H1N1 & precautionary vacations and life thereafter....

I am having the time of my life. Am I really?

Vacations as all educational institutions are one of the lots of places shut down as a measure to prevent the spread of H1N1 virus or Influenza A, better known as Swine Flu. Pune where I am currently studying, is the worst hit by the pandemic in the country and having no better choice, I felt it best to come down to Udupi, my hometown. The past one odd month has been really great for me. I had the opportunity to attend the ‘Bhajana Saptaha’, a weeklong extravaganza at Udupi, late last month. This was something I had missed for the last 3 years. And no sooner had I reached Pune and was just settling into academic mode, came this bigger news.

In the back of our minds, most of us were actually making pretexts and finding reasons to convince the college administration to give us a break from the hectic (?? Read on...) routine. Swine Flu was the most preferred excuse. As luck would have had it, even before any of our attempts, the Govt. of Maharashtra came as our Genie and granted us exactly what we wanted. A week long holiday, and we were in fact encouraged by the college to go to our respective hometowns. 95% of the people actually vacated the place in awesome speed. What was more appreciable was the efforts by the university to provide more frequent transportation to the city from the campus to enable people take flights / trains / buses to their respective places. Everyone actually went home and was actually having a great time. I too came home and this time, I got to be a part of the Sri Krishna Janmashtami celebrations after 3 years.

But some of us were greedy. We again started finding excuses that Pune was not safe and the holidays be extended. We even made ‘logical’ reasoning and came to conclusions that classes would “anyway not commence” till the coming Monday and that visiting faculty will also “not want to come” to the campus and so on. We also started calculating probabilities that the Govt. itself “may extend the holidays” beyond Ganesh Chaturthi which is a very big festival in Pune and draws huge crowds. We started praying for the holidays to be extended beyond the festival, and yes our prayers were answered once again. Again, I will be celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi with my family after 3 years.

But somewhere in some parts of India, some intelligent people silently saw this as the silence before a storm to come. When I too started thinking of it, I realized what type of a hurricane we are heading into. We will not have holidays for Deepavali; we may not have holidays after our semester is over. What’s more worrying is that there won’t be any holidays for studying before the exams. As if to rub more salt on the wounds, we may have classes from 9 to 9 everyday, Saturdays and Sundays included. Daily assignments, submissions, presentations, evaluations and tests will anyway continue.(If that was hectic, what will you call this??) We may have to forget our social and personal life for the next few months and adapt to a fully ‘Gurukul’ style of learning where we are totally isolated from the outside world. Few friends have already started making analogies of what we will be going through come 24th August 2009. One of them said, we will be the ball, college admin will be Sehwag on a juicy wicket with a fast outfield and the outcome will be ‘zabardast dhulai’! Another said that we will all be put in a pressure cooker for the next 3 months and the lid will be opened only after it is totally ensured that we are all ‘fully cooked’. The crux of the matter is that we better be prepared for the tough days ahead.

So, my dear reader friends, I am pretty sure that I will not have time to write these posts as often in the near future and that is the reason I am writing it now!

ALTOPHOBIC?? HOPEFULLY NOT ANYMORE...

I am altophobic! Yes, I have a fear of heights. It has to be ironical that a tall person like me has a fear of heights.

Though I do not remember distinctly, how long I have been carrying this fear with me, I can vividly recollect memories from my childhood where there have been instances where I have had terror wreaked in my mind only because of heights. I can still remember instances where I have simply closed my eyes and let things around me happen by itself. There have been instances where I have run for shelter in the safest place – my mother’s lap. There also have been instances where I have prayed religiously for it to get over as soon as possible.

Whenever I see down directly from the terrace of a normal building, I feel odd. Giddiness takes over my senses and I feel that something is going to happen. By normal building, I mean a double or a triple storey apartment building. Giant wheels in those yearly fairs (which have literally become history now) were another thing I hated and avoided sitting in. When I see straight from the top of the building, even if it’s taller than a normal building, there isn’t a problem. When it comes to seeing vertically down, comes the trouble. And to add to the misery is the fact that I am tall and I always feel that the containing railings are too short for my height and may not contain me in case I lose control and something happens. Dying doesn’t bother me as much as the feeling of living handicapped for the rest of my life does.

