Peace and a little Too Peaceful ...

There was yet another peace protest today.. this time however, the Mumbai University took the initiative. Colleges from all over Mumbai were asked to participate.. We had to follow a dress code- white and/or black..

I was looking forward to it, made a couple of banners and asked all my friends to join in too..

I had a debate with one of my friends over the phone last night when he said these rallies 

don't do any good, and that people just come for the sake of it, to wear stark white clothes,  shout, scream and have a good time.. No one's really bothered what's happening and where all this is going.. and that India can never improve.. I argued , and told him its because of people like him that India is the way it is..

But today I realised how wrong I was.. 

We all assembled in college at 2.30 pm, the march was to start at 3pm sharp, right from college to Shivaji Park, where we'd all sit down for the Governor's speech..It started on time, and we started walking holding up our banners,secretly hoping we'd get clicked! :D .. Most of us though just seemed to be chatting amongst themselves.. some imbeciles were chanting slogans like "Simon Go Back!",   I even over-heard someone asking if there was free food!

 

We finally got there at 4.30 , hoping we'd atleast get to hear what the Governor has to say.. 

They made us sit on the ground, where all other college students had been seated.. there was so much of chaos that nothing could be heard... nothing could be seen either, with more than half the students standing, and jumping around.. People started singing songs to while away time.. We couldn't stand it anymore and walked out at 5.30.. Getting out was also a pain.. 

Stopped at Irani for tea before coming home.. The place was all lit up by star-shaped lanterns, and the xmas decorations made it look all the more beautiful .. Xmas carols played inside.. we ordered tea, and then the owner put on a Pink Floyd concert on TV.. so we just sat there, watching tv, sipping on hot tea..  it was so much more peaceful than the "peace rally" .. 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays !!!!

The Quarter Life Crisis

Hello ...

I know its been a very long time since I've posted somethin here..

I guess I was , and still am, goin thru wat-they-call "The Quarter Life crisis"

After my last post, I appeared for a few more exams.. then trieddd havin fun in Diwali .. and went for a 10-day long tour recently to Chandigarh, Manali and Amritsar.. felt a little refreshed after that.. I'll be writin posts on that trip too.. 

I don't know how many of y'all have gone through this ..

but lately, I've been feeling very scared and confused about everything.

I get a feeling I don't care for people anymore.. Though thats not what I want.

I want to help people out, do things for them like I used to before.. But something seems to block me.. And even if I go ahead and do it anyway, I don't feel good from within.. This never used to happen.. I don't even know if I like my friends, my family cuz I have to, or cuz I really do.. and it gets scary .. 

It actually feels like I'm stuck in some kind of a trap..

 

I don't want to turn into a bad person.. 

These thoughts have been eatin me up so bad since the last coupla months.. I had 3-4 panic attacks and depression thereafter.. I just don't know what to do.. 

strange emotions! :)

Had fun after a really long time today ... :)

With my mood swings, the crying, and the negative thoughts that have kept me busy for so long (not to mention exams) , i've never been happy about the things i shud have been..

Felt a gush of happiness run thru me today , more so when we all rushed to have the best cold coffee and nimbupaani at this joint atleast a km away from college,  after the exam got over..

I don't know if it was the fooling around, the hot gossip, the coffee, or the dragon fly in jaspreet's pocket dat he's planning to pet!!! :D

I'm still unaware of what I was so happy about.. some things just can't be explained.. 

All i know is i had a smile on my face that lasted till i went home .. and it comes back everytime i think of today :)

Egg-jams .. :(

Its dat time of the year again... and HOW i hate it ..!!! x(

Study leave was always a nice long vacation for me.. This is the first time i actually utilised my study-leave to studyy!!! :D

All I do these days is eat, sleep, study, come online .. 

But still there's a lot more to be done.. 

Not that these marks matter much, its just a practice test, the actual exams will take place in March.. Even then, I don't wanna end up gettin low scores :(

People are "preparing" in full swing..  I get scared of even writin down an algorithm on my palm leave alone make chits ... !!! 

That reminds me of one time I had tried my hand at copying ..

I had this invisible pen , you write with it and then just switch on a button on its side, that gives out a tiny ray of light.. you can see all that's written in that light.. 

