My Mind Speaks

Two months are left before I bid the final Good Bye to my student life at IIT Roorkee. People say that these last few days are the coolest (well, I don't know how is the word defined) and most memorable days of the B-Tech life. One doesn't have much to do, very few classes, no tension of exams, B-Tech project which one never bothers about, and lots of vella (free) time. A person might simply love this and when I was not living this sort of life i.e. last year in the 6th or 7th semester, I used to dream about these days and wanted to live them as soon as possible. But, as of today, I don't really enjoy this kind of idleness. Yes, I am restless and I need something to get myself involved. There are movies and there are books with which I pass my time but that too, at times, seems boring and monotonous. 

So, do I want these days to end so that I can fly away from this place, which I hated a lot at times and loved a lot at other (for different reasons, of course)? Not actually!! But the problem is that I even don't want to stay at this place either. Because I know that perhaps I am not even going to like the job which I am going to take after passing out of this place. I know I sound confused and I certainly am. I don't know what to do with my life or perhaps, I know but I don't want to take my life in that direction coz I am afraid. Afraid due to a variety of reasons. Afraid because of thinking too much about my future. Some people say that it's good to be confused because a confused state of mind makes one think. And when one thinks, one evolves. But at times I think that life is not about certain beliefs and principle to follow. Every aspect of life is subjective and something which provides a solution in one situation can't be as effective in other. 

At times I even think that it would have been better if I had accepted what came to me as a gift from life without complaining (read thinking). And at times I think about the necessity or importance of education which I had till now. Ignorance seems to be a great bliss then.

Does education actually liberate us? Or what we got was just some piece of information, gathered from here and there, and bundled together?

Of Forgery & 500 Rupee Notes!!

A very interesting thing happened today morning. I was sitting in my papa’s office and reading a book and then all of a sudden my uncle, with excitation, handed out a few crisp 500 rupee notes to my father. It took no time for me to make out that the notes were forged and my uncle, owing to his experience with handling notes, had found the ‘truth’ about them just while counting them. And then, out of curiosity, I took those notes from my father and began scrutinizing them. And to my dismay, the notes were exactly the same as the original notes except for two things. The paper was a bit thicker than that of the original note; however I could notice this only after I was told by my father to feel the thickness of the note. And the golden thread, where RBI is written in small-sized letters, was broken.

Well, there is nothing so surprising about coming across a few forged bank notes. One gets to see many of them at different times. But what was astonishingly painful about those notes was the fact that these, even after being ‘exposed’, were not destined to turn into ‘ashes’ (as it is a general practice to destroy the forged currency)?. The client who had given those notes to my uncle was sad that he was cheated by someone else but the other person accompanying him kept on solacing him by saying that he would make those forged notes ‘run’ in the villages. And this made me ask the other guy:
Agar aap pakde gaye to kya hoga? (What if you get caught using these notes?)
To this he replied:
Gaaon me kaun pakdega? Ye to bahut aram se chal jaayega gaaon dehaat me. (Nobody would find out in the villages. These notes would be just perfect if used in a village.)

And this made me think about the narrow mindedness of that person. Just to save a few thousand rupees, he would actually commit the crime of using the forged notes, and not by his intelligence but by taking advantage of a poor and uneducated villager. But then I thought, what if these notes some back to him in some or the other? Will his cycle go on forever and there would be nobody who would choose to lose his few five hundred rupee notes and save the country from a series of false transactions and dwindling beliefs? For notes are not just pieces of paper, those are the words of trust passed on from one person to the other with each transaction.

He later told that some people in the village have the business of buying forged notes at half the price (written on the note) and using them at different places (and thus getting a full 100% on the investment). I don’t know if the police knows about it or no and why the villagers have not reported this to police. And do people really use this service of selling fake notes?

And that man told further:
Ye note to tilak me de dena chahiye!! (These notes are well suited to be given as dowry.)
This sentence made me think whether the person is so selfish that he would give fake notes to his own son-in law or this was a remark from a man tired and trodden by the ill system of dowries. Whatever the case may be, what made me sad was the fact was that the person represented a very general individual in the society and when he was speaking, it were the words and beliefs of the society. And if a society as such degraded moral values, the future indeed seems bleak, no matter whatever growth percentage we achieve in our GDP.

Suddenly, it struck to me that the person might not be educated. But then I asked myself: Does it really matter whether the person was educated or not? Would the attitude towards the notes have been different in either case?

Rahul Dulhaniya Le Jayega

I am at home after about five months. And I am thoroughly enjoying the ‘tension-free’, ‘nothing to do life’. And equally enjoyable is the constant supply of food going inside my stomach. These days, since I am very much occupied by ‘The Shadow Lines’ by Amitav Ghosh these days, I don’t really need to sit in front of the TV and pass my time. And as a result, I have really lost any kind of interest in the TV this time at home (which sometimes surprises my mother). Anyway, something interesting caught my attention today!! And it was…….oh, please don’t wait for it………..it was “Rahul Dulhaniya Le Jayega” (Rahul will take away the bride)!!

After the death of Pramod Mahajan (who was Rahul’s father) and the drama which followed, Rahul had gained some sort of celebrity status among the celeb-hungry junta of the country. And what could have been a better opportunity to raise the celeb-status in the world of reality shows?? But what baffles me is how is this show still running and who are the people actually watching it!! There is a guy in mid-thirties who is already a divorcee and there are many girls, some of them as young as twenty, dreaming him as their future husband, making plans of wedding with him, and then going to honeymoon and what not!! Well, there is nothing wrong in dreaming of a marriage, love and other things but in that case the person concerned knows who the spouse to be is. It’s just some kind of pagalpan (madness) making such plans with the person you are not sure enough to marry with. In fact, spouse would not be the right word. Someone whom you win after a contest to make him/her as your spouse is no less than a buy and sell of commodity to me, it’s just that the money, here, is replaced by the efforts to win the competition.

The most funny (read fake) part of it is the different kinds of dates on which our groom to be Rahulji goes with his ‘desperate to be brides’. How can the girls actually behave that the guy loves them when they know that he is taking other girls on the similar dates? And isn’t it the person with whom you go on a date adds thrill to it and not the place or exhilaration associated with it? And look at what Dimpy, one of the (un)lucky final three contestants, says after going on an airplane date wih Rahul Mahajan:

Main Rahul se shadi karna chahti hoon taaki wo main aage bhi aisi dates pe ja sakoo.

(I want to marry Rahul Mahajan so that I get an opportunity to go on such dates in the future too.)

And Rahul is looking for his true love in this girl!! Funny, isn’t it? But what can Rahul do or even the producers of the show do when such crap sells in our country? Till there is an audience, there would be crap coming up and killing the time.

Some would say that there was the same drama during ‘Rakhi Sawant ka Swaymwar’ too!! But then everyone knew beforehand that Rakhi is a propagandist and the show is being made for some time pass on TV. And Rakhi, thanks to her exposure to camera glare, knows how to act or even try to act. Rahul didn’t have any such advantage also!! And the junta is bored with one swayamwar already. Difficult to digest another one!! We need better stuff, TV walon!!