Ch-Ch-Changes!

Last week, on the 2^nd of June, I had a GD/PI scheduled as part of the application procedure for a college offering Liberal Studies under a prestigious university in the student hub of India, Pune. Both the GD and PI went exceedingly well and on the day of the results, I found out that I had been accepted as a student in the university.

The deadline for the submission of all forms and documents has been posted as the 15^th of June, which means that my father and I will have to do some really quick work and get everything in place, which includes my 10^th and 12^th Board marksheets, pass certificates, leaving certificates, migration certificates (required for changing the university under which I was studying in my junior college to the university under which my senior college is), ID proofs etc, etc. Apart from that, we have to go visit the campus to confirm my lodgings at the campus hostel and also fill the admission forms there. Wow, that is some work right there.

To make matters worse, my father is moving to Ahmedabad because he got transferred there and he joins on the 13^th. And since my younger sister has school (she’s in 10^th now), my mother can’t afford to help me out because she has to manage the house and my sister’s lunch boxes. So, my father and I have to finish the work as soon as possible, which means in two days.

I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I’m going off to college. Heck, I can’t believe I got selected out of 500-odd students who applied for the 60 seats available. I’m gonna be studying a much in-demand course and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do because I just couldn’t decide whether to go in Arts, Commerce or Science. I mean, I wanted to be able to study Psychology, Biology, English, History, Physics and Math and also continue Music, Dancing and Photography as my Extra-Curricular activities and Liberal Studies allows me that!

But, in spite of facing the heat, what with the whole admission procedure and choosing subjects and majors/minors, somehow I can’t acknowledge that I got in. yes, when somebody asks me where I’m going for college, I can say the name. But somehow, it is emotionally not registering. In fact, a small part of me thinks that they’re going to drag me back to junior college, saying that I failed my 12^th Boards!

Everybody around me is talking about hostels and college life and managing a monthly pocket money and getting the stuff I’ll require such as new clothes, a cell phone, a laptop and perhaps even a two/four wheeler. And here I am, typing away in a frenzy, half afraid that all this is just a dream.

Well, I hope it’s not just a dream. Or, even if it is, I wanna see how it ends and not wake up before the good parts even start (don’t you hate it when that happens?)

Anyway, I better sleep now, because there’s a lot to do and I have less than six hours to sleep before starting to run around to secure my admission.

But before that, I’m gonna make myself a nice glass of milk flavoured with Mapro’s Mango flavour concentrate and sing,

Turn and face the strain
(Ch-ch-Changes!)

In case you don’t know (which is such a shame), the song is David Bowie’s Changes.

And everybody else who’s also starting college this year, I wish you a rocking college life and lots of parties and college fests ^_^

Some Original Thinking

While speaking of my transition from a junior college student to a senior college student, one thing that I’m currently undergoing is the competitive examinations. And let me tell you that they’re ample and annoying.

Well, in my case they are ample because I’m giving a lot of exams. From Engineering to Arts, the only exam I’ve not given is CPT for the CA entrance and the IIT-JEE. But I’ve covered pretty much everything else.

One thing I have realized in giving these exams is that they truly cannot gauge one’s aptitude for a subject. I saw this picture on Facebook in which a man sitting at a desk proclaimed to a zoo of animals, “To decide which the best animal is, we have arranged for a simple task as the examination – all of you must scale the tree behind me.” The comedy of the cartoon was in the fact that there were elephants and rhinos in the crowd of animals.

What defines an aptitude gauge for a student seeking admission? Is it just the Board and competitive exam marks? Or must the government see beyond those answer sheets and take a look at a student’s personality, his intelligence?

A relative in my family was talking about her neighbour. “Brilliant guy. He topped the CAT entrance and knew every concept in Business Administration. But he scored 56% in his 12^th Boards and failed his university exams. They chucked him out of the college without another word.”

Have grades overridden intelligence? Have textbooks replaced intellect? More importantly, do we even need intellect these days? It just takes a little bit of hard work, a little bit of luck, an attitude to accept rules without a thought and lots of money to get us admitted to tuition classes that can teach us everything we need to know about tackling entrance scenarios from an entrance exam to a personal interview. However, it takes less intelligence and more rote learning. It is often not a representation of what our point of views may be; it is a representation of what our point of views are meant to be.

