Learning is the Law of Life

This semester, the beginning of the fourth year of Ph.D has marked the beginning of a different time for me. Earlier, it merely used to be just another year coming and then eventually passing by, but this time somehow it was different. Since the past one month I have been trying to analyze what has really made the difference; because I believe the difference has been for the better!

I think mid of this year marks the end of the "mid-phase" of Ph.D, a seemingly slow, sometimes depressing phase. However, each year of Ph.D has brought something more, new and nice to me - I never really had the "mid-phase" problem, probably because I was never short of the bigger motivation or the goal. It kept me going.

Despite this, keepng ambitious and short-term targets have been keeping me busy. While this good on one hand, that it doesn't let your attention lurk the dark allys of philosophical thoughts about life (note, I used to write a lot about "life" etc earlier!), yet, at times, it can be stressful. And this is what had been happening to me since sometime. Peer pressure, desire to be better and work and short-term targets seemed to leave me so stressed that I started getting sleeplessness at night.

However, now I realize one thing. All this has happened for the better, as usual, as they say! I have become so used to the stress levels now, and the work pressure now only makes me work harder, while the philosophical "life" talks are just some residue at some remote corner!

What is learned is that time makes up for everything. We are extremely manoeuverable individuals, time and the course of life evens out all the rough undualations we have had in the past. And of the ruggest road of present, it makes us fit enough to face it. Time takes care of everything...

However, I have also learnt from my experience that it is very necessary to rediscover and redefine ourselves every now and then. Only that can affect the strength we need to match up with the healing over time. And this self-discovery or refinement could be anything. For me, I learnt a ne way to define life altogether. I also found an immense source of pleasure in learning new things, be it research or life.

Learning brings us in contact with new ideas, new thoughts, and even sometimes a newer self inside us altogether. Learning has no end and it is one area where nothing is ever enough! And by learning I mean anything under the Sun which enhances ourselves, and our lives for a better tomorrow.

So to wind up, I believe there is no good time or apt age to learn about something. It only enriches us, enables to cope up with the changes in life and lets us tide over certain chapters of the past. All of us learn some bit about life everyday, however, learning something you cherish makes a lot of difference. Hence this is a blog for those friends who are looking for a motivation to learn, to do something in life; who think their present life is not upto the mark. My suggestion says, go out there are discover what you want to learn, and then trust me, there won't be any looking back! There doesn't need to be a clear materialistic goal for learning, learning can make differences larger than life and wider than perception-evident Earthly goals.

Learning is the law of life...

Some Ramblings...

I am excited about my trip to Colorado early October, more because it has been a while I had driven out of Tempe! Colorado would be a new state for me, and one where there is so much Nature to enjoy! I plan to spend half a day at Denver, and then a day in Aspen; and then drive to the Keystone resort where the conference is. Just to keep track of my traveling, which I love so much, here goes a list of the states visited yet:

Arizona, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida, California, Utah, Virginia, Illinois

And drove through these:

Ohio, Delaware, West Virginia

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I attended the ISA (Indian Students' Association) Freshers yesterday evening and I was thinking one thing - how fast time flies, it just seemed to me that only "that" day I attended the Freshers, and already it has been an year! Several things have changed since the last time, especially the research pace, which has rather been very positive for me, in turn been an artifact of some other things and happenings in the past one year, especially early this year. And while its fun on one hand, that probably it's not too long I have to be in Arizona, on the other hand it sometimes feels scary - so much to do in so less time! Time flies, and life is short!

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I am trying to implement the "law of conservation of sleep" - wherein I plan to sleep less during the weekdays and get work done; and then relax in the weekend - less of partying, more of cooking, and some good sleep (ref. probably is Quarter-life crisis effect :P). Also I have realized I am doing less of my favorite pastimes: photography, writing, reading and watching movies. I think all of them are much needed in life for self-evaluation, to broaden the perspective, to reach out to alternative thoughts and to re-invent yourself and thoughts.

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Whenever you lose something, you are bound to gain something else! And I think this is what defines life - the choices that we make, and the choices we are obliged to make due to circumstances. Finally, hopefully it all ends well - something which I always tell myself and friends, "whatever happens, probably happens for the better!" And probably that's why I am happy with everything, no complains about the past whatsoever! Things have turned out to be pretty positive yet; and hopefully life won't let me down to disbelieve this philosophy in the future too!

