Mera Jahaan

Chopta

2010-03-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Have you been to a place, which is beautiful. So beautiful, that it becomes equivalent to purity. Every snap you take is perfect because everything around you is perfect. A place so high that even eagles don't fly that high. Every breath you take makes you realize that life is beautiful. Everything you think is pure. You are afraid that another word from you might ruin the sanctity of the place forever and so you are silent. The nature talks to you, and you listen, with all your heart to the sound of silence. The place is a vivid proof of a higher power. A magical place that has made impossible tasks possible. The place makes you feel that there is still hope left. It makes you believe that world is worth fighting for.

I visited such a place. Its 4200 Mtr. above MSL. Its in India.

Thats Chopta.

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Chopta is a perfect trekking spot. Its a hamlet just 150 Kms away from Kedarnath. The picturesque location and the untouched beauty makes one call it the "Switzerland" of India. The place offers you a very hospitable environment. Basic accommodation and food facilities are available at Chopta. It is possible to hire a guide(Sherpa) at negotiable rates. The place is connected by road to Okhimath (or ukhimath). The best season to visit is around 15 feb to 31 March (Based on my personal understanding and interactions with local residents).

The trek begins from Chopts and a paved road leads you to Tungnath Temple. The Tungnath temple stands at 3600 mtr. above MSL as a tribute to man and his creator. It is symbol of man's achievement. It stands there forever, welcoming everyone to admire this creation of mankind, standing tall through ages. It inspires men by simply making them realise that how devotion and hard work can create everlasting beauty. There is only one emotion that surfaces in your mind, RESPECT.

The path further leads to Chandrasheila. There another temple awaits you. this time even more serene and silent. It offers you the a 360 degree view of the mighty Himalayas. You are at 4200 Mtr. above MSL. You have almost reached heaven, but not yet.

Be there.

Virtue of forgiveness

2010-02-08T09:40:00.000-08:00

Forgiveness is defined a follows.
forgiveness - the act of excusing a mistake or offense

Right from childhood, you are taught to forgive others. Somehow, as we grow up, we tend to forget these values and loose our innocence. After Vipassana, I found a deeper meaning to forgiveness. It taught me, that I as a common man (especially used for those set of people who argue, that they are neither saints nor aspire to be saints, and so have a right not to forgive others), should forgive others, not because its been taught to me, not because it will improve my image amongst my peers, but because, its good for me. Why should I loose the balance of my mind for someone else' mistake? Why should I waste my time planning a senseless revenge or in cursing him which will not serve me any good. As a 'Selfish Rational Being' that Ayn Rand preaches us to be, its in my favour to let go and move on. He may or may not repent for his mistakes , in either case, its not my job to make him a better person, that's his job. Having said all this, a simple incident taught me how hard it actually is to follow

My friend, accidentally split some cough syrup on the floor in my room. I was not present in my room and he left my room after some time without even informing me of the same. When I returned, I felt angry and cursed him. Then I remembered, that I must forgive and move on. So, when I next met him, I said, "I forgive you for what you have done." (felt a bit dramatic - acutally i was trying to induce guilt)"

Now, like any sane person, you might say that this meager incident is certainly not worth mentioning on a blog and rightly so, it isn't. What I intend to convey through this post is what follows,

1. I actually was never able to forgive him. We keep increasing negativity in our minds even about such minor issues.
2. There were random bursts in my mind, where I planned for a revenge.
3. I tried inducing guilt in him, just to hear him say 'Sorry'. I dont know how it would have helped me, but I still wanted to hear it.

This is when I realized the greatness of 3 people.

1. Jesus Christ: He forgave the people who killed him.
2. Mohandas Gandhi: He freed India from the British Empire without violence, but with compassion towards his oppressors. He even managed to induce his great values in millions of his supportes.
3. Nelson Mandela: He forgave the racist 'white' people who imprisoned him for 27 years of his life.

So this one is for all those men in history who taught us the value of forgiveness.

