Alone vs. Lonely

Alone and Lonely ... the words share so many letters. Yet the two words carry totally different meaning. One of those past day gone by feelings is coming back .. and i am hating it. Feeling quite lonely, sad, dont want tomorrow ever to come, not having a great time in this day too, feeling disgusted with life, with myself, there is that fear of future, what tomorrow is going to bring, what have i lost today, what have i left behind. All the true signs of a week man. But i have to move on. Life will not stop here. It will continue. This day will end. Tomorrow will come and I will have to face it. So no point in fretting or freaking out. Let me welcome tomorrow with open arms. And i will work to make tomorrow a success. A grand one too ... For God - Bas itni si tumse guzarish hai ... you know what!

Life is set to change .. once again

A long long time since i wrote my last blog. I will try to be regular now. The title of this blog says it all ... life is set to change .. once again.

I have this feeling in my bones. I know it in the deepest of my hearts. Change is good. Thats what everyone tells me but thats not how always we percieve it. We accept it, welcome it with open arms when its for better but what do we do when everything has been perfect .. and life is set to change ...

This change that I can feel is going to be both personal and professional. I will move over to Pune from Nagpur and Aurangabad in this project. While it does feel good to come back to civilization (from the now much explored jungles of Maharastra :P), there is definitely a bit of apprehension if I will be able to repeat the history that I created in the places left behind. Personally, I dont think I have too much of bachelor life left, though God only knows what he has in store for me.... and hence i want to enjoy whatever time is left to the fullest.

We had a great time yesterday .. me, Tarun and Ankur. We had gone to Firangi Pani in Andheri. It was a great place though I seriously missed having a girlfriend there. The best thing was that after a long long time we all let go of ourselves and had a great time.. And I will remember the 'lady in black' for the rest of my life ...

P.S. .. I Love You

Its been a really long time since I wrote a blog. I think I need to get back into action. However, I am discontinuing writing blogs about my life @ L for a couple of reasons actually. One that even though that was perhaps the best time of my life (so far), its not coming back for all i could wish and writing about it makes me long for it all the more. Secondly, the response to the blog from the few and limited readers with whom I had shared the blog was not very encouraging :-) and hence I thought let me try something different ....

Last 2-3 weeks have not been great for me, both personally as well as professionally. That I am spending a couple of hours towards the rear end of the day alone does not help either. God knows .. what is this ... even I cant understand. Sometimes small irrelevant things have started affecting me badly. I am tending to think a lot about them ... am worrying a lot about themm. Some of those things may not be small and may affect me or my life in a much bigger way. Time will tell when that happens. But I am surely missing company. Going back to the hotel room has started seeming dreadful. Maybe thats why I have started spending as much time in office as possible (even when its not required) and in the company of others, even if I am just sitting there listening to their conversation .... Maybe thats why they say that an outstation project takes toll on you ..

Anyways .. let me drift once again this time to a hitherto unexplored territory ... P.S. I love you. I read this novel recently. Its a beautiful one .. Loved it to the core ... Its about a lady who lost her husband and then learnt to live without him. The lesson - not everyone is lucky in life. We may never get what we wish for. Our life may never be even closely similiar to what we wish it to be. Yet .. life goes on. Life is for living .. though it helps if someone up there is watching you. Even if not ... you have to carry on .. with whatever you have .. with whatever is left ... striving to make things better than yesterday if not day before ....

I personally believe that I havent got the best in life ... There are so many things that I yearn for ... yet they seem to be out of my reach .. he has planned it for me some other way. I need to follow and respect his wishes ... I need to recollect myself .. pull myself up once again ... I need to make the best of what I have ...

We will miss you nani ..

