Barely two days into my MBA course here and I'm unequivocal with everyone else out here, "Life at MBA is going to be one helluva roller-coaster ride with all the chills and thrills no doubt but wonder if we'll be able to cope and shine". But then its not just about shining any more, is it? Gone are the days when you had below-average and average students and it was better than good to be a slightly above-average student.

Gone are the times when you could be friendly with everyone and yet have a strong enough personality to emerge a leader and grab a share of the limelight. Then you could be the star among your batchmates, the monitor of the class, the prefect of the hostel or the secretary of the college. There was so much limelight and so few aspirants or even so few fighters for that spot at the top that reaching the acme was an achievement soon forgotten too.

But here, here the world is so damn different, so much more challenging and so much more demanding, both physically and mentally. Here, everyone is above-average and everyone's been a winner from where one has come from. Everyone has enjoyed a spot in the limelight and everyone makes a grab for it. There's far more competition here than the earlier stages and everyone wants to come first. There's no one who's a back-bencher and neither does anyone want to be one.

The pressure's extreme and the tension's unsurmountable. The excitement has begun and it promises to be a fantastic journey through these two years here. It remains to be seen who will outshine the others and make it to the top five and who will languish in the dark alleys of failure. Hope for the best for me and the rest..God be with All of us...and You.

While writing the previous piece, I remembered this lil story I had in my collection. Seems sort of a continuation and maybe a further reinforcement of my fundas..so what the heck, here it is, to be enjoyed and appreciated by all like-minded people, to be simply read and forgotten by the non-believers and to be pondered upon by the moderates.

There was a mountaineer who went trekking at high altitudes..He went to dangerous heights and took up the challenges the mountains posed. Once this friend of ours was out in snow, at great heights, in peak cold......and he slipped!!
Down he went...and as he fell he had flashes of his life...all good times he had.....bad times...his wife...children...parents... friends.. he remembered them all.
As he was falling he felt a jerk...a he was hanging in the air. He had been a good mountaineer and so he happened to have tied himself to a rope.
Now he was hanging in air...all exhausted.....no tools...almost dark...and it was very chilly.
He prayed to the God and said.."Lord,save me! "
The Lord spoke to him and said..." My dear son, do u really think i can save you?"
"Yes Lord, you can" he replied. Lord again asked..Do you have faith in me"
"Yes"...our friend responded. " I have faith in you,Lord."
"Okay", said the Lord..."cut the rope."
Now our friend was bewildered..."Nooo!!" he exclaimed...I won't cut the rope..I am scared!!"
Lord again said... "Cut the rope, my son, listen to me" .
"No ..I won't" was the answer..."I WON'TCUT THE ROPE!!".
Ten days later...the rescue team found the body of our friend.. frozen to death...he was hanging...tied to the rope..............just two feet above the ground!!

Bottomline: If You Believe In God...Have Faith in HIM too.....And if you don't believe in God, try placing an iota of faith in HIM. He won't disappoint you!!

God & Faith..

I am in the process of leaving my present company for higher studies.So a bit of packing keeps happening everyday and I also do a lot of salvaging of my old stuff too. In the course of this, I managed to rummage a couple of my old college-time diaries and chanced upon a very dismaying entry.

Those days we were struggling to convince a friend who'd been constantly failing in all his campus interviews that he is a very capable individual and that temporary failures are just that, temporary. We kept telling him that he should continue his efforts with the same concentration even now and with the firm belief that success would eventually be his.

But that friend, though highly God-fearing and very religious, was so pessimistic about all his outcomes that sometimes I thought maybe Lady Luck herself was too scared to come near him. He made us sick talking about how badly prepared he was for the interview and how horrible his "kismet" was and how pathetic his performance would be. Never did I hear him saying that he was hopeful of getting through or that he was so sure of an excellent result, even though he would have solved all the questions in half the time, correctly.

I used to wonder why some people are like that, why they can't accept their strengths, take confidence from them and just work it all up to a tangible positive result. I used to see people pray to God obliviously and ask Him for help but could never trust Him enough to actually do what He says, to actually take that risk and wait to see the final consequence.

