Bliss.

Bliss.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

The Boy Who Dared

Situated on the fringes of the village, the house was shaded by coconut trees and hydrated by a clear stream flowing with a quiet but determined pace. The household was well known, since most of the surrounding agricultural lands were theirs. It was a joint family, with most of the members engaged in the prosperous 'family business'.

His birth did not elicit any surprise. His horoscope was studied, then discarded, for it didn't matter. His future was already decided. He would study to a satisfactory level and join the family as an apprentice.

Little did they know that Fate had ordained differently for this young man.

He seemed different from the very beginning. Different to the extent that it caused his parents much concern. Bright, confident, arrogant, extraordinary, outrageous, curious was how his teachers described him. Among his friends,he was the ringleader, with a growing set of followers to his clan.

They knew. They knew that this youngster threatened to obliterate the thin fabric that held the family together. A meeting was held. A consensus was reached. The boy was too good to remain in the village. He was sent away to study in a bigger town. But before that, he was told that he would always have to return to his family after his education.

Years passed, times changed, dreams were conceived, determination emerged, and there were battles to be won back home.

It was a tough job. One boy, against a family opposing his career, his choice and everything he Believed in. To them, it seemed ridiculuous. To him, there was no other option. He had made up his made and nothing could alter his conviction.

In the end he won, for the simple reason that his passion was unfaltering, immeasurable and impregnable to the lure of fame or finance.

It was a new beginning for him. People from various locations, backgrounds, circumstances; with a common goal, a common desire and a common passion.

However, life wasn't smooth sailing anymore. The goals that he had lay in shambles. He was disillusioned  by the approach, the lack of creativity, the lack of application, the monotonous memorization that was expected of him.

Friendships blossomed. The occasional enemy was obliterated and a small but a definite change was seen.

His dream was his pride. His greatest strength, he felt was in his ambition. It always elicited surprise and awe. A certain regard for him, a silent applause for his courage to dream big. To dream about the unimaginable. About what seems beyond our reach.

But it all changed one evening. A shock that left him angry and hurting. Angry that his castle in the air was destroyed, hurt that it seemed ridiculous and saddened because there was some truth in what she had said.

But to laugh at what he had cherished since time immemorial? That seemed unbelievable. The dejected feeling persisted. It gnawed steadily until he deciced to prove that it was possible.

Years passed, people moved on and life trudged along familiar lines For  most people. After a point, a person is content with what life has offered to him and operates along a standard predictable pattern; oscillating between work, family and friends. Very few end up as what they originally aspired to be and fewer people realize their childhood dreams.

2020. A developed India. Atleast that was the general procrastination a decade ago.

He smiled to himself as he scanned his Acceptance letter. Sitting in his Boston apartment, he couldn't believe the miracle even though several months had elapsed. Not a day passed without him recollecting the day that changed everything. He wondered what had become of her. After all, she had distant ambitions too. But he never ventured to find out. Somethings were better left as the sweet mysteries of life.

It isn't everyday that Harvard is gracious enough to accept you into its privileged folds. And neither did he ever know that she was just across the bridge.





Note: The above story is my first story this year and its coming after a very long gap, so my apologies for any syntactical,logical, grammatical errors. The above piece is fictional and any resemblance to any persons living or dead are mere similarities and are purely coincidental.

The writing is different from my usual type and I suspect that the Jhumpa Lahiri book I read is partly responsible for that...

Adios.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Action Replayy

Listening to a song from the above movie right now. ^  But this is appropriate on so many levels. I think.

Weekends follow a standard pattern here in college. Atleast, its been that way for a while now.

Saturday is Laundry day followed by Sleep/ Novels/ Chat session and post this is the customary visit to the library. Irrespective of saturday's sleep pattern, Sunday is basically a picnic in the library! (Intercepted by plenty of power naps, snack breaks and finally concluded prematurely due to a false sense of 'saturation')

So in reality, Monday evenings are relatively 'lax' and today for example, was spent surprisingly well. Doing nothing, that is! But on the contrary, I have a long night ahead with record work piling up at an alarming rate.

