Reflections

Introduction “Love is not the greatest glue between two people. Sex is.” The book, “The Alchemy of Desire” by Tarun J. Tejpal, starts off at this witty remark which mesmerized me so much as a reader that I could not help but share this phrase and the paragraph following these lines with my friends. Little did I know that the author had established the theme of the book right from the first line, unlike a lot of other books which ramble around the theme all the while, only closing in on it in a few portions of the book and sometimes only towards the end. The book is filled with it; desire. The book is not about its characters. Desire: that is just what the book is about. Through each character in the book, a new aspect of the theme is revealed, creating a mesh of ideas which get sorted out only at the end. Summary Something between the narrator and his wife Fizz (nickname for Fiza) snaps and the narrator no longer feels the same intensity of love for his wife as he had felt earlier....

Here is a collection of the links of some of my articles published by youthkiawaaz.com, an online forum with which I have been working as an intern for quite some time! Mentorship: Celebrating People for Who They Are! Plagiarism: Challenging the Concept Understanding the Agnostic Viewpoint Badnaam Munni, Jawaan Shiela and Poor India College Fests: The fun. The turbulence Model United Nations: LOLing Moments! Suddenly, Last Winter NREGA: Bright Future Prospects? Censorship on the Internet: Some key players and Perils The state of 5 Rivers in Turmoil P.S. Some of these, you might have already read on my Blog! :) P.P.S. Thank you YKA for an amazing experience! :D

Lights, camera, Action! Put on your formals, yes those high heels and those professional ties! They should suit you with that plastic smile and the “Oh my God, I am so concerned!” attitude that you shall wear on the scenes for the next three days! You shall walk with those files tagged with those Green slips (pink for ladies, please!) and hope against hope that you have a file boosting of more pages than all the other delegates! Oh you have a laptop? Great! Now, you will not even have to miss your favorite episodes of Modern Family while the entire world is “discussing” world peace in the “Conference”! Thirsty for some cheap publicity? What are the Communication “chits” for? Works well for you if your chits pass through the “IP Ladies”! Almost like a double treat! Kudos to all the Delegates and the Executive Board Members for the immensely fruitful discussions that they have had, in the innumerable MUNs that they have attended. Kudos to The International Press Members who have dilige...

Recently, a random plan with a friend ended up in us watching three back to back hard hitting Human Rights movies. In the subsequent 3 posts, I shall be posting my Review/ Opinions on the three movies! Suddenly, Last Winter The movie portrays the struggle of a gay couple in Italy during the time when Family Laws were being revised in Italy, in the year 2007. While I have personally never imagined homosexuality to be something abnormal or requiring medical care, most people shown in the documentary held quite contradictory views. For some, it is “a disease which needs medical attention”. For some, it is just unethical to question the order of God, who apparently created a Man and a Woman as a couple and not a Man and a Man or a Woman and a Woman. The movie talks about whether legal status be given to marriages between same sex couples. I fail to see, in the first place, why they should be illegal or for that matter, criminalized. But, maybe it is just my amateur mind which cannot und...

“So you believe in God, eh?” “Uhh…umm…Yes…No…umm…I don’t know!” But, what I do know is that I don’t know who is God. Or, what is God. Perhaps It is a belief that justifies our existence and the occurrence of every event.   Perhaps, a concept that our super-human ancestors cooked up so that they could weave innumerable stories around it about hell and heaven and morals and ethics. Perhaps He is a super-human Himself who controls each of our actions like a puppeteer would do. And, why exactly am I using “Him”? “He” could just be a “She” or perhaps just an “It”. I choose not to discriminate and shall use “It” for any further reference. So, we have never seen It. But, we had occurrences which are mysterious to us. And, so we think It is there. Where? We don’t know! To avoid any hurt to people’s sentiments that I may cause by my rhetoric statements, I shall now only present My Agnostic Viewpoint: I think and choose to believe that t is really just about Faith. Faith in something, any...

He hated it. So much so that he couldn’t stand It for the shortest period of time. It was almost like a monster eating him up. Slow and steady, like an insect it would creep out of nowhere and linger around him for eternity. Making him almost claustrophobic with it’s presence. Like a rope tied around his neck, forbidding him to speak anything. All he could do was shouting in vain, hoping that someone would take it away from him. It was in It’s presence that the woman that he had loved so much had left him. It reminded him of those exam halls sitting inside which all he could ever do was staring at the empty answer sheet that he always submitted! Bringing back pathetic memories of the Conferences where he tried so hard to elicit some response from the other side. Or the umpteen attempts at making his audience laugh, failing most of the time. She loved it. So much so that it was like a part of her. She was used to it, like the chirping of birds, the presence of the wind. She did not fin...

Today, I shall do what women are considered to be best at. To put it in more sophisticated words, I shall express my utter discontent towards the Indian Education System. Though I fail to see any Systematic order in constant strikes, absence of teachers/students from classrooms, exam paper leakages, mediocre infrastructure and ill-motivated classrooms, for the best interests of all I shall keep that out of the discussion. I wonder why we even call it “Education”, when all that we go through is just rigorous training to work as clerks or “Managers” under the bosses of “hefty package” Companies! Whatever happened to the formal definition of education as “a process to develop mentally, morally or aesthetically”? Though I don’t have many memories of classrooms (considering the lullaby that my teachers religiously sang for us in most of the classes), the fondest ones are those of the teachers ranting about how the syllabus needed to be finished (I say finished, not “completed”) before exam...