Personally speaking, there have been so many occasions in my life when I could do nothing but believe that there IS a God, that He is there for me anytime I need him and that if I just do my stuff and entrust the remaining to him, He leaves no stones unturned to get things in place. I don't see God as just Lord Ganpati or Lord Shiva, I don't visualize him as only Durga maa or Lord Jesus for that matter. For me, God is that Supreme Being, that scientific principle, that cosmic power which creates, sustains and destroys anything and everything around me.

For me, God has more to do with my faith than my religion, God is more of a consistent companion and guide than someone who's just carved in stone and adorned with flowers and who is worshipped every morning and sunset. In fact, had it not be been for this aenoian belief in that Heavenly entity, I doubt if I would have been able to sanely survive the different circumstances and situations that this short lil life has thrown my way. I guess that since my faith has never betrayed me till this day so maybe that is the reason I fail to see why other people can't believe in Him enough.

But then, aren't there too many instances of God being around for us not to accept His existence? And haven't there been enough folklores and tales talking of how someone suffered for lack of devotion to drive the point home? Or are these tales considered mere figments of imagination? I hope not coz I can't imagine a person just striving on and on, without a little bit of feeling that there's someone to take care if things get awfully out of hand.

And mind you, I am not talking of the strong-minded atheists who have a couldn't-care-less kinda attitude, who just go out there and get everything for all its worth, who spend all their lives getting their dues by sheer hard work or luck maybe, but who've seldom felt a need to shiver in anticipation or feel depressed or shed a tear on some unachieved feat. Either they are too powerful or they are too carefree. They might definitely survive but wouldn't they be just a handful?

But what I am seeing is a normal individual with a very normal level of self-confidence, a person who is not going that extra mile without a heart-felt assurance that he would be protected from unforeseen consequences and that he would continue to live with no big loss, in one piece if nothing else, I am talking of a person very much like me, very much like the millions breathing around. A simple belief in the existence of that Supreme power can serve to assuage all pains and miseries, can serve to add that shock-absorber to make things a lil lighter to bear and can give that lil extra push to make the going a lil easier.

Don't many of us feel the same and acknowledge that Divine presence in our lives? I would like to think so.

Nothing New!
Some time ago, I'd read this collection of some kids writing to that Supreme Power ...God.
This was done in a Sunday School class and were too cute to miss.
I think they're worth a read, for those who didn't know them...


Dear God... Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don't you just keep the ones you have now?

Dear God... Who draws the lines around the countries

Dear God... I went to this wedding and they kissed right in church. Is that okay?

Dear God... Thank you for my baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.

Dear God... It rained for our whole vacation and is my father mad! He said some things about you that people are not supposed to say, but hope you will not hurt him anyway.

Dear God... Please send me a pony. I never asked for anything before. You can look it up.

Dear God... If we come back as something please don't let me be Jennifer because I hate her.

Dear God... I want to be just like my daddy when I get big, but not with so much hair all over.

Dear God... I think about you sometimes, even when I'm not praying.

Dear God... I bet it is very hard for you to love all the people in the world. There are only four people in our family and I can never do it.

Dear God... Of all the people who worked for you, I like Noah and David the best.

Dear God... If you watch me in church Sunday, I'll show you my new shoes.

Dear God... I do not think anybody could be a better God. Well, I just want you to know that I am not just saying this because you are God already.

Dear God... I didn't think orange went with purple until I saw the sunset you made on Tuesday. That was cool!

Pure Innocence par compar!!

I wanted this kinda site since a long time. Something which will let me express my views freely, free from the invisible boundaries of the psyche and especially free from the drudgery of the web-pages coding. I don't know what it will feel like to see some of my views published in the media, even though this ain't exactly one. Lemme see, what is it that I really want to write about...there are scores of topics, some conventionally the "topic of the day" and some close to my heart.

