The Prerequisite that helps to Succeed...

How much importance we give towards education of children. What do we aim for by educating them precisely? Do we intend to make them increase the number of degrees of various qualifications? I believe we expect them to come up with sound knowledge, but not just that rather we expect them to develop themselves into a civilized and a well behaved ‘human’. Children are made to target towards the wishes bricked together by their parents, and seldom left to make the choice of their own. But at the grass root level if we examine, we will realize that indeed we wish to produce a well behaved person in future.

Sadly, somewhere we are lacking. We are lacking to produce youngsters with proper mannerism and quality to behave decently in front of other people. When talked about mannerism, I bifurcate moral values and professional behavioral attitude as co-related but separate entities. A child inculcated with sound moral values need not always possess sound professional attributes in his behavior. And the same goes the other way round too. But neither of these two entities is being imbedded into youngsters. This setback is coming at the front in form of poor placement records in colleges, and this scenario prevails more dominantly in C-grade private colleges of India.

After such students pass out from college, frankly with such a void attitude they own no future at all. Companies who hire people look for well-groomed personality and rich mannerism in talks first, knowledge comes second. And if they fail to meet the first requirement, who cares to let them have their technical knowledge tested. The matter is of prime concern today, and this not just covers the problem arena of engineering colleges, rather it stresses the need to own well behavioral attitude in general as a prerequisite before venturing for any kind of job. You can yourself see how we are inclined towards those companies who offer better customer relations. How good the service is being provided that comes second. At the first place we realize how the behavioral outlooks are towards us. From your favorite local restaurant to deciding the best consultancy service for your business, it all starts with sound conduct in talks.

Today to grow with India, the prerequisites need to be inculcated and furnished with shine at the earliest. The early the youngsters realize this, the better it will be.

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The 3rd Blogoversary

It was around this time, three years back; I was in first year then. It started with enthusiasm to have my own space online, which would somewhat look closer to a website. I remember I made a website for my school when I was in class Xth as a part of my school project. Having got appreciation from my computer teacher, gradually I gained interest in web development, and always wanted to have a website for myself. What exactly my website would be all about, what contents it would have I never thought of. ‘Blogs’, I came to know of when Mr. Amitabh Bachchan started to reach people through his blog. Blogs are the medium to express yourself and connect with people. Blogs serve as an online journal, linking to other sites and news stories.

My poetic verses and story making in messages/SMS for fun and scraps on Orkut started making their space at my newly made blog at Wordpress. But me being an enthusiast for web development, and a student of computer science, I was not satisfied to work within restrictions imposed by Wordpress at that time. Wordpress has turned a bit flexible now but then it not even allowed use of iframes and external scripts. 
I came to know of an online tool which could transfer a Wordpress blog to Blogger, keeping posts and comments all intact. And that marked the start of my exposure to web development and web designing.

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Brain-sick's Diary >> Positivism

Life has been a chaotic drama lately, with numerous self-realizations and self-discoveries. I have turned more rigid and endured against harshness. Yes! The heat was rising drastically and it burnt me like hell, but I need to stand in the kitchen. As Harry S Truman said, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’. Escaping is never a solution, it takes courage to face it and make your way through it.

I have started to read a lot. Earlier, I used to hang around with friends or used to tread down alone on the roads of Durgapur, composing short stories and poetry. But now, I read a lot in my room, and this has been the time when most of the self-realizations and self-discoveries have started to come up. How much goodness does the reading habit brings for you, I got to learn. I read two books by Dale Carnegie within past two weeks; ‘How to speak Effectively’ and ‘How to stop worrying and start living’, while ‘How to win friends and people’ I am still reading. It has helped me a lot to improve myself in terms of perceptions that I used to have earlier about ‘friends’, ‘people in general’ and ‘relationships’ that human kind has to offer to you. Most of the problems in our lives are not the serious ones, as Carnegie said, ‘We suffer only from minute problems the most, and tend to overlook the bigger part of our happy life’. Why should we go on spoiling the only life we got because of few tiny pinching agents that life brought in for you?

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Brain-sick's Diary >> Inhuman

Against the one I love the most, even to hear a small word of offence fills me with anger that I can’t subdue. The wrath of my placid soul fights against spoilt demeanor against the one whom I home inside me. How can I not? The tiny and weak strands of friendship, which I stood holding calling them to be considerate and fortunate for me, were mere delusion. I never thought they would pain me like the unhealed wound getting unstitched. From the day, till the evening, the obstinacy of my heart to never forgive them is getting more pronounced. It seems even if I pour myself into the glass of momentary alcoholic relief, my soul won’t settle down at peace.

