approval

Trying to grab the professor’s attention and stand out in class – maybe you’ll get that extra edge on test-scores; hoping you didn’t put on too much weight during summer break – what would your friends think; screaming at the microphone and hoping you didn’t sound too bad – you are jamming with your band after a long break, you know; strutting about college smiling at acquaintances – do they see what a nice guy you are… People constantly seek the approval of others around them. Why, I find myself doing it all the time!
But, what I don’t understand is how does it matter what others think of me? Is it going to make me change my ways? Should it? Will I be a better person, living somebody else’s life? Is it really worth living up to (or even down to) somebody else’s expectations? Who or what decides how anybody should lead their lives? And if that decision is upon the individual then which is the “righteous path”?
So many questions and even the best attempts at answering them seem so feeble and so baseless, that I’m stuck with a million other questions in mind. Society suffocates me. I feel society’s cants drowning me in a sea of dubious morals; rules created with the sole rationale being the benefit of the creator. And, which is worse, I still cannot do without society.

stuck in my head… all evening!

How many ways to say I love you,
How many ways to say that I’m not scared.
With you by my side,
There is no denial.
I can’t wait for me…

Kids… don’t fight!!

On the 29th and 30th of last month, there was this conference organized by the Computer Society of India in Bangalore. I was asked to attend this conference, and in a nutshell, it was THE most mind-numbing conference I ever sat through. The theme was “IT in Defense”, and it was the fourth of its boring kind in the country.
There was one clear message that I did get from the eleven hours I spent in that auditorium. Through the maze of technicalities – NCOs and communication networks and motes – I could see millions of dead people, and the intellectual cream of the country, these people in front of me, sitting in an air conditioned hall and planning the murder of a million others. How to guide ICBMs to hit there targets more accurately, how to coordinate attacks so that the enemy wouldn’t know what hit them, how to kill, kill, KILL… What did I ever do to deserve a sponsorship from college to attend such a horrid sitting?!
Later, back in the confines of my own imagination, I sat thinking. And this is what came to mind: We have, as a human race, come a long way. We’ve dreamt things into existence, things scientists a century ago deemed impossible. We’ve given up bows and arrows and picked up automatic rifles; ballistae have given way to missiles. And through all of this, our collective mindset still remains the same: Although our tactics might have changed, we’re still fighting the same old wars. When will we ever grow up?

hmmm…

Is it just me, or is it that when you read what you’ve written you feel like… “Oh, crap”?

thought

Thought – the content of cognition, some say; a force beyond reckoning, I think.
This morning, when I woke up, I thought to myself: “Ah, another beautiful day…” Too bad I woke up to the chirping of the birds outside my window instead of the indignant beeping of the alarm clock: I was late, and the only thing that remained beautiful to me was the rays of the sun tugging away at the edges of my quilt!
How time controls our lives! I have always liked to think that I was in complete control of my life, and then something as abstract as time came into the picture. Abstract… now that’s a thought! No, it really is: doesn’t the adjective “abstract” mean “existing only in the mind”? Now that would lead me to believe that time only existed in our minds. Of course, we have the positions of the sun, longitudes, watches, and old grandfather clocks to keep track of time, but where does time really exist?
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that time is thought. It’s simple: Past + Present + Future = Time. What we remember in the back of our heads, is what we like to call the past. The conscious state of our minds is what we call the present. Our expectations, anticipations, become what we call the future. It all begins with a thought!