I had written some formulae on a piece of paper back in SYJC mid-term exams just in case I forget those.. and the next day, in the middle of the exam.. when I switched on that button, it just wouldnt work.. the battery had died out..!! :D 

I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.. I was just happy I didn't rely on that chit entirely.. I could recall dat formula later and it all went well .. 

Haven't dared to try anything of that sorts ever since ..!! :D

As far as peeking into my neighbour's paper goes, I somehow can never trust his/her answers and end up writing my own stuff !! 

Well .. now tryin my best to finish studyin as much as I can .. 

Just hope it all goes well ..

Wish me luck !!! ;-)

For a Friend's Life

Just finished watching a movie "Return to Paradise" (1998) on Zee studio , that left me in a maze of thoughts..  

Its about 3 friends- Lewis, Tony and Sheriff, who go on a vacation to Malaysia , and are involved in drugs. Two of them, Tony and Sheriff come back to New York.. while Lewis stays back, and gets arrested. He is scheduled to be hanged within 8 days, lest his other 2 friends come back. If only one returns, each one will have to serve six years in prison. If both return, all three will have to serve 3 years each in prison. If none return, he'll be hanged. 

Tony and Sheriff are in a dilemma. Tony is about to tie the knot with his fiancee and has a bright future ahead of him, and Sheriff does some soul searching..and decides its not within him to go, but eventually his conscience pricks him and he ends up going to Malaysia and so does Tony.

Tony comes back soon after he sees the conditions Lewis lives in, but Sheriff sticks around for saving his friend's life...

At the end, they still hang Lewis cuz some American journalist criticises the Malaysian rules of justice, which offends the Malaysian judiciary.  :(

This movie leaves you thinking what would you do had u been in Tony's or Sherff's shoes..

The right thing to do would be to go back to Malaysia, because you're responsible too. But that also means wasting 3/6 years of your life in a prison where each one has a separate cell, there's no proper food, and you're made to slog..

Sheriff does say.. "Its really difficult to give an honest answer unless you're in the situation yourself.." 

 

But.. i think if I were in their situation, I'd have first thought how much that friend means to me .. and if he/she would have done the same for me.. and would have then gone ahead wid my decision..

I'd like to know your take on this.. what would you have done ??

Tag time !!! Love is all around ...

Was Tagged by Sakhi to do this .. sorry I'm late, was a lil caught up !! :)

RULE #1 People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs and replace any question that they dislike with a new question formulated by themselves.

RULE #2 Tag 6 people to do this quiz and they cannot refuse. These people must state who they were tagged by, cannot tag the person whom they were tagged by, and must continue this game by sending it to other people.

So here goes!

1. If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?

If he's my lover, he would know better not to betray me... orrrrr elssss..... he just wont be my lover anymore !!! 

2. If you can have a dream to come true, what would it be?

Hmmm.... would want to be peaceful for once !!! 

3. Whose butt would you like to kick?   

Mr. RAJ THACKERAY !! :D  

4. What would you do with a billion dollars?

Shop till i drop .. and yeah give SOME share of it as charity too.. !! 

5. Will you fall in love with your best friend?

I HAD fallen in love with my best friend !

6. Which is more blessed, loving someone or being loved by someone?

Both are blessed , but they have to co-exist !!

7. How long do you intend to wait for someone you really love?

I've waited almost 7 years and won't repeat dat mistake..!!! 

8. If the person you secretly like is already attached, what would you do?

Has happened.. and I still loved him like an idiot.. !! In future, I would just move on..!

9. If you like to act with someone, who will it be? Your gf/bf or an actress/actor?

Hmm it wud be my bf , cuz i won't be comfy wid someone i don't know personally ..! 

10. What takes you down the fastest?

Depression , anxiety 

11. How would you see yourself in ten years’ time?

Working in a multinational IT company, filthy rich with an M.S. degree !

12. What’s your fear?

I'll change into a bad, rather selfish person considering what I've been going thru for da past coupla months.

13. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?

A  genuinely sweet, calm and sensible person, who writes wonderful stories and gives good advice 

14. Would you rather be single and rich or married but poor?

Hmm.. if i fall in love and end up gettin married happily, i dun mind being poor.. but if i'm single all my life i want to be rich !!!

15. What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

Think of goin back to sleep again ... !! 

16.“Would you give all in a relationship?

