The road not taken

So I never loved Mathematics, hated it all my life, I really sucked at it, this was one subject that plagued me all my life, as my formal education was coming to an end (Formal because education is a never ending process, always remember that Kids), my joy knew no bounds. Cut to stupid campus placements, Worries of parents and relatives, the fear of losing my girlfriend who was already employed for two years and social stigma of getting a good and secure job made me come into banking. Let me get this straight, here I was, a guy that hated Mathematics all his life, went into banking, into a job that uses maths as its basic framework supported by a plethora of rules and regulations. Luckily I am good with numbers and arithmetic, that made me a survivor and  I am Robinson Crusoe of Banking, wrecked at a place  I was not supposed to be but getting good with time, making this thing my own. What does this teach you, that life my friend is unpredictable, it can put you in places you are not supposed to be unless you carve your own path and not feel like an Eskimo in Sahara.

In our society, there are two futures prevalent for a kid, either to become a Doctor or an Engineer, that is it, end of choice for all the budding minds. It is not necessary to take up Science stream for higher studies if you are good at studies. It is a common misconception that students who perform well at studies are the ones who should go for science stream and the ones who don’t perform that well and so and so should go for Arts stream. The Logic here, Arts is for losers and simpletons and science is for the high flying club, the result is just like mine. There are about billion stories in this billion people strong nation, every other day, another regret of not going for the choice we should have gone when we had the chance.

Ours is the country which boasts of the oldest language known to mankind, one of the oldest civilizations to have thrived and the ancient hub for education. For god’s sake, we were the people who taught the World about education system and universities and today we barely feature amongst the top hundred institutions for education. I always had this question in my mind, what is the practical use of the endless formulas and theorems we were forced to memorize and jot down in examinations. What did it do in the real world; it didn’t even help me to open the lid of a pressure cooker when in need or to find a place in a map on the road. We have been reading the recycled matter that has been leftover by the British and has been constantly indianized over the time. I always loved literature, the prose, the poems and words dancing in my head before I spoke something, the languages of the world. Had I have chosen the Arts stream over Science, my life would have been a lot different and better than today, not that I don’t have a good life, I would have been more content and happy if I got to do what I love most in this world.

As children we try to emulate what we see, what we like, we try to be Doctors, Astronauts, police, Lawyers, Actors, Scientists and what not, imagine if you could do the same with your life. Why do we have favourites, why do we have best friends and why do we have hobbies, just apply that logic to life too. It is necessary to bend the social stigma of the same old formula of churning out Doctors and Engineers, if they don’t succeed in the entrance examinations put them in the available colleges. Today things are more refined for this farce to go on; a child is put up with coaching and tuitions from as early as class 6^th or 7^th to prepare for specialized studies for entrance examinations. He is taught the art of solving MCQ’s as soon as possible at a time when he could learn about a new language or the functioning of nuclear fission and fusion or the practices of fine arts like architecture or art, the list goes on.

Be a rebel, try to love what your heart asks you for not what your father hears from some friend of his to put you through, maybe he wishes and thinks of the best for you but unknowingly he may subject you to something you don’t want to go for in the first place. Don’t make that mistake, there are millions of students who are roaming aimlessly after completing studies, they were neither good at it nor could derive any use from it. Take it with a pinch of salt, what good is a Civil engineer if he doesn’t make a good bridge, what good is a surgeon if his parents paid top mullah for him to drag through all the classes in some med school, what good is an actor who doesn’t know anything about acting but has to face the camera because his father was a yesteryear Superstar. Look around you, the world is waiting, do you know where do you find Shiitake mushrooms, where Rafflessia flowers bloom, where can you find ostrich meat to eat, where is Krakatoa, more importantly what is Krakatoa known for, where Pripyat lies and why its remembered for?

The world around you is filled with interests and avenues you can jump on. What about kayaking, what about mountain climbing, what about nuclear or astrophysics, what about an author, what about a media person, what about a politician and what about a sportsperson. You can be anything you wish to be, you just need to have the gut to go for it and the courage to take that path and the ability to convince or coerce your parents to go down the path with you. Once you decide something, stick to it; don’t make a joke of yourself. It’s your life on the line of fire; you decide what path you want to go on. Even Charlie Chaplin would have stuttered once or twice before becoming a comedian, a comedian, come on, even Johnny Lever or Rajpal Yadav would have come to tinsel town wanting to be lead actors, let alone Charlie Chaplin, he was a stud, girls swooned over him yet he stuck to what he did best, he didn’t try to become James Dean. That’s why the world respects him, Imagine Sachin Tendulkar with a tennis racquet and Roger Federer with a cricket bat, doesn’t feel right, right?

