Another fornight to go.........

Well guys there's just another fortnight to go before we bid adieu to our college life and step out into the real world, so i thought why not try and express what my friends mean to me ( yes, yes, there will be a farewell post pretty soon now!).
You see I thought that I would have to write like two posts for this cause I am blessed to have so many friends with whom I share so many wonderful memories and times spent together. But now as I write this post I realize that there can be no words that can do justice to these everlasting bonds of friendships that we have built over these years. But never one to back down from a challenge I will try my best to do some good at least.
The story begins in the year 2004 when a 5ft-11inch guy of around 90 kgs. took admission in St. Francis Institute of Technology. Hailing from a family of IITians, all his friends from JC were either in IIT or in some NIT. Not exactly the academic, he nevertheless did get into one of the most promising colleges in Mumbai. The first day he went to college he was christened BG ('badi gaand'), and he thought he would take umbrage at being labelled so. But when he saw that the naamkaran was out of friendship and not spite, the bile growing in his mouth slowly vanished, only to be replaced by a smile. A smile he was not to loose for the next 4 years. And so life went on for the next four years (for details either read the next posts or wait for that guy's autobiography!).
He had entered SFIT as a little dissappointed, disillusioned person who was absoultely not sure of himself, unable to take any cracks at his physique, wanting out every second. There he met many people who would shape his life, prominent among them being Sid, Steff, Sujay, Maggie, Raj, Anush, Sushant, Anil, Colin, Deep, Ameya, Nishant, Sheetal, Kale, Saurabh, Ray, Indu, Kiru, Amu, Pandya, Piyush, Rao, Kedar, Kiddo, Anna, Tarun, Roy, Balya, Madtha,etc............... These are the people responsible for turning his life around for him. The guy will never be able to express his gratitude or mention his thanx to them for quite literaly helping him ressurect himself. He now stands supremely confident of himself, knowing that wether he goes right to the top of the tree or screws up his life royaly, these people will still call him BG. Its like that guy is on a life support system and they are his oxygen, something he absolutely cannot do without. The guys would like to thank each and every one of his friends for accepting him as he is, with all his faults and follies, with all his idiosynchronies, all is madness, all his haggu giri, for everything.

O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched.
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.

I just wanted to let all you guys know that I really really love you, no matter what happens!

cheers ppl,

moksha

PS: yah i know i've been writing serious posts for quite some time and there is a need to break out of the mould.............. :D

Trying to find Myself...........

Strange isn't it? You keep on groping about for some good, nice topic to blog on and then in an extraordinary act of serendipity someone just says something and you go like 'just wait a second....' ! One of my dearest friends was talking about the academic blemishes in life and said 'who am I?'. That set me thinking. In this blur of assignments and projects and God knows what else, we are leaving so much behind. Do we really know who we are?

I would really like everyone to at least once read Barrack Obama's Dreams from My Father. If you don't know Barrack Obama, you are probably from Mars. The book although an autobiography of sorts, tends to dwell a lot on the issues of racism and Obama's struggle to grasp his own true identity. I don't know why but somehow I could connect with his struggle, although he grew up in Hawaii whereas I grew up here in Mumbai.
Everybody has some nascent dreams in him or her. Its very rare that you find the choice to go along with your aptitude to follow what you want to; maybe you wanted to be rocker, maybe a railway-driver, an electrician, I remember telling my mom that one day I would become Superman! Try telling that to yourself one of these days! The point is that we have all become so engrossed in 'growing up', in doing what is right, we've left the child in us behind. The small child who wondered what made the moon disappear in the morning has been replaced by an 'adult' who does not give a damn about the moon anymore, only about securing a place at JBIMS.
The Matrix tells us that life is all about choice! Do you want the red pill or the blue pill ? All of us inadverently end up taking the latter. Where are the days when we were so carefree that time was not the 4th dimension, winning the cricket match was? Where are the days when choices were made not because of any considerations but just because we wanted it to be so. Gone are those days of glory, of hope, of despair, of boucing back, then of glory all over again!Life is cruel, it kills the child inside us and forces it to be an adult. Bound on all sides by the chains of responsibility, shackled and kept prisoner in the solitary confinement of academic exellence, it forces us to break down and submit, to tap out to its pressures.
But HOPE springs eternal my friends! With every dark cloud there is always the silver lining, no matter what! The fight is long and hard, but it will be fought nonetheless. Victory is no guarantee but the attempt will be made. I will find myself, cause deep down in the recesses of my heart, there is a small chamber. There at once protected as well as overshadowed by Life lives the child that was, no, is me. To get the child out of darkness into the light is the challenge that I have taken upon myself. Probably that is what life is all about.............
Finding yourself

Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
-Betty Friedan

YOU BETCHA!

cheers,
moksha

4 kickass days and a new year!