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I have always had several smart, intelligent, hard-working and competitive people around me. And I would say, while sometimes this can be stressful, it is actually good, since positive competition makes you better, extracting the best out of you. Since I came to ASU, having competitive people around me has let me work harder and harder, learn things and try to get the best out of me. And it has worked for my own good!

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And finally cherish life - it's a golden opportunity - a truth I realize every morning I get up!

The Grass on Your Side is Always Greener!

This blog is dedicated to all the readers who think something somewhere in their life is missing! Hope you enjoy it and get the message :)

The other day I was flipping through some people's pages (read my contemporaries / social contacts, not necessarily friends) when I was elated to see them happy with their significant other, an-apparently-good-looking-well-paying-job, and a decently nice car. Though I am far away from knowing what they think, yet it did appear to me that to them, life was full upto the brim, with all the necessary elements needed for a good life defined in the societal terms.

Contrast me. Not quite sure where the "significant-other" chapter is heading to; rather, to be precise haven't been looking out, for reasons more than one, and lessons beyond simple popular notions. And I am happy the way things are regarding this - after all, who can parallel a girl like me? ;-) Oh yeah, I am a little too proud when it comes to finding that "significant other". And I don't see a reason why I shouldn't be!

Jokes apart, about the apparently-good-looking-well-paying-job, I don't believe in the entire concept of working for the sake of money, or doing something which "people" around you consider fulfilling, yet leaving you go back home thinking "what the heck I am doing with my life?". I live a life which I can enjoy, work on stuff which intrigue me, so that the next morning when I get up, I can look back at yesterday and feel ecstatic about the little accomplishments I made, the little differences I could make to a much larger goal.

A loving partner, a well-paying job and other material comfort are necessary in life, no doubt. But are they sufficient as well? I am sure most of you would think no! And this is what exactly defines the way my life is.

Life doesn't have to be exactly the way other people lead it as. Rather life should be led the way you think it makes you happy. Having a relationship is good, but not a necessary element for happiness in life. I know so many friends (and I was also one of them at one point of time) who think that their life is so incomplete because that "significant other" is missing. However, they don't realize that being in a relationship is not the end of the world, or the attainment of Nirvana. The reason you are not in a relationship is because either you haven't met that "right" person, or the ones whom you have met, weren't "right" for you - whichever way, or whatever the reason for the past not working, it's good you are not a part of that mess anymore.

And of course the realm of job, money and satisfaction, or the opportunity to do what you want to or love to do. Honestly, there are very few people bold or courageous enough to tread a risky path as to go ahead and find that job or that work which leaves them satisfied. And the ones who do tread that thorny path, are warded away from the societal definitions of a so-called comfortable life. Yet, to all of those like me, who are set on a journey to make a difference to the world, in some way, small or big, I would say, kudos! May be you feel something somewhere in your life is missing, yet you know whatever you have, it is the best you could do to yourself. And definitely that defines why you are better than all the other commonplace crowd!

Life is too short anyway, note, I am 26, and time seems to be flying! Then why wither away time thinking and comparing yourself with others, being morose imagining how your life could have been? It is foolish to do so.

I sometimes feel so bad that I want to do so much in life; so many things which could make me happy (note, I am very happy with my current life, I have no grudges, no complains whatsoever!) and could make others happy; things which could affect another person's life positively; things which could impact the world a little bit. There are so many things I want to do, and yet so less time!

I agree, probably my life is so very different from many others, when you evaluate it in the popular societal terms of having a good partner, good paying job, big house and elegant car, yet I feel this is the way my life should have been; even if given a chance to go back, I would still wish my life to be this way: however much stress it might involve! And about the societal material happiness, it is often a matter of time and a method of personal evaluation - and as long as you pass your own test, you don't need someone else' certificate of happiness!

So keep living each day, like a live happy person, who thinks the grass she has is the best she could have then, and work and hope that it will be greener, more lush and better with each new day!