Whatever you choose, choose it with both heart and brain, because listening to one is idiotic and other is logical, both are poles apart, just like life, what you want and what life gives you is a far cry from the requirement. Remember need and requirement are two different things and bridging that gap is your achievement. Take the road less travelled, don’t be the new Sachin Tendulkar, be the new Biswajit Hotta of cricket, carve your name into the minds and hearts of people alike. Create something extraordinary from the world weary of ordinary. Remember you are taking advice from a Banker who hates mathematics, the rest you figure out for yourself, you are the Y generation, just add a O to it and make it YO. I am quoting a very beautiful poem of Robert Frost to make you understand the importance of the road not taken, hope that piques some interest of you,

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was greasy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Prateek Gautam

2006 batch but made the leap in 2004.

The Life & dilemmas of being a Digi Parent

"Technology may open up many avenues but it also opens up some that can’t be avoided. It is just like fire in front of a toddler, sooner or later the learning will be dealt in the hard way."

"The technology has slowly made the use of one’s own brain so redundant that it’s affecting the children’s capacity to learn and grasp things."

“Is that the new Angry birds game that launched last week, its cool na”, as I hear this from my youngest cousin brother, who’s an adorable chubby boy studying in ninth grade, I grind my teeth with anger and try to reply with a smile. It’s my mistake to play a game in front of him on my Smartphone. It’s another one of his countless innuendos to ask me my phone. Five minutes after watching intently at my phone and making the doe eyes of the Shrek kitty, he won my phone with a big frown from me. I got a few calls before the battery got drained, every time I completed my call, he will be eager enough to take the phone back from me. After the battery got totally drained, he promptly connected it to a charger, switched on the phone and started playing back on.

It’s not uncommon nowadays to see kids behaving like predators to catch the next Smartphone of a family member seen on sight. It feels good to see the children use technology in a friendly and proper way. I have a cousin brother and a nephew both falling in the same age group. But there are certain traits of them that upset me and most of my family members. Older members who do not take technology as seriously as our generation frown upon me for sometimes not giving my phone or PC and rebuking their request to play or use my phone. They think of me as arrogant and selfish but they do not truly know the ill effects of technology and how it is affecting the children of today’s generation. The children of today are shunning playgrounds to play on gaming consoles and gaming arcades and slowly they are losing the harms of the real world. Geeks and nerds may sound cool today but these could give rise to bigger problems to those who do not socialize much. Social media has replaced the actual society for them.

The children used to love me, I was their rockstar a year or two ago. We used to be good buddies, watched television together and the kids occasionally asked for my phone to play a game or watch a clip or hear a song. They had slowly started to use internet search engines like Google and Yahoo to answer my questions which they didn't know. They used to be very good kids who had a brush with technology. They used to play games on my computer with me sometimes. Slowly they grew addicted to it, over the time, the requests turned to tantrums, the bonhomie became noise and the usage amplified. The kids were no longer the same. What used to be my time with them turned sour as all our conversations would be about the new game or the new funny clip or the new trailer launched on web. Is this the cost of technology on childhood, that kids be glued to screens all the time, trying to find the world in it, whereas the world outside is waiting for them to come and explore it. These cousins of mine haven’t trekked a hill yet, they haven’t bathed in river yet, they seldom play sports at a ground near their house. The worst part of it is, both are obese and sport a pot belly each, whenever I meet them during my visits to their home, I am bombarded with questions of the trending stuff on web. When I ask, ‘what is the capital of France’, I get answered that they don’t know, upon pushing to try and answer it, they answer, ‘Rome’. When I get angry, they quietly ask to use Google to tell the answer, yes that’s good that you are using Google to find the answer. But why use Google in the first place, when you have it in your text books.