I have tried to get over it at times. I had the privilege of studying my engineering from probably the only college in India which had a private beach and a lighthouse. We had the opportunity to go to the top of the lighthouse which was something like a 12 storey building. I have climbed to the top a couple of times. But whenever I have done that, I have closely held the railings while climbing up as well as down and also always ensured that my back is always in contact with the wall of the lighthouse. Even on reaching the top, I made sure that I did not look down at the base of the lighthouse directly; my hands were firmly on the railings and my back comfortably against the wall. I recently tried the same on another lighthouse nearby, but the fear still existed.

But then came my day. It was just the first week of our induction module at college. The entire batch was out on an ‘Outbound Training’ program on the foothills of Sinhgad fort (one of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s numerous forts across Maharashtra). The program was handled by ex service men and was a great experience of learning and team building. One of the exercises involved was what is known as wrappling or abseiling. Each and every one of us was supposed to come down from the terrace of a three storey building, along the walls with the help of ropes. People who had done it earlier did it with ease. Some of them who were doing it for the first time did a really good job and some others faltered badly. And the sight of this group of people made me look for reasons to abscond!

Escape routes were hard to find. Even girls were not spared. Eventually I thought this might as well be my opportunity to fame (at least in my own eyes). I thought this is the time when I should actually get over my fears and weaknesses under the supervision of trained and qualified people. I somehow made up my mind and reached the top of the building. As one of them was tying the ropes on my waist, I tried to remain cool and composed. I tried not to look at the base of the building as much as possible. And when the big moment arrived and I stood on the wall, I was surprisingly calm. This was really commendable considering the fact that there were people who have literally shivered while on the wall. For a brief moment, as I was standing backwards on the wall (me facing the building), I badly felt like asking for a bottle and get myself photographed in the ‘Lose Control’ style from RDB. Then an inner voice told me, “Zyaada herogiri dikhaane ki koshish mat kar beta, tu ab tak neeche nahi pahuncha”. The instructor casually repeated the set of instructions, dos and don’ts for the umpteenth time in the day. I listened to him and started my journey downwards.

I was at the base in roughly under 5 seconds. I simply could not believe that I had done it so comfortably. And people who actually saw me coming down and were cheering me said that it was a very ‘professional’ attempt for a beginner. By ‘professional’, they meant it was closest to the one as demonstrated by the instructors. I was indeed proud of myself. Unable to contain my happiness, I called up mom immediately. As expected she too wasn’t able to believe it.

But yes, it had indeed happened. I was not daydreaming. I had actually got over one of my worst fears. Someone had actually clicked everyone doing the heroic feat, and I am still looking for the snap.

So the big question is whether I have really got over it? Well, I don’t know and can’t say anything as of now. I haven’t tried anything like that ever since, nor have I even tried looking down directly from a high rise building. So it may be too early to claim something now, but I’ll definitely have it at the back of the mind that I have done it once in my life. This feeling is definitely very gratifying and I am sure that it will give me a lot of confidence the next time I decide to look down from the balcony of my hostel room which is equivalently on the fourth floor!

Technology and its ........

I wanted to write about this topic for a long time now. I have thought about it very often but somehow or the other it has not succeeded in completing the journey till here. This time though, I am very optimistic about that.

A lot has been said about the positive effects that technology has had. It’s actually hard to imagine life without technology today. And rightly so, it has made life so simple, so comfortable and so very convenient for people today. So much so that off shoots of technological advancements has become more of a necessity than a facility. I will not dwell too much into the positive aspects of technology here. There is no doubt that technology has indeed been a boon. Let me try to explore the other side of the coin.

I was travelling by train a couple of months back from Hyderabad to Mumbai. The journey takes around 16 hours and I was travelling on train for such a distance after a long time. I was looking forward to meeting new people and getting to interact with them. But my expectations turned out to be damp, not because the compartment was empty. But because of technology. 10 years ago, something like this could not have been imagined. One chap in my coupe was busy watching movies on his laptop. Another was busy talking to someone on his mobile. I really don’t know what was he doing throughout the journey. And there was another girl who had a book in her hand and a pair of earphones continuously plugged into her ears. She was continuously banging her head in the air, proving that she was actually listening to some sort of music. Few travelers have always been eternal sleepers, and their proportion has always remained the same. So considering this fact, I can only say that technology has separated people. If I had taken a similar journey 10 years back, all these people could have been seen interacting with each other as if they were long lost friends who just met by chance. But with technology improving every day, it has even increased the distance between people.