Back

Welcome back to my blog, after a span of 13 days of not blogging! It has been really really hectic at school, with all the research and everything. After all the reason being, the PhD years are closing in. And the thought itself runs a streamy blood down me - the magnanimity of a lifetime's dream to make a difference. Specifically, I have been stressed about several research and research-related issues. And my night-owlish habits have also been giving me a tough time live up to normal human schedules!

Well, excuse is not a good option especially when it comes to the best of someone's pastimes, I am talking about writing, which I always enjoy to the fullest. It is a way to better understand myself. It provides an affordance to tide over difficult times. And nevertheless it is a platform to instantiate my online presence, as someone rightly said, "The Web is really the last resort where you can exercise Freedom of Speech"!

However, all this time not blogging has taught me a lesson. That, you don't need a medium to tread a difficult path. You need to have the confidence that you can make it till the end. After every sunset, there is a sunrise.

There have been several things running on my mind everyday, each day that I was not blogging. Most of them were related to my research, which goaded me to revisit my desire of starting a "brainstorming" social research blog. Let's see when that finally happens.

I encountered an interesting idea in the Wired magazine last week. And it was how there has been an inherent shift in the way we tackle scientific research now-a-days, especially armed with zillions of data. Have you heard of PetaByte? It is as of now the biggest sized information defined! And what the magazine said was how the profuse online data is changing our basic methods.

I felt research, for example, a hundred years back was linear and unidirectional. Scientists would form a hypothesis, develop a mathematical framework, test or simulate it on some data and thereby validate the hypothesis. However, with those overwhelming data, research paradigm appears to be circular. We observe a phenonmenon, form hypothesis, check if the data fits that hypothesis, formalize a model and then test and validate; which is followed recursively given the data, resulting in a circular paradigm.

With this interesting thought, I would leave. Hopefully, given the same amount of stress at work, I would be more regular with the blogs from now on!

The Next Generation Web

Today I came across a paper which said:

Despite the fact that we already see the approach of the 'social network fatigue' syndrome it seems to me that the social aspect of media generation and consumption on the web will grow. The key push for this development will be the wish of humans to share experiences in a globalized and nomadic world, where the trace replaces the tag. The most valuable experience challenges our assumptions and perspectives and ultimately alters our understanding of information and thereby our own internal model of the world. In this sense, challenge is indeed the challenge we face for information systems. Current systems utilize similitude as selector of new experience. ‘If you liked that then you’ll like this’. However the more profound and hence lasting experiences are the unexpected ones that are at once accessible and confrontational. It is easy to be either, but being both is a demanding challenge. So far we have little capability in marshaling such experience for users but in 2020 this will be different.

Given the above perspective and coupled with newer conceptual technologies like Web 3.0 coming up already, the next generation multi-way dynamic and participation based WWW would be interesting.

I envision a Web where our interests, social interactions and our communication dynamics are taken into account to satisfy our media consumption, media participation and media generation needs better in a more systematic manner.

I-Day Celebration

Aug 15 morning, at the Indian Students' Association I-Day celebration, courtesy: Sashi.

I-day night dance party at Neha's place, courtesy: Divakar.

For the first time, I became a part of the Independence Day celebration after coming to US - right from attending flag hoisting, to singing the national anthem, to wearing Indian clothes, to having a "desi" dance party at a friend's place! It was great fun after a long time. We played Hindi numbers, played cards, imitated each other's dancing styles and pulled each other's legs!

Nevertheless, there is a more serious and profound thought associated with the celebration. The question is, how much can you do staying thousands of miles away from your country? Has the importance of Independence Day reduced to just feeling a little Indian?

The Three Year-long Journey

"The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different."

It is completion of three years in US today, a totally different place, country and culture; in ASU, an endeavor to do something more with life; and in PhD, a desire to excel and make a difference to the rest of the world. As I look back, time seems to have just drifted so fast; however, each day has been different; and I have had the opportunity to gather a wide spectrum of variegated experiences, both professional and personal, sweet and bitter, which have been a great learning, preparing for the life in the coming future.

I find this quote so apt in describing the journey of our lives; when I came here, I was so excited about this whole new experience, apart from thoughts of finally being able to do what I wanted to do, and everything else. Each dawn it was something new, and I have come a long, really long way. I don't repent anything, I don't want to go back and change any bit of it. For, at the end of the day, it has been a learning of life; things you don't imbibe in formative education. And I want to gather that learning in the same manner as it has been, had I had the chance to go back and change anything.