The technology has slowly made the use of one’s own brain so redundant that it’s affecting the children’s capacity to learn and grasp things. When will they learn if not now, the childhood is the age when one learns and understands stuff the most. In these formative years, the total dependency on technology can be negative on their cognitive senses. Most children nowadays wear glasses, are obese and glued to a screen, doesn't matter the size. Books have become kindle, dictionaries and encyclopedias have become Google. It feels good when a child doesn't bother you with his questions all the time, ask for help with his projects instead prepares his own slides and projects on his own computer without any help. But then again, do you know, how much he learns from it, the projects and assignments in today’s date are search, find, copy and paste and voila, your project is ready. Where is the learning in this? The children know and use the web t their disposal nowadays, who knows what they watch when you are not around. Do all parents check the history of the browser when their child gets off from the phone or the computer? The answer is NO.

Most children under the age of fifteen and even some below the age of ten years have Facebook profiles with fake date of births, my cousin brother and nephew have one each. And sometimes they give me headache with their posts and use of social media. Some dumb people even create profiles for their children so that they could connect with their relatives and family. But that cute chat with his Grandpa or Uncle may slowly convert to group chats with strangers and people with fake profiles. There are so many cyber crimes involving small children and teenagers happening in today’s date, most of them are due to the negligence and nascence of the kids. Wouldn’t it give you the chills that the HOT DUDE777 who chats with your 13 year old bright, sweet daughter is actually a sociopath or pedophile who she will be meeting on a date next week. Technology may open up many avenues but it also opens up some that can’t be avoided. It is just like fire in front of a toddler, sooner or later the learning will be dealt in the hard way.

I grew up in a village, later was sent away to a boarding school and spent most of my time away from home. I was born in the nineties and have seen the world transform in front of my eyes, yes I am a gamer, I like gaming but I also spend time working out and basketball or cricket. But the children nowadays find cycling tiresome and play temple run and subway surfer all the time on phones and tablets. They take more interest in virtual world than the real world. The alarming rate at which obesity and poor eyesight is increasing among the current generation of children is mostly due to the affinity to a screen and fast food. The Gen Y lives in Computers and smartphones but eventually there is a life outside of the box, call me old fashioned but one should have the best of both worlds and as parents it should be our duty to ensure that.

NB: This post has been written as part of the Women's Web - eKavach 'This Digi-Parenting Life' campaign (http://www.yourekavach.com/)

A or Z, Does it Matter. Part 1

Lets put it this way, I have never ever felt about anyone else the way I felt about her. The way she curled her lips, the way she bit those lips, thee way those breasts bounced and pranced about in her shirt when she played basketball, the tomboyish attitude she threw at the boys and girls alike and the way she looked at me. She despised me, hated me, always thought of me in a bad light and never understood me. And I never quite understood women the way I understood her. She was the coldest, meanest, calculating bitch when she got mad. But that didn't deter me from loving her over and over again. She wasn't exactly beautiful in the typical way but she was in an exotic way. Like wild waves smashing at the black rocks at the coast, like the sweat in the tropical heat, like the pinacolada you sip on a hot summer, she was god’s imperfectly perfect creation. She wasn't meant for the regular kind, she didn't know the whimsical tunes of monotonous life. She was a free bird, not to be held in the clutches of any normal bean. I didn't exactly remember when I fell for her but I fell pretty hard for her, she was that special, like the raw musk of the musk deer and like the morning dew on the leaf blade. We always fought whenever we found each other, she found our fights irritating and I found those interesting because every time we fought, I would discover another new trait of hers.

I remember in the school library, where we first kissed and professed our love to each other, albeit due to me. She always tried to avoid me in intellectual stuff and she always thought of her as the most intelligent person in the room around her and showed off her knowledge every now and then. We were teenagers and on the verge of discovering adolescence. She was in her uniform, the white shirt and grey skirt; she always looked like a devil shrouded by angel’s wings in that white shirt. She didn’t have the usual girly charades which was the best thing I liked about her. She sat as far as possible from me but I always disappointed her in these matters. As much as to her displeasure, she never could avoid me that much for I always found a way to her. May be it was the strange connection we shared or maybe it was the best way we enjoyed our love hate relationship. My love for her and her hate towards me. I wasn’t exactly the school heartthrob I thought of me. I was reed thin, had bad hair style, a funny posture and walked like Western gunslingers of the Wild West. But I was popular, I was eye sore of the teachers and the students alike. I had the good looks of my parents and money to spend. That wasn’t so bad considering the environment of the boarding school. She sat with her legs crossed, eyes fixed on the pages, her eyelashes flickering once a while, her gaze intent onto devour knowledge as soon as possible, while I stared endlessly from behind a book shelf. I reckon once or twice her eyes moved to check if someone was watching but she was unaware of my position. She again looked around, trying to find a pair of hidden eyes that she thought was piercing upon her; I was not that far from her, I was standing behind a book shelf away from the reading tables. Then I overheard her friend asking her about me.

