Perennially Nostalgic

BITS-Pilani
Rajasthan-333031

I am back to where the journey began-The journey from the valley to the sands, the iterative journey every semester, the journey which marked the beginning of so many beautiful friendships, the journey which gave us a home away from home, an entire clan of Bitsian Brothers, sisters, ID daughters, ID sons, Grand moms, Grand pops, groupies, Ps-mates, Department/club seniors, Sideys, Super sideys, Oppi’s, wingies and Psenti’s (for some)!

Journeys always seem pleasant in retrospect and for Pilani, it is so very true! You don’t realize how important part the present will play in your past! If only we did! If only we could turn back time and relive those moments once again, with the same enthusiasm, passion and double the time span. It reminds me of a cliché, memories are very strange; they make us laugh when we cried and make us cry when we laughed the most! When I look back, I feel sad to think of the good times we spent and also laugh over the moments when I cried over small things!

There’s something enigmatic about Pilani, which makes you hold on to it. A charisma that it never lets you get influenced by places/times which you’ve experienced before or which will come henceforth. Despite the scorching heat, hoards of insects post rains, power cuts at night, tight test schedules, tutorials at 8 in the morning, assignment deadlines (which were more like assignment starting times for us) and the Open Book assaults, we still remember the good things, as it always is! The Sky hangouts, The IC breakfast, frequent chai’s at redis ,C’not treats, The Dhaba grand treats, birthday confessions, the walk in the rains, Lazing around the Saraswati temple, Gussing classes, Last minutes GHOT sessions, Audi movies, Oasis with friends and departments/clubs, The Prof-show fever and the resonating after-effect which continued right up to compre’s, Assoc Grubs, Batch snaps and photo sessions, etching out treats from friends for minuscule reasons-First ZUK treat, Test topper treat, Psenti-treat, job treat and what not, the bedecked and scintillating clock tower during Diwali, the colored and more often muddy faces as well as clothes during Holi, so on and so forth.

 There’s so much to write, the people, the places and the bonds which sustained. The Bonds… Yeah! I feel there is a defining moment in each friendship when you find out if they are your true friends or not.. After that you have a real friend or one less thing to worry about and I’m proud to say that there have been many such defining moments at Pilani, and I have found the best of friends here, some one I can always look back to, in joy and distress alike, no matter where they are and what they are!

I don’t know whether it’s the same about other college campuses or not. But definitely, none of the alumni of other colleges feel as strongly as we feel about our campus. Had there been a Passion quotient, for one’s alma mater BITS Alumni’s would absolutely score the highest in it. (All course toppers! CT). We definitely cannot grow out of BITS! It’s a part of us! After Life @ bits, our life is divided into 3 phases- the life before that, and the life after it and we constantly compare our lives with those golden four years.

And now as I am back, things have changed yet seem similar. Or maybe I perceive them to be similar to suit my convenience, To feel that I’m back home again, back to the place which gave me the best of friends and the best of times I could ever have spent. So Yeah It hasn’t changed; just that it’s a bit more colorful, with the new flashing white color buildings and new people of course! The Redi’s have vanished, though as promised, they will be back in a new refurbished avatar soon! But didn’t we like the Old Rustic Yellow colored Pilani more? Sky isn’t as crowded as it used to be and C’not is deserted at 10.00 pm and you feel like asking these deserted places, “Where are the people, man?” with a hope that they might have a clue. Or maybe it’s just ‘my’ people who I miss- the seniors whom I would greet, the juniors I would smile at, the batch mates I would talk to. Although no amount of consolation would do, but yeah there are a couple of similar faces whom I recognize and who recognize me as well, other than the faculty of course, and they are the Cycle waale bhaiya outside Meera Bhawan, the Mess bhaiya’s who would give a big smile when you drag yourself to the mess full of alien faces, The Shopkeepers at C’not and of course the Famous Chimpu Ji of Blue moon and Pappu Ji of Sky and many more such people.

 Not that, I am not happy to be back; I still love the place and I always will, But I’m not sure whether this place would give me as good memories as it gave me earlier. Or maybe two years is too short a time to re create the magic which happened in four years. Maybe these two years will just pass slogging hard and strengthening my bond with Pilani as a place and remembering what a beautiful platform it was for a Journey to begin. A sense of nostalgia always crept in whenever you think about this place, so I always associated nostalgia with a longing for a place, but now being here, I guess it’s not always a longing for the place, it’s a longing for the people in that very place, a longing for the past- as it was, as you would always want it to be. For me, it’s a perennial nostalgia now and I love to be associated with it. So three cheers for all the Good times we have spent, the tough times we’ve seen, moments we have laughed and the inseparable Memories that we have created@ 333031.

