In the Air

Flight, a place where all your inner fears about manners come to life. Moreover, it is at this place where you become self-conscious about your body language, the way you speak to the flight attendants and not to forget the fear whether you are eating properly or you are eating like a boor . I have traveled by flight,  a number of times. One thing I can say with assurance is that each experience is different. Moreover it depends on who you are sitting besides. But, there is one thing in all this, each experience teaches you a different lesson in life. Even if it is for a limited period, you peek into somebody else’s life for a while, you get to know what kind of life they are living. Whether they are sad or happy or tensed or just tired, you observe that in no time. This experience taught me empathy, it highlighted the fact that, we live more or less similar life, the only difference is the phase we are in. The similarity between all of us is that even though we lead different lives, we face a similar set of problems interchangeably.

Sunset from one of my flight rides!

In one trip, I was sitting besides teenage boy. We bonded on a game I was playing and eventually started talking. Innocently he asked me,”In which grade are you in?“. In my mind, I had a small laugh, and told him I was in Masters Program. He was thrilled and surprised. And like any other gamers, we asked each other for game recommendation for android, realizing this he instinctively asked me which PC games do I play.

I said, “Well I’m quite old and I don’t play any computer games.”

To which he said, “Well my mom warned me that I could play computer games for only 1 more year after that my access to computer would be delimited for 3 years or so“.

After hearing this I  was intrigued, so I asked him in which standard he was in, he told me he was in 9th grade. As he replied, his expression frowned, I understood what he felt, I too felt the same way when I was in 9th standard, my games were also shut down for 3 subsequent years. This just vindicated a notion I held dearly, everybody faces the same set of problems at one point of time or the other, and that everyone lives in more or less the same way. Thinking about all this, my flight time was up, an announcement from the flight deck said that the flight would land in 15 minutes. My thoughts rather my thought process which was relaxed for the entire time changed, now I felt a little tense, the reason for this being my routine would restart again. It is weird as much we want to run away from a routine, we too want order in our life. The flight landed, I went to the belt where my checked in luggage would be arriving, I again saw that boy, I smiled and told him to study well and wished him luck for his coming years. Hearing this, his face was a mixture of anxiety and fear, but he smiled, I immediately recognized that he must be hearing this from a lot of people. I too felt the same way when I was his age, I realized I was old now. I was not in the same phase,I was in a different phase of life. Yet I had experienced that phase too, after all everyone is relatively different but on a larger scale we are all the same.

Uninspired Patriots

Exactly one year ago, I was in Pune writing a different theme article on the occasion of Republic day, here in 2016, I’m sitting in my hostel room thinking of a completely different perspective of the same theme. This year’s 26^th January began at midnight in a library’s reading room, where I was watching funny stuff on YouTube. I began watching at 9.30pm and saying just one more video, it was 12.15. I hurried my way back to my room and slept around 12.30.

 

I couldn’t resist myself from taking this from “Man of Steel”, but it is a stellar line with relevance to one’s nationalism!

The actual Republic day began at 7.30 in the morning. As I put my toothbrush, towel, soiled clothes into my bucket, I realized that at this time last year, I was sleeping in my cozy bed back home, and  here I’m this year readying myself up before anybody else for a clean hostel bathroom. I didn’t pay much attention to the activities at hand-  washing clothes, brushing teeth, bathing, but I was lost thinking about my country India, and what I was doing for her on this patriotic day. I was being a youth, educating myself and sustaining myself on my own scholarship which I earned by my own merit, and not deviating from the path of hard work. A story of an ideal Indian youth, I was doing my bit for my country indirectly, I was keeping my hostel premise (including my room) clean, and being civil in foreign place. My thought process was briefly interrupted by an empty Lays packet which lay in front of room’s door. It must have being thrown from above or maybe someone from the same floor threw it. I calmly pick up the packet and throw in the dustbin which is present on a right turn away from my room.  Thoughts regarding lack of civic sense of head explode in my head. Out of nowhere a Trojan thought emerges – What does my country do for me? Should my country do something for me or it is just a one way street- me doing something for the country?!

