College ... life

Memories of college life are indispensable part of our lives.These are the days when you laugh uncontrollably on insane activities of your friends ,still you will remain the best buddies with out any "EGO"  clashes .Here are some rules which inspired me and will inspire most of you  toaggrandize your college life and  make most out of it .


1)In college more than ever ,before songs will attach themselves to memories. Every month or two, make a mix cd, mp3 folder, whatever - just make sure you keep copies of these songs. Ten years out, they'll be as effective as a journal in taking you back to your favorite moments.


2)  Take time to analyze your productive hours ,if you are nocturnal let it be ..embrace that time and make most of it .
3) Take naps in the middle of afternoon and let it be a reckless abandon 


4) Carve out an hour every single day to be alone


5) At least a few times in your college career, do something fun and irresponsible when you should be studying.Like the present scenario logging on to orkut or facebook even before few hours to go for your exams ...


6) In four years span of your college life send a hand written note to someone (his /her ) who made college possible  for you and all the adventures so far  . Acknowledge their efforts .It will mean a lot to him/her now, and it will mean a lot to you in ten years when he/she shows it to you.


7) Embrace the differences between you and your classmates. Always be asking yourself, "what can I learn from this person?" More of your education will come from this than from any classroom


8)Take risks.


9)Wednesday is the middle of the week; therefore on wednesday night the week is more than half over. You should celebrate accordingly. (It makes thursday and friday a lot more fun.


10)Take some classes that have nothing to do with your major(s), purely for the fun of it.


11)Become friends with your favorite professors. Recognize that they can learn from you too - in fact, that's part of the reason they chose to be professors.Gaining khnowledge is always a 2 way process .


12)When your friends' parents visit, include them. You'll get free food, etc., and you'll help them to feel like they're cool, hangin' with the hip college kids.

13)When you're living on a college campus with 400 things going on every second of every day, watching TV is pretty much a waste of your time and a waste of your parents' money. If you're going to watch, watch with friends so at least you can call it a "valuable social experience."


14)Much of the time you once had for pleasure reading is going to disappear. Keep a list of the books you would have read had you had the time, so that you can start reading them when you graduate.Books are rearly your best friends in college life as substitutes emerges in no time once you enter the college campus .


15)Things that seem like the end of the world really do become funny with a little time and distance. Knowing this, forget the embarassment and skip to the good part.


16)Every once in awhile, there will come an especially powerful moment when you can actually feel that an experience has changed who you are. Embrace these, even if they are painful.


17)No matter what your political or religious beliefs, be open-minded. You're going to be challenged in the next four years in ways you can't imagine, across all fronts. You can't learn if you're closed off.


18)Don't always lead. It's good to follow sometimes.


19)Ask for help. Often.Because you amidst your best buddies ,who ironically will be your saviors inspite of being involved in creating troubles and thereafter seaching for the best possible solutions for you to be out of the mess.


20)Your health and safety are more important than anything.


20)Half of you will be in the bottom half of your class at any given moment. Way more than half of you will be in the bottom half of your class at some point in the next four years. Get used to it


21) Welcome failure into your lives. It's how we grow. What matters is not that you failed, but that you recovered.


22) It's important to think about the future, but it's more important to be present in the now. You won't get the most out of college if you think of it as a stepping stone.Live each and every moment as it comes ....


23) Take a lot of pictures.And most important of all is take weird and nasty pics , because these are the only pics which could help you relate the whole story as it is for that day and the incidents related to that pic .


24) In ten years very few of you will resemble ,what you are actually right now ,many of you may not  look as good as you do right now, so secretly revel in how hot you are before it's too late.


25)On the flip side, don't try to do everything. Balance = well-being.


26)Make perspective a priority. If you're too close to something to have good perspective, rely on your friends to help you.


27)In the long run, where you go to college doesn't matter as much as what you do with the opportunities you're given there.So avail it and make optimum utilization of this.It hardly matters you win or loose ,it will give you another reason for celebration among friends .Even participation matters a lot in those days ...


28)Excursions starts in college itself Explore the campus thoroughly.Don't get caught.Break the rules atleast once and visit the prohibited areas ,it will help you to  develop guts 


29)Life is too short to stick with a course of study that you're no longer excited about. Switch, even if it complicates things.


30)Now for those people who are in some kind of relationship whether distant or with in the class .The key is not to let your relationship interfere with your college experience .You dont want to date someone that is totally fine , but is not fine is ,missing out a lot of defining experience because you were hell lot busy with your bf/gf over the  phone(3 to 4 hours or sometimes even 24 hours are not enough ) . That you started neglecting your friends completely .


31)Your friends will change a lot over the next four years. Let them.


32)Call someone you love back home a few times a week, even if just for a few minutes.


33)If you need to get a job, find something that you actually enjoy. Just because it's work doesn't mean it has to suck.


