Monday, November 27, 2006

Get, Set, Go Dumb.

I wasn't on Karisma, to say 'Jet set go', But i was on a bike that equally stands up to it, 180 cc Pulsar DTSi. I was accelarating at 80kmph overtaking a city bus. And i was thinking ' Why does maths , which i believe to be the only area to give singular definite solution, also have anomalies like (-)*(-) =(+)*(+)= +. (I believe this particular equation does a lot of difference not only in maths but also in philosophy of life and perceptions of people, which i would discuss in another article).I was trying to figure out more about that anomaly.Thats when my dumb day started.

'Screeeeeeeeeeeeeech', i pulled the brakes hard, there was a guy right in the middle of the road, pushing his bikeaccross the road. Its funny that , everything happened in a split second. I felt as if i was in Dhoom2, but i couldnt make it, i mean i couldnt make my bike stand on a single tyre. Instead, the obvious happened.I couldnt control the bike and turned the handle and laws of physics acted quickly and threw me flat on to the ground, banging my head with helmet onto the ground and helmet flew off my head. The first thing i looked for was , the bus i overtook could have been right behind me. That would have been the best part of the adventure, i would be like tom cruise in MI withthe helicopter blade stopping right infront of his eye.

Fortunately , that didnt happen. My left leg had scratches at regular intervals, one on hip, one on knee and the poor dead thumbnail died as it broke. The guy who catalysed all this was made the scape goat for the situation.I wondered the other scenario, i mean , if i hadnt braked or didnt turn myself down to ground, i would have banged into him and damaged some of his valuable organs, then , i would be the culprit, he would be the victim. Funny.

Now, I didnt tell you that i was actually going for an exam.So, i got myself back on to my feet and moved on with my bike. It didnt get a single scratch.Now for the dumber part, the exam was supposed to start at 10 am, which meant we were supposed to get the question paper at 9:55 am. I was there in the exam hall at 9:30 am and the question paper along with the answer sheet was already there at my seat. The poor college that was conducting the exam, couldnt afford a seal to it. How funny, the college is a premier management institute.within five minutes , i was finished with the details in the answer sheet and my idle mind started to turn into devil's workshop, and i thought, i will just take a peep into the paper and find out which section is what. I tried to do that by folding each page at the top right corner. I could just make out what each section was and i was already into guilt. I stopped it and was looking around, i had a girl beside me on the same bench, the right kind of girl you would like to have during an exam, shewould just not distract you anyway. Now , i started to see the real world.
She spread her question paper wide open and started reading the passage. 'God, she might get debarred for that' I thought.
The guy behind me was happily flipping through every page.One more guy in the room was nicely working out the quant section.
I know you would be asking -'where is the invizilator'. She was there, she wass right there in the real world, she was coming to each one and taking their signatures. Now for the dumbest part.

I was tempted to cheat when the world around me was so skewed. i thought i will do it intelligently. I started to read the passage from my bench mates paper and thought to myself,'i could never be proved wrong as i didnt open mine'.The invigilator came to our desk, the girl beside me didnt give a damn, she was concentrating. The invigilator took the sign and moved, it was the same even with the guy who was doing calculations on the paper.I felt that i was dumb enough to use my criminal brain and stopped looking into her paper, neither did i look into my own.Meanwhile there was this guy infront of me, who came late and is very tensed. he couldnt fill up his details fast. he was getting stuck with everything. He was scratching his head and trying to figure out something. Out of curiosity, i peeped into his paper, he then figured out and marked SEX-M.Now, thats what pressure does to someone. Now, the joke of the day, At 9:55, a bell rang, a guy from room,(i was happy to figure out there are worst dumbos than me)asked the invigilator ' Can we start the exam?' and she said 'no, you should start at the next ring thats at 10'. God i should tell you how i laughed, i laughed like hell. though i didnt laugh loud.This is the way,the world goes. You need to learn it every day.

I wouldnt say, i came out clean from it, without cheating. I was tempted. I did it to an extent and couldnt carry it through because for me, Guilt is proportinal to cube of the degree of a mistake. I stopped it at the beginning. But the thing to learn, In the fast life, rules are needed to protect the objectivity of something, Otherwise, every one defines there own boundaries of good and bad, like i defined mine :)

Friday, November 24, 2006

Requiem For a Dream

This is something , i would never like to write. I thought, it would be better to write it off and forget it. Thats too much of a dream. The movie 'Requiem for a dream' , is one of the most realistic movies , i had ever seen. Its a movie which had taken me into into a trance for some time and made me lose my sleep for 2 days. Its been almost 4 to 5 months, since i saw that movie. Its coming back to me now, just because , it seems i have become part of the reality part of the movie- Thats about Dreams, Obsessions , Memories.

Its impossible to find anyone without any one of the above. For me there is one thing. Its the CAT. To be honest, its neither the IIMs , nor the MBA. Its the CAT. The Common Admission Test had been my dream for quite some time, which later turned into an obsession and now its just a memory. Giving CAT three times, i would call myself a CAT veteran, i know there are seniors to me. I can claim , that if i train 10 memebers for the exam, atleast 5 would pass the exam for sure. Now the funny thing is, i couldnt do it for atleast one out of the three times. Thats what dreams turned to obsessions do to a person. They turn the smallest to the biggest, lightest to the heaviest and so on.I dont have anyone to blame on this but me. I think i can encapsulate the whole problem of mine in just one line, as my friend said about me, 'Your strength lies in the fact that you know your strengths, your weakness lies in the fact that you know your strengths too well'.

It hadnt been easy to me to digest the fact that i have been performing underpotential (thats based on my criteria). At the same time, i believe, i can do a lot things, which i havent done before. But i have a silly problem- I am very lazy. I had almost 10 oppurtunities to make ads within the company. I never did one. I had an oppurtunity to make a movie in the company. I didnt do it. I mean i just postponed it and then gave it up. Inspite of all this, i am comparably at a higher position than many, because , i have a thought that is different. But i keep myself at a low position because, as i feel , its a dreadful mistake to keep a thought as a thought. I still have something to claim though, I made a movie, and its a good one.

Now, whats the fuss about not able to crack an exam. 1)The ego-its difficult to accept failure, when you strongly feel you are eligible for success, that too thrice, one needs to have a truck load of patience and courage. 2)The society- Its so difficult to face people after a failure, i had been doing an imposition saying to everyone ' it didnt go well' for three years. And there are hundred ways in which people react to it., some sympathize, some empathise, some rule me out, some underrate me, some think high of me- The problem is nothing helps, as long as you are obsessed.3)The requiem - If you didnt get what requiem means, its a song sung at the funeral. When thing like dream/obsession dies, the requiem starts for itself and it stays there like a memory, like a song in a loop mode. It takes time to forget it.

I dont have solutions for it. But i know the typical sayings 'Life goes on' and "Nothing is the end of the world", and 'whatever happens is for the good'.All i can say now is that there is a long time to know the truth behind those sayings, infact there is a life time. But there is some thing that i lost faith in "Hard Work leads to success", maybe smart work does.

PS: Dont watch Requiem for a dream if you have a weak heart. And dont watch alone. Its neither a horror movie nor a thriller movie, its a drama , true drama of life.