This suddenly reminded me of the story my dad narrated to me, when I was home during vacation. We were on our way back from vacation in a car at night and were distressed by the way people drove their cars on the road and general lack of empathy they exhibited. The story is recent one, the Japanese government was surveying train station across the country, as they wanted to find the usability of each station by people. They found out that there was one particular station, which was the least commuted by people, and they marked this station for dismantling. In all this scheming, the government officials heard news about a little girl who frequently used the station to go to her school, which was in a nearby town. Moreover, train was the only way by which the girl was going to her school every day. Dismantling the station would disrupt the girl’s education, so the government officials decide that they would leave the station as it is, until the girl completed her education. This was an exceptional example of a country caring for her citizens, it was country doing something for its people. I rarely see such an example in India. Patriotism is a two way street, just like any other relationship- friendship between two people, family relations, it requires efforts from both ends. It is just not enough to be good citizens of a nation, the nation should also treat its citizens with dignity and respect. Lack of civic sense in public space of people, highlight only one thing- bad citizens. How can such people be patriotic for its nation?? Playing patriotic songs on loudspeakers on occasion of Republic and Independence day is just not enough, doing this illuminates how superficial our love is for our country. Being good citizens is NOT enough for the progress on our nation, the nation should also display examples of inspiration, nationalism, otherwise it generates a new class of citizens- Uninspired Patriots.

 

Happy 67^th Republic day to everyone.

The Grey Photograph

We take photographs to capture memories. It helps us capture past times, times that will never return. We all feel that sense of accomplishment and excitement when we take a good photograph. But I want to ask you this one question, what is a good photograph? A photograph that truly captures the moment? Once in a while, we take such a photograph, and when we look back at it, we fell accomplished and happy. There are some photos, which not only capture the moment, but they capture the sharpness and brutality of reality. I took one such photo, when I was cycling back home. As I was cycling back home, I saw this scene, and thought to myself, “This would be an awesome scene to click”, so I stopped, parked my cycle, took out my cell phone and clicked away. What I didn’t realize at that instance was that this would be one photo that I would remember for a long time.

As you can see, there is a small house in a depression of ground, this ground is not dry, but it is partly covered by water. This made me think of the life we live. How our surroundings are a manifestation of our thoughts and perspective that we hold dear. That depression on the ground is the spectrum (range of our mind), and that lone house signifies us. If you imagine the house to be a living being, like a tree which cannot move, it doesn’t really know what is beyond the border edge. It doesn’t really realize how beautiful and wonderful this life is, it only sees what the mind reflects. The moral this photograph taught me was to never narrow down our sight rather our vision, always keep an open point of view. You can’t be like that house, you have to more than that, you have be like the trees that surround the house, ever growing, and having a broad perspective of the overall world. Ironical to what I captured, we are unfortunately like that house in depression, which is happy to see things that are directly in front of it, but completely ignorance of how vast the world is beyond the boundaries. We should always remember one thing in our life, we SHOULD not be closed minded individuals, with a rigid set of ideals, but rather we should be open for inspiration, we should have the capability to see beyond the walls that surround us. Remember, there are thousands of things to envision beyond the ordinary things right in front of you.

 

The Play of Change

It was lazy summer Monday, as I looked at my cycle, it reminded me that its tires had less air pressure in them. I went into my balcony to fetch my air pump, and went straight towards my cycle tires. Well as we all know this, filling up air into cycle tires, is not a piece of cake, and it is quite a ‘tiresome’ process. So as to reduce my physical misery, I plugged into my Ipod, and pressed the shuffle button on it.

Coincidentally, the first song which was played on my Ipod was my favorite song – Californication by the funk rock band Red Hot Chilli pepper. It is quite a relaxing listen, and while listening to this song, I was filling up air in my tires. The lyrics of the song went on as follows –

“Psychic spies from China try to steal your mind’s elation

Little girls from Sweden dream of silver screen quotations”

The lyrics of this particular song are quite spectacular in its own ways!

