Aprajita

Had written a short story some time back, thought of sharing it today 

It was a warm summer evening. Lying down on the terrace after a long day’s work, Aparajita couldn’t help but smile. After all Papaji had spoken to her today for the first time in three years. He had said he was proud of her. Tears came trickling soon after and Aparajita couldn’t help but think about the fateful night three years ago when she had told her family of her decision to cancel admission in IIT Delhi for M Tech and start up her own firm to educate farmers in the village. Papaji had been angry, she was the first in the family to go for post-graduation and now she was floundering it away for some stupid idea. She remembered how she had pleaded, how she had tried to make them understand that she couldn’t absorb the idea of sitting in an air-conditioned office while her friends in the village were crushed under mountains of debts.

 She couldn’t fathom the idea of another Madan. Mummyji had started crying in her typical way “We shouldn’t have sent her to the city, look what she has become now”. She remembered she had mentioned Madan in the hope that this might make her see her decision in a new light and how Papaji had exploded “Yes! I had warned him of the dangers of getting into farming and now look what happened, the same that I had feared; he committed suicide because he couldn’t pay back the loan”.

To her Madan was like her own brother. She had spent countless evenings with him while he had worked in her father’s shop. He had called up her one day when she was studying in the city “Didi, I am leaving the shop. I am going to start farming again on Bapu’s land”. She remembered the excitement, the energy in his voice. And then two years later he was dead, dead because his crops withered away due to lack of rain, dead because he couldn’t pay back the loan he had taken from the loan sharks.

It had not been easy. She had already lost her family’s support. Teachers and friends were also not very encouraging. They kept telling her to keep her dreams realistic. And they were not wrong, not many people from her village had gone to the city to study engineering. Rejecting a job offer and then rejecting an admission offer from IIT, she did seem pretty reckless and too ambitious for her own good. A single girl trying to set up a business in a village in Maharashtra, she knew it wouldn’t be easy. The farmers were not willing to listen to her. After all a young girl telling them how they should change their farming practices; it hurt their ego. But a few young farmers had come. She had arranged talks by experts on video conferencing. She told them about the government schemes for farmers. Slowly and slowly other farmers also joined in. She made sure they had the proper fertilizers, seeds and equipments. Her efforts did not go in vain.

It had been two years now and thanks to the increase in farm yield, not a single farmer committed suicide. A few local papers published her story which caught the attention of some NGOs in Mumbai. Aparajita was contacted and asked to share her ideas and set up similar offices in other villages to help more farmers. She put in her life in these efforts. This wasn’t just a business for her. It was a means to connect with her roots, it was a means to change lives of the people who had been left untouched by the growth being witnessed by the urban India.

Her offices were now present in twenty villages and catered to over a 1000 farmers. Three years into the business and she had already managed to break even. And then one fine day, something unexpected happened. Aparajita had just reached her office, her assistant came running towards her, “Appu, see, what has come!”. It was an invitation letter to the Republic parade by the Chief Minister, she was to be honored for bringing about a change in the lives of hundreds of famers. The news made the banner headlines and she was now a celebrity. Aparajita had become a living symbol of the adage, ‘Success often comes to those who dare and act, it seldom comes to the timid.’

Deep into her work, she was spending another long night at the office when there was a knock. Wondering who it could be this late at night, she opened the doors. Standing there were her parents. She couldn’t say anything, she just broke down. Buried in her father’s arms, she only remembered Papaji telling her how proud he was of her, how much he had missed her these three years and how he had followed her every move and action. Tears did not stop, words could not do justice to the waves of emotions in her heart. The big wide hollow in her heart had finally closed and she knew life was going to be better now. 

A Dark Night

On night like these
the world seems still
but your mind is in a hurry
I dont know why and I never will
The inner turbulence
The outer serenity
Is that a mirage?
I dont think so
But I dont seem to reach it
Is that the forbidden fruit I cant have?
As the night gets deeper
Is not the sunrise getting nearer
Why the sudden deluge
Why the deep agony
Tearing through me
Engulfing the night
In the blanket of silence
But I see the light
I believe the light
As I always have and I always will...

