Exam is here, Im shivering with fear!!!

Disclaimer: Its 4 am almost and I'm fed up studying some shit I'd never want to study. TS is 2 days away n I'v to study a hell lot more!



The longer I sit

And the longer I stare;

All that I realize is

I really dont care!



Loads of assignments

And hell lot of tutes;

Up the professor's asses

I'd like to shove bamboo shoots!



Days are now longer

And winter has begun to wane;

I stare at the textbooks,

This stuff is real pain!



All the ghissus are away,

In the library they ghiss;

I wish they'd be bound

And on their faces I'd piss!



I really dont know,

Where do I stand;

Neither ghissing nor enjoying,

I'm on the no mans land!



The time is ticking,

I must start to read;

For a good GPA

Is something I need!



I'm truly frustrated

And my brain is chewed up;

I'm really very sleepy

And my state is screwed up!



I look at my notebooks

And I shred them to bits;

Staring at these bits I realise,

I'd rather go for the test with chits!!!







Just wrote it as I wrapped up a part of EC. Loads more to be done. TS is fast approaching and Im gonna get screwed!

Some IITR lingo ghissing is studying for marks all the time and ghissus are book worms.

No hard feelings Iv got about the profs, the line was just added to make it rhyme! Ha Ha Ha!!!

The Week that was.....

Day 1:
The first day of 2008 is just about to pass and I'm stuck up in a bumpy bus with a cranky driver trying hard to manoeuvre the khatara out of Delhi's ISBT. I'm trying my best to balance my guitar, my laptop and 3 bags all over the place to make sure they dont bump into anyone during the violent tremors in our good 'ol khatara. Just when you think things cant get worse, they actually do! My sweatshirt failed miserably against the assault of freezing gusts of wind. In my attempts to close the window shut I failed even miserably! All I could do now was shiver helplessly. At last I reached Roorkee and sleep peacefully in my Room-Sweet-Room (S-37 Rajendra Bhaven @ RJB)!

Day 2, 3, 4:
The next day goes on pretty uneventfully, with me sleeping while the friendly neighbourhood ghissu set out on their early morning pilgrimages to the lecture rooms (this has become their routine now). It has become my routine too, though I set out just a bit late, 30 mins late that is! With the hostel full again and life back on track 3 days pass us by swiftly.

Weekends are here again,
Just sleep till late,
And relax your brain,
To hell with the NCC parade!

Day 5:
The very first weekend into the second sems and I get up late as usual. Now LAN is something I really did miss when I was back home. You ask for it and they'v got it, movies, music, ebooks or software. I download from LAN Taare Zameen Par and watch it. For 3 hours I am transfixed, its possibly the most touching movie I'v seen. Amir Khan is a perfect perfectionist! The child artist Darsheel Safary too is par excellence. Everyone has lived their roles not merely acted them. Aamir Khan has handled the theme with great dexterity. He has not just succeeded in making every child a hero but actually helped us see a child in ourselves. Just like no man is perfect no matter what position he commands in the society, every child with both their ability and inabilities is special and talented in their own way. The movie isn’t just about a child suffering from dyslexia and his challenges, it’s also about how parents get carried away by today’s competitive world and fail to understand their child’s dreams and nurture their inborn talents.
We may love our family or our friends, but how many times do we actually say that we do? Rarely if at all ever. At Mood Indigo, Shankar Ehsaan and Loy for the first time to my knowledge campaigned for TZP at a live concert. The music too is gratifying. Its worth watching this movie once, twice, thrice an umpteen times.....

Day 6:
Sunday! All I do daylong is eat and sleep. At night though I decide to start reading a book, something that I'v been planning to do for long. I decide to start reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. A very bold book I would say. Its not easy to stand up and talk about atheism or rather prove God to be a Delusion in this world driven - or should I say riven - by pernicious theism.

'I suspect - well, I am sure - that there are lots of people out there who have been brought up in some religion or other, are unhappy in it, don't believe it, or are worried about the evils that are done in its name; people who feel vague yearnings to leave their parents' religion and wish they could, but just don't realize that leaving is an option. If you are one of them, this book is for you. It is intended to raise consciousness - raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled. That is the first of my consciousness-raising messages. I also want to raise consciousness in three other ways, which I'll come on to.' - Richard Dawkins.

