Rohit’s Weblog

A roller coaster of a weekend. If weekends are for ‘chilling’ then this was something else.

Caution:The incoherence in my post could be due to my lack of sleep.( 41hours without sleep- 2days+1 night). But there are so many things to talk about this weekend.

Grandpa is in the hospital. He had an attack of pneumonia last week which turned pretty bad at  a stage due to his age. But he is recovering now. Talked to him for a whole long time on saturday. Hospitals are not great places to be in and they get worse in the night. I was on hospital duty for 24 hours. I finished reading half of  ’Life of Pi*’, tried to make sense of some medical terminology, was glued to the display screen and was praying that the spasm oxygen level does not fall below 80, watched how different nurses and doctors kept themselves awake on night duty, watched some emergency patients battle out their injuries. Just waiting for my grandpa to come back home as soon as possible. 12 days is too long to be in a hospital.

Sunday was just MAD-ness. Running around adorable hyper kids, watch them sing and dance(perform),eat and play with them, watch the ‘friends of snakes’ pulling out one snake after another from their bags( I held a python!), dance for some mass Telugu songs by the campfire. Context: MAD(Make a Difference) was organising a summer camp for kids in TARA( a home for the homeless). There were 40 kids between ages 2-17 and it was 3 day camp in a resort where they learnt a lot of soft skills,yoga,painting, dance etc. It was typically MAD. .

Also in the weekend:

Rafa lost on clay. Having difficulty typing this also. If Federer ever had a chance to win the French open, this is it. Can he win this one and equal Pete ‘The Legenedary’ Sampras’ record?

Watched ‘Angels and Demons’ in IMAX. Mini Review: Not even close to the book but the effort to compress all that into 2.5 hrs without losing any major part of the story was commendable. Too much talking in the movie but just loved all the Visuals. Brought back the days of me walking through the majestic streeets of Rome.

*Life Of Pi – Only finished half of the book. Really liked the story and the anecdotes for religion used in the book. Was not too impressed with the writing style. Maybe I had too much hype in my head. But ther best part of the book is supposedly the second half,so looking forward to it.(Damn this hype)

A lazy saturday afternoon. All I have been doing was trying to better my speed at changing channels, just to get away from the news channels which have been showing the same things for no clue how long now. It was Raj Thackerey once and now it is Varun Gandhi. I am sure Varun Gandhi would not have all this stardom of ‘going to jail for his principles’ if not for the media. In some place called Pilihibit( I still don’t know which state it is in) he makes a usual communal statement and thanks to the myriad of news channels he becomes a star overnight.

Is this  NEWS? I guess it is a debate which I have been hearing everywhere but I guess the answer lies with us. None of us would watch the Doordarshan for news. Because it is plain simple news. We need that little extra entertainment. And there is no LIMIT.  Who draws the line? We want something and we dont want the same thing.  It is even worse with the Telugu channels. There are about 15 news channels now to complement the 10 or so political parties. Each channel has a favourite ( the thin line between journalism and advertising is fading). Today’s news was all about the people who haven’t got party tickets to contest in the elections. So many parties and still no opportunity. I am scared to think of it as a good sign where everyone is aspiring to be a politician. I might be speculatively true if I say this is a sign of recession as politics is surely recession proof.

And now for Democracy and its effects. People have got more vocal now. On one side we have movies like Gulaal and sites like bleedindia.com mocking the democratic perversions and on the other hand are initiatives like Lead India and parties like Loksatta trying to re instil the faith in it. But are we really democratic is a very individual question.

But to answer such a question we need to be good citizens first. We crib about the situation. Some genuinely and some just to mask our incompetence. But what can we do? We laugh at our friends who follow the rules. We bribe the corrupted guy down the road and complain about it day in and day out. We justify some of our not so fair actions as ‘human’. We take refuge in the great American Dream to keep us away from this system. We call voting for a genuine candidate a vain cause.  We blame the police for spoiling our parties. We dope and blame the drug peddler for ruining lives. We debate when we are drunk and talk about ideal situations. We cannot find time for social service as we don’t have time to cater to our social needs. We just don’t care enough.

Some people do. I am talking about us not them.

aimless,thoughtless,directionless and focus less.

Even the most trusted of my ‘ thought procceses’ have given up on me.  For the first time in long there is this feeling of emptiness. Is this just another thought or something which requires something more? For once there is more than just optimism in me.  For once I have no idea about what I have planned. For once I am lost in thin line between what I am winning and what I am losing. Not so long ago did I think that not having anything on my mind could be something I can look forward to. SO was I looking forward to this?

But why all of a sudden?. What has changed. Nothing in specific around me but something actually did change. Something that is called ‘me’. I guess I will never realise whether it is for the good or the bad. But I don’t think I am liking it too much. As long as I was giving in to my whims everything seemed so normal. But now it doesn’t.