Tales of budding managers

So I was thinking the other day its been long since I have given a status update of where I am, what am I doing. And yes I am a little narcissistic and want to talk about myself for a while. So BTech got over last year(sigh! Whether this sigh is of relief or of sadness is something of a mystery to me too, so we will just pretend to ignore this now).  Those of you who know me, know (a little too much for their comfort) that I love planning, when I say love, I mean I really really enjoy planning. So I had planned in class 11^th properly how I was going to become this really hardcore engineer, you know all geeky types. As the future became clearer, the plan finetuned to becoming a kickass computer engineer, hacking into systems, doing real spy stuff (partially because becoming a spy was part of an earlier plan). And then in the third year of college, I followed the crowd and joined CAT coaching. Somehow cleared it in final year (God! Smart people must have really stopped giving CAT or maybe I had actually become a real cool hacker, after all the exam in online now) and here I am now in a management college.  So the couple of months before joining, the planning commission headed by me (and having only me as a member) started making new plans. The new plans included making plans to appear very busy always (managers are supposed to be busy people, they have to do real important stuff like writing blogs on stupid topics). So now that I am here, I am always very busy. You ask why? Because as a management student, I have to be, it’s the only requirement to study management, you have to be always busy. We have just too many assignments and reports and sheets to submit. And stupid Mr Turnitin doesn’t let us management students use our holy mantra Ctrl C + Ctrl V (if I did a survey on the most hated software in my college, pretty sure, our dear Mr Turnitin would win hands down). So getting back to being busy. I know you must all be thinking, WoW, assignments on your own, that’s really some work. Well you are just a bit off mark. We are always busy doing assignments, just when we say doing, we mean paraphrasing wiki pages so that Turnitin uncle doesn’t catch us. On the rare occasions when we are not doing that, we are scheduling meetings. Oh yes, never mind that we are still students but what is management without meetings. So we are sending mails to our groups, a typical mail would go something like “Guys, Lets meet in CC at 10 pm to discuss the project”. Turn to 10pm, 2 people out of 7 reach CC, bitch about how the other 5 are freeriders and go back. Repeat the whole exercise every week for the entire semester and then do the actual work one night before submission.  What else keeps us busy, well what would all this hardwork be if not complemented with parties. So we have parties. Now its exactly like those glamorous parties you see in movies. Just instead of a cool location, we have booze, and instead of food, we have booze, and instead of games, we have booz and then ofcourse there is more booz. So now you get the idea, we are always busy. So whats the most important takeaway from this piece of article on which you just wasted the last 2 mins of your life. The takeaway is never ask a management student “Are you busy?” because you already know the answer. We are always busy.

I would have loved to write a little more but pardon me, I am busy.

Disclaimer: The above is just a piece of fiction and any resemblance to real life events is purely intentional.