What’s on your mind?

2009-11-27T13:43:00.000-08:00

Facebook asks me “Whats on your mind?”

Life, Paper, Publication, career, Prioritize, Contact prof, mail, compre, death, Vipassana, Mba, M.S., PS, PS Abroad, Placement, CAT, GRE, G-MAT, Publications for GRE, Work Experience for G-Mat, Civil CDC’s, Am I a quitter? Am I a looser? Wing problems, Who moved my Chivda? Do I love her? Cant manage to read news-paper, A project dat needs to be worked on, Cracked PR T2 – How abt a career in PR? What will she think? P-sentisemite friends, Friends problems, Have not attended a single class post T-1, A NC in HFM? Final CG? Will I cross 8 after graduation? Num-al Pre compre score? T2 marks? Campus Ads, Canada ka prof? A long overdue mail, iTouch, A screwed up Write Up, Fucked up CG, Career in Advertising, Google Reader, Check mail, wassup on Biertijd and Goal..com, El-Classico, Champions League, Test Match Score, Sleep, The thing before Sleep? Do I smell? Bath time? Mess Lite? ANC?, SAC?, Project , Thesis, TIME, Gre Prep, Farewells, 14^th Nov, Movie, Songs, Yanni, Washing Clothes, Kidney Stone, Filtered Water, Rising Expenditure, Rising Weight, Its too early to wake up – SNOOZE, When do I get to sleep next? Why didn’t she call me, Start Up, Learn Piano, Search for interns, Camera, lets smoke, lets get wasted, Depression, Bursts of excitement, Why did the BOO me? Was I that bad? Country, Politics, I haven’t read the news paper for the last 2 months, What should I write about? Lazy, Exercise, Why can’t I get a girl? I wanna go abroad, I hate India, However I say it, I ll always love India, Or will I? Do I? When is the Next House Episode coming? I want new music, Will I get placed? PS @ financial institute vss PS at core CIVIL, Do I like Civil, If I leave Technical side, does it mean accepting defeat? Finishing that unread novel, Blog, Should I become a writer/journalist? I think I write well!!! Time to act,

lite!!!

And then the Biggies

What have I achieved so far

What if I fail?

What if I never make it big?

What makes me happy?

What is that field, to which I can devote my entire life’s work to?

What’s my passion?

What’s my dream?

Am I any good?

Are all the things that I believe to be right really right? Or is my life merely based on false assumptions and unrealistic Aims?

Will I be able to fulfil all the promises I have made to myself?????

In serious need of answers, Do write back, Even an ASDF will be good

How.I.Got.My.Passport E01 Pilot

2009-09-02T10:36:00.000-07:00

"How I got my passport" is a mini series based on the real story of 20 year old Student. His childhood dream of flying in an aircraft and visiting a foreign country is about to come true. The only thing that is stopping him is a Passport. This is a story of a boy who fights his race against time in pursuit of a Passport. The journey will teach him a lot. The journey will reinforce his belief in God, will take him trough a roller coaster ride of emotions, show him the ugly face of Indian bureaucracy and make him question his love for his motherland. Interestingly he will end up spending 10 times more money (INR 25,000) than the actual cost making a passport(1000+1500 Tatkal Fee) without bribing a single officer.

Day One:

Basic Stats:
Date for flight: 17th August
Destination: Singapore.

A Glimpse into the future.
It was 17th of July. I had returned home after an internship at Bangalore for one and half months. I had barely met my parents for the last 8 months. After a lazy morning, I was off to paying my college fees. After going through the passport website, I concluded that i needed 2 things

1. A Verification certificate
This is a formal way of 'Sifarish'. You are supposed to get a letter from a highly placed govt. officer saying that this officer knows you and certifies that you have a good moral character. He also has to mention you present address and permanent address in the letter. All this has to be done on his official letter head with his stamp, signature, office stamp and xerox of his ID card.

