Random Ramblings

When I came to this place almost seven months back, I knew it is going to be tough, but I never thought that it would be such a big battle for survival. But now when I look at my result and celebrate about having ‘survived’ the system (as on today, as I know not what lies few months down the line !), though not in a great health, I often think of those who haven’t. Here, the system is quite strict and also at one level though it is flexible, when it comes to discipline and academic standards it is as hard as a rock. In the relative grading system F is the lowest and D is the next. If in a year you accumulate 2 Fs, or 5 Ds or 1 F and 3 Ds; you have to repeat a year. And few Profs love to give a few Ds and Fs. There have been quite a few deserving candidates who are in the “red zone”, but there are many who don’t deserve to be there. This may be my personal opinion but this is reiterated by probably the entire batch. Passing marks is 35, yet many end up getting 33 or 34 and miss the

It was few minutes to the year 2007. I was all alone at my seat waiting for the train packed with all kinds of people to move. Meanwhile I was all set to welcome the New Year with a copy of business world and a packet of Lays. Then from somewhere came this small kid of hardly 5 -6 years asking for something to eat. Usually indifferent to them, I gave him few pieces of the chips which otherwise would have had been converted to fats shortly. The train moved, and I continued to read about the who‘s who of the corporate world. But the picture of the kid begging couldn’t leave me. It kept crossing my mind again and again. How different is their world from that of ours. In fact we cannot probably stretch our imagination to exactly know what their world is like. What may seem too trivial to us might be something of tremendous joy to these people. For us a piece of bread may be just another thing, but for them it might be life for one more day. We may, at times take survival for granted, but

/*Maybe some fans of Indian culture wouldn’t like it*/ Since childhood we have been fed upon a steady diet of greatness of Indian culture, values, beliefs, sanskars etc. Some of them are good, but is it all that great, or even somewhere as close as what is taught to us? For example we worship Goddess Laxmi, the Goddess of wealth and are taught to believe that we must respect wealth. We even celebrate Laxmi Puja which is the biggest festival among Hindus. Yet, people continue to avoid taxes and show utter disregard for the rules and obviously with a belief that “sab chalta hai” People over here are so obsessed with marriage that if at a certain age and that point of time you don’t want to fall for it, you are frowned upon and looked down upon. And most of the time it is the elders in the family who take such decision, and the approval of the one actually getting married is merely a token or somewhat sort of a puppet. And if at a certain age you are not married or not planning to get ma