Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Engineering your life



Go to google.com.

Type ‘define: engineering’ and hit the enter button.
The branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures. The action of working artfully to bring something about.

That’s what Google says. But in India, engineering means different. Engineering means respect. Engineering means regard. Engineering means that you have made your father proud. Engineering means that you have made your clique proud. Engineering means that you have subsequently increased your dowry by few lakhs. Engineering means that some of your relatives have become jealous of you. Engineering means that you have done something fruitful. And so if engineering means more and then it demands much more.
But what if you aren’t an engineer. According to some hypocrite people, it means that you have just been deprived of power that is vested to you by the constitution of India via Article 21. The freedom of living. You don’t have ‘right to live’. And so it’s better that you commit suicide. And every year many guys do so.
The result times are some of the toughest ones. It just takes a few seconds to access the result, but many days to accept the same. The result that sometimes surprises you. The result that sometimes disappoints you. The result for which it takes months of preparation. The result for which you have to load tons of frustration.
During result time, no one talks much. Neither you nor your parents. Verbal communication ceases and non-verbal communication finds its new importance. Eyes talk a lot and you too reply with your eyes. Eyes express yours feeling better than your patois.
And as soon as the result is declared, you become numb for a time frame. It doesn’t matter whether you have succeeded or not. In either condition, you are going to lose your friends.


The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you. – Bette Midler



Those few black inked characters on the screen convey a lot. Your phone begins to ring. Your friends begin to call up. They begin to show up. If you have made it, you just want to say it to everyone. But if you haven’t, you just switch off your mobile. You just want to stay in your home coiling up by yourself.  You think and then you repent. The whole world seems to be asking you about the result. You want to escape this competitive world and search your solace. You want to be surrounded by someone who is true, someone who could pat your back and say ‘Hey, it’s OK’. But the reality is the far distant cousin of fantasy.

Parents begin to doubt your hardship. And you lose your confidence. You begin to think about your teachers who somewhere in your past had assured you of your success. You begin to think about all those friends who had praised you for your talent. They were so damn wrong. You were so damn wrong that you got flattered by those comments. Your neighbors begin to show up. They begin to judge you.If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.

They want to know about your result. And they end up the conversation talking about the result of their distant relative. And in each case their relatives override you. You don’t want to talk with them, but your father has to. You remain in your room and you ignore the conversation. You don’t want to listen to them, but you can’t help yourself from hearing them. You finally sense the soreness that your father’s voice is laden with. You coil yourself even more than a snake. You do keep staring anything that comes in your line of sight. Your mother approaches you with her silence and tries to break yours but in vain. She assures you that everything is goanna be alright. But it’s you and only you who know that nothing is going to happen alright. You begin to tame a ghost in your heart. And that ghost reminds you about your failure whenever you try to be smart. That ghost is going to chase you for the rest of your life. All your life.
Everyone seems to be a stranger to you. And you too want the same. Each guy approaching you for the first time seems to make you uncomfortable. He might ask you about your result. The conversation ends up very quickly. And all the time, it ends up with the suggestion. The guy who doesn’t knows even the Newton’s second law of motion or secant of 30-degree passes by giving you an advice. One of those many things that you already have in abundance.
But life is not about how bad you fall after it hits you. It’s all about how you dare to stand up and hit it back with more intensity.


Nights are longer for those who dream. Days are longer for those who work hard to realize those dream.



You work hard and harder. You run the race. It doesn’t happen easily. If it would have been easy, anybody could have hit the bull’s eye. But life tests hard. And accepts only those who are tougher than the toughest. Finally, you have become someone, but not an engineer. You have created your identity but not as an engineer. You have found your niche and that’s too without being an engineer. Life is what you make it. And life is not about being an engineer. It was never about being an engineer and it will never be. You are more than that and you deserve more. One day you will have your footprint on the pages of history and sands of time. You have to believe in something because you have no other choices. In fact, you never had any. It’s time to Run.




This article is an excerpt from my book  'The Cut-Off List' 

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Bullying in School


I don’t exactly remember the year but it was during my 7th or 8th grade. There was a guy in my class who always used to take the last seat of class. He used to wear very thick specs that rested very difficultly over his big nose. He had a slender body which any nutrition company could look up to for its newspaper advertisement. And the students of my class referred him as a loser. One day he finally opened up to me and gave me all the reasons for being irregular in the class. He told me that students make mockery out of him. They laughed for no specific reason. He didn’t like that. He chose to remain silent. And he was right. He remained silent for the next many months. In the following year he didn’t enrolled himself in the same school and I don’t exactly remember where he headed to?