2. An Affidavit
The stupidest thing I have seen in my life. You have to write on an appropriate Stamp paper that you will not indulge in any illegal activity outside India and other such crap. It has to be signed by a Notary.

I set off to see a Lawyer-cum-Relative to get these tasks done. He further assigned me to another lawyer to get the certificates done. We met a govt. officer who asked us to visit them the next day(The red tape begins).

I also tried contacting some agent for a Tatkal Passport on that day. All turned out to be inefficient. They wanted INR 8500 and promised to get the passport in 25 days. (Leaving no time to get a VISA) So the agent was out of contention.

Thats all for day1.

Review:
Money Spent: 0 INR
Mental State: Happy to be home.

The Strike in India

2009-08-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

Isnt all the 'People of Brain' leaving India to settle in developed foreign countries equivalent to what Ayn Rand proposed in Atlas Shrugged? Just like John Galt and others arent these people at Strike against the Indian State?

Beggar and the alms

2009-07-08T03:56:00.000-07:00

Why do people give alms? I guess because they pity the beggar and his condition.
Why then do they pay him a meager Rs. 1 coin (some people graciously offer 2). What in the world is he supposed to purchase from it? Chintoo Candy? or Tiger biscuit? And if that buck is useless to him, what exactly does giving a buck signify? I think it is a mere gesture, coming more out of guilt and habit. Isnt it the 'guilt'? The guilt of what the onlookers will think? Or the guilt that I am richer than this guy? If No, if it is really out of pity, then why dont you think of some better places to invest your hard earned money (OR your father's hard earned money) in some NGO which works towards the long term elevation of Poverty? Or, if you want to help that particular person, sponsor his meal, or give him a blanket, or Rs.10, or any think he can actually use. Surely there are better ways to help the beggar than literally throwing a buck in his 'katora"

Some people will argue, We feel a sense of satisfaction.
I will just say one thing. Think!!!
Aren't you hurting a human being's dignity for that satisfation?

Some will say, he is starving, fighting to stay alive, he cannot afford 'Dignity'
I will say just one thing. Remeber by giving alms, you are actually helping yourself (to overcome the guilt) and not the beggar.(1 rupee isnt helping him anyway)

For people who are still not convinced, THINK and comment

The Football Fan

2009-06-29T03:32:00.000-07:00

My first nut-post. Its about being football fan. Its a crime to switch your alliances with one club and support a different club in football. BUT WHY? No one says a thing when a players are transferred, No one says any thing when coaches are changed, No one minds a change in ownership as long as the owner has lots of cash to spend. Why then is a 'fan' the only one not allowed to change sides and has to be called a traitor if he does that? Even the flags, anthems, stadiums and primary sponsors change!!!

Nut-Post

2009-06-29T03:05:00.000-07:00

Like I promised, I have been lazy about blogging. Here is one more product born out of my laziness to write. Its called a Nut-Post, called "Chotti Chotti magar Moti batein" (courtesy Shaktimaan) in Hindi. Here is the concept

I will write a small paragraph on my viewpoints about some issue and will leave it to the readers to comment on it. It will be just like a forum on some highly debatable issue in each post. Lets hope I will be consistent this time. So if you like the post, or find my ideas too extreme, do write back.

My first blog....

2008-11-29T01:08:00.000-08:00

Blogging is supposed to be an expression of ur own thoughts...... well its me, and if its me, it has to be something different.... so here is the difference.... my very first blog is a complete "copy-paste" blog from different news articles about the "Mumbai terrorist attacks". You may ask why so? or you may feel that i am just trying to be different for the sake of being different but that is not so.

The reason for this "copy paste" is that I have nothing new to say. You have already felt and expressed and discussed the same things that i felt about the incidents and hence there is no point repeting it. So the following part of the blog are the key lines of some of the articles i went through about the attacks.

India is an easy target.

Not only are its intelligence units understaffed and lack resources, coordination among State police forces is also poor. "The country's anti-terror legal architecture is also inadequate; there is no preventive detention law, and prosecutions can take years," it said.