The society seems to be on the consistent downfall in terms of humanism. Ranging from ways to communicate with colleagues to ways of being presentable in front of others, every trait of human in the socialized scale has been suffering setbacks in quality. How come has this degradation brought into existence? The slightest wisdom that bifurcates the ways to protest or to present disagreement and to abusively criticize someone has gone in vain. It seems they don’t understand what they are doing, is it disagreeing or is it abusing?

I had been clubbed with these thoughts all hours today. And I can’t let the one living inside me break down in tears. Because if it does, that would come as a calamity to me. I am that protective shield whose significance lies till the life it protects is jovially alive. And if it’s not, then for what shall I live for?

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Brain-sick's Diary >> In my year fourth…

Few hours from now, and our entire vacant hostel will get swigged in shouts and murmurs. People will be back. In this one month of training period, which constitutes an integral part of curriculum of WBUT for our seventh semester, I was in heavens sky. I love silence, and there it was in abundance here at our hostel. For no one was here at hostel, I had tight sleeps through nights. I read some of the best short stories by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. His short stories steered my thoughts on the road that I never cared for before. And in the folds of silence at the grounds, I had enormous space to let my thoughts plunder every corner of my imaginative world. Sitting by the window, and letting juices in my brain convulse to build a different world, were frequent each day. I even witnessed love, the one in its purest form. The feeling that I used to admire once, I could only wish for, now I had it experienced. That feeling is of ‘being loved’. To love someone is not something which brows up my attention, but its ‘being loved’ truly is what that hooks me. God! Bless me…

I am in my fourth year of B-Tech course. One year from now, and I will be a pass-out. Time flies; who knows this better than them who studied in engineering colleges. I recall that existence of energy in me and that zeal when I was in first year. I had several friend circles, lots of well-wishers (at least I supposed them to be) and dreams to accomplish. Everything has changed now. Or I should say they have got refined. With the changing and moving time, life adds various filters through which you sieve out many people. I was no exception.

Challenges on my way, and few trusted supports I have. I wish to keep up with the expectations that my family has from me. But I don’t know really what I would be writing here one year later from now.

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bon voyage

How clearly the emotions we remember, of those frightened steps that were hesitant to move ahead. That was the day when few timid hearts obliged with immense aspirations consoled themselves, and accepted what they ultimately arrived at. That was the first day when we entered our engineering college…

(click to enlarge)

I am in final year of my B-tech now. And for me, there has been a series of learning and experiences outside my textbooks. I know this would be true for my immediate seniors too. They ended their terms in our college after their completion of final semester, and have left us alone. I had been attached emotionally with some, and tied friendliness with many.  The most crucial thing I am going to miss now is I won’t be hanging around them explaining peculiar thoughts and curiosities that pet in my mind. Few things no one understands, and I never explain them to everyone. I will miss them who truly understood what I used to explain. :D

Whatever be your college's status, whatever curse you prize your college with, at the end you are going to miss it. I have seen them… not just through the moistness that prevailed in their eyes but through the unexplainable silence rooted somewhere deep inside. Emotions pouring through eyes are not as powerful as the silence is, and that too creased in a smile. Unexplainable situations, I know I would have to witness myself too. The one which is a year far, I know that will get closer in blink of an eye. At the end, we people turn out to be so dependent on the ambiance that prevail consistently in our hostel. When back to home, we tend to stick to the same routine, we tend to find the same people. Who is going to bang on to our doors shouting aloud names connecting them with girls in the nearest girl’s hostel, who will be there to quarrel for a puff of cigarette? Friendship is the last string that keeps you attached in your memories despite of truck load conspiracies you got to confront in your four years.

I won’t point out names of my seniors specifically because almost everyone had been very special to me in one way or the other. I got to learn something from them which awakened me from sort of darkness in different realms. Now me being in the final year, I take the responsibility to support and elate my juniors. I have plans for this year. I hope I will be able to execute them efficiently. And for my seniors, I wish them good luck for their lives ahead. And as Robert Frost had said, ‘In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on’; so lets move on, and pledge to work even harder in our future and march ourselves towards excellence.

Please do stay in touch!

ANSHUL GAUTAM

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Brain-sick's Diary #4 >> Unusualness

Something unusual has happened. Something that is pulling me into despair. Something which is clenching me in the fist of depression; a depression of a kind whose origin lies veiled. Only my senses are reactive towards the rhetoric discussions I have been raising inside me. Perceptions I envisage is pulling me apart with a force that can uproot a living strong tree, that can bring to the grounds tombs of giant mega structures, that can explode away a town with nuke energy.  I don’t know the specific reason. I just witness the unusualness.