I am still confused.Still lost. Need something to bail me out of this. Maybe someone. But am I looking for advice. A big NO.

Then what am I looking for. Is it a ‘query’ which can be searched on the Internet. Not really? It is just me. I need something. And maybe just a new start. Fresh and clean. Too much of my past is haunting me for no reason. Thanks to some ‘friends’,  too much is about being me. Is it such a taxation? or is it just another day’s work of my mind….

Inspiration has never been the only reason to write. But to write this post I needed a no better inspiration than the year 2008. A year which was the most eventful one of my life. A year where I saw the worst lows of my life. The year in which I lost and then  I gained. The year which actually changed a lot of ‘me’.

I have learnt. Learnt that people change,that people are judgemental, that people are impulsive, that people are sensitive, that people are uniquely different, that people are  collectively similar, that people all over the world are same people,that people make mistakes and finally that I am one of those people.

A demographic has changed.  From spending 24 hrs in the vicinity of similar thinking friends (an assumption) to meeting friends only on weekends, there was no effort involved. Friends are no longer the people who think like me, who have been known to me for a lot of years, but I have learnt that there is much more to friendship than just having them.

The biggest high of the year. Travelling. For someone who hasn’t set foot outside Indian soil, I have travelled and travelled a lot. From visiting few states all my 20 years I suddenly found myself in three European countries on the same day. I have found a new high in travelling. Travelling is all about meeting new people and every person is a lesson in themselves. ANd when it comes to this I wouldn’t mind being a Nerd.

This was just a personal look. And the world has seen a lot more than just change. Some which I have mentioned in my ‘forced blog’( calling it forced atleast relieves some pressure off). 2008 was a year which I would love to look back at in future also. And if there is one thing I am happy about the most it would surely be GOOGLE. A place where I have grown professionally and personally thanks to the people around.

So much for another forced post, I have been crapping more than ever before. Hope everyone has a great Year of 2009. May the God in you bless you.!

Tried to bell the CAT but did not realise that I was tied to the Mouse.

and the rest are just trying.

If given a choice- would I be the quintessentially brilliant nerd(of whatever I do) or the ‘not so boring’ fun guy. I am presently essentially neither. And it again is just another thought that makes me think. I know there is always an IF which never exists but the mind is never under control and I really don’t need this now.

History has been made. A dream has come true. Some effects have been negated. Election results are being celebrated not by party workers but the citizens who are the voters(there is a difference).  The ‘we’ in Yes we Can truly making an impact. Change for a change is not an anti-incumbency factor.

But would ‘the man’, the reason for all this pull of such a thing in India??- in a country where we need a unifying reason to be divided. A country which is ruled by some politicians for whom diversity is not about people but more about different accounts in the vote bank.  Otherwise what would explain reservations in every reform except in political parties. What possibly could be the reason for more presidents than prime ministers  from the so called ‘minorities’. A political system in which a family lineage or acting background is a better qualification for the reform makers than a harvard law degree.

I hope I am not playing spoilsport in someone else’s party but are we celebrating too early. I truly admire Obama for the amazing orator that he is but my practical side wants to wait and see what he would execute. I really hope he has something great in store for the world. The history as it seems has already been made. And once again there is another reason to believe USA is lucky.

I am desperately looking forward to a day I would be celebrating an election result as a World cup cricket victory. It took the USA 44 elections for the anticipated change and hopefully will take much lesser time for us to see IT happen. I surely did see something not so historic on this historic day. While the national news channels were covering Obama’s success, the local channels were covering the advent of yet another matinee idol(not really an actor) into the political scene with his movie dialogues being cheered by 2 million live audience.

YES WE CAN!

It is 4 am in the night here or in the morning somewhere else. This was supposed to be my lazy weekend but after chatting with so many of my friends from all over the world and after failed attempts at getting good food in the night( Hyderabad is much better in this regard) and after hours of excercising my fingers on the TV remote, I am just blank.

Blankness of the wierd silence of this hour. Blankness which is actually ‘nothing’ to share and ‘nothing’ to do anything about. I miss those corridors of VIT hostel which were always abuzz with action throughout the year,the week and the day. I miss the feeling of not having anything to do the next week/next day/ next year. Some useful and some forceful. It is the wierdest of thoughts that are passing my mind. No connection, no relevance and NO control on them. I suddenly feel active. My body is not supporting it but my mind is just travelling in all the four dimensions. I have no clue why I blog and why it is forcing me to write about blankness with so much content at the worst time that could be. 

It is really wierd how two words can spark of a race( more like a marathon) of thoughts. Two words which have no place in this materialistic,optimistic and practical world. Two words- ‘What if’