Saturday, December 20, 2008

The Journey Home...

This post is dedicated to all those who live away from home...

"The journey home is never too long
Your heart arrives before the train
The journey home is never too long
Some yesterdays always remain"

Simple, but meaningful lines from A.R.Rahman's Bombay dreams. It is a strange feeling. I don't