Day 7:
After my fourth pilgrimage of the semester, I decide to go out and have dinner with my friends and thats just about when things begin to become interesting! My mom always thinks Indra — a Hindu counterpart of Zeus — will zap me with a bolt of lightening for not believing in him!


And it turns out to be true! Mr. Indra or Mr. Zeus or may be both together are busy formulating Holy Plans to Zap me - the blasphemous atheist (thats how we are always portrayed)! While I am busy eating the sky starts to get cloudier and cloudier as if it still is monsoon. Bolts of lightening began fencing with each other and there is deafening thunder, the Plan is ready and about to be excuted. (Ok this sounds just a bit more melodramatic than it was, just thot it'd be funny) Five of us, me and four friends (isnt it obvious?) begin hurrying toward the NIH gate inorder to try and reach RJB before it begins to pour, merrily discussing about lightening strikes, totally unaware of The Holy Plan. And suddenly we see a flash of blinding light and a loud bang. We all run helter-skelter knowing very well that we just missed being struck by lightening. The shopkeepers come to help us but manage to make things worse with their stories of casualties nearby due to lightening strikes. Gathering some courage, we set out again and again lightening struck us! The same flash of light, the same bang. We survived the wrath once again! And it began to rain. At last we returned to our rooms half drenched and fully petrified but thankfully all alive. The Holy Plan failed again!

Thats it folks my first week of 2008 and my first week of second semister too!

P.S: I'm thinking about a post on The Pilgrimage that is our daily trips to DOMS to attend lectures.

P.P.S: I have no intentions of harming religious sentiments wrt my day 7.

P.P.P.S: I recently went to Mussoorie and its beautiful.

Thank God I'm an atheist.....

Disclaimer: While writing this one I was in a very contemplative mood,these are the few occassions when I can be stupid enough to think about thinking, about why we think and how we think. It is during such times that I can come up with questions like ' Why do we we think in English or Hindi, why not in C++, why not without its use either?' Yup I can ask such things!


Being an atheist can be a tough job, especially when you have a mom who thinks Indra — a Hindu counterpart of Zeus — will zap you with a bolt of lightening for not believing in him! Zap.....


I'm an atheist but I wasn't born one, nor have I turned into one overnight. The journey from being a theist to an atheist has come to me as a result of reasoning and experiance. I just couldnt believe in the 330 million Gods — each with a dozen names or so — that Hinduism claims exist.


A zillion misconceptions exist about atheists and most among atheists themselves! Atheism is not a religion in the sense that Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism are. Atheism does not generally offer a complete guideline for living as most religions do. However, Atheists frequently derive their own ethics and philosophy of life using their Atheism as a starting point. They are generally derived from reasoning and experience put together. Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair colour. To different people it means different things. To me it is the belief in no God rather than no belief in God. The word atheist is derived from the ancient Greek adjective atheos meaning 'godless'.


'If we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.' -Baron D'Holbach one of the first famous European atheists.


God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now when you finally discover how something works, you stop associating it with God, you dont need Him anymore. But you need Him for the other mysteries. Therefore you leave Him to create the universe, you need Him for those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time — life and death — stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. We use God as crutches to hide our disabiltiy in the form of ignorance.


Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is God both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-Epicurus

Fantasy

Well I'm right now a part of this awesome group of people in IIT-R who publish a news magazine WATCH OUT. Right in the beginning of the semester they took in new facchas(thats what we first yearites are called) after a series of interviews. I wrote this poem for those interviews.

Its called Fantasy.





As I stood at the shore

And the waves touched my feet

And the sun was there no more

As I thought of the girl I was about to meet.



As I stood at the shore

And I saw her coming from far

And the sun was there no more

And she came and stood by my car.



As I stood at the shore

On the beach that ran for a mile

And the sun was there no more

As I beheld her shy smile.



As I stood at the shore

And the wind caught its speed

And the sun was there no more

Of any words there was no need.



As I stood at the shore

And we sat there hand in hand

And the sun was there no more

As the moon cast it's light on land.



As I stood at the shore

And the wind brushed against her hair

And the sun was there no more

As I kissed her then and there.



As I opened my eyes

And the stars had come up in the skies

And the girl, my eyes could not find

As all that was just a fantasy in my mind.