34)Enjoy every second of the next four years. It is impossible to describe how quickly they pass.


35)This is the only time in your lives when your only real responsibility is to learn. Try to remember how lucky you are every day.

Elephanta – a peep in the shrine

There are only few places on earth where you can truly meet the holy god in his entirety and versatility. And nothing could be better than Elephanta islands which really pinch you by the labor and pain that would have been done to construct an art marvel like this. The great caves of Elephanta depict the fact that a human mind set on fire can even do the impossible.

 

Can you imagine those twenty seven hundred years before, a bunch of villagers excavated and carved a hill island of 16 kilometer square area? Can you imagine that how they used to work day and night, at a place more than ten kilometers from the mainland? Can you imagine how those nomads even thought of the beam and column system to support the great load of mountain above the caves of Elephanta? On my recent visit to the industrial and glamour capital of India, I couldn’t stop myself to visit these somewhat pale and silent figures of sheer beauty and hard work.

 

We reached Gateway of India at about twelve, when we got to know that the boats for Elephanta would commence from one in the afternoon. For the time we visited the magnificent hotel constructed opposite to Gateway of India – The Taj Residency. This magnificent figure can even leave most Britons gob-smacked as being a gothic church. However, this whim for eyes would atleast cost you two fifty bucks as even coffee at this gubernatorial hotel costs his much!

 

At about one, we set the sailing to the caves and on the way I saw ships of all types! Be it the warships of navy or coast guard, to the commercial vessels to the fishing and tourist boats, this busiest region of Arab Sea have them all. With the help of exceptionally calm ocean, in about an hour we reached the island. The boats were anchored at a platform specially made for tourists’ boats to park. This is a 100 meter long concrete structure that has reclaimed the land from sea and has made a man-made marshy land on the shallower side of the sea! This artificial marshy land has the rarest of flora and fauna and was a starter for my appetite for beautiful scenes. We reached the steps that lead to the cave through a toy train (like the one in north-east!). Till now it was pure fun, but from now on began the terrible part that made me realize what a life would have been lived by the builders of this great temple. There are more than 250 steps that lead to the temple premises. But the sun and scarcity of drinking water are the factors that troubled me much more than anything else. Everything here is sold at double rates and water is as precious as crude oil! But then just think, how the wanderers used to lie without portable waters in the mid of the ocean.

 

Thinking that we reached the temple where there is an office of Archeological Survey of India (ASI). Those people have made a museum there which displays every detail of not only elephanta but also about its sister concerns like Ajanta and Ellora. Going further we confront the grand entrance which truly reflects the name given to this mighty rock-cut architecture marvel.

The caves of Elephanta, located about 10 kilometers from the famous Gateway of India, are given the status of world heritage site by UNESCO. Elephanta, officially known as Gharapuri Island or place of caves, is a hill island and have no straight pastures. At the entrance is an entablature which is supported by 4-5 pillars of about 2 feet diameter. This whole column- entablature system is wholly carved in the rocks and is made to step up by about 3-4 feet. These caves house rock cut temples dating back to the 5th century BC. The Elephanta Island was so christened by the Portuguese due to the excessive use of figures of Elephant in the premises. These rock cut temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva and is rich in sculptural content. The entire complex was created through a process of rock removal. Some of the rock surfaces are highly finished while some are untreated bare rock. There are three distinct entrances to this temple, of which the ones on the east and the west mark the axis of the temple. A 20 pillared hall is mirrored against this axis, and on its western end is the cella (entrance portico). The pillars consist of fluted columns standing on square bases, and are crowned with fluted cushion capitals.

The Sadasiva avatar of Shiva is carved in relief at one wall of the cella.  Going further through the interior gate of the temple, we arrive at the open yet covered mandala. This depicts the Nat-Mandir of the Dravidian Architecture and has bare rocks as its enclosure. This courtyard leads to the secondary shrine, which I think was constructed much later than the former one.

This shrine is not that big in scale as is the older shrine, nor is it very beautifully carved. The secondary shrine basically houses a small mandir of Shiv (Lingalingam) and the pradakshina path, all around it.  The temple as a whole gives a glimpse to the whole life and events of Lord Shiva and is a treat to not only the religious folks, but also to the nature lovers and adventure prone hunks!

Being Refugee

I am not an orphan; not even a terrorist in a land of foe; neither am I a person from the caste of ‘untouchables’. I am residing in the Republic of India since last thirty years. I have my driving license from New Delhi. I have my voter id of Chennai. I also have a Ration Card bearing the photo of my wife and three children, and also the address of my last to last abject tent-house. I have a saving bank in State bank of India, just because it is accessible from everywhere; a quality that is necessary, just in case of emergency. But I am not Indian.

