Musings of a Touched Soul

How does an event qualify as interesting? Probably when it attracts your attention for a considerable period of time. If so, how do you define a memorable event. Could be when the said period of time is considerably larger. So what is a life changing event? According to me, it is when an event lingers in your mind for such a long time that it actually starts altering your daily lifestyle or thought process. Such events are of course rare if not almost nonexistent in an average person's life.

What is queer is the fact that an event which is life changing to one person may not even qualify to be interesting to another. It might be something he has already witnessed or experienced or something which doesn't concern his life at all. You are wondering where I am going with this. What is all this blabbering about? Well let me narrate a story to u.

I was once sitting in the college canteen (Back in the time when it was actually kind of good) with a couple of friends and complaining about the poor quality of Chinese food being served to us. Of course most of us were expecting the food to be of top quality while forgetting that a dish used to cost us just 40 rupees. Anyways, I noticed that the table next to us was occupied by a father and a son. It was obvious that the father was a construction worker, one among the hundreds that work on our campus and his son also seemed to be a child laborer (Or maybe just used to help his dad) of sorts from his attire. They were both enjoying a meager meal of white rice, sambhar and a few accompaniments. And I use the word enjoy because u could see how happy the child was from the way his eyes were lit up. He was so happy and proud of his dad and he felt special to have a meal from our canteen rather than from his usual labor camp.

That day I saw something which I rarely see in this college. The child was content. He was truly happy and moreover satisfied with his life. Human nature is really weird. We are all confused and tricked into believing what we want in life is money, fame, a good job and what not. But what a human soul actually yearns for, is satisfaction. To be content in whatever field and in general be satisfied.

I couldn't sleep well that night. My mind returned to the scenes of that afternoon and I couldn't help but wonder, what have I done which makes me better than that boy. Why is it that my family has money to educate me whilst his family doesn't. It's not on the basis of his or my achievements obviously for he would most probably be more hardworking than me. What have I done to entitle me such a comfortable and blessed life?

I called up my mom (Childish maybe but trust me she is good at all this) and told her the whole story. She told me that in life there was a certain amount of luck. I was born into an affluent family while he wasn't. She said that our ancestor tried to explain this occurrence as a result of our doings in our previous life's. Karma you could call it I guess!

Ah! Another variable. The doings of our previous life. It's as if god devised a fail proof program. He declared a variable "past" as an integer and assigned it to zero. After each life a value would be added or subtracted to this variable and in the next run of the iteration the value of the variable will be checked and appropriate conditions would be applied to that life. It seemed to be simple and it kind of explained everything.As good as the program seemed to be, I wasn't entirely convinced. That sort of an evaluation seemed unlikely. God wouldn't be that mercilessly judgmental (Ironical, yes). There had to be another explanation for everything.

I pondered on this for days at a stretch and finally a solution dawned on me. A sort of an explanation. What if I was given all of this wealth, comfort and education not because of the actions of my previous life, but as a promise for the actions in my current life. Let me put it in an easier term. I would like to call it, "A student loan from God". God blesses me with everything a young child could hope for, gives me education, a good job and all that because he wants me to use it. And by using it I mean repay him by giving my wealth and doing service to help those who in turn were not that blessed by god.

Yes, it is a convoluted cycle but it actually made sense to me. If all our actions were revolved around paying back our debt to god by helping the lesser fortunate, imagine how nice the world would be. People would actually start helping each other without expecting anything in return(Yes, it does sound like a Nickelback song). So that night, I slept peacefully!

Now you remember how I started off. This incident was the closest to life changing than any other in my life. My perspectives on service, satisfaction and the true goal of life have changed. You have heard my story now, but I don't expect you to feel like I do. This was not one of those inspiring stories which would set into motion a rapid chain of world changing actions. This was nothing but a simple thought, but a thought I felt deserved to be shared.  All I know is that as long as I live, I will try to keep that small boy as my role model and the plate of white rice he enjoyed and the content smile on his face as my goals in life!