Sometimes I wonder, what is the point? Why covet what will never belong to us? Why desire for the things that will never a part of our lives? Is it hope? Hope against all hope that somewhere deep down, maybe, just maybe...?

The mere realization of this fact makes life simpler. But is simple always the best thing? What is life without imagination, hope and creativity? A demented living, to be brutally honest.

Feeling OMG listening to these songs right now:


  • 7 Things: The song and the lyrics actually used to make me teary-eyed. I can only LOL now. I was young, naive and dreamy. I wonder if I will ever be that way again. It just seems so unlikely that I will. And I guess that's a bittersweet feeling.
I guess Sanjana (Hassan)'s quote about fruits is very apt and elegant. :-)

  • Chasing Cars (Snow Patrol): :'( Enough said. For now.
  • Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Quiz competition with Vikas, Ashita, Varun K, soaking up in the rain like carefree kids.

Constantly reminding myself about priorities, goals and focus tends to get tiring and I sometimes wonder if I'm being a killjoy and stonehearted but for now, its essential.
Guilt is similar to termite infestation in woodworks. It gnaws at your insides with a vicious strength, leaving you feeling hollow and weak from pain. An outer facade of placidity is maintained but there is no substance, nothing within to justify the seemingly solid exterior. It is so efficient in destroying you that the slightest pressure leaves you crumbling down in despair.

Cya.
It's going to be long night ahead.
I am a confused, caffeine intoxicated kothi.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Keep Holding On.

I'm home.

Here's something interesting:





Have trouble remembering where you parked the car? A double shot espresso could help.
A new study in the journal Nature Neuroscience suggests that the same amount of caffeine you'd find in a grande latte can enhance long-term memory in humans.
"We report for the first time a specific effect of caffeine on reducing forgetting over 24 hours," Michael Yassa, a professor of brain science who recently moved his lab from Johns Hopkins University to UC Irvine, said in a statement. 

To test how caffeine effects memory in the human brain, researchers at Yassa's lab at Johns Hopkins recruited 60 people who have a relatively low daily caffeine intake. Subjects were asked to look at 200 pictures of everyday objects like a chair, or a coffee mug on a screen and tell the researchers whether the object was an indoor item or outdoor item.

"It didn't matter what they said, we just wanted them to pay attention to the pictures," said Yassa.
Five minutes after the volunteers completed the task, half of them were given 200 milligrams of caffeine in the form of two small pills. The other half were given two placebo pills that looked exactly the same. The study was double blind, so neither the subjects nor the researchers knew who got the caffeine pills and who got the placebos.

The next day, the subjects were asked to look at another set of images and identify which pictures they had seen the day before, which pictures were new, and which pictures were similar, but a little different to the ones they had already seen. For example, maybe a coffee cup that was a different color, or a chair photographed from a different angle.

While both groups had the same success rate when it came to identifying pictures that were the same and pictures that were different, the volunteers who received the caffeine pills were better at remembering that a picture was similar, but a little different to one they had seen before.

"It is a much more detailed memory," said Yassa. "If all they remembered was 'coffee mug,' they would say the picture was the same. But they were remembering the exact coffee mug they saw."
Scientists call this type of memory -- when we can determine that something is similar but not exactly the same as something we've seen or done before -- "pattern separation memory." It is the type of memory we use at the end of a work day when we remember where we parked our car in the morning, rather than yesterday morning, or the morning before.

To see if more caffeine lead to better memory boosts, the researchers tried the trial again with 300 miligrams of caffeine. The results were about the same as with the 200 miligram dose, and some of the test subjects reported some uncomfortable side effects from the increased caffeine levels including nausea and jitters.

Yassa  said that there is no magic in taking caffeine five minutes after something that occurs that you need to remember. "Before or between or after or during, it would all work," he said. "The only thing I would say is don't drink caffeine to pull an all-nighter. Sleep is really good for memory, but if you are going to drink coffee to stay up you won't get the boost from either one." 

