Possessiveness

Yesterday, a freshie of my hostel came to me and asked for my cycle key (I have a racing cycle) because he wanted to practise for the inter-hostel cycling event. I, immediately gave hime my cycle even without asking his room number or name. He later came to me faithfully and gave me his cycle key and asked me to use his and told me that he would return my keys once the practice is over.

It has been two days since I have touched my cycle. I couldn't meet this boy and get back my cycle key. Although I have one cycle for use which is in pretty good condition, I have been feeling quite restless because I wanted to use only my cycle. This restlessness clearly indicates to me that I am very possessive of my cycle which I never realized until today. What an unnecessary attachment I have developed towards this cycle ! I had at one point of time decided that I would tell him that his cycle is very painful to ride and that I wanted my cycle back. This attachment has driven me to a state of telling lies unnecessarily at my mental level. A thought conceived in the mind is as bad as doing the action itself.

You might consider this a very trivial thing. But this is how most of our attachments lead us to a state of mental unrest and dissatisfaction.

Is man nocturnal?

Is man a nocturnal being? Obviously not. Had he been one, he would have the faculty to traverse and do all the activities in the night without the aid of electricity. And he wouldn't be doing anything during the day. This is evidently not the case.

If you ask any random person in IIT what time he usually goes to sleep, he most probably will tell some time beyond 12 in the midnight or sometimes even 4 in the morning. I thought this was the case only in hostels but only after I chatted with a couple of my friends in Bangalore who don't stay in hostels did i realize that they too sleep late; very late in the night and get up late. This seems to be the trend in most cities. If you ask them why they cannot go to bed early and get up early, they will say it is impossible for them to do so, the reason being that they have never tried doing so. And the funniest part is that some even feel that the most productive time of the day for them is after midnight when they do most of the activities. What an irony! Medical science has proved that it is important for any person to sleep during such hours and that sleep is the most productive thing to do at night. It doesn't take much effort on one's part to get up early. Any person who has enjoyed the morning calm would never like to part with it. I think it is the only time in this modern fast paced world when one can feel closer to Nature. One is really missing something if one is not able to enjoy this peace.

Personally, I feel the later I sleep, my mind is filled with more and more thoughts and there seems to be absolutely no calmness. And the following morning I feel extremely tired even if I sleep for 8 hours. You may say, it is very personal and that it does not apply to every one. But I would suggest you to do this. Just close your eyes and observe your thoughts at 10 in the night and if you are awake until 12 observe them. If you do this for a few days, you will know the difference. In the Puranas, the time of midnight is considered to be the time of the Rakshasas. Rakshasas are nothing but thoughts in your mind. And the time between 3 and 5 is considered to be the Brahma muhurtha. This is the time of absolute calmness and a person who meditates during this hour can achieve calmness of the mind very easily. That is why in the olden days, rishis used to get up by 2, take bath and do tapas during the brahma muhurtha.


I would say this tendency of sleeping late and getting up late is making man move more and more away from Nature. Just look around in Nature all the diurnal organisms. They go to rest soon after sunset and you can hear the sound of the birds chirping as early as 4 in the morning. And man , who is also diurnal, is just doing the opposite nowadays.

Revival of my violin practice

It had been more than a couple of years since I had touched my violin much to the disappointment of my parents, more so my father. Though I had not lost my interest totally, I didn't have the enthusiasm to listen and practise.

To me, music is one thing which needs utmost devotion and dedication. No one can learn music if one does not practise enough. There is no point in learning music just for the heck of it. If you begin learning, you need to put your heart and soul into it and practise every bit a few hundred times to master it. Music is not like any other subject where you get a 40% and you pass. In music, you pass only if you are 100% perfect, else you have failed. Obviously, if you want to do this, you need to put in a few hours of practice daily. And if you are learning an instrument, it would be more difficult because you have to sit with your instrument in a particular place unlike vocal where you can practise anywhere by singing to yourself.

I knew I couldn't practise as required, as music to me was only secondary to studies. And being in IIT, devoting enough time for practice would be an impossible task unless music is your passion and you want to become a professional. Neither of them were true in my case. So, I totally gave up practice thinking that I would not be losing anything if I didn't practice. But these arguments never convinced my father and he thought i was totally against music.

In the beginning of this semester, I bought a PC and downloaded lot of Carnatic music from the lan and I have about 1800 Carnatic music tracks. After listening to quite a bit of music, I decided to bring my violin to the hostel and continue my practice, in spite of all the difficulties involved. I know my practice would be of no avail to me, except for the fact that it would satisfy my father. To me, it makes no difference whether I practice or not. When I went home a couple of weeks back, I brought my violin, much to the surprise of my father, who thought I would never touch my violin again in my life. But unfortunately, I couldn't practice since one of the strings was cut and I had to buy a new one and also because my quizzes were going on. Once my quiz got over, I removed one of the strings from my friend's violin, who anyway doesn't practice much, and put it in my violin and tuned it properly. Now my violin was ready to be played. I initially thought I could not even play the sarali varisai properly but to my own surprise i found that my placement were perfect and I could easily play without many apaswaras, although the gamakas were not coming out properly. I practised for about an hour and a half until my hands began paining. Earlier, I used to practise for three hours continually and my hands never pained but this time they pained showing lack of practice. Yet, I felt a little happy that my skills were not totally lost, thanks to my music knowledge gained over the years.