There have been several changes about me. How I look at life, how I look into my future, how I judge relationships and how to be responsible for myself. Precisely maturity has crept in wide and deep; which has been for the better I strongly believe! Growing up has been a wonderful journey in the past three years here.

There were so many things which I was inquisitive about three years back, which I was skeptical about. I have answers to many of them now. I know where I am going to be in the next five years, a thought which used to be a question then. And still there are some questions which spring up every now and then and sweep my entire thought process. However, life is about getting more questions and the quest for their answers in the way, isn't it? And therein lies the role of the hidden future, a future which is obliged to be different from today - a hope that is always alive, in some remote corner of our mind.

*Today* and Some Bits

Today is one of those numerous days that made me feel like a real PhD student! Some of the highlights are here!

• I had the longest meeting of my life - lingering for three hours. This was with my advisor to discuss the paper we are submitting tomorrow.
• I needed to call home today, but since I had too many changes to make to my paper and so little time, I called them to just literally say "I am fine" , "Hope you all are doing good" and "I need to hang up, have loads of work"; that was a mere couple of minutes talk. Note, I never talk home this less; it is always at least 20 minutes.
• I had terrible headache since morning, so ended up buying coffee with a Columbian shot (!) to make it as strong as possible.
• I am stuck at the lab all night likely, note, today is a Sunday and that too, this is summer time!

All said and done, hope my paper turns up good. After all, it is going to be held in Barcelona, Spain, and I need to get there, apart from satiating all the PhD desires! Rest for next time: I have another deadline on Wednesday! Whee, I am loving this life, no pun intended!

On a different note, please read about Quarter-life crisis (QLC) on Wiki. If you are in the twenties, you will find tremendous ways to connect to the feeling. At least I did, so did some of my friends whom I asked.

Some of the ways (refer to the above link) I feel I suffer from QLC: tendency to hold an opinion about everything on Earth, I can talk on anything under the Sun; the realm of personal relationships, I am not happy about some of the ways things have worked out in the past; stress, oh well, it is a part of life when you are building up your coming future; desire to have children, I love kids; nostalgia, I am suffering from it tremendously these days; and re-evaluation of past life, it is always a great feeling and learning to retrospect and reflect on things that have happened, nonetheless I am happy about how life has been, despite all the bad times and the intermittent good times, well, don't they say, "Joy and woe are woven fine" (William Blake).

And some of the ways I don't think I suffer from QLC are: I am not confused, in fact I am never confused about anything, I always knew "which is which"; I am not unhappy with my job, in fact I am pretty happy with it; I don't feel that everyone else around me is doing better, yeah, I sometimes think I have sort of a superiority complex; and I don't suffer from insecurity about future plans, of present accomplishments or of the near future, I always knew what I wanted to do in life, ever since I was in 4th grade.

Note, this is not about self-analysis or anything of that sort; remember we were talking about QLC! So, check out what you think about yourself!

Slavery, Resilience. Then?

Man is a slave of circumstances, of habits.

I hail from a place in India where it pours very heavily; we almost have four to five months of real monsoon. Then, when I used to be there, I was accustomed to playing in the rain, going round the city with raincoats, umbrellas, riding rickshaws with water-proof curtains or even running across huge puddles of rainwater in front of our house. Rains used to be a part and parcel of life and so were out lifestyles; be it buying shoes especially for rainy days, be it getting dressed like that, or be it carrying an umbrella or raincoat while going out, if you guess it is going to rain that day. There were no surprises; we even knew which places to avoid, in case it rains too bad and areas get flooded.

Now the other aspect: power-cuts, for heaven's sake, we used to have plenty of them in Agartala - everyday for at least an hour, at an uninformed time. It used to be a part and parcel of life, too sarcastically, and reading in candle light or kerosene lamps used to be common long back, till things graduated to an alternative emergency electricity line. Preparations would go on since evening itself for the power-cuts, like keeping that part of the evening free and finishing off important things earlier or possibly later.