"On taking office in 2004, one of the first acts of the ruling Congress Party was to scrap a federal antiterrorism law that strengthened witness protection and enhanced police powers," he wrote.

Dhume, a Washington-based writer said the Indian approach to terrorism has been consistently haphazard and weak-kneed.

n an address to the nation on Thursday, the Singh said the group that carried out the attacks "was based outside the country" and warned its neighbours "that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated."

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's allegation that he was not allowed to visit Maharashtra yesterday and barred from visiting terror attack spots today is 'politically motivated', Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said here today.
Reacting strongly to Modi's charge that although he wanted to visit Mumbai yesterday, he was not allowed to do so, Deshmukh said "Modi need not be told that there is no point visiting places where police, NSG and the army is engaged in combating terror"."Modi's statement is reflective of the tendency of some politicians to make political capital out of any issue", Deshmukh said.

But what one fails to understand is the predictable ham-handed response that we as nation seem to adopt when dealing with terrorist attacks.One would have thought that with every successive experience our ability to deal with a terrorist situation would improve. The truth though is that the state has failed to put together any sort of credible mechanism, either at the policy level or at the ground level, to deal with a terrorist situation and responses are at best ad hoc. At the policy level after every terrorist strike various political leaders pay lip service to the need for a national body to deal with terrorism.While on the one hand there is no centralised body to deal with terror, on the other hand the NSG, which is the elite force to deal with such situations, is centralised and located only in Delhi. After every terror attack, intelligence agency of some state or the other will claim that it had warned the victim of the possibility of an attack and the warning was ignored.Scores of terrorist attacks on and with hundreds of policemen dead or wounded, nobody gives the structural problems of the police force a thought While the terrorists seem to have state-of-the-art weapons, most of our policemen are still armed with only a stick. Despite so many incidents of terror, there is still no attempt to create an elite force of cops which can deal with terror situations.Only a few months ago there was much ado about the installing of what are supposedly bomb detectors. Yet yesterday morning when we visited the station most of these contraptions were not working and there were numerous points where you could enter the station without ever passing through any of these detectors.The local administration may have many parking laws but turns a blind eye to all infractions, which means that the commandos are busy trying to move scooters and cars before they can take any action on terrorists holed up in a building.

A leading US daily has blamed "squabbling" Indian political leaders' failure to put national security above partisan politics

But a far-reaching strategy to combat terrorism remains non-existent.It certainly hasn't been for a lack of time. The first wave of terrorist violence erupted in 1984."What are we supposed to do?" asks the officer plaintively. "Most of the attacks are planned somewhere in the countryside where there is hardly any police presence. And in cities like Mumbai, where there are 15, 16, maybe even 20 million residents, there's not much we can do," he says. "In a country as big as India, we can't be everywhere. And the military isn't responsible for combating domestic terror." India has 1.2 million police and about one million paramilitary troops. It is the biggest security force in the world, but given that India's population hovers around 1.2 billion, it is still much too small.

When broken down, the situation appears even starker. In India, there are just 126 domestic security personnel for every 100,000 people. In most Western countries, that ratio is closer to 400-500 to 100,000. Furthermore, around a fifth of police jobs are currently unfilled in India due to a lack of qualified applicants.

PM calls for a meeting with security agencies, Home Minister not invited

PAK HAND IN MUM SIEGE CONFIRMED: INTELLIGENCE

These are all broken fragment of information and i want to connect these pieces together to get a complete picture of the situation. How various factor are "using" this situation and what each one will gain or loose from this attack on humanity. So please help me join the dots by connecting these pieces of the jigsaw.

As regards to the regularity of this blog, i am too lazy to be posting any thing regularly but once in a while when i post, it will surely be about something which I really care about (bcos thats what made me take the efforts to write it) And because it is dear to my heart, your comments (positive or negative) will be appreciated.