Interests are getting suppressed. Things that used to be my passion (which they still are, but have gone under hibernation) are also getting dim in my arena. I go through early pages of my life, and I feel surprised on the changes I underwent. In the isolation, in the separate space where I have dragged myself into, I keep juggling thoughts and beliefs that have burst out from nowhere. Why does this happen? No clues.

Facebook? Twitter? G+? I have quit almost all of them. I used to be one of the most active person on social media websites. Though I never run out of plots for short stories and poetry, but increased intimacy with the unusualness has slackened the will to perform, to write them on my blog. Why am I writing all this crap right now? I am only scribbling my heart on pages of my open diary just to bookmark this day, and when I will look back again in distant future, I will try to feel the worst unusualness that I have experienced. Why does this happen? No clues.

Friendship which is considered to be the most sacred relationship (I haven’t seen, I read in books) never crosses my way. It might be that I am very stiff at my attitude and consequently this relationship never intersected into my way. I have always tried to mix with people, tried to get to know them, tried to weave strands of solidarity with the people whom I connected with. But I have failed each time. Love? Does it exist? I have only seen unusualness.

This unusualness is intensifying with each passing day.  If I could ever get to reach its origin, I will surely bring myself out of this labyrinth, killing the evil spree to death. 

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Confessing Secrets

I have been admin of several literary Facebook pages which deal with art and presentation of artistic talents. Fortunately, I happened to be one of the co-admin of a confession page on Facebook lately. I am amazed to see the rising popularity of that confession page which is subduing the popularity of any other page on Facebook. The confession page I am currently seeing, where I was asked by one of my senior to manage as the admin, is currently getting approximately twenty confessions each day. I am surprised to see the number of likes which has crossed the mark of 800 today, and this figure was achieved within a span of two weeks since the page was formed. This is a reason for enviousness as I am also looking after my own Facebook fan page which has hardly got 520 likes and that too in this period of two years. Moreover pages like BCET Bloggers and Facebook page of our college’s Tech-cum-Cultural fest, which is being managed by me again, has hardly turned out to be this popular. Reasons?

It is the desperation of being pulled together and expressing what they never dared to say to the opposite genders. I won’t get biased on any side, I am just presenting my sole reactions on seeing the database of confessions we are receiving. And I can see, that we are getting equally sincere confessions from the both sides. At this juncture, I wonder, why are people so tempting towards spilling out their hearts about their love concerns? If they wanna spill their heart out then isn’t there anything else that they would like to share and contemplate about?

I get to learn something from this. If you want to get popular on social media then you would have to project your actions and plan your way out through advertisements in such a way that it relates with the 'attracting phenomena' of opposite sexes. And certainly yes, to a very large extent this is correct. You can see how almost every advertisements on television are now being presented and screen played. They resemble your love life somewhere or the world of your love-fantasy or may be about the broken love life of yours. These three things I should say are working as the three chief dots which draw the big popularity triangle.

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The Open Window...

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

On closing my eyes, I fill thick brooded meshes in my lungs with air… I hold it for a while, pushing it a little further, until I can hold it no more. Freshness sprouting outside my open window descends deep down into me… Perhaps, its spring; I can see through the open window, trees ladened with new leaves and buds; birds chirruping, squeaking around in happy-playful mood. Jolly squirrel nests on the tree too, jumping from branch to branch. Sometime they stop by at the open window, staring at my partially lit face.

Can I be ever free? I have been captive under chains of my psychotic mind. Along every perspectived dimension in my mind, there jolts clumsy curiosity; the curiosity to arrive at a clue to freedom, a way to cut bars in the open window, to dissolve the tiny autumn within me and dilute it into the sprawling spring outside.

Tools made out of elemental love, I have used enough. Adamant chains tied around my torso don’t listen to them. In the environs of spooky silent nights, my imaginary friend visits me. He preaches to carve my tools out from hatred, assuring the success on blood soiled chains. Morally fed soul of mine ravages at this juncture; it still trusts in love, although yet to recover from past injuries bought in the love’s conspiracy.

The sunlight is warm, grazing over green trees outside the open window. At a certain time of the day, the Sun bathes my dark pestered room, throwing a shine of hope on my face. It’s the time when my friend in my shadow visits me. He shares his thoughts with me, conjuring me about life; What is life?

As the Sun rises up in the sky, friend in my shadow recedes, and he is away when its all dark again. He left me a note yesterday… When the Sun was bathing me in a spotlight of hope today at its time, I read the note:

“Life is beautiful outside your open window. Free yourself from the chains that never physically existed. Free yourself from the captivity laid by chains of your diverse mind. I am waiting, outside your open window….                                                  -Anshul"

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