30th April, 2009

My nani passed away this day. I will really miss you nani. Though I could never say it to you in person, I am sorry for not being able to give you your due importance, love and respect. The unconditional love and caring that you have given to us all - no one else could give. I will miss your nimbu ka achar, your constant efforts to make us eat something or other all the time and your love that you used to shower liberally upon us. Perhaps grandparents are the only people on earth who dont have any expectation from you. They are the ones who love you as you are irrespective of whether you give them time or not, whether you pass or fail, whether you even take out a minute for them or not.. Janak puri will never be same for us again. Our lives will never be the same again without you nani. O God - please take care of my nani. She is in your hands now. Nani, please forgive us for all our wrong doings ... please and let your blessing hand be always there on our heads.

I also hate myself for one more thing. Everyone keeps on praising about what i have achieved in life. But no one seems to have realized what am i loosing in this process. When chachu passed away i was not here .. when nani passed away, again i was not here .. I am losing the time that i used to spend with people who care for me ... i am losing my family ....

Memories from the golden years of my life (24)

Let me start the blog on a sad note. No one read my last blog after repeated mails! I was actually sad to see this but I must realize that maybe what seems so interesting and is dear to me may not make up even a good story for others. So I have decided not to pain people anymore with my stupid blog mails. I will write just for myself. Maybe 10 years down the line when things are totally different I will have a good time reading it.

Lets start from where I had left in my last blog. I have always believed that the first half of my first term was the toughest time of my stay at IIML. Thankfully, it had come to an end. I do believe that tough times bring out the best in any person and the same was reflected in my behaviour during this period. To quote just one example my expenditure during this one and half months was at an all time low. If I am to guess correctly it would not be more than 1500 a month 80% of which would be contributed by mess bills. This figure had grown to an exorbitant 6-7000 per month by the time the course ended. This was despite the tough times such as my foot infection.

Anyways … classes had begun again in full force. We had four full credit courses continuing from pre mid term which were Behaviour in Organizations – By now it had turned out to be completely boring and useless. Debchat used to give loadsa gyan (most of which held little meaning) for me. All that I picked up from him was wielding hi fi sounding words into sentences which seem to convey a lot but actually mean nothing. Consider this “The personality of the person is truly reflected in his inner conscious and sub conscious interacting with each other, the effects of which are evident in his demeanor” :P

Economics was perhaps becoming more and more interesting with every passing day. I loved my prof. Mr. Bannerjee, though I hated the way he made his papers. Totally globe questions such as “Is economics an art or science? (20 marks)”. This was actually a question in our mid term paper! But the subject nonetheless was very interesting.

Another important thing that I had picked up by now was to play on expectations. I had learnt to look out for what a prof expects from us and deliver the same and believe me this was the best thing that I could do for myself in the entire course. So I was furiously taking note of every sentence that eco prof said so that I could reproduce the same in the final exam while for BIO I was practicing making sentences like above. Believe me it worked like hell. Rest about other subjects and profs in my next blog ….

Memories from the golden years of my life (23)

It has been almost 2 months since my last post. The other day only I was telling Manish, that sometimes it is really emotionally exhausting to write a blog ... because it simply reminds me of so many things that I miss so badly that I just dont feel like entering this world where everything seemed good (well not always!). For example .. its a Sunday today .... and guess what I am writing this blog exactly at 5:43 AM! Well thats not surprising as I am sure there would have been many Sundays in Lucknow when I would have been up at 5:43 AM. But this different coz .. this is after a full 8 hours of sleep :P .... What has happened to me?