Dichotomy Incarnate

There is a strange yet intriguing dichotomy inherent in the nature of Kashmiris. To an observer’s eye the paradoxical nature seems baffling many a times. Observe it nowadays.. Four Kashmiri boys have done us proud with their ace performance in civil services exams and they surely have become the talk of the town. Every morning we are being greeted by their smiling faces in the newspapers in the context of one or the other article. Doctors, engineers and students everywhere are searching for contact numbers of these ace performers to get a few words of guidance from them. Parents (I’m sure) in every household would be goading their kids to action and telling them to follow the example of Dr. Shah Faesal et al (without even realizing if their kids are really capable of doing it or interested in doing it!). Let us take a look at the other side of this. Whoa!! Where are those people who some months back were shouting slogans” Hum kya chaahtey aazadi” ,“Narai Takbeer Allah-u-Akbar” and busy slandering the very Indian nation as a whole. I hear those same people advising their kids, “tuhiye te karzihew IAS”! Antithetical isn’t it! 

Take a look at our respected teachers. A look at a busy month in the calendar and they start praying for hartals and curfews. They know a new month has begun if our hartal uncle’ Geelani sahab’ has given a new hartal call for a fresh cause! And at the end of the month they start demanding their salaries, for whatsoever modicum of work they have done! Coming to our academicians of the varsity, they will speak volumes about following the American system of education but when it comes to classroom lectures they can’t even tolerate a new idea or methodology of solving a problem. How will potential researchers come up if the pedagogues nip them at the bud itself! (By nasty comments like, “Apney aeydea (read idea) apne paas rakho) 

The degree colleges of our state are no less. Each year they will promise to work for academic excellence, but what it turns out in the end is bureaucratic excellence. One college starts and the others follow the lead and join the bandwagon! Ministers, media, the show biz and on the other hand the academic machinery running haywire, with no one to attend to the pupils in the classroom. Nowadays, our Education system has become more of a show biz and a ‘Degree provider” rather than imparting education in its real sense and improvising on work ethics.

 There’s more to the dichotomy than only this! Every Kashmiri is proud of their ‘Jannat-e-Firdous” and are concerned about its beautification and cleanliness. What I don’t understand is that despite of all the concerns, why do we have garbage littered around the city and why do we figure as the 4th dirtiest city in the country. Each year we demand airplane runway like wider and better roads. But what’s the fun? Even if the government to some extent is fulfilling its promises of providing a better road network, what are we doing in return? No sooner a road is made, it is encroached with a line of shops or other constructions. As if this wasn’t enough, then huge bottomed transformers are put at an unsuited location defacing and squeezing the roads all the more. 

We are the People, who sermonize about the hazards of environmental pollution and the urgent need to ban polythene bags but readily accept these ‘non biodegradable culprits’ when we go out for shopping. Even if a good soul among us questions the shopkeeper about these polythene bags, they very smugly reply, ‘Yahaan sab chalta hai”. Surely nothing is illegal for them as long as they don’t caught! The Mughal emperor would have been appalled at the shocking condition of what he called ‘the heaven on earth’ and if he travelled to the present, he would surely rethink before saying’ Agar Firdaus Bar-roye zameen ast, Humhein Asto humein ast’. Sigh! This reminds me of what our erstwhile Union Minister of State for External Affairs, Dr. Shashi Tharoor once remarked about India, which somehow applies to Kashmir too “India (read Kashmir) is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country (state), but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay”

I don’t want to go on revealing the sharply contrasting psyche of Kashmiris neither I wanted to open a Pandora box of complaints. But I do have a point to make Kashmiri people must do soul-searching and identify what they really want and stand by it in all circumstances. For change and improvement, we need something more than effective governance; it is the participation of people and their belief to cause the change and make it permanent. We don’t need changes that are as ephemeral as the governments, what we require is a long standing transformation! We not only face a political imbroglio but more than that we have an internal muddle to deal with. Two groups with clashing motives are acceptable, but a same person having conflicting thoughts imbibed in his/her mind is not at all tolerable! It is this discord within minds of the people itself which prevents us from an emancipation and empowerment. Unless we make a resolve to clear our minds of the ambiguity and stand by what we say we’ll never move ahead and always get trampled down. Hollow words are not what are desired, it’s after all actions which speak louder than words. Make or mar your motherland-The choice is yours!

