The Life arrives

Angelic eyes full of innocence,

Giving sheer joy, profound and limitless.

Granting life a new dimension.

It seems you are my reflection.

Feeling of holding you is second to none,

Welcome to this world my son.

The 'Ragging' Memoir- A tinge of Emotional atyachaar

"Give me 5 good reasons, why i should not slap you?". Yes, i still remember this billion dollar question thrown at me during one of the early ragging days by a senior from our engineering college. That was one stark example of 'emotional atyachaar' inflicted upon the freshers. "i am from your state, sir", "i am a good person who doesn't deserve to be slapped, sir". These kind of 'good' reasons that popped out of our innocent, nervous faces were never 'good' enough for the big bullies. So, the count till 5 'Good' reasons was an  impossible task that would finally prompt us, after 15-20 minutes of emotional turmoil, to say "Sir, please slap me instead" and end this trauma:) 

So, another mental torture that i had heard of was to be prepared with your bio data('Intro') in a predefined format.

As i memorized everything about myself to be told as 'intro' to a senior, i was shocked to find that each member was supposed  to learn by heart the 'intro' of all others in the group(our group of 18 was named 'Punjab Party'). And so we started cramming things ranging from 'permanent address' to 'professions of siblings' for all our group members(again reiterating that we were a group of 18) 

So, any senior at any given point of time 24*7 could suddenly ask you, "what is 'Mohit's date of birth?". And it never helped that there were three members of the same name, 'Mohit'. So, if you accidentally remember the DOB of one Mohit, the senior would be smart enough to understand that you do not remember the same statistic of other two 'Mohit's'. And expectedly, every wrong reply used to result in another emotionally draining activity like guessing the age/origin of a third or final year senior whom you are meeting for the first time:)

But, somehow, these remembrances bring a smile on my face. Maybe, many things in life don't seem so bad when looked in hindsight.

The Lost Conversations...

It might be a fair assumption to make that many of us are in the grips of an enormous power that we fondly call “Social Media”. Ironically, even as I am writing this, side by side, I am checking Facebook too.

So, what is so attractive in this virtual world that we find so irresistible? I guess, the comfort factor of living in our shells, is too good to forgo. It’s a different thing that we may not even realize that we have not actually made any real conversation/contact with our close friends/relatives for months, maybe years altogether, leave alone actually visiting them.

If I reflect over, I realize that I have not been calling any of my long distance friends for quite some time. Of course keeping in touch has taken a new dimension in the form of chatting, facebook and so on. But one thing that shocked me was that I could not recognize the voice of my best friend, who happened to call me from his new mobile. Although, it could have been the same case if it was the other way roundJ.

During travel, the best resort for most of us is plugging in ear plugs to listen to songs or engage in any other activity that would very clearly give a loud and clear signal to people in vicinity that ‘I AM BUSY’. It’s very easy to remain in your shell and lock yourself in your virtual world. But is it always the best route? From varied experiences, I have come to believe that if a chosen path is very easy to take, that might not always be the best choice , and maybe a revaluation of the path is required. Maybe I need to start with this revaluation myselfJ