Life changed radically once I moved here. No rains (thanks to Arizona) and then the technology-slaved lifestyle in US, made me lame to handling situations like rains and powercuts. I was coming back with a big basket of laundered clothes today when unconsciously I stepped into a puddle of water and almost slipped. I realized I am wearing flip flops which have completely flat and smooth bases, a complete no-no for rains, as Mom used to say in India. Alas, the lifestyle here made me forget that!

And surprisingly, when I was driving to a grocery store later in the evening after the rain stopped, I passed between two intersections which were completely dark, jet black, and a poor traffic police guy was standing (with still little drops of rain pouring) and controlling the traffic. The irony being, certain places in Arizona, not being accustomed to such heavy rains, went almost crazy when some electrical equipment failed to operate and deliver electricity! And icing on the cake, even the traffic lights weren't working due to this power-cut! And trust me, unlike the rickshaws in Tripura which can operate on a flickering kerosene flame, driving without traffic lights working freaked me out totally. It was like putting yourself "out there," for some accident to occur!

This is all aside the ordeal the people living in that area were going through. This place is close to ASU campus, so quite a few students live there. Life is so much poised on this so called blissful technology that you cannot possibly cook anything (which means you starve unless thriving on already cooked food), can't get hot water (which means cannot shower), stay in the dark (which means no AC, no sleep) etc etc. Life just comes to a standstill, and especially if it persists for hours together.

I was just wondering at how we become accustomed to our situations, to our ambience and turn into slaves of technology. Only three years back, rains or powercuts per se, used to be no big deal at all. And now life just stops. A complete stop.

Man has this amazing capability to be resilient to whatever situation he or she is in. There is an inherent ability to adjust to the surroundings, to the situation, many be given sometime. Eventually everything gets leveled, we are the slaves of our own lives, of our own circumstances. Still, at the end of the day, knowing all of it, why do we panic when things are not our way? Where does that bliss of tremendous resilience go away all of a sudden?

All About Me

October, 2007 (Courtesy: Arvind, ISA Freshers')



February, 2008 (Courtesy: Rahul's Tempe visit)

July, 2008 (Courtesy: Deepak's Arizona Trip)

Me sometime back, a few months; a re-collection. The first pic goes back to the time of last year's ISA (Indian Students' Association) Freshers. There was a drama simulating the life of Indian graduate students at ASU, and I was playing the role of an administrative staff. The second pic is taken by my friend, Rahul, when he visited Tempe (and subsequent Grand Canyon and Las Vegas) last February. The third pic is the most recent, and courtesy taken by my friend Deepak when he was making a trip to Arizona last month. It is taken in a nice Mexican restaurant in Sedona, and I am cherishing a heavenly glass of Margarita!

I learned a few lessons

Life teaches so many lessons. Some of them aren't the ones you read in secondary school, or the ones that your parents would teach you or even the ones your friends could tell you. These are the lessons you learn from life's variegated experiences. And I have jotted down a few of them here.

Don't be foolishly romantic. Love exists, but preserve it for someone who deserves it. It doesn't mean that you hate others, or be mean to them, but yeah indifference is the best emotion you could deliver, when you aren't sure about any other!

Set a goal in life: a short-term one, and a long-term one. These could be something about your professional career or could be simply your alter-interest. But do have them with you, round the clock. They let you cling to something and something to look forward to. The short-term goal keeps you on your toes. And the long-term goals, which could be pretty high level, or very generic, keep you motivated and cater to keeping you overflowing with aspirations.

Realize you aren't the perfect human being, but strive towards being so. Craft the principles, ideas and thoughts which you think could make your life more perfect, which could be for optimizing any self-set motive.

Live life everyday: which also doesn't mean don't think about tomorrow. But yeah brooding over the past is the last thing in life. It leaves us morose, affects our day-to-day lives and disturbs our mental agility.

Be adaptive to your surroundings; keep all the five senses open to what you can be a part of, and what you could be aloof from. A wide heart and open mind often makes life easier.

And finally I would like to say, sometimes hope could kill people. Because at times, it does not come as a boon - rather it leaves us alone in never-ending roads of optimism where no positive ray of light ever gets to sway the golden grounds. We keep expecting things to go our way, things to revert back to the state where we left off, or to reach the disposition wherein we felt the most contented. Nevertheless life is sometimes a brutal reality: hope does not always come very handy.