Anyways ... back to the story ... Ever since the mid terms got over .. I had this feeling that they hadn't gone too well ... as in I myself was not satisfied with my own performance .. and that is why I had started my readings even before the classes commenced. A second factor was the presence of Mr. Manish Peter. Now strange as it may sound .. Manish was named Maggu of the hostel!!!! Can you imagine .. the same guy who used to roam crying one day before a fin exam saying alound "Gautam ... main fail ho jaaooonga" was actually labelled a Maggu! .. and rightly so ... coz he mugged so much in the first half of first term ... that seniors and juniors both alike thought that he is here to do something! (well we are were ... but still). What convinced us all further was the way in which Manish had done his room. I just cannot describe the difference in how his room looked during those days and during our fifth or sixth term. The entire room was full of books ... to say the least. Morevoer Manish had gone to some cheap Lucknow market and got some posters .. which kinda helped him gain the "Maggu Peter" title ... One such poster saying "Do not disturb ... serious study in progress" was placed outside his room door. In fact I remember one incident when Shanky (one of our hostelmates on the same floor as ours .. 511) even altered that poster using a marker so that now it said ... "Do not disturb ... serious study in progress by Maggu Peter" (of course i was the one who gave the idea for that since i was pissed that he refused to come for evening snacks ... and there was that famous aloo tikki for snacks that day which i loved and he loathed ... just because he wanted to finish a reading). This was then read by Mr. Rajas Raut ... who obviously took no time in spreading the news ... and hence our Mr. Peter was formally named "Maggu Peter". See Manish ... so think twice before you say no to me next time ... ESPECIALLY FOR ALOO TIKKI :P

Anyways ... all said and done .. I was really inspired by Manish .. I was. In fact today also .. when I look back at my winning the gold medal ... I guess the seeds for the same were laid in first term itself by Mr. Peter .. Thank you Manish .. I will be indebted to you for life .. for this ..

So I had started my readings early this time .. one obviously coz of above stated and secondly to get over Mom and Dad leaving .. Well things always do not go in our favour ... It was never meant to be a smooth ride for me. 2 days after they had left ... one morning papa called me to inform me that chachu had expired ... I kind of spent the next 2 days convincing myself that it wasnt because I forced all 3 .. mummy, papa and dhiraj to come with me ... and chachu was left alone even when he wasnt in the best of his health. The sad thing is I myself am not convinced till date ...

Memories from the golden years of my life (22)

Long time since I wrote my last blog. In fact I am yet to start over blogging in new year !! Such a shame. But anyways I will try to compensate for that. Or at least I am making a start now.

Well I had a good time when mummy and papa were here. Although both of them freaked out really when they saw the condition of my foot! It wasn’t a quarter as bad as it was earlier, but the huge infection had left its marks and it would have taken a blind man to ignore them! Anyways papa and mummy thanked God and I was reprimanded for not letting them know since so long and also never letting them know that it was that critical.

It was during those days when papa mummy were here that we went to the city and I went there for the first time in 6 weeks for enjoyment purpose. I don’t remember exactly but I think that we had taken the bus to Hazratganj from campus. On bus we met one of my favourite profs Abhijit Bhattacharya aka Golu. Papa wished him and he too responded back. Am not sure if he recognized papa as the one who had come with me to the interview (owing to the fact that I had my interview one day later than planned). Since all of us were new to the place and we were also not really aware how big / small this market was, we asked the bus driver only where can we go to eat. Basically I did not want to explore the market or for that matter any place in Lucknow as I had planned to pull up my socks in studies (some of the mid term examinations had gone really bad and Manish inspired me a great deal).

The driver pointed us to Nirulas – the same Nirulas which became a hot favourite of mine and Manish for its Chilli Chicken Tikka Pizza – Remember Manish? Anyways … that Nirulas was like far from where we were left by bus. 2-3 times we contemplated giving up but still carried on. Since Saharaganj was non existent that time, the place was really deserted. Finally we did reach there and had a great meal. When we started coming back we realized that we would miss the bus!! It was late! Anyways we finally managed to locate two rickshaws and hopped on to them. Rickshaw wallahs drive like maniacs in Lucknow. Comments, Manish ??? Finally we did manage to catch the bus back after some confusion.

The next day we went to Aliganj only and had food there. I was not really in mood to go out as mummy, papa and Dhiraj were leaving the day after. It was really great to come back to family from classes after missing them for like 6 weeks! Few things which are still etched in mind – all of them really liked the campus, the mess (and for its unlimited food which they found good surprisingly! And the Nescafe shop for its badam milk!) They left the next day and I was back to basics … I did feel lonely and sad for some time but then life at IIML is such that you can’t even brood for a long period of time. The pending work finally sucks you back into the system ….