The Mole concept

Its here again, another birthday. I never thought I would be this old this soon! But oh well!! It feels quite empty from inside when you think that you are now 23 and you are yet to do something worthwhile in your life. When you feel that there is something yet to come that it will ignite hidden passion in you, give a purpose to your life. So far you have only focussed on searching for it, and in the meanwhile being prepared when it hits you. You have toiled (supposedly) sometimes to be the best prepared amongst them. All for what? You still don't really know. My mother always used to tell me, when I acted lazy, that Akbar took the command of his empire at the age of 13, what have you done? Now being 10 years older than Akbar's age of coronation, I still don't know where to take the command. I am still unsure on whether I would be able to handle the kingdom well. I still believe it is out there, waiting for its emperor to come and rule. My experiences so far have told me th...

This play was an experiment for me and all others involved. It was my last semester and I was determined to do a play, a last play at IIT. I always wanted to do a play with my friends and my sophies prod experience was also very nice. I literally begged the Insti Dram secy for a slot in the annual prod and finally when he gave me a 10 minute slot, I prepared my play accordingly. From producing a great play, my focus went into producing a different one. I appreciate the level to which we have risen as far as dramatics at IIT Bombay is concerned. There is however a pattern to what we show in our plays, it is mostly some old man or a lunatic as one of the leading characters. In the annual prod itself, the two most appreciated plays had almost the same plotline. They both had chess as the common ground for the leading characters and both were basically comedies trying to hint at a larger issue. I have nothing against anybody and I applaud every effort by everyone, infact I was quite surpri...

If anyone comes up to me and says that he achieved everything he had hoped for in IIT, I would not believed him. We all had been blinded by the imagery created by the coaching centers, the media, and especially the uncle and aunties about our beloved institute. The expectations from the institute, the professors, the infrastructure and everyone around us was so high that no-one could do anything to match up to them. The expectations met reality when we saw our hostel rooms for the first time. The dingy corners in which we were to reside for the next four years, possibly with another fellow barging in on that little space we had. It was only later that we fell in love with the same quarters and never looked back at them the way we first saw them. The next jolt to the expectations was the first lecture. I for one, like countless others in this institute, had a fairly good academic life in my school, and like a good and disciplined student I had never felt the urge to fall asleep when I w...

Birthdays have been overrated in my opinion. Be it Harry Potter or Gandhi Jayanti, people have a fixation towards making a day represent a person's life or any big change in it. Perhaps as kids we are introduced to the concept of a birthday being special by ladening us with gifts. Back when I was in school, my parents had brought me up in a way to not expect any great gifts. So the only thing that made me wait for my birthday was the small celebration that happened in my class. Normally, in the class, the birthday kid would come in his or her favorite clothes and then the class would sing a birthday song for him and as a reward, he would distribute toffees to all the kids in the class. The bonus was that you could skip the boring class and go to distribute toffees to all the teachers in all the other classrooms with a friend who would assist you in this daunting task. Needless to say, the position of the assistant to the birthday boy was the most sought after. It was never the p...

I dont know what it is with this story that makes me feel more connected to it each time I come across it. I have read it many times, watched it being made into movies, heard accounts of it and even visited the place myself, but every time I am reminded of that horror it feels like I am hearing it for the first time. I transcend into that place, with my family and all my friends around me enjoying their time in the baisakhi mela, some distant voice shouting something on the microphone, hawkers bellowing over the crowd. Everyone is dressed in simple plain white dhoti and kurta, some kids running around the place gleely and their parents running after them. My grandfather holding some kid on his shoulders as he used to hold me when I was a kid. I then see brown colored khakhi claddened men rushing mindlessly through the narrow gates and filing into a line. I see a crooked smile on some white colored male who is twisting his moustache and watching in delight. My blood starts to boil. I se...