Difficulty in writing

There was a sudden craze in the wing of my hostel to start blogging. Every one here created a blog and wanted to pen down whatever they felt like. I too joined this and created one account and soon posted one which was not my original in any manner. And it has been about 20 days since I have written anything. The reason is mainly because I have a strong feeling that I cannot write well. Obviously no one can write well unless he begins writing. Though I know this I feel diffident and discontinue writing thinking that my thoughts are not coherent. This has happened to me at least half a dozen times. I realize that I should not care about whatever I write and just begin writing, not thinking about how good it is or how meaningful it is. But this understanding also does not help me to overcome my inferiority complex. At the end of the day, I know I am the loser if I don't know how to express my thoughts in writing. Hopefully, I will overcome this diffidence and start writing regularly so that i may improve my writing.

Dialogues

The most enjoyable period in my life so far has undoubtedly been my pre-university college days. The main reason was the wonderful calibre of the teachers we had and the amount of fun we had mocking at them. In my 2nd PU, i began noting down the meaningless dialogues, as we called it, of our teachers. These were statements which came out of the mouths of lecturers, either due to the lack of knowledge, or due to the inability to communicate well, or sometimes because of a different meaning that could be attributed to the sentence. These dialogues, to this day, if i recollect them, make me laugh heartily. By the end of my 2nd PU, I found that i had more than 300 dialogues of teachers from colleges and tuition classess all over Bangalore. Here are a few which i like the most. ( Go through them slowly so that you might enjoy them to the fullest)

• You two are sitting alone in the bench
• Write negligibly ( guess what this teacher means - write legibly)
• My notes are world famous in Bangalore
• Usually womans are bad at arithmetic maths
• No previous day is holiday
• Carbon dating is used to find how long a man died
• Carbon dating is used to find the age of years
• What is the difference between a cable and a wire? A cable is long wire and a wire is a small wire. Another answer to the same question: A cable is a wire which you see outside and a wire is a wire which you see inside.
• What is the use of waste gases?... to heat the hot gases.
• Take a copper wire of any metal, preferably silver
• Bring the world map of India
• Himalayas are world famous in Asia
• Bring your father. I want to talk to your mother.
• While studying, keep the door of your room open so that your parents can see you through the window
• Which temperature is known by which zone?
• Ferrous is stable in ferric state.
• Iron is the topmost element above the top.
• You are repeating alongwith me
• I am coming back to the next point.
• These metals are metalloid in character.
• What is your name w.r.t (with respect to) your father?
• Earth is revolving around the sun in a spherical orbit.
• Draw a tangent to a line
• There are four types of sexually transmitted diseases. You will get one of them in the exam.
• I could hear your sound while i was coming up down the stairs
• Open the window, let the airforce come in.
• Everyone in the class must get above class average
  
• One day, suddenly a monkey appears near the window of the classroom and the students look at the monkey. The teacher then tells "Why are you all looking at the monkey when i am here"

A special mention has to be made about my Sanskrit teacher, who, within a span of six months had told around 200 dialogues. The following are her best.

• Section A is full of absentees.
• He is driving the cart alongwith the bullocks.
• Wheels of the chariot may fall upon its body.
• Any type of such jumbled questions will be asked in the exam.
• You have to recognize the questions in the question paper.
• I am not the Raja himself.
• The charioteer saw the scenery first, later Raja saw it simultaneously.
• Charioteer sits in front of the chariot.
• The horses are running very fast showing real horse power.
• Let them graze on the river.
• The parrots are dwelling inside the trees
• Animals in the wild forest do not have human dwellings.
• Don't write the conclusion in the middle of the answer
• The name Kaushika belongs to Vishwamitra
• Irrigate the water.
• You can see the beauty of the moon on new moon day
• He wants to find the birth secret of her birth
• Bee is sucking honey from the flower.
• Class is not progressing because of your non-cooperation movement
• You are not physically present here
• Dust particles are coming in huge size
• If you are too good in chemistry, why are you coming to sanskrit class
• Charioteer and chariot driver are waiting with the horse
• My mind is running behind my body
• Camel is inhibiting the desert.
• Northern direction is above south. Hence it is greater than south.
• He is playing veena like violin
• Shiva's husband had a wife anybody
• His head is a fruit like coconut.