First and foremost, apologies to all my readers for not posting for soooo long. I owe this absence to a strange and unfortunate concatenation of circumstances!!! But I am back (with a vengeance!)

So what do you get when you add an IIT genius, a model for Talwalkar's before/after weight loss program, a bat and 2 fatsos ??????? One helluva reunion and 4 kickass days! (Ohh yah and throw in loads of food and a horse for good measure, along with one really kool aunty and a PIT STOP!)
"Samajhdar ko ishara kaafi hota hai!" -----> lol guys!
Arpit came down from New Delhi and despite having an Image Processing paper, I have never ever had so much fun in my entire life! Thanks man, all the credit goes to you. And Arpit,before you smirk even more, there will be no sentimental dialogs here! That stuff is reserved for the Red Box Cafe! Thanks for the treat buddy.......
Well, to sum it up, the last 4 days of December 2007 could probably be the most wonderful and memorable days of my life, unless our plan of a trip in May-June materializes........nothing will ever come close to that boss!

The year ended with a bang and heralded the onset of 2008. With 2 papers, 4 results and a Goa trip thrown in between, it sure resembles one hell of a slobber-knocker start! Well following is my list of resolutions for 2008:
1) Grow fitter
2) Stop using a scrap-all on Orkut...(they are such a pain in the a**!)
3) Grow thinner
4) Get into a good B-school
5) Reduce Fat
6) No semester studies...(as if I ever did them.....heheheheheh!)
7) Improve Stamina
8) Finish B.E Project
9) Stop eating junk food
and finally..............
10) Cherish all the moments that i spend with my friends and foes alike.......coz i really dont have any foes....and keep some crazy memories for the rest of my life.........

"its a long long road to tripeppary......................."

cheers
moksha

PS: Hope you have a smashing year ahead, may you get all your wishes fulfilled and your dreams come true........

Stay Hungry..........Stay Hungry

There has been a chain mail that has been circulating which has a text of Steve Jobs' address to the Stanford grads of 2005. For the un-initiated its by THE Steve Jobs! (think Apple...think Macintosh....think IPOD! yah thought that wud get ur attention! :D) Well the chain-mail ends with Stay Hungry Stay Foolish..........I would say Stay Hungry......Stay Hungry
heheheh! before all u hogs get any ideas please remember that this post isn't any frippery meant for the hoi-polloi.......its a serious one with a lot of weight behind it (not quite literaly!)
Well the raison de etre pour mon joi de vivre (yah i know pathetic french !) was the fact that i had a long and very fulfilling conversation with one of my veerryyy best friends about how life was changing in general. I was just reflecting upon the fact that most of the people in our batch were unable to do well in the GRE as compared to both our previous batch as well as their own calibre. Well i asked my friend as to why so many people found the GRE english to be so tough. Pat came the cryptic reply "Deke dekh boss! samjhega!". And then we were discussing life in general.
I man come on people, most of us are 21 about to start our REAL life and really most of us dont know wat are we going to do in the near future. I mean we cant go molesting marwadi for ever can we? (actually we can! :D). Seriously when we come down to think of it all of us will be shouldering some responsibility or the other in the days to come. For some it may be their parents, for others their siblings, and for some of the lucky ones their partners-soon-to-be spouse. Have we ever thought how drasticaly our life is going to change? Give it a thought and the results are nothing short of terrifying! I mean lets consider a scenario in which I want to do MS. I give my GRE do my MS get a good job....then what??? Have you thought about this. Anyways its not so simple as it sounds.....just ask anybody who has gone to the states.....xcept maybe madtha coz he is a dumbass.
Some of us are under financial strains, others under academic. Some people are under both! The time which was supposed to be our hey-day is turning into a hey! day. No longer can we be the same carefree selves of the 2nd and 3rd years. we have definitely changed and so it has to be, because the only constant in life is change. Maybe somewhere down the line we have missed something. In the transition from a 3rd year to a 4th year we have given up something. Otherwise how do you xplain being able to work 24 X 7 for 3-4 months for IRIS but not being able to put in 1 month of rigorous effort for our own GRE/CAT????
Which brings us to Mr. Jobs. He said Stay Hungry Stay Foolish. We are still foolish, but the hunger is missing. The hunger to prove to the world that IRIS can be done no matter wat is not translated into effort for GRE/CAT. We were hungry for IRIS to be successful but we are not hungry enough for us to be successful ourselves?? Its such a paradox. I think none of us realize that we have grown up. Boys have become men and the girls have become ladies. Soon we will not be protected by the chrysallis that is SFIT, wherever we go. So guys just put in ur 100%. This investment is not for today or tommorrow or the day after, its for our lives.
Because 10 years down the line none of should look back and say I could have done better
there's no bigger folly than that

STAY HUNGRY.......STAY HUNGRY
cheers ppl
mokhsa

PS: Are we going to GOA in Jan?? and wats with the jhol in the rajasthan IV i hear abt???