This song transported me into a new dimension. It was quite unusual phenomenon, despite the song being catchy, it didn’t distract me from the primary task at hand, rather  it made me concentrate more on it. As I was filling up air, the bright sun rays which were falling on my cycle suddenly dimmed, as if somebody came up from behind  me and drew the curtains. Initially I thought someone came up from behind me to prank me, but to my surprise there was no there, only I was there with my pump and cycle. I ignored this phenomenon, and continued filling up air, and again suddenly there was light on me, bright sun rays again fell on me. This particular activity went on for a while, as all these interesting things kept happening, in my headphone Californication played on. For all the people who haven’t heard this song, this song basically talks about how things go about in California, rather how California is actually Hollywood and vice versa. But I like to interpret it as a song about change. How seemingly random happenings in our world, have small but certain influence on our ways and perception of things around us. The bright and dim foreplay of the sun and clouds in nature, made me think about whether somebody was standing behind me. All I’m trying to say is that we are victim of changes occurring in this brave world. These changes may not always be pertaining to us, they may be occurring on a larger scale of things such as nature, but  they do have an influence on us. In short, we can consider change to be happening/ incident in our everyday life, whose casualty is us. The causality can be a positive thing for some of us, on the other hand others may not cope up well with it. The positive or negative causality of change depends upon us, and our perception of change. As I’m lost in my thoughts, suddenly my mind is distracted in the right direction towards my headphone, which still played the same song.

The lyrics now says –

” The sun may rise in the east, at least it settles in the final location”.

At that moment, I realize that the “Sun” is the change, and East and final location(West) are our perception of change.

This is the music video of this great song! 🙂

😀 🙂

Blank Space

It was 11.15pm in the night, I’m conflicted between 2 thoughts – one to write an article about a certain idea I have in my mind, and my mind telling me you are too tried to concentrate. But I gave into my former thought, and started writing an article. But this article which I had started writing was different, it had no title on it, it was blank. Well I thought to myself, whether it was right to write a title of the article, or to write on with the flow of my thoughts. This time I chose the latter, and continued to lay down my story, my ideas on paper, without giving a thought about the petty title. By giving a title an article, I would confine myself only to a particular line of thought, and not go beyond that, on the other hand without a title, I would be like a tree who spreads its roots in all possible direction, and would expand on a variety of thoughts and ideas. All these thoughts made me think of the other writers, who are also writing , are they conflicted by such trivial things, or whether they just ramble on with their ideas. But I continued writing my thoughts, well by now it had an intro, and I was thinking about how to begin writing the body of the article, when I had this bright moment of epiphany.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. sir I salute you!!

We begin our life as a small child, full of innocence and undiscovered things and habits, we don’t as a child have a particular line of thoughts, all that we are confined to is the cycle of sleep-wake-cry-eat-poop-repeat. It goes on until we are old enough to think about which particular toy we like and we want, which color we like, which sport we like. Then as years go on, our line of thoughts starts getting narrower and narrower, we start developing likes and dislikes for a particular thing, we starting putting boundaries in our world, to confine ourselves to a particular set of experiences, and become completely immune to  experiences which are not particularly our jam. I don’t think we should do such an unfeasible activity, at that moment I start removing the mental fences I had put up in my mind, and allowed my mind to drift into the unexplored territories without being afraid, that  I might fail. If we fail, still we win, we become wiser, and if we win, we learn to push onto our limits. I start deconfining myself, by removing those mental fences. and at that particular time, I find myself, writing the end of the article. The body, which I had written, it had variety of thoughts, ideas and experiences all completely random, but somehow cohesive to one another. As I write the last sentence of the article, I realize one another thing, I forget to give a title. I think it would be appropriate to leave a blank space, at the place where I would be writing the title. It would be UNTITLED.

Its all about getting ideas out of you!

Until the next time guys! 😉 😀