Her friend mentioned how a creep I was, always acting macho and stud but behaving like a psycho whenever I saw her. How I intentionally picked upon her friends to try to talk or fight with her. She told her that she even once saw me at the girl’s hostel, staring at her through her window at 2 am in the night. That she knows whom I have kissed and still how was trying to woo her. She said that she knew that and she hates me. Her friend again mentioned that she had seen me following them on their way from class to the library. That hit a stroke, she suddenly looked like she was in discomfort, she hit back at her friend, telling her to shut up and mind her own business. Then again, she took to reading but she was disturbed. I was lost in my world, she hates me, why does she act so proud, wasn’t I worthy of her, she doesn’t even know how much I love her. How much she means to me, I again looked at her, with every look she kept getting more beautiful to my eyes, the occasional fidgeting with her hair, her eyes, the way she read, the way she sat and maintained her posture. We were barely fifteen years old but she acted like a more mature person. Her eyes when she discovered a new fact, gleamed like a newborn baby’s when he discovers a new thing, my feet were killing me but I didn’t care, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and in the process hit the book shelf and a book dropped, she looked up suddenly in my direction when she heard the thud of the falling book. I hid for a while and then again started looking at her again, she kept glancing at my direction, unsure of my presence, for a while I looked down to tie my shoelace that had come undone, as I was tying my shoe lace I heard a footstep coming towards me. As I looked up, it was her, she looked angry, very angry, for a moment I didn’t know what to do, she looked every bit of my dream that I had of her from last weekend. In her uniform, eyes sparkling of confidence, her pencil thin lips red with passion, her white shirt with the outline of her breasts, her skirt, the way it fit her. Her knees, her beautiful legs, bruise here and there, perks of being a sportsperson. I knew she was the woman I wanted, I wanted her so desperately. I sat transfixed there watching her, she cleared her throat and spoke, ’what’s wrong with you, why do you always trouble me, don’t you know that I don’t like you?’ she had the voice of an angel, not the typical girly chiming voice but she had a husky voice, the kind of voice that stirs up tornadoes in  man’s heart.

I felt that she wasn’t angry, maybe she was disturbed or terrified to discover this new side of me, she had never found me such intimidating before. I stood up, mustered up my courage and tried to calm her,’ why don’t you like me, what do I lack? ’ I shot back at her. ‘You, you are, you are not my type’, she managed to spurt back. Oh even now, I was aching to find her so close to me, the library was seemingly empty, only the librarian sat at his table, her friend also wasn’t anywhere in sight, it was just the two of us and the librarian. ‘I would never find such a chance to speak my heart out’, I thought to myself but before I could speak to calm her, her stormy eyes became red, she started to cry, I was shocked and confused, ‘people are saying a lot of things about me, I am not interested in this kind of thing, I don’t like people talking about me like that, I am a good girl.’ Obviously gossipmongers of our school had spread word of my affection for her, but they have spread their version of the story, they didn’t know mine. They didn’t know the love I had for this girl, this girl was everything for me. The heat was burning up inside me, I was simmering with anger now, ‘what is wrong with you, if people talk shitty things about you or about me, does it matter if we don’t give a damn’, I almost screamed, I stole a quick glance again to see if the librarian had heard us, but he wasn’t there, damn, it was lunch hour and he must have gone out, locking us inside, her bitch friend also had gone. It was the both of us standing barely thirty centimeters away from each other in that room. She started sobbing, I had never seen her cry before, she appeared such a force but now all of a sudden, she looked so frail, so weak that I wanted to hold her in my hands and caress and calm her not to cry. I tried to wipe her tears away but she threw my hand away in disgust, I didn’t budge, my angst of not able to stop her tears swelled up inside me and I caught hold of her hand and pulled her towards me in a jolt.