But today, let me write something that I have felt about probably the most used and abused word of English language, Love. I know someone, rather lots of "someones" who fell in love,were loved back and told so too, they saw dreams of a fairytale life ahead but eventually had to just chill out with a "this isn't THAT love you know". Wonder what THAT love would mean and how the person would know it. Like they said in Dil To Pagal Hai, it could be a thunderbolt falling on you or a flash of lightening or it could probably be like that title tune playing everytime you come across the chosen one or maybe it would be a divine revelation as it happened in the Mahabharata.

And what if all these signs were experienced by just one of the two people presumably destined to be together. That happens and surely, the person who feels all this is right in believing this is love for wasn't he/she shown all the apt signs and auguries. But that is not to be, the person swallows his pride first to confess, then swallows his tears when not acknowledged in kind and finally has to swallow the feelings and "move on" in life. Too simple? Hardly. Ask someone who's been through it.

I once wrote something to a friend who was trying to get over someone. Family problems, he said. Tough to forget him, she said.
But my job was not to question them and their opinions, all I was expected to do was lend that shoulder and utter those words of encouragement which as you'll see, I dutifully did. Read on...

"All I want now is u have to get 'aar ya paar', yeah one phrase which one of my friends here had used on me and am using it on u.
I know this will hurt, so much so tht you might have a recurring headache and you might feel so empty and void , that there'll be a vaccuum that no one else would be able to feel, you'll want to smile n you will, to the point of hurting your jaws.But inside, you'll be crying rivers of tears,you'll sit n laugh at a joke in some serial or film n then just shrug n forget it all but when it comes down to a senti scene, shruggin won't be as easy, you'll start by cryin for the hero or the heroine or some damn actor but you won't realise when you 've stopped cryin for them,when you've started cryin for yourself...when you've started lettin down those defences you so bravely put up in front of the others,you'll wonder if you are finally over him or if you are still breathin some hope. I know all this will happen dear and you'll be going through it every single day for God knows how long.

I know its very nauseating at times and the loneliness just kinda gets to u at times. But then the realisation ought to set in, that you've managed to scavenge myself from that bin of unwantedness, that you've stopped giving all your love and everything else that you have to someone who won't be around for ever,who won't even return that much love to you, that you've managed to stop putting someone on the top of your priority list without being on the same position in his. You begin to realise that had you continued in the state you were in, it would only have caused irreparable heartburn and you would have screwed your life big-time.

For a long time one goes on thinking that there's a chance and that one day, he'll see more than wht you seem to be, he'll ignore some faults n follies in u, like you have done for him, he'll look for the real and inner you, appreciate the person you are, that he'll penetrate those depths of your soul and see how much you love him, how much you are ready to go through only for him and how much happy he'll remain all his life by being loved so much by someone.

But no,dear, this does not happen,not with everyone and not in every case anyway.God knows why, but there seem to be too many illogical and unnecessary reasons for a person not to love u back, for a person to simply turn a blind eye and a proud head to your sincerest and deepest feelings, for a person to simply say "Sorry, U r someone I can't afford to lose but did I ever say I love u...no way buddy?!!"

All said and done, maybe its his bad luck or yours but things going the way they are, there's very little chance of saving that heart of yours unless you decide once and for all to end this emotional business and trust me, it does seem impossible but then its anythin but that. In fact if u really really make up your mind about forgetting a person and getting over some person,its quite quite possible.

But what you need girl, at these times is some interestin side scene, some friends you can always go out and have fun with, some pals of yours who'll always be there for you anytime and any place you need them, some pals who'll know just how to deal with the entire situation. And am rest assured you'll come out from this with ease..no, thats a wrong word, not with ease but definitely so. "
End of Quote.

I wrote that to her some time in September 2001 and she was all grateful and determined and all that. She's still seeing the chap. Period.

And my new resolve ever since has been to reduce the number of keystrokes in my mail to anyone in this respect. Makes no sense actually coz at the end, its "each to his own". People will keep falling in love, will keep on feeling all those mushy emotions, enjoy those romantic movies and novels and quotes and finally, will keep breaking their heart and moving on in life. No mail can stop them, no friend can make them see reality and for that matter no amount of writing it all out will help them. It didn't, for me either. :-).