कर्म की याचना

रोजाना आँखों से देखे

हम तुम सपने हज़ारों

सपने तो देखे है सभी

पर क्या सच होते है कभी

खुशियों का क्या करना

वो तो बेशुमार है

सवाल तो है ये खड़ा

क्या तुम्हारा दिल है बड़ा

दूर खड़े तुम रोते हो

अपने अंश को हर श्ण ढूंडते हो

आओ ज़रा आँखें तो खोलो

सिर्फ बगईओं में ना खिलते फूल

सुगंधित पर वो भी होते है

दिल तो सबका दुखता है

पर क्या आगे कुछ तुम करते हो

कभी तो हम सब कर्म करे

कब तक शर्म से मरे

किलकारियों की गूंज को

मातम में ना बदलने दो

ए ज़िंदगी अब तो मुझे कुछ करने दो

Books and Memories

Ahh! Back here after a long time. Basically this means there is something going on in my head and I am in one of my **stay away from human communication** moods. So I am here to vent.
I was just going through quora, chanced upon a couple of questions on books. Wrote an answer for a Harry Potter question. In the midst realized how much time has changed. Its been ages since I read a book. I guess I miss reading. It used to be a world of its own, letting your imagination run wild. Seeing the characters develop in your mind, the moment when your heart skipped a beat seeing your beloved character in danger because it wasn't just a character at that moment, it had become your friend, it had become someone you had known for ages. Remember sitting on the study table, pretending to read RD Sharma when you were actually hiding a novel behind it. Remember finding your spot near the balcony and then spending your entire weekend there with your beloved book. Remember getting annoyed when people folded book pages. Remember getting super annoyed when people thought using marker in a book was cool. And remember getting really sad on seeing a torn book and then spending hours with your mom on trying to repair and bind it again. I remember the time when I knew every corner of the fiction section of my library. I remember Ghosh Sir from JB, the school where I first fell in love with books. I remember how his face used to light up on seeing me enter the library knowing that I had come again to eat his head and yes, to borrow more books. I remember reading famous five and wondering when will my adventure time come. I remember reading Harry Potter and waiting for my Hogwarts letter. I remember reading Dan Brown and seriously contemplating taking up History as a major. I remember reading Nicholas Sparks and crying because the emotions got too much to handle. I remember reading Amish and debating with my friends on why Indian authors and the Indian mythology had a lot on potential. And I remember those Bangalore bus rides when Howard Roark gave me company.

Oh! Nostalgia...thou art a heartless bitch.....

Because sky is the limit

I am finally on the last leg of my education! Remember your 10^th boards? That was the first time many of us heard this famous dialogue from our moms “Beta bas is baar padh lo, life ban jayegi”, little we knew this was a dialogue we were going to hear many more times. Well, I am the lucky one, the last two years of my academic life are here and thankfully it seems to be fun and exciting up till now!

Recently I had a chance to read a couple of chapters from the book “Monk who sold his Ferrari” by Robin Sharma as part of an assignment. Though I am generally not too fond of self help books, I liked this one. I used to think these self help books are just a load of gyaan and does not make much sense practically. Luckily for me I was forced to read it, and wonder of wonder! I liked it! Reading it, I realized how little we know about ourselves and how important self awareness is for our personal growth. I feel like sharing a couple of things that really gave me a different perspective of how I view things in life.

Have you ever thought about the percentage of time you speak in a conversation and the percentage of time you actually listen? I am not trying to undermine the importance of voicing up your opinion, it is absolutely essential that you put across your point. But you can also not underestimate the power of listening, the power of understanding and accepting. One should be like a cup, open and receptive to new ideas. Those who know me closely are aware of my talking prowess, how I can talk and talk endlessly! But now I am on the path of self improvement and have started speaking less and listening more (yes yes, I can hear you guys laughing :P ) .

Another thing that I realized after reading the book was how pain is a motivator. Pain shows us our limits, it shows us how much we can stretch ourselves. At every moment that you say you cant take it anymore, believe me you can.  Same is the case with fear, I will not say much about it. This quote from the book captures it beautifully “Fear is nothing more than a mental monster you have created, a negative stream of consciousness”. And what do you do with a monster, you challenge it and you slay it because you my dear are capable of doing anything.  

You, yes You, who are reading this right now, just wanted to tell that you are beautiful and your potential limitless!

In the next post I will write about the 10 rituals of radiant living, till then keep smiling!

The muddled puddled mind

What do you do when your mind is a hazy interwoven labyrinth of confusions? Do you go by your gut feeling (yes, everyone of us has a gut feeling about everything) or do you tell your heart and gut to shut up and let the brain make the decision? Some people try to find a pattern in everything, they wore some shirt when they gave an exam and the exam went well, for those stupid people the exam went well because they wore that particular shirt. And so they wear that same shirt for every exam. Continuing the stupidity forward they wear it on the result day believing that the shirt is a good luck charm. But this is where it gets interesting, what if they are right? Ofcourse they cant prove it true because for all that they believe some of exams do get fucked up inspite of wearing that shirt. But can I prove them wrong? Every scientific rule/law has exceptions, what if the failures were just some exception in the shirt rule. Can they not be just outliers? What if everything is connected, from your shirt to that exam to the date to possibly anything. If you have seen the series "Touch" you would probably be getting an idea of what I want to say. So coming back to the decision taking part, how would you take a decision which can change your life. Remember change is change, it can be both good and bad. How do you calculate the probability of whether the change will be good or bad. How do you decide that you want to change the course of your life? Include the condition that the present course is not bad, its actually good but there is a probability that if you change the course, you might chance upon that better path that you were looking. Now what if you take that leap of faith but fall down. How do you spend your life then? Do you repent that decision or do you take it in a stride and move on? But whatever you do, you have to accept that your life is worse because of that decision.
Now that I have muddled your minds as much as mine was muddled, its time to take a leave!