Diagnosis of Pandemonium

­Last minute studies, photocopying notes, enquiring about the syllabus and pulling off all nighters! Yup, we have all done it. Looking back, it always seems so easy. Chugging down mugs of coffee and gobbling up bowls of maggi seemed to give us all the strength to get through it. Our academic life can roughly be divided into the time we have fun and the times we pay the price for the fun we have had. And for people like me, who spent the bulk of each semester dwindling their time on everything other than studies, there is always that one moment before each semester exam which we can never forget. It's that one moment, late into the night before your exam when you are still far away from covering that syllabus, when it strikes you that the war is nothing but lost. That moment when you turn to your best bud and say, "Dude, this time we are screwed man!". But surprisingly it's not fear that follows. It is peace, a deep understanding which I would audaciously like to compare with holiness. Knowing that your actions can have little or maybe no effect on your life tomorrow, yeah that is pretty deep stuff.

Underneath all the chaos of our college education system lie two pillars. They are the foundation of all the misery and frustration of thousands of students. Of course, the two pillars are but metaphors for two words which brings out nightmares for college goers. Relative grading!


 I find relative grading ironical in today's world. The whole world is so hung up on eradicating discrimination and ensuring that people are not judgmental of others on the basis of their religion, color or caste. And what do we have here? We take a look at all the students in a class and imagine an "ideal student" (Also known as class average) and put this student up on a pedestal. We then call upon every student and size him up next that guy and declare him a failure or as fit to continue. Doesn't seem so nice when you think of it this way eh?  

What is funny is that relative grading is actually a cannibalistic cycle. When someone actually does score way below the class average and flunks, others in the class benefit because his marks also count in the average and eventually brings it down, helping the other students get better grades. The next semester, the average is higher because the poorer students were left behind and now the same students who survived because they were just above the line last time, suffer from poorer grades (Yes, I did use the verb "suffer". If you are a student, you know why!). The system slowly and steadily removes these underlying layers, feeding the bigger cannibals on the top. And eventually after 8 semesters, the ones who are left are the big fat cannibals!  

The biggest fear of a student before an exam, is NOT what he or she hasn't studied or gone through. They only fear what others in their class have studied! It is a cruel and painful torture for one to sleep at night knowing his peers are staying up and studying. People who claim that they can stay up all night before an exam and study, they do it because they don't have another option. They just can't fall sleep and you can't blame them for that!

People are hasty in branding peer pressure as agents which force children to drink, smoke and do what not. We forget how it extends to studies and much more. After around a year and a half in an engineering college, most students get, what I would like to call the "internship epidemic". It suddenly strikes them that working in a company for a month or two and adding that to their resume is much easier than getting a good GPA. A rumor spreads that a good internship almost certainly guarantees a fat pay check and that this practical work you do counts more than your GPA. If you have ever played the game Chinese Whisper, you know the scenario! This takes me back to Dark Knight Rises, when Bane delivers Batman to his own personal prison and says, "There is a reason why this is hell on earth; it gives you hope of escape". Everyone manages to hang on to this glimmer of hope, that the internships will actually save them from the plight caused by their marks.

Calls are made, acquaintances contacted and family friends notified. An all out effort is made to procure an internship in a top notch company. The company offer more of a silent observer job rather than the traditional hands on experience role an internship is supposed to provide, but hey all of us still take it! And after a few weeks the company readily award us a certificate stating we worked for them diligently for months, possibly quite happy to get rid of the responsibility of having interns in their midst.

Every year, lakhs of students join engineering colleges, each of them harboring their own hopes and dreams. A large number of students pass out from colleges every year too. How all of them get employed is mathematical equation I haven't been able to work out. It is a crazy experience, with its share of ups and downs. But I am sure that these moments will become memories worth laughing and sharing a few years down the line. Then, looking back, it would all seem worth it. All the time we worried, would look silly and the good times, too short! Although, it would be nice if all of us had a job then!! So, "may the force be with us all" !