A vent to thoughts

This post (although chronologically not in order) is a sort of a prelude to my ‘soliloquy’.I am a not poet or a prolific writer, but I do like penning down my thoughts (or should I say just ‘typing’ in my thoughts;penning down and then typing would be an extra effort!).This blog wouldn't surely follow a theme because writing within the constraints of a theme would make it monotonous(implies boredom!, sooner or later!).My thoughts are more often event triggered (society, politics, daily happenings).I seldom touch maudlin territories of love, betrayal or deep dark emotions in my writings. Let that field be in the hands of the big players only. Being an amateur maybe I can’t just do justice to those areas.

Well it might have happened to all of us, some time or the other when we see a disturbing situation in the news-a political or an ethical issue and we want to voice your thoughts; when we want to come forward and share, comment and speak up, rather than sitting back as a mute audience. Not only this,in our daily lives there are things, which for some reason make an indelible impression on our mind; this blog will serve as record for all those things too..

However it does take time to come out of the procrastination and “the I can, but I won’t” do approach but it feels good after you start. Newspapers are another medium to present your views but you might not always be guaranteed a space in there. Moreover sometimes you want a personal space, when you want to speak out your heart, and feel like writing regardless of any audience, any feedback or any scrutiny. That’s why a soliloquy – voicing out my thoughts without regard to any audience. Let my procrastination not come in the way …

Film stars, Sportstars and Sena-stars

Lately it is becoming apparent that some Indian political parties do anything and everything other than pursuing politics in its real sense. How does it make sense opposing tennis ace star Sania Mirza’s betrothal to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik? Soon after facts regarding Sania’s engagement with Shoaib Malik surfaced in the media Bajrang dal hosted protests in Hyderabad and Chennai against her. Not only this, who is not aware of the furore raised by RSS over Shahrukh Khan’s statement of inviting Pakistani cricketers to IPL (Indian Premier League)? 

In a country which guarantees the seven Fundamental rights to each and every citizen, isn’t there a way to check the unnecessary intrusion of political parties in personal lives (or business) of people. With due regard to the Indian constitution and its “Right to: (i) Freedom of speech and expression and (ii) freedom to assemble peacefully and without arms”, I would like to ask whether the above mentioned ‘Rights to freedom’ gives the political parties a warrant to pry into matters of absolute personal choice of any individual.

All these protests, be it against Sania Mirza or Shahrukh Khan, do however silently convey the impression that some Indian political parties (not all of course) have developed paranoia of the word “PAKISTAN”. In whatever form they hear it or see it, they will start coming out on streets shouting slogans against any individual who’s even remotely connected to the neighboring country.

Post 26/11 Indians have developed the same paranoia against Pakistan as have the Americans developed for Muslims post 9/11.Sigh!! I don’t have any special empathy towards Pakistan but wisdom and common sense gives us the power to judge between right and wrong. (But sadly common sense is not so common!!) Even a layman can see the difference between nationalism and jingoism (which parties like RSS and Bajrang Dal depict). It seems these parties are craving to be in the ‘glitz’ at par with film stars and sport stars. Under the façade of nationalism, they appear to be grabbing media attention. But ironically, they foolishly defame themselves by such senseless protests and just seem to be carving a way to being branded by people as “nationalist terrorists” (fighting for the cause of nationalism!). We are no longer in the days of yore and no one would accept hegemony enforced by such parties and thinking individuals would always stand against it.

Entering politics seems like just another hobby of an average Indian, probably because it’s the only body with no age, sex and education restrictions. Any Joe blog can enter politics, which in a way is good, but after seeing political parties behaving like hooligans and raising hue and cry over petty issues makes us rethink the same. Politics or cross border animosity should not be mixed with sports or some one’s personal life. Sports and inter-cultural ties promote fraternity and universal love, while meaningless demonstrations and protests taint the image of a Sovereign, Socialist, Secular and Democratic Republic, like ours!