I learned it is best to tide over the past; to start looking forward to things which have a meaning in the days to come. And also to live life at its best at this moment: pensive yet pragmatic, fancied yet the realist. To hope for things in the future, not the past and should the future not cull out the way we wished it to, never ever say "I wish, I hope." Rather, tell unto yourself "I would, I can tackle the ordeal."

Always rely on yourself for all the needed strength in the world: there is no magic wand or a Alladin's lamp to set things right in life. You are the architect of your tomorrow. And past is not going to help you do so; neither are the false hopes going to come to your beck and call. It's all about you; tomorrow as it stands right there, so close, so merry, so rosy, yet needs one extra thing for everything to materialize, and that is you yourself, ready to embrace life as it comes.

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On a more casual and comic note, Kartik pointed out the other day that some of the most frequently used tags in my blog are: academics, happiness, research and random. So he made a sentence out of it (remember the Make Sentences thing we used to do in primary school!). And here it goes:

Searching random happiness in academic research.

Ironically or coincidentally I would agree anyday, that this is really what I have been doing the past three years! And I am happy and proud to be doing so :)

A little piece of good news!

Just to share this piece of good news with all my readers! I got a scholarship acceptance for the Grace Hopper Conference for Women in Computing (2008) which is in Keystone, Colorado (90 minutes drive from Denver, CO). I will be traveling there and presenting the technical poster which was accepted there earlier.

I am extremely passionate about encouraging ambitious young women pursuing wonderful careers and I find this conference to be a great budding ground promoting this. A related blog post about my thoughts on this issue and the conference can be found here.

Apart from everything else, I would get an opportunity to explore a new state Colorado which is supposedly among the most beautiful states in the country!

The Motivation Factor

What do you do when you start getting disillusioned about life and the goals you had crafted for yourself? How do you tackle this situation when the primary motivating factor in life stops delivering its rejuvenating sap in your day-to-day little happenings?

I have been struggling enough of late, primarily due to de-motivation. Not because my PhD is not going great, in fact, it is very good I guess (so do several other people think); but it has been something else. I guess, on one hand it is the emotional turmoil which has created a mess, and on the other, it is the constancy of a research career, a degree you are pursuing which is crunching a fat slice of the ripe time of your life, along with ripping thick flesh of your efforts everyday. I don't mind indulging into an ambitious endeavor as that, but sometime, it has to reflect to me in some manner, why I am doing all this; why I have let go several nice things when I made the choices; and why I am in a position today when I feel I don't have anything to look forward to tomorrow.

This is not a depressing blog; I am not moaning over the melancholic life, nor am I re-iterating the bad experiences of the past. It is a piece of writing which should enable me re-think; re-think why I chose the path I did, three years back or may be even more. What the goals in the long run are. How is it going to make the lives of others different tomorrow. And when I run these questions in my mind, it feels like I am back on my track: the much larger than life picture I need to paint, eventually!

Life has its ups and downs. There are days when everything looks so perfect; and then there are times when nothing seems right. This truth is so cliched, but hardly ever we realize it when it is the most necessary. We brood over the past. We curse what has happened and what went wrong. It is difficult to forget certain happenings or people; difficult to put apart certain things which you could have worked out but did not really happen. But life is about looking forward, living each day full to the brim. Because what is past will never come back. It is just there. While, the motivations, they help us move forward in life. So the wise is who can weigh the motivations over past worries. He or she is then the winner, the winner of life at its best!

I would like to conclude by saying:
"There is just one life for each of us: our own." - Euripides.

PS: Please pray (if you are a theist) or wish (if you are an atheist) that my aunt who is ailing with cancer in its secondary stage, gets fine. I just got to know about this tonight and haven't been feeling great all the more. She has been a wonderful person in my life and I hope life doesn't take its toll on her this way.

Truly, Madly, Deeply :)

This defines my current mood today. Dedicated to all of whom I have loved or still do! I know if you are reading this blog, you would know!

However, life and love are transitory to a great extent. Roads merge and part, we meet and part with a host of people, things and happenings. Everything gets swept in the lashing waves of life. What remains is the feel of it. So there it is...