The next step for Yassa and his team is to figure out why caffeine helps with pattern seperation memory. One potential explanation is that caffeine increases arousal levels, which can be associated with better memory. 

"Other scientists have found that when animals are shocked or scared or stimulated in some way they have better memory," Yassa told the Los Angeles Times. "We know that with caffeine your heart rate can go up and there is jitteriness, and other symptoms of arousal too. Maybe these moderate doses of caffeine can boost our memory without these other side effects."



And here's something more:

By Tom McKay  
It's not all good news: Most Americans drink about 300mg of caffeine a day, ingesting the compound from coffee, tea, and soft drinks. About 80% of Americans are users, but only a small proportion are "true addicts."
Caffeine can be so addictive that in a study which gave addicts a placebo or a caffeine pill, most of the ones who received the placebo "were functionally impaired for a day and a half. One person who had a manufacturing job made costly errors. Another could not bring herself to go to work. Another spent the afternoon in a dark office with her head on her desk. One woman called off her child's birthday party."
While many studies have linked caffeine to positive health effects like reduced liver disease and suicide risk, others have found negative side effects like disrupted sleep patterns and altered heart function.
So sip away, but be aware it might not be great for you.

So on Monday, I wrote the Anatomy test, packed my bags and headed out of college. I boarded the first bus I saw, a nearly tilted private bus with the people clinging on to any possible appendage that would take them to their destination. With forces acting on you in all possible directions, I assumed a classy pokerface and prayed fervently that I wouldn't crash into the group of men standing on either sides of me or lose my belongings or any other possible horrors. Thankfully, I made it to the Bus stand in one segment and I ended up not paying (since I had no change and the conductor (having seen the trauma I'd been through in the 20 minutes inside that bus) decided that I didn't have to pay after all). I booked a ticket to Bangalore and waited for the next 45 minutes in the bus stand, perusing a copy of India Today.
Around 12:00, The blessed bus arrived and I got myself some lunch and made myself comfortable. 15 minutes later, a sappy Kannada movie began playing, and I plugged into Grey's A on my tab whilst having some lunch. But alas, it wasn't meant to be. A defect in my vestibule and possibly in the semicircular canals caused me much discomfort and nausea but after a while, I convinced myself that it was just a figament of my imagination.
Watching the passing landscape and listening to music, I felt a tranquility I hadn't felt in a long time. This peace lasted for a short while only, but I will always remember this journey. My first solo journey.
..............






Once upon a time, I had dreams. Different dreams. :)











'Young and Beautiful' by Lana Del Ray. All over again. The lyrics. *Gosh*

Byeee.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

I Deserve Better.

I can't and WON'T let this happen to me. I have a plan, a goal and a dream to achieve.
Ugh.

This is it. It's going to be hard but I don't care. It's for the best.
I need some peace. I need my space. I want to be happy with the people I trust.


Monday, January 6, 2014

January Jitters.

Clearly, I'm hallucinating. Nothing seems to be okay. Aloofness is in the air. I've built complex castles of confusion in my cerebrum and I don't know what's for real and what's a part of my vivid imagination.

The only thought that's reverberating in my brain is that I'm probably not a bad person and that there's always a silver lining in every cloud.

Here's a beautiful line from The Siege (which I finished at 2:00AM today):
'Whatever God has for you, accept it rather than fighting it. To accept it is to accept God.'

So I finished the book. Eerily disturbing and chilling. And normal citizens of a bustling metropolis endured such tough times. The book leaves you thinking, about the uncertainty of our lives, our fates and the little time that we have to make our lives worthwhile.

So the first internals has gone okay. The ride henceforth will probably be steeper and more rugged.

At the end of the day, it is virtually impossible to make everybody happy. And remain happy with yourself too, in the process.

I need a Yang in my life. Assuming I'm Meredith. *cough* Shepherd? *cough*. Lol.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

New Year, New Beginnings.

