Saturday, November 22, 2008

Peace

Peace

Peace, a thought with a noble sense
Nowadays, just a tattered fence
Which sought to change the world
Into a livable place
But is now waiting for someone,
To give it, the coup de grace.

Great leaders fought for it for years
And saw a glimmer of hope
Another few, took only minutes
To make it a worldwide joke.
Many people used it,
Like caste and creed
And disposed it off as they pleased.

The real meaning behind it is forgotten
It is just an instrument,
Used for means so rotten
And now I wonder
Whether the time has come
To let peace, rest in peace?
-- Me

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Looking back...

Even though I'm still short on time, I realised I do best when I'm facing a deadline :) , so here goes.

Doing my usual timewasting, I stumbled across an invite to my (high) school's alumni meet in January. To people who don't know, I'm from the Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram, a name whose fame is rivalled probably only by my other alma mater, IIT Delhi. Ya you will obviously disagree, but who cares, it's my blog, not yours. And when I read the date, and a comment by my close friend, I realised it's gonna be 6 years I've been an alumni dipsite (ya that's what we're called). And that's what made me realise it's been that long. In many ways I'm that same person I was then, in many ways, I'm very different. On the outside, I look much the same, probably a little geekier, some side effects of IIT there, heck some time back my nursery teacher recognized me without breaking a sweat! . Inside, dunno, I'm much the same, but very different. Whenever I look back I'm always amazed by how naive, how innocent I used to be. I guess we all do, that's why the cliche (ugh! never knew I'd say that) "the good old days" exists. People who keep track of me through this blog are likely to imagine me as this depressed guy, I don't usually write when I'm happy, I just enjoy that time.

Getting back, the past is such a wonderful thing. People remember their school life as a horror or a wonderful ride, it's sorta difficult to be lukewarm about it. I guess it's a mixture of both, else there won't be million dollar industries to cash in on it. To tell you frankly, I was never one of the "cool" kids. I never regretted it, even when the maiden mobile movie enterprise from my school came out :P . Maybe especially then. If you don't know what I'm talking about and are from India, what world were you in! I was kind of the archetypical studious boy, minus the specs for most of my school time, and as I'd like to believe, minus some of the geekiness. Frankly, I'm a lot geekier now than I was then, but then, IIT does that to you. The simple fact is that when I look back, I remember all these wonderful people I met, all the experiences I had. I'd never wish to change any of it, who I was then made me who I am today, and I'm pretty happy with that. The funny thing is how I used to imagine, that 6 years down the line after passing out from school, I'd be set, decided on what I wanted to do with my life, and actually doing it. Now I realise, I only have a vague idea of what I want to do with my life, and I'm not quite there, and probably we never do. If we do get to where we want to go, that makes you lose your purpose to live, which is probably the worst thing that can happen to anyone. I guess the best we can do is to always remember that child inside of us. That's why, I guess, they say, no matter where you go, don't forget your roots, where you come from. I still remember myself as a wide eyed little kid, holding my mom's hand, entering the school on my first day, as I do my last. I still remember entering IIT for the first time, and leaving it for the last time. I guess I'll always remember coming to UNC, and definitely leaving it too. I've had some good, some bad, and some truly wonderful memories, made my best friends at these places and had some of the best times of my life. If I give credit to who or what has made me who I am, these places and the people I met there, come second only to my family. These places will forever remain enshrined in my head as those wonderful places, which regular places in this world aspire to be, but never achieve, inhabited by such wonderous people whom even fiction cannot match, with memories to match. These places, ladies and gentlemen, are my heaven, and forever they shall be. In the words of the mughal emperor Humayun, "Gar barruye zameen asto, hameen asto, hameen asto, hameen asto", which roughly translates to, if there is a heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Life

This is one more of my old poems, while I still am plagued by lack of time

Life
You can be surrounded by friends, yet be all alone,
You could have won the greatest prize, yet lost it all,
You could be the happiest person in the world, yet find no reason to smile,
You could have known a person a lifetime, yet find a stranger in front of you everyday.

You could have seen all the world has to offer, yet not seen anything at all,
You could be the richest guy alive, yet poorer than the beggar on the street,
You could be the most powerful & influential person, yet be the most helpless.

Life is not about what you choose, but what you do with what has been given to you,
It’s about leaving your past behind and think about the present, yet not drift into the future,
It’s not just about pondering over who you are, it’s about putting those thoughts into action,
Because you are unchangeable, irreplaceable, and so are those around you,
Because where there is good, there is evil, and it’s not in your power to root out all of it,
But what is, is to overcome it & look at the bright side of life,
Because you have but one life, so put it to good use, and relax and leave the rest to life.

-- Me