Yes. 100%.

17.If you fall in love with two people simultaneously, who would you pick?

Two people? Simultaneously? :O not possible !!! 

18. Would you forgive and forget, no matter how horrible a thing that special someone has done?

I might forgive but I'd never forget .. 

19. If you get to go back in time and fall in love all over again, would it still be with the same person?

Definitely NOT.     

20. List 6 people to tag:

Well I don't have six people who haven't done this already.. so .. I'll tag

Aravind, Mystique Dew, Nissim

Aargghhh... !!!

I am so irritated today, and I'm taking it out on everyone that I'm coming across..!!

I was informed yesterday that the 7 am System Software lecture is cancelled cuz Pinky Ma'am is not going to come, so dat meant I had only HTML at 8.40 today.. 

I got up at 7.30, mom tells me she had been waking me up since 7.. !!! 

I couldn't even open my eyes wide open at 7.30, i forced myself to stand up at 7.45, and ran to the bathroom, bathed, dressed up, poured hot coffee down my throat..!! And then rushed to the bus-stop at 8.35 hoping the bus would arrive in another 5 minutes, i'd just be 5-10 minutes late then..!! 

That's when I took my cellphone out to listen to music as usual, and I saw this yellow envelope on my screen, there was a msg, thought it must be some dumb msg from Vodafone as usual asking me if I wanted to know what my stars have to say today, or if I wanted to make a new "friend" at Rs.6/min!! (Who says money can't buy everything :D ) .. Unfortunately it wasn't, it was a classmate : "Harpreet sir is also not coming today, please pass on this msg to everyone!" It was HIS lecture at 8.40 , so dat meant no college at all today !!!! 
I cursed myself for not reading the msg as soon as I got up, atleast I could have gone back to sleep again.. 
I went back home, and somehow now I cant even sleep properly, my head is starting to pain now.. and the smallest of things is irritating me.. :-(

The Great "Bombay" Divide

Of late, all I hear of is .. a shop being demolished.. a man being beaten up .. for no fault of his, on 

the mere accusation that he's spoiling the "culture" .. Does our culture include beating up people, destroying valuable property, enforcing illogical rules on others without having the right to do so? 

The recent occurences by the MNS activists has developed great dismay amongst all 

Bombay (I prefer calling it that!) citizens.. 

Maybe, Mr. Raj Thackeray is doing this for getting the Marathi votebank, but little does he realise, this is making him lose his self respect in the society.. if he had any! 

The activists started with beating up immigrants from UP.

Then it was with cinemas showing only Hindi and English movies.. He made it compulsory for 

every theatre across the street to screen a Marathi movie. If that wasn't enough, he forced people to change their company/restaurant's names from Bombay to Mumbai.. Its so ridiculous changing names like Bombay Blues , Bombay Dyeing, Bombay Scottish .. to Mumbai Blues and the like. Its not even his right to do that.. No one even bothered to take action against this. 

And then he came up with what he calls "the Marathi revolution" .. He forced shop owners to 

change their hoardings from English to Marathi, with the Marathi font larger than the English one. It was a rule by the BMC, agreed. But who gives this party a right to take it in its hands? A 

deadline was given, and after this deadline, the BMC took action, fair enough. Was the drama 

created by these MNS activists necessary ? 

And then again, at the music release of the Bacchan movie "Drona" , Jaya Bacchan chose to

 speak in her own mother tongue offering sincere apologies to Marathi folks asking them not to 

feel bad. This was interpreted as an insult by the MNS activists.. How can they even think of 

something like that? Moreover, he banned Bacchan movies being shown in theatres.. If this wasnt enough, he went ahead and asked everyone to stop using products which the Bacchans endorsed..  All this... and the government is doing nothing but look!!

When the Mumbai commissioner rightly said that Mumbai does not belong to anyone in 

particular, but to anyone who resides in here , he passed a harsh comment against this 

commissioner too !!

He's really a hypocrite.. he had himself taken up German in college, and he chants Marathi slogans while he sends his son to Bombay Scottish!

They'll soon ban English too! All in the name of statehood..!!

I say, he should be arrested for provoking communal violence. 

Why cant they do something constructive instead of all this ???

Recently with the Ganpati celebrations going on, in VileParle, a man requested for the volume of 

the Bhajans to be turned down since his dad just had a heart operation.. He was beaten up by the Shivsena activists of his society! 