I do not oppose people conforming to thinking within the box and not wondering beyond what we aren’t supposed to know, even if, for the sake of maintaining the rules and regulations of the organization we’re affiliated to avoid anarchy and annihilation of hierarchy. But does that mean squashing our one true gift given by God – freedom of thought? What difference is between man and other animals, apart from a conscience and an ability to think? I’m not trying to encourage stupid daydreaming or hatching plots to cause disruption on any scale. I’m simply telling people to achieve their life’s goals by doing some thinking on their own.

There was a time when people studied at night after working during the day. They had no help to get them through. But these days, with the opening of a plethora of tuition classes for every subject imaginable, the procedure of getting into the industry has been made an industry. And the universal, or rather, sole method of getting around in this industry is money. Apparently, the colour green doesn’t just allow cars to proceed; it also clears the way for you in a traffic jam of people.

Today as I sit in meditation of the exams I have recently given, a small fact makes me proud – that I studied for these exams on my own. How I have fared is something I don’t know as of now, but at least, the results are consequence of my hard work and not the spending of big bucks that are proof of my parents’ hard work.

Remembering the Past Image

Around twenty years ago, the West was *the* place to be. Everybody loved following western culture. Everybody loved adding the unfamiliar western twang and slang to whatever they spoke. And most importantly, everybody loved being remembered as a “Westernized” person.

The culture of my country, India, is perhaps one of the oldest known in the history. The amount of scriptures, prayers, gods, languages, dialects, traditions and beliefs that India has can’t be matched by any other country.

And for a lot of time, we wholly took pride in our culture, until the advent of Westernization. And since then, our people have begun to abandon our cultures to adopt the westernized ways of living. Joint families were replaced by nuclear families. The respect of elders has slowly started decreasing. People have become shallow and have started caring too much about their social image and status.

And this is where we went wrong. The West never taught us all this! Sure, these things more frequently do happen there, but we conveniently ignored the efforts the Westerners take to keep their families together, the amount of time they spend with each other, how they follow their cultures such as Thanksgiving dinners and celebrating their festivals with gusto. We never picked up their love for sports or their sportsmanship and their drive to be a prospering country in every field possible.

The ironic thing is that the West is curious to learn about Indian cultures and traditions. People travel thousands of miles to come to India and be amazed and refreshed by the meditative, enigmatic atmosphere that is found in every city of India. The foreigners know more about our culture more than we know it ourselves!

Why have we given up on our culture? Is it because a sarod is not as funky as an electrical guitar? Is it because most Bollywood films are Hollywood copies and hence, we see everybody as a wannabe? Or is it simply because it is easier for us to act like we’re cool and amazing than to follow the rules of living a good life?

I’m not saying that the changes have been entirely bad. A lot has changed in this country for which we must thank the foreigners because, without these changes, we wouldn’t have been able to cope with the New World. But I think while we’re busy adopting an awesome way to live life, we must pay attention to not leave behind our intuition, our cultures, our rich heritage and most importantly, we must remember a past image of our true selves. Because only when we know where we come from, do we know where we can go.

Knowing the Unknown

Questions like “Does God exist?”, “Why are we here on earth?”, “Are we alone”, etc, are a few things everybody has thought about at some or the other point in life. We often find answers to these questions, in magazines, in interviews, on websites and from learned scholars, among other sources.

But the main question is this – Which answer is right?

You could say, believe the scholars. But, scholars have studied from books and learned from experiences, both things which are easily available on the internet.

So maybe we should believe websites? Except, website manias often sprout from media articles, such as those in the magazines and newspapers.

Then believe the paper media! I mean, if they’re wrong, we can sue them or something and we’ll even have written proof! However, magazines and newspapers publish such articles in the form of interviews and they interview learned and experienced scholars.

This is the vicious cycle most of us are caught up in. Now, I can give you two answers to escape from this cycle – either read up everything, every single source and get overwhelmed by all that information our brain has never handled in that quantity at the same time, or, simply don’t care about the matter at all. I mean, everybody’s got pressing issues to handle as it is, and providing answers to gratify our curiosity isn’t, for all probable causes, a necessity.

But then arises the main question again – Which answer is right?

Each answer maybe right or wrong in different dimensions. For example, logically, not caring is better than caring, because you increase your productiveness in this world of purpose (read: money). But, mentally, choosing our curiosity over our capacity for productiveness would be natural, as that is how humans have been made.

In the end, which option can we choose? Both make sense, and yet they don’t make sense.

I really don’t think change is the only constant thing in the world, because confusion is still untouched by change. Confusion may reduce in some subjects. But, in matters of the cosmic nature – matters of which humans are the effect and not the cause – it is the only constant I know.