Itz Mie Life!

Today, as I walked out of college, my bike was the last bike parked in the Bhavan’s Parking lot.

2 years back, this was an everyday scene. I was amongst the 10 crazy people who stayed in college everyday till 11 pm. Today, I had a feeling of Déjà vu. It brought back great memories. Memories of pushing the bike half a kilometer till the Petrol pump at 12 in the night coz’ some idiot stole Petrol from the bike. Coming Home on 4^th gear, full throttle, no brakes 6 kms, 7 minutes that too without a power bike. Cool nights. Counter Strike, Warcraft with full fledged sledging and cursing one another. Nostalgia!!!!

Around a month ago, I had decided to kick the word ‘Boredom’ out of my dictionary, and am very much happy to have lived without it for past one month. Idea is to stay occupied and not give boredom a chance. Most people feel boredom is related more with things around you rather than yourself. I feel the other way round. You are the one who lets boredom creep in.

I know people who keep themselves so much occupied that they utilize the 5 minutes that they wait for the train at the railway station to read the day’s newspaper. In a world where people cry for want of time, why should we aspire to kill available time by giving boredom a chance? We should live life in a fashion such that there would be no regrets later. Else, you’ll end up saying stuff like “I had so much spare time, I wish I had studied driving. Now, I am in a 14 hours job in an unknown city wasting much of my time waiting for the crowded bus to my office”.

After a comparatively dull semester, I want to be back working pretty hard again, making the most of the time I have, interacting with many people, pursuing my hobbies, living my dreams. Not thinking of college as just another 9 to 5 activity, being active in the society, completing some of the projects I’ve undertaken. Having a life! Not just having a life, I’ve began to love my life. For the last month or so, I’ve been very much active socially. My father is a very popular person in our neighborhood and many people know me as his son. I want to venture out and work so hard that people know me by my own identity. I want the pace. I remember Lance Armstrong saying ‘I want to die at a hundred year old after screaming down an Alpine descent on a bicycle at 75 miles per hour’. That’s the spirit.

So, hopefully I won’t be saying ‘I am bored’ for quite some time now, coz’ I know, I won’t be bored!

This is my 50^th post. The blogging experience until now has been great until now. Pratap and Yugandhar’s blogs have inspired me to start blogging. They both have killer blogs with amazing creativity. I also thank all my readers who spared their precious time to read my posts. Thanks to all of those who pointed out my mistakes, thus helping me improve. I’ll keep blogging.

Night-out

First Sunday of the year, I was standing amongst hundreds of people waiting for a chance grab a seat in any of the Mumbai bound bus at Pune station. After a prolonged waiting period, I somehow managed to get into one of Igatpuri bound bus which had a halt below the Vashi flyover. Now, this bus dropped me near the Vashi flyover at 2 in the night and I was the only one to alight there.

Late for the last local, too early for the first one and apart from the fast speeding cars, I couldn’t see a single person around. I started walking towards the railway station. The Green Day song lyrics that I was listening to made perfect sense…’I walk a lonely road…….’ Nobody in sight till the station arrived. As the station was nearing, I could see around 5 people sleeping next to the closed ticket window. I printed an electronic ticket and was about to enter the platform where one of the security guards prevented me from going in for safety reasons. So, I had to wait staring at the indicator saying 4:00 ST and next to it, the time 2:14.

Instead of staying put, I decided to roam around the place a bit. Outside one of the call centre office, I saw a chaiwala cum omlet-wala. I thought it would be a good idea to converse with him over a cup of tea and omlet. New year has not started on a brighter note for him as most of the BPO employees are on holidays and his business has gone down from 500 cups of tea a night to 50 cups, most customers being mall cleaners. I consolidate him saying his business will prosper soon, not knowing that soon would be too soon!!!