This is not even humane..!! 

I am very passionate about Bombay, and I love this city for the freedom it offers, for

 the way 

people of different communities live together in harmony, celebrate festivals together

 irrespective of what religion they belong to..  

Even during the 11/7 blasts and the 26/7 floods, no injured Maharastrian asked for a helping hand from another Maharashtrian... we left it all behind cuz when it comes to humanity, nothing else matters!

My college group consists of Punjabis, Gujaratis, Muslims, South-Indians me being one myself,  

Maharashtrians, North-Indians, and I love it when we all have our dabbas together during breaks.. I love it when I'm never asked for my last name, and when I'm asked where I'm from, I proudly say Bombay!

But with the current scenario, I wont be surprised if all of us would be kicked out of here soon.. i 

already don't like the look of it anymore.. its really sad..

Speechless Beauty ..

He tugged at my dupatta as i stood before the Ganesh idol .. 

I looked down where he sat, and smiled. 

He tugged at it yet again gesturing me to sit next to him.. 

He clapped cheerfully as I sat ..

He pointed at the Ganesh idol , and clapped again .. gesturing that its beautiful ..

I kept staring at him , as all others around me did... with pitiful eyes..

He was the most innocent 8 yr old kid, sweet and playful,

mentally challenged and devoid of speech... 

CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGES MUST BE BANNED: Genetic defects cause a lot of ill-effects in resulting offsprings.

Of Displays and Drivers ..

I was fidgeting with my remote ,  flipping through the channels .. nothing really was worth watching on television.. rather, I had no idea what was being aired and on which channel.. i don't watch tv dat often but dat day I didn't have a choice.. after half an hour of switching 999 channels (Tata Sky and my life is NOT AT ALL "jhinga-la-la", and FYI they dont give u all the 999 channels, a lot of them are paid channels and a lot are empty..), I shut it down .. err.. turned it off.. and then once more, I turned to look at my empty cabinet and sulked (cabinet here means my PC case)..  I had nothing to do .. I had finished reading all of Indian Express and Hindustan Times in the morning.. Yes, the sports section as well !!!  I dozed off to sleep , got up in an hour .. switched through the channels, looked at my cabinet again..sighed.. called up a couple of friends, who only made me feel worse by sayin they were all conferencing on Gtalk lab ed... went back to sleeeep...!! 

I had never imagined a single day in my life without my PC .. It has been my constant companion since I was 5 .. The last couple of weeks really put me to test !!! 

My monitor was giving me problems.. (actually, it was my Motherboard but i figured dat out later! :D) .. The monitor would just go off when i was in the middle of something... I could hear songs playing, and XP start-up and shut-down sounds.. just couldn't see anything on screen.. so I assumed something must be wrong with my monitor.. I got my neighbour's monitor to test, and it worked.. The next day my neighbour's monitor also went off in a while .. so then I assumed it must be the data cable .. so I tried switching the data cables.. it still wouldn't work ..!!! 

Then one of my techie-friends said there must be something wrong with the on-board display on the motherboard.. I was hoping that should be it, atleast I'd know what the problem was !!! And then another one said it could be the drivers.. I borrowed my friend's graphic card for a coupla days, the display didnt go off even once with the graphic card inserted, so I either had to buy a new GC or a new motherboard.. The next 2 days, I was searching for my

 motherboard box and saw it was under warranty.. I rushed to the Gigabyte service centre (takes an hour by train + auto :-( ).. They were pretty fast (took 5 days), I got back my motherboard , assembled everything.. it started.. the display hasn't gone off even once since then :-) 

I experienced what it was like without my comp .. It has become such a big part of my life, a basic necessity !! All I would do is watch television (rather, switch channels till my fingers got bored), read books, and sleeep.. It did bring me some peace for a change.. sometimes I'd feel restless especially when my friends were conferencing on chat and I couldn't join them :-( , i couldn't even work on my projects, do my practical homework,  surf blogs, write a post, check my scraps, listen to my favourite songs or watch movies .. but couldn't help it. They always say you should never be so dependant on something so much that it affects ur living.. all good that came out of this is I survived through it all and feel pride in it :D .. 

P.S: Feels great to be back !!! :)