She crashed in my chest and before she could scream to call for help, I put my hand on her mouth to shut her up. Now in that hall, there were we, my hand on her mouth and holding her two hands behind her with the other hand. I could feel her heartbeat on my chest, her eyes, so beautiful, like a storm in the wild sea, stared at my face, she was trying to understand why I did what I did. I was totally frozen in time, senses working but touched by her, I could feel her breath on my lips, her lips, quivering and trembling, a drop of sweat trickled down from my brow in tension. She tried to open her mouth, I kept my hand fixed but she looked at me with anger, as if she wanted to say something, unsure, tensed but I gave in to trust and let it go. She didn’t move, we were still standing together, our bodies embracing the flow of hormones in such close vicinity of the other sex. She looked at my eyes, then slowly tried to free her hands, I let them loose, she raised her hand, I was almost certain that I was getting a slap followed by a loud scream, a meeting between parents and teachers at the principal’s office, rusticated may be, as my train of thoughts ran wild, she did the unthinkable, she put her left hand on my waist, like those ballroom dancers put theirs on their partners. She caressed my face with the other hand; her soft hands caressed my temple and my cheeks. I was awestruck and dumbfounded at the same time. A thousand lightning bolts and thunders swarmed my sky with her touch and then suddenly she took her hand and put back a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled. Suddenly I was standing at the edge of the world with her with me, the reality slipped away, I was hers and she was mine, we were together. I moved closer, sealing the little distance between us, I grabbed her hand and caressed it, she smiled again, I touched her waist, rubbing it to her back, then she asked, ‘ are we doing what I never wanted to do with you?’, ‘not with me?’ I snapped back, ‘is it love?’, she asked,’ what else could it be’ I spoke. ‘You have kissed other girls before, haven’t you?’, ‘yeah, I have but not like this’, and I kissed her.

Her entire body tensed and she clutched my shirt tightly with one hand and pulled on my hair with the other. We kissed like it was the end of this world, I had kissed others before but this kiss, as I told her was unlike any other kiss I ever had or will have. It was our first kiss, my cheeks suddenly felt wet, she was crying again. ‘why are you crying?’, I asked her, ‘you can’t understand how much this means to me’ she managed to say between kisses. We were concealed between two book stands and a corner; I pulled her to the corner and started to unbutton her shirt. ‘Isn’t this an inappropriate place for this?’ she asked but I didn’t listen, I was dying to see her twin peaks, I had spent 4 years watching them grow. Countless dry summers and cold winter night’s I would lie down and think of her and her body. She knew I wouldn’t listen in the heat of the moment and she relented to let me marvel in her womanhood. As I unbuttoned her shirt, she drew a pace back and let me have a look at her. Disheveled hair, lusty lips, shirt half tucked half out and the white bra revealing the most beautiful sight the mortal eye could perceive, her cleavage looked like the sunset, half visible and half left to imagination. Like the glorious red sun, her skin a tone red from the making out, I madly stared at her as she unhooked her bra and let it fall to the ground with the shirt.

I rushed to her, turned her around and grabbed her. She moaned and smiled as she felt my hot breath on the nape of her neck. Then she turned around and faced me. I was like a mad wolf, for I went on aggressively on her, licking and biting in between kissing and caressing her ample beauty. ‘Be gentle,it’s my first time’, she moaned, I slowed down from aggression to passion, she liked the slow serenade of our making out. Then as I tried to slip my hand down her skirt, she said ’ let’s not go all Hollywood the first time, we professed our love to each other’. I managed a mischievous smile; I watched her put her bra and shirt back on like a kid watching candy. She adjusted her hair and earrings and asked if she looked alright, I just smiled at her, she blushed, this tomboy, she blushed so deep that I went weak at my knees. I pulled her to a tight embrace and whispered in her ears that I love her, that she was the sole purpose of my living in whole of the eternity. She said she knew, and the whole charade of hating me was also because of her tomboyish attitude trying to give in to attraction for me. She took my face in her hands and kissed me hard, ‘do you love me?’ she asked, ‘I don’t know whether I love you or not but this feeling, being with you, thinking about you, is unlike any other experience I have ever had, may be that is love’, I spoke. She took my hand and took me to the nearby reading table and sat me down with her, we talked about our feelings, our revelations about one another and our confessions. She asked if I had been to her hostel and looked at her while she was sleeping, did I really stalk her at her basketball games or have I really kissed other girls. I answered each question of hers and she did mine. And time slipped away with that first kiss with the first love of my life.