Technology has also reduced the personal touch which used to exist between people. Consider a formal communication which used to happen a couple of decades ago by the way of handwritten letters. People used to preserve these letters and read them leisurely. They used to get emotionally attached to them. It is debatable whether such emotions are good or not. But the point I am trying to make is that the personal touch is missing. Now a day when it is the case of e mails and letters through e mails, it has become instant, but with this it has also brought a whole lot of questions. Similar is the case will telephones. A couple of decades back it was hard to talk to people who are abroad and for that matter even those in different cities. Now it has become some cheap and affordable that it has no value. Cheating has become so easy, and again the personal touch is missing. Imagine what we all are missing. The anxiety with which people a generation ago used to wait for the postman to come, the host of reactions which used to come when some loved sprang as a surprise, the great deal of euphoria surrounding a family get together, are all nowhere to be seen these days. Credit cards have made purchases easier, but what has happened after that? People have started spending excessively and a part of the subprime crisis which has led to global recession is also because of this!!

Technology has no doubt given lots of benefits for us. But if we see that in the real sense, it has only given alternate solutions to needs for which solutions already existed. It has not come up with things out of the box and it has not come up with any new solutions. It has merely made existing things simpler, comfortable and convenient and nothing else. People may call me a traitor or a fanatic or I dont know what, but this is really a debatable point. As much as I acknowledge the merits of technology, I also at times start thinking too much about the other side of it which is also factually true!!

I am confused!!!????##^&%*%^

“I am back after a long time”. I am actually fed up writing that statement again and again. Every time there is some discontinuity in my blogging, my first statement after comeback will be that!! I really want to do away with that and hope I will be successful with it in the future. After a brief surge in my blogging frequency just after I started the second innings of my student life, it was almost a month of silence. Now owing to the precautionary holidays declared by the college in the wake of the spreading havoc of the H1N1 in Pune, I have again found time to write something. I will not write on any topic specifically, but will try to dwell on whatever crosses my mind at this point of time.

The period of silence for my blog in between has been really a topsy turvy journey for me personally. There have been lots of ups and downs for me. Especially a week in between which went real bad. And I am forced to believe that it was all the result of a well planned divine intervention. I cannot but help the Almighty for having pulled me up from this mess that I was in. I feel that it has made me emerge stronger mentally and emotionally. I really do not want to go into the details of it all and relive the agony. So don’t bother asking me either. If you already know it, you know it. And if you don’t know it as of now, don’t really bother to think about it either.

The last couple of months have been a real different experience. Having come to studies after a brief stint working, it feels like heaven to be back among the books. Having seen the way corporate work for a great part of the 33 months I have worked, I realize what it takes to be back in the student’s shoes. The exposure I have got in my working career has helped me in clearly defining what I want from the two years of this MBA course. I know how exactly I should approach the education and what exactly to take out of this. A very close friend of mine said to me just before I commenced this course of mine, “Don’t take your grades seriously. But make sure that you take your learning’s seriously”. The statement is very true considering the fact that having good grades all through my academic programme so far has not helped me a great deal. I was a topper in my UG days, but that put me in place with lots of other common grade holders in my job. Not offending any of them, I realized that grades are not of any importance. So it won’t really hurt concentrating on things other than academics alone.

Now this change has been more evident from outside. Friends and relatives close to me, who know everything about me, have acknowledged a clear change in my attitude. I have become more carefree and do not worry unnecessarily. I am much more relaxed and easy going now. However much you try to not be so evident about it, you cannot really be so. It eventually shows out. And for people who are so close to you, it’s not so difficult to realize that change either.

A couple of years back when I was working; I was a part of a management workshop. There was this consultant trying to stressing on the importance of not worrying and thinking of the worst which can happen if something we were worried about did not happen. And he was asking us to compare it with the troubles and complications created by worrying and reflect on whether worrying on it was really worth it. I initially took it as just another gyaan but slowly when I started practicing it and found it to be really helpful. I do it even today. I believe that at the end of the day, life is not permanent. So there is no point living it worrying over small and petty issues. After all, issues are temporary. Things will change in due course of time and things will be forgotten eventually. Nothing in life may be serious enough to waste time worrying on it.

I know this sounds very weird and without knowing the facts, it’s actually difficult to make sense of what I am trying to write. But I desperately wanted to come back. So what if its not with a bang?? Every comeback in cricket does not mean a century; every movie by Amitabh Bachhan was not a hit. So I do not expect this post to be great either. Hope to come back soon with a more sensible post soon.