Before I propagate my manifesto for 2014, let me just update you on the finer aspects of the last few days.

  1. 26th December: Dad comes to college, Me becomes excited emotional fool. Permission to go home denied. Hyperventilation and Lacrimal Glands start working overtime. Permission granted. "Long Drive Pe Chal" with music and college talk. Reach Bangalore, hunt for Bhopie ki ghar in the semidarkness of JP Nagar, finally make it. Hog on Pizza after months. Chat about hostel life, freedom (in Bhopal) and the lack of it (in Shimoga), academics and the surprising joy of it, friends and close friends, sponge bobs in Shimoga and dignified debaters in Bhopal (*wink wink*). I felt reconnected with a part of myself which I thought I'd lost after I joined medicine. Turns out it still exists, surreptitiously hidden in the recesses of my brain.
  2. 27th December: Bid adieu to the baboon by name Sanjana and head home. I was pleasantly surprised and touched by Di ki Christmas Tree (all decked up with Ma's help) and she'd made greeting cards too! Rest of the day was a sleepy haze and evening we went shopping in BSK, had good ol' Golgappa and added a few more specimens to my jewelry collection.
  3. 28th December: Morning session passed without much ado. Oh yeah, I got an ECG, a Sonographic scan, post and preprandial blood tests, and an X-ray too. Shockingly enough, I have a near perfect report. Post lunch we headed to Vnagar where I convinced Ajji that she needn't feel so sad for me and she is convinced that she convinced me to give up on coffee. Sleepover at Atthe Mane where we stayed up much later than we ever had. :)
  4. 29th December: Sunday began on a sleepy note, was interjected by ample sleep in the noon and culminated with Dinner at The Village, Central JP Nagar. It was a risk that I took by suggesting this place, but luckily we all had a great time and a lot of different dishes at our own pace (which is rarely the case in most restaurants these days)
  5. 30th December: I can't seem to remember how the mornings pass. I mean, seriously! Evening Ma and I watched Dhoom 3. Watching movies has become a surprisingly fun event with Amma. I rarely go with anybody else either. The rest of the evening was mildly unpleasant but fairly overshadowed by the movie.
  6. 31st December: Morning was doing Divya duty for a while, shopped for survival food for the hostel, met Maidha and we went to Sapna where I purchased:
    1. The Krishna Key: Ashwin Sanghi
    2. The Tell Tale Brain: VS Ramachandran
    3. The Lowland: Jhumpa Lahiri
    4. The Red Queen: Philippa Gregory
    5. An Anatomy book which I think will be useful for me.

      Plus, Mama has lent his book 'The Siege: The Attack on the Taj' so I'm really hoping to get back to my reading habit when I get back to College. Primarily this is another way of spending my time usefully when I'm not studying or sleeping. I MUST make time for reading these books (plus the books that I brought last time!), even if it means lesser networking with friends.

      Each time I come home, I realize that I've stagnated to some extent and I try my best to overcome this. Here's to a lot a more reading in '14! (Academic and non-Academic)


      After book shopping for myself and a curiously docile Divya we headed to PH for the usual hogfest and it was a hearwarming feeling to hang out with my beloved Sheepie once again (It reminded me that insanity is a very normal phenomenon that strikes the best of us! :P )

      Post this, I came home, began the arduous process of packing my bags and retired to Dreamland as usual. Later in the night, we headed to PV for that rare family dinner that passed quite eventfully (thankfully). Good food and good conversation makes for a great time :)

      And thus, I began 2014 while putting Di to sleep, convincing her that the fireworks that she could hear were infact her own imagination and that all little kids were in bed and she should go back to sleep too. :)

Here's hoping for a better tomorrow, good health and much happiness to anybody reading this. May this year take you one step closer to achieving your goals and realizing your dreams, May this year give you the endurance to overcome the tough times, enjoy the good times and work for betterment. 

On a personal note, I hope I can be dedicated to my choices, loyal to my friends, and faithful to my own values.