There was a group of around 100 students around my age, walking towards the Vashi station, some of them stopped for having tea. They seemed very friendly; one of them asked me what I was doing alone at this part of the night. He said that they are a group of last year B-com students from Shillong who were on a 3 city trip of Mumbai, Goa and Kolkata and were waiting to go to CST to board the early morning train for Kolkata.

Pretty soon, I found myself talking to many students from the group. They were talking about their trip experiences, the places they saw, the culture difference, the good things the bad things et al. I felt like being a part of the group. I asked them a lot about Manipur, about the North East and they were eagerly telling me about the places to visit, food to eat, ways to travel and lot more. They say Shillong is as safe as Mumbai, if you travel at the right time of the day and that the people considering North-East unsafe is to a great extend untrue.

The topics shifted to songs. After a while, we were singing famous Hindi and English somgs together, out loud. Variety of range from Bryan Adams to Sunidhi Chauhan. It’s 3 in the night, I’m surrounded by 30 unknown people in the wide open space outside Vashi station singing songs and having a good discussion. When does life ever give you such wonderful experience? I had 2 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours, but the songs and the discussion kept me wide awake.

I asked them did you like Mumbai. ‘Fantastic place!’ came the uniform answer. However, they had some minus points as well. They said that people see us as foreigners wherever we go. They are considered more Chinese or Nepali rather than Indian. They are cheated moneywise while paying for the auto fare etc. ‘Why should we be treated as foreigners in our own country’, said one of them. Many of the girls experienced eve-teasing a lot more in Mumbai compared to North-East.

These students were quite different. Normally when you are in a group, you almost never talk to the people outside, but they never made me feel like an outsider, I felt like being one amongst them. They were the people who cared more about the result of confederation cup final between Shillong and Mohun Bagan than Leeds vs United. How quickly time passed and we boarded the first train. On the train, they gave me another reason to visit Shillong. They say they have a student group in their college who arrange jungle trails in Meghalaya. Do visit, it would be the nicest trip of your life, one of them said.

‘One day surely’, I said.

A Happy post for a happy new year!

Ever experienced a feeling of loneliness despite having a cluster of friends around? Friends with whom you have an endless list of topics you can talk about. Friends who you really hope meeting forward to, who are jovial, great people to hang out with, still, somehow the boredom creeps in. Happiness fails to find a place.

Similar story, few years back, I went to see the Taj Mahal. Although I had seen it before, I was very much looking forward to seeing it again. After all, it’s one of the Seven Wonders of the World and who wouldn’t like to visit it? Surprisingly, this time around happiness eluded me. I still say that it’s a magnificent piece of art, no denying the fact, but just that it did not bring me happiness then. Maybe it was the crowded atmosphere, the array of agents lined up for explaining history, hundreds of professional photographers occupying every clickable area, the black soot, the yellow colored marble, I really don’t know what. If this place doesn’t give me happiness, then what will? Something’s sure wrong with me, I kept thinking.

On the same Delhi trip, I visited Akshardham temple. It was then recently build in Delhi and had not become popular yet. I went there with no expectations from the place and had planned to see it in an hour’s time and leave. But once I went inside this beautiful place, never realized how time passed by and ended up spending the entire day in the temple. The place has some of India’s finest architecture and very detailed stone carvings. I was awestruck with the majesty of the place. It certainly brought me happiness, the feeling of joy. I don’t want to compare it with the great Taj Mahal, but just want to say a few things about things that bring us happiness and things that don’t.

• Happiness is not always there where you expect it to be.
• Having the best things around you does not guarantee happiness.
• Happiness doesn’t mean things are in perfect melody.
• If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.
• Happiness depends on me rather than the things around me.

A long time friend accidentally meeting you will bring happiness. A phone call from a person whom you never expect to hear from will bring happiness. A childhood note of yours lying in some old cupboard will bring happiness. Accidentally finding money in your old jeans will bring you happiness. Unexpectedly tuning into your favorite childhood song on the radio will bring happiness.

Don’t keep searching for Happiness, it will come to you anyways! But not in the ways you thought it would…..