Yes, I am, anything but not an Indian. I speak Tamil, bifurcated Hindi and Bengoli accented English. But still, I’m not even an Indian. I came from many countries, mostly from the ‘friendly’ neighbors like Bangladesh, Nepal, Tibet and Sri Lanka. My parents died in the villages of India and my children were born in the cities of this nation. Yet, neither my parents were Indian; nor are my children.

I have forgotten my gods and goddesses. Even I don’t celebrate the death or arrival of the angels. My children have never seen their uncles. They were three, all younger than my father. My youngest daughter, the only girl of the scorn of two boys and one girl, often ask me for bicycle; and I often reminisces her the days of my childhood, when I used to fly with my bike in the marshy lands of western plateau. However, she never listens to it. She just keeps gazing at the tall building, on the other side of the road on which we live. It’s a wide road. And the bus-shelter, our home, is quite cozy and warm. Especially in winters, my son looks on the sky through the hole in the fiber sheet of the stand. He does multiplication and subtraction of stars, I guess. However, I have never concluded what he does because I have never been to any school, nor do my children.

My wife is an expert in family business. She gets up early in the morning and rush to the nearby colony to find our breakfast. The last night’s dinner of the colony people serves as our breakfast, sometimes even lunch. Then she wears the most rustic saree of all his half rotten sarees and goes out on the site. The site of our work is near the famous theatre of this city. People come there to with movie with fewer cloths. However, they do give my wife some pennies inspite of their own poverty of cloths.

Sometimes my second son asks me to go back to ‘our land’; the place of our great grand-father. I wonder how it would be. Will the mango tree of backyard was still giving sweet mangoes or it has turned unfertile due to my sudden departure in the times of war. I didn’t want to leave nikky, my cat, but when a bomb came and blasted in front of my mother, nikky ran away and never came back. I last saw her with tiger, the most handsome dog of our slum their.

Amidst these thoughts a policeman comes with gun in his hand and puts it on my hand. He thinks I have stolen the marble elephant of Yusuf uncle who lives in the building that is on the other side of the road. Nonetheless he suspects that I also supply RDX to the insurgents of the ‘enemy’ country. And because I am not of this country; I am not an Indian. I’M A REFUGEE.

 

Oh my FART!

“Kangaroo fart can ease global warming.” – Reading this news was a pleasant surprise for me on a sunny Saturday morning! The news went on, “Australian scientists are trying to give Kangaroo-style stomachs to cattle and sheep in a bid to cut greenhouse gas emission blamed for global warming”. This was good enough dose for my ears to transmit this alarming idea to my stomach back to my mind and finally to eyes, which were now shining.

 

“Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer those bacteria to cattle and sheep”, ooh…. This was not the news I thought it to be. It’s related to some nonsense gas which these nerds produce herds. Still I went on for the sake of getting news to talk about in office. And this deliberate move of mine proved to be a great idea to get me my first patent because it was, “Sheep and cattle produce large amounts of the harmful gases, about fourteen percent of emissions from all sources in Australia”.

 

“This is amazing. Complete genius.” – These were the words that I wanted to listen since ever! It was my greatest dream to listen laurels from all rounds for myself. Since school days I was singing even with soar throats, was bringing tea to teachers, posting private letters of my boss, just to listen these words. And now, when that rarest of rare idea was in my mind, my eyes started flowing. Through the narrow canal, which my cheeks have created in close association with my nose, ran the spring water of my life forming a delta just above my wide smile, which was flourished with thick bamboo-jungle like moustache.

 

It was me. The great me. An idea made man. Who else could have got this unique idea of……..of getting those bacteria from cattle and sheep’s stomachs to…..our stomachs!! Wow! What an idea sharma! Alone India has more than a hundred crore humans. If they together fart with those bacteria in their stomachs, the pollution levels would turn down in a meal or two!

 

Who else but an Indian can have such brilliant thought? Only a person with hundred crore brothers and sisters can think such big things. Even Australians can’t compete with us this time. ‘Our farts will rock the whole world now’, I was thinking with a wide smile, ‘...But just’, I became serious now, “China”. ‘But what these Chinese will do when we’ll begin a campaign of the scale of AIDS’, I concluded with a sigh.

“Khao aur udao, pradushan door bhagao”

 

‘Nobel or Padm Shree?’ I got confused over this. I knew that they all will fight to award me first. But it would be difficult for me chose. Bush will come in Boeing to take me for Nobel. ‘But I am an Indian first and so I will go for Padm Shree first’, I concluded. How emotional it would be for my mother, who always watches the Independence Day parade on television, to see the parade live with VIP passes and free breakfast.

 

But there was a practical problem now. These are the last days of month. All friends will demand for a party. And obviously I can’t deny them this time when I’ll get all the rewards and awards of the world. ‘Hmmm, so I’ll tell them the next month’, I got a solution.