This sight is common in every class of every school present across the length and breadth of our nation. That is what bullying refers to. But I just gave you an example at a very miniature level. There are over 8, 97, 00,000 search results on Google when you Google the same. This is something that we don’t remember. Or the other social problems of our society like eve-teasing, inequality, rape and others have an edge over this issue. But the essence of all these malpractices halt to a basic intuition and that is dominating nature; master- slave concept.

If you don’t want to be a slave then you have none of any right to be a master at all. You don’t have to be of dominating nature and influence your power for the same. This is something that world needs to know and we must campaign for it. What’s the point of bullying? To feel better? You will never feel better if the only thing you know is to make others suffer.

The most shocking fact about bullying is the etymology of word itself. The word "bully" was first used in the 1530s meaning "sweetheart", applied to either sex, from the Dutch boel "lover, brother", probably diminutive of Middle High German buole "brother", of uncertain origin (compare with the German buhle "lover"). The meaning deteriorated through the 17th century through "fine fellow", "blusterer", to "harasser of the weak". And it continued for next many centuries.

Various attempts have been made and various organizations all over the world are trying their best to tackle this menace. US Govt. even has special twitter account that goes by the name @StopBullying.Govt to confront these type of situations. But still hundreds of such cases crop out every day and even at this very moment when you are reading this, someone somewhere in the world must be getting bullied. We live in a democratic world and voices can’t be suppressed. In fact it shouldn’t be suppressed to any micro extent.


“I am not a joke, so stop laughing at me.”


Tuesday, September 8, 2015

International Literacy Day


Apart from birth date of famous persona like Asha Boshle and Wiz Khalif and apart from being celebrated as victory day in Pakistan, this day has its own meaning. It is also celebrated as literacy day. It will not come as a surprise if this reminder may have slipped out of your mind. September 8 is a special day. In fact it has been a special day since 1966 when it was first celebrated. The moment was November 17, 1965 when finally September 8 was decided to be celebrated as International Literacy day by UNESCO. The memories may have faded, but the power of that magical moment must never be forgotten. And from then we have never looked back. The world’s illiteracy halved between 1970 and 2005.
“Literacy is a key driver for sustainable development” This is what unesco.org states apart from ‘Literacy and Sustainable Societies’ being the theme of this year’s literacy day. But why education and literacy? That is one of the basic question that may dart across your lobes.  There are other factors that have the capabilities and possibilities to be the key driver for sustainability. But the world insists on eradicating illiteracy; It has an edge over other world’s problem like poverty, gender inequality etc. Gandhiji believed that mass illiteracy is India’s sin and shame and must be liquidated. “Literacy could be ladder out of poverty and Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope” The former statement was said by Morgan Freeman while Kofi Anan concluded the latter one.  However the essence and instinct of both sayings halt to a basic intuition and that is the importance of the literacy and education.
India is a young nation and will be younger by 2020. Let me support mine argument with facts and figure. By 2020, the average age in Japan is going to be 47; China will be heading well past 40; Europe 46; United States will also pass 40 and India's average age is going to be 29. So we are potentially the people who are youthful, productive, dynamic, young population, ready to work, and transform the world, the kinds of role that, say, China played in the last generation could be ours in the next. But do we have the ability to equip the people to take advantage of this, to be the workforce of the work engine for the world? We have come a long way. The Britishers had left us in 1947 with 12% literacy rate and today we have moved to 75% (2011 data).  And the leaders of our nation must be applauded for the same but it’s not the time to relax.  We have to go miles. Eradicating illiteracy is not only ‘sarkari netas’ problem. It’s our fundamental duty too to contribute to our society. Our society is the mirror of our contemporary era. You may love your people and you may hate too. You may criticize your people and you may praise them. But you can never ignore them. We need to step out and scream our voice loud for the same. Help the local NGOs which are already fighting for the same cause. Help your society. This society has always matters to you a lot. Its time when you could matter to them.



Gift a book. After all a book is a gift that you can open again and again.

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