Demons on Tar

"Road fear and Exam fear are the two fears I've never had and will never have" - so said a 16 year old Shilpa who was studious and raced town buses on her BSA Ladybird! 

I have strongly stood by my statement till date, well, literally till date!

This very evening, a motorbike screeching past, too close to the right of my vehicle and a not-so-pleasant experience of being sandwiched between a carefree push-cart vendor and a car whizzing along, left me with something like an electric shock in my heart.  Is it sane to call yourself fearless of a blind demon slashing away in all possible directions? 

Possibly, the speeding car that rammed my vehicle's front panel and left my circulation system short of a few hundred millilitres of blood (or whatever quantity is sufficient to soak a sandal and drip over), has made me more conscious and cautious on the road. 

My two-week bus travel post the accident made something of an early bird out of me and on resuming my two-wheeler ride to college, I found that it was actually possible for me to start earlier than (the usual) 8.30 a.m. to reach the 10 km-away college before 8.50 a.m.! Travelling in a relaxed mood, I have been able to observe my fellow road-commuters. A surmise that applies to a majority of them is this- An Absolute lack of a sense of coexistence! Eight out of ten people seem to possess a book of traffic rules that reads:

• Your own job is the most important! Get to it as quickly as possible; never bother about anything else.  
• You may start as late as you please; but ensure that you always reach your destination on time!
• You don't have to slow down at cuts or U-turns; the  moron driving straight ahead with no clue as to your sudden arrival in front of him shall pay for his ignorance.
• Jump the red signals; the recently installed cameras near traffic lights are actually for screening people for bike-stunt ads.
• The noble pedestrian has all rights to cross the road with no regard to the vehicles coming ahead; the road, after all, was built using his tax money!
• "Keep Speeding" is the mantra; "Keep Left" is outdated.
• Horns that sound like a pack of wolves' howling are the in-things.
• You may remove the silencer of your motorbikes, to draw attention to your sleek assembled bikes and your cool riding stunts.
• Helmets are for sissies who prefer safety (haha! what danger can ever befall a hero?!) and don't mind hair loss!! 
• You may even start your bike without a key (well, some new technology will crop up) but never ever start it without both your ears plugged to your I-Pod or Cellphone with its media-player belting out your favourite songs!  

There are definitely more of these and might be observed by yours truly in the days to come.

I admit that I used to be a very fast driver pre-feb 18,2011. But now my eyes are wide open to the road around me. I'd always believed that if I ever met with an accident on the road, it would be by my mistake. Alas! I was shown that there was atleast one guy who was a more careless driver than me. 

Does everyone need to pass through such an ordeal before he/she realizes what I have realized?!

Fear, may be uncalled for; Awareness, most definitely, is needed!

The Sine Curve called Life

Life is such an amazing thing! It has put me through a vast gamut of emotions in the past one week.

The week last started with a visit to the lab where we do our project, with the least of hopes, for we had been going in circles, trying to resolve a recurring and seemingly incorrigible error. We had no hopes of wrapping up the project and were sad that we may have to disappoint the most wonderful project guide one may get. But wonder of wonders! A slight change to enhance the compatibility between certain sampling rates and there we were with our almost accurately working code. We later learnt that a 100% accuracy can never be obtained in practice! :D 

Then came the trip to Delhi. I was a little tensed and the usual thrill of visiting a city for the first time was somewhat missing. The vast Delhi University campus left me in total awe! The Group Discussion and Extempore (where I was lucky to speak on Hogwarts!!) processes went decently well. The Interview's gruelling last part left me apprehensive and I returned, with no big hopes. 

On return, a news of a certain unjust occurrence reached my ears. Though I knew the right way to handle it, I was also aware that I was not mature enough to accept injustice with nonchalance. The declaration of the final admit list of a B school (whose written test I had failed to clear by a whisker) added to my woes and I felt that I was at the very rock bottom, then. No words of consolation or advices of "ignore-it-it-doesn't-matter" could penetrate my thick skull. 

The next day dawned and I was sure that the soon-to-be-declared results of my Delhi trip would be negative. After all, I had run out of luck long back, in my opinion. But I was ready to face anything. Talking to a respectable person who gave me neither consolation nor advice but just hard facts from her life, made me bold enough. 

The dreaded results came in due time. Opening the pdf, I found the names of some famous Puys and felt happy for them. Suddenly, just beneath the name of one of the most respected people in Pagalguy, I found my name and roll number!! I couldn't believe it. I reopened and refreshed the pdf some ten times and took out my admit card to verify my roll no.

I am getting to do an MBA this year!!!  

Well, the sine curve of life has started moving upwards for me. I am well aware of the fact that it will start falling again, sooner or later, but I am prepared for it :)          

The Case of The Missing Blogger

'The Social Network' won Three Oscars today. But its real victory has been on a much larger scale, over this very Blogosphere. 

I joined Facebook around the end of May 2010, basically to get in touch with my old schoolmates and relatives who live far away. But it turned out to be nothing but a pointless chat platform, with most of the people commenting on your statuses and photos being the ones you actually interact with daily! 

The popularity of these social networking sites is mainly attributed to the human mindset. We tend to get bored, looking at long pages of text which will require more time than what our average attention span lasts for. A mere :) or :( on your wall will attract a good number of likes and appropriate comments (albeit in inappropriate cool or rather kewl lingo). 

Sharing photos of everything from your latest lunch with friends in a nearby hotel to a random bee on a flower in your garden, eagerly pressing the F5 button for comments and likes and visiting friends' profiles for updates- can easily be a very popular pastime today. 

Facebook also has other apps. Farmville and Mafia Wars provide gaming attractions while you can create/like any number of pages, describing anything from a popular personality to an institution at the corner of your street. 

Sharing videos, writing notes (by far, the closest to blogs) and getting to send your friends virtual gifts on their birthdays and anniversaries.. Mark Zuckerberg has created (even if not conceptualized) a revolution of sorts in the human interest domain.

Each creation has an equal and opposite destruction. The victim of the latter is the free flow of thought that leads to enjoyable prose in blogs. My blog has been a victim, yes. And I have been distracted and diverted by fb. 

Still, thanking the rusted iron gates of my mind for not being permeable to Twitter usage and subscription to further social networking sites, I shall end on a hopeful note that I shall be back on Blogger sooner rather than later ;)