Time Travel

I was listening to the title song of Kuch kuch hota hai tonight. It was a movie profusely popular in my friend circle back in those times (1998) and I personally loved it, since it talked about the love (triangle) among three young school-going people, very much like all of us. And suddenly I found the lyrics to take me back to those times. Then, falling in love was so beautiful, matched exactly what the song had to say "ab to mera dil jaage na sota hai...".

The contrast between then and now amazes me widely! Not that I don't believe in falling in love anymore, in fact, I still believe that it is possible that we fall in love, everything becomes pretty around us and then there is no looking back. But the perception is somehow very different. Falling in love then (if at all it was love!) was really amazing, it was like flying with all multi-colored wings in the blue sky, a background adorned by all the best things and happenings and where life merged with the movie-akin romance.

For some reason which I don't know, I have been treading the path of the past pretty often of late! Times like ten years back; my thoughts then and the perspective of life I had then (if at all I understood all this that point of time!). Whatever the reason is, the backwards time travel has been very interesting. I have enjoyed it every time, irrespective of whatever memory time pulled up.

Self-quotes and their analysis

"I am trying to rise above all earthly desires; it is only papers that I care about now."

This was a statement I made to a friend sometime back about why and how I am looking forward to life, after all the things happened which I didn't want to.

However, how many times are we really capable of doing that? I thought you merely need one reason to live, one motivation to move forward in life. And it could be anything. Though I have hunted down that one reason to live, there is something somewhere else, lying around in some corner of my mind, that iches time and again; making me realize, may be there are two reasons you need in life. So that when things don't seem to be going much right on one end, you always have another reason to cling to. Let's see what the future says about this reasoning!

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"Certain memories make me nostalgic."

Today I was talking to another friend of mine, when we stuck on the topic of how we associate certain specific happenings, events to specific people at different points of time. We were talking about how we would associate certain music with our past crushes, with past relationships, with exam results, or simply with the dreams we used to cherish then. Somehow today afternoon I ran into one of those kind of music back from 2001 which reminded me of several things at that point of time - it was those times when we were bursting with hopes, plans, dreams to start an altogether new kind of life (right after 12th grade finals). And then there was the odd feeling of how things of the past 12-15 years would seep down in the sands of time. Probably some of those will never revert back. They would just exist there.

But there is one very interesting point I noted about being nostalgic about those memories. Somehow I could recall only the red and rosy things; even the stress that used to torment us then feels so different now. It was the times of hopes, zero responsibilities and zealous pursuits.

I don't mean that life has been stripped of fun and hopes now. But somehow it is very different. I think life is now more shallow; our thinking is less convoluted, and our subscription to principles and rules are rather flexible. We no longer dream we could be astronauts. We no longer dream of life to be exactly like a romantic-comedy movie. We longer dream that we could change the world in a day with our accomplishments. We are more mature now; we know our little grounds. We cherish dreams, we plan, but only those which we know we are capable of. And when the gone-by memories sometimes come back to you, you feel nostalgic and going back to those times gives a very astounding feeling.

The Checker-board

I like it when I find my life like a checker-board - everything laid out in a proper manner which I know, and every move that I would make is calculated and as per the current circumstances and future happenings. I am never confused; and I do exactly what I want to do in life.

But how many times does life really happen like that? I am not sure: and that is one of the major complains I have all the time - why cannot I embark on a decision or take a footstep towards something conclusively? Why is so many times a layer of uncertainty dwelling over the skies of our hopes and plans?

Hopes and those moves on life's checker-board that goad towards fulfilling some goal or the other keeps me going all the time. As a matter of fact, whenever some cloud of uncertainty would overcast them, life gets all the more interesting. It opens up newer avenues to take life as a challenge and not succumb to it.

That's why I don't like times when I don't have anything to do, anything to look forward to. I find life too hollow then - the captivating moves of the twists and turns in life make it lively and worth living!

The Mere Existential Things...

Life sometimes surprises me big time: things which you would never expect happen and then leave a trace somewhere in some corner. But may be that's just a trace, may be it does not have any significance in the future, whatsoever.

Trying to come to terms with this seemingly true fact. Not quite up for it though. Because I think, whatever happens in life, has a meaning, be it for the better or the worse. May be sometimes, it doesn't. Certain things are just there, they just exist, without any significance at that point of time, or later.

Am I right? Can these traces be of any use later? Are they good enough at least to impart some experience or lesson or little bit of learning? Or are they just merely existential?

It is not what life has to offer ...

Whenever things in life don't seem to be going much right, I have often had this consolation from friends telling me, "don't worry, life has more to offer." Unfortunately, such consolations never came to help for me, and that is also precisely one of the reasons why I get much paranoid when things don't seem so right in life.

I am a person who grew up always trying to shape things in life as it came, never really trying to leave things to chance. However, sadly, life is sometimes unpredictable; one or more of the infinite variables controlling a segment could often go wrong, and that is when the uncontrolled situations would often drive me nuts - the lack of my control over a set of circumstances. And isn't that obvious for a person of this kind, to find all the consolations involving "life has more to offer" appear meaningless?

Of late, experience and maturity has taught a myriad lessons. I realized, that things could go wrong at any time and any place about anything, but what time and situation cannot steal from you is the desire to remain upright, all the time. For, I believe, it is us who define what life could offer.

Mostly, life is really what we extract out of it, how we define it, how we justify it to ourselves. Several things in life depend upon chance or are purely beyond our control; obviously, things could go wrong at any time - however, what we could control is how we want our lives to be from that point onwards. It is not what life has to offer, rather what we want life to offer us!

The darkness in "The Dark Knight"

"He is what Gotham deserves to have, but not what Gotham needs at this moment."

The Dark Knight is the story of the human superhero, the hero of a civilization which has been bogged down by the darkness of wisdom in a deep valley of hopelessness. He is the ultimate self in a time when the human mind has lost its faith in goodwill; a time when people started to be driven by their selfishness, their mundane desires and their gory revenges of the past, turning Gotham City into a reality hell of daemons.

Bruce Wayne (aka Batman) has been doing the "shit-cleaning job" of Gotham all the while. He has been letting the people of his city sleep in peace; he has been driving all those ill-motif souls to their deserved places of sins. The children have been looking up to him as the ultimate resort, and every Tom, Dick and Harry has been motivated to tread his path by wearing his gadget-y suit. Yet, Batman is Batman - his passion to make Gotham a better place to live in makes all the difference.

The movie shows the war inside a commonplace man's character, a man though like you and me, has the profuse responsibility of sweeping the gory floors of a world turned selfish and wicked. The movie raises a question on our love of the presence of a superhero - a person godly enough to possess all the qualities which could make the world a better place to live in. A person who transcends all human limitations. A man in the real sense of the term. The man of every woman's dream. A man of character, of motive, of warmth and of self-resilience.

But reality is far from this dream. Batman, a superhero with a mask cannot inspire a generation; he cannot motivate twenty other teenagers to leave the path of sin and embark on a path towards a new dawn. So Batman decides, "let there be darkness before there is that twilight." He feels Batman needs to be erased from the soul of Gotham; what Gotham needs at this moment is a real hero, of flesh and blood, a man whom the commonplace can relate to.

The movie ends with our man of character and power having to flee. Flee with no wrong-doing in record. Flee for the sake of humanity, for a better civilization, more responsible by itself. Flee with the image of a real human as the hero, not a masked superhero.

The movie somehow made me think our definitions of perfection. We dream of an utopia, and we dream that sometime someday there would be one great man who will wipe the world clean of every misdoing. We laze around, sit without the sense of a responsibility, waiting for that superhero incarnated person to come up and end all the woes in the world. But don't we ourselves have a role to play? Aren't we ourselves responsible for a better tomorrow?

The world does not need comic-book heroes, men of dreams or people whose intellect or wisdom is a bolt from the blue, rather it needs real and mundane heroes, like you and me, who can deliver the crusade of making the civilization wiser and better at each dawn, everyday.

Let us wake up before it is too late for one single person with a noble thought (like Batman) to sacrifice the 'hero' in him and get doomed cleaning a world full of shit.

I would not reveal the actual story here, but it is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever watched. It has profound philosophy, it has the passion of fulfilling one's dream and it has the real world connection of a superhero being a part of the same world we live in. The movies ends with a note which asks us the question of our own responsibilities towards mankind, instead of a all-powerful superhero accomplishment.