line at all?” Does there come a stage in life when I do not have a new race to run sacrificing my present luxuries? Or is life itself a race which ends only with the heart of the individual. Well, if that is true, why do I care to run so fast? If life is nothing but a race, why can’t I transform it into a leisurely walk enjoying the beauty around as I walk past different milestones in my life. Is the absence of this particular feature in our life which makes us crib all the time? I do not know. To be honest I am totally confused. Sometimes I pray, I stop questioning things around me.

A lot of people study hard and make their way up to the top. They begin their journey from may be a small town and go far away from their home to study, to work, to earn, to achieve success. Possibly the reason is because people relate success to happiness. They may to be entirely wrong in the absence of any other aspect in life which we could so closely relate to success. But for an individual who sacrificed a lot of happiness and luxury to work hard and later in life if that is what keeps him away from his family, for whom at the first place everything was done; is not success self defeating ?

A man works day and night to earn a good life for his family and in the process he fails to spend time and love his loved ones. He fails to sit with his parents who sacrificed everything to let this man study and grow. He spends a lot of time away and it often (not always) cripples the fabric of the family bond. The end result may be a broken and unhappy family. Many would attribute it to lack of time management or fate and destiny. Some may blame it on the societal framework while a few conservative raise the issue of a working wife.

But my objective is not to blame and to criticize the system. I am not against the participation in race for I myself am a part of it. May be I am a little scared. May be i am not sure if I will be able to manage my time. May be I am sad about the fact that i will have to work away from my family. Or maybe I am petrified at the thought of being a victim of this self defeating success.

As I am about to step into this corporate world, where people stand tall on the corpses of other people, known and unknown, I can only wonder and wish to achieve success; a state where I am happy and in a position to share the same with my family, my friends and my loved ones. I can only hope to enjoy the race and not just turn blind to the beauty around in the fatal effort to reach the finish line.

May be I am too young to think about all of this... or maybe, it is time I start thinking.

-Sriram

Enigmatic, it inevitably is

When the winds twirled

Leaves swirled; pollens whirled

I sat across the mahoganies, pondering

Spent all my moments, loving

As the sunshine dimmed

Far across the horizon

Every living soul rushed home, hurried

And lay in the laps, buried

I still sat glued to those rocks

Up until the crickets creaked

All I heard were the hoots

Punctuated by hisses and silences

I jumped as I felt creepy-crawly and

Moved to a distant source of light

Flicker and dimmer though, it was

Hardy and dauntless, I tried to be

Fear, I never thought was so beautiful

Melodious, I never anticipated it to be

Phantasy, it ain’t

Enigmatic, it inevitably is

--Sriram

(Dis)pleasures of being “Completely Vella”

Most people I have met in my life have always had one common complain and point of dissatisfaction. They didn’t have any time (leave apart the concept of quality time) for themselves or for their family and loved ones. Sandwiched between work and endless responsibilities they found their lives being torn apart. They longed for moments where they could go and watch a movie or just sit by their window and relax or atleast have one morning when they wake up without getting tensed about all the unfinished tasks they need to complete. In short they were the modern day depictions of what Henry Davies wrote long back, “What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.”

Till sometime back even I was one amongst them. The pressure of performance in all the activities I undertook voluntarily or involuntarily along with a host of personal and professional responsibilities used to drain me out. There were moments when i felt like running away to the Himalayas. Then came a moment of my life, when I got a dream job with my dream organizations, in a manner which still feels like a dream to me. Suddenly life changed in a blink of an eye. Moments before I was crashing under the nerve breaking pressure of proving oneself to the world; and suddenly I was a free bird.

Out of all the emotions which filled my heart the one which I wish to talk about is the pleasure of being “Completely Vella ” (For those with poor vocabulary “Vella” is the state of body and mind in which a person has absolutely nothing to do or think)

After a long time I wake up with no POAs at the back of my mind. I take all the time in the world to get ready (even if that makes no difference in how I look :P). Being a little abnormal, I now wake up pretty early in the morning. (I wake up late when I am supposed to do the contrary). My mom would be really happy to know that I now am regular with my breakfast also. And after all these morning chores I sit idle with literally no job. (Getting a job in medium run has made me unemployed in the short run). For the first few days I actually enjoyed this feeling of being vella. After all it came to me after a lot of trials and tribulations.

But this happiness was really short lived. I now feel really weird. And there are reasons for the same.

I wake up early and sleep late which gives me an extra couple of hours to spend. (But where?). I do not have any deliverables and have no reasons whatsoever to open a book or even the daily newspaper. (Honestly I wish to remain as far as I can from that ET). I don’t feel like browsing through a novel or books which give “general gyan”. But what really horrifies me is the fact that I don’t feel like watching movies or TV soaps either. While had exams I used to watch a movie almost every day along with those TV series (likes of HIMYM and Scrubs). And I used to take small naps while sitting on my study table. Even when I had to grasp those riling and vexing rules of IFRS and US GAAP, I always found time to compose poetry or write something abstract. But now I do none of them. How am I supposed to pass the 24 hours I have at my disposal... I guess the real fun and pleasure of having “fun” is when I have deadlines to achieve and unfinished tasks in my hands.

Yesterday, for the first time, I felt like I should have had a girlfriend. Not that I am looking for a short term relationship just to pass my time(I won’t do that even in my dreams), but looking at my committed friends I do know; they are always short of time(No offence meant). May be that is a panacea to all my problems.

I know I am a confused soul and when I should be living these moments, I am actually praying otherwise and would again pray otherwise the moment my prayers get answered! May be that is how I am.

-Sriram

Rationality vs Fate

Ever since I got the essence of the two very crucial words in everyone’s life, surprisingly enough I have never been able to place the 2 of them on the same line of thought and attitude.

Rationality and Fate.

Can a rational human being ever believe in fate? Or can someone who believes in fate be ever rational? Or to be more confusing as well as precise can a single individual be both rational and believe in fate?

The moment I make an effort to look for an answer, my mind, my heart and my senses all collide and the result is a complete chaos just like the outside universe and thus maintaining the much needed equilibrium of life. At a personal level I would rather abstain myself from ever believing in the concept of fate. However this doesn’t imply that I always make an effort to be rational. This brings me to yet another question. Does the absence of one of the characteristic imply the presence of the other? If not what do we call a person who is neither rational nor does he believe in fate?

The degree to which my mind is cluttered now can be explicitly seen in how the above thoughts have come out to be. I myself am now trying to figure out what exactly do I plan to prove or conclude. And to add to the misery, I put up a simple question to myself!

Define rationality and fate.

And the sad part is I genuinely do not have a definition which could possibly fit in the plethora of varied perspectives of life. The very basic issue is when we proclaim an action to be rational or otherwise we do it on the basis of certain assumptions, which are mostly implicit and seldom do we realize their presence in our so called logical reasoning. So if one fine day I start questioning those assumptions and rate them on the scales of their rationality, we will reach situation where we have no assumptions to make which isn’t as rosy as it seems. Lack of assumptions could possibly imply an absence of a ground to build the foundations of rationality.

Thus when we make an assumption and then build up the network of rationality, we have already left the success of the process to its own fate of doom or existence. And later when we humans tend to believe that we are rational we fight against those who believe in fate, sometimes even derogating and questioning their rationality. Don’t know about others but I do it with myself. Probably this is the moment where even existentialism can’t come to the rescue to wage a war against fate. And hence I end up from where I started. The questions still remain unanswered. Probably they are meant to be just questions to raise yet remain unanswered or evoke a thought process. Plausibly this is what that has and will continue to lead to the evolution or devolution of human mind.

-Sriram

Random Thoughts- II

When the sun shone high and lit the room
I woke up with a heavy head
Something wasn’t pleasant though
I wondered what that was made me feel so low

I did have a good night sleep
And a great dinner as well
Yet it felt like morning blues
I pondered, but had no clues

Past few days haven’t been good
Lot of fluctuations in everyone’s mood
More than often I hurt someone with my inaction
Only in an effort to take a little extra precaution

It is so heart wrenching
To feel no more than an otiose
For someone we think we knew so well
Appears to be a stranger in a world so grandiose

As we travel across the sands of time
We all pretend to be jocund and sublime
Those moments when we introspect and retrospect
In our desperation of self actualization
Is just a matter of life and time

--- Sriram

Lucky to be

Sweet smile, beautiful eyes, and elegance
is what defines her and her presence
Pure thoughts, selflessness and commitment
is what I wish to augment

I met her by chance
Or call it fate or destiny
And in no time I could feel
A growing friendship within

Everyone who ever could meet her
Has never been left not mesmerized
she is one of the rarest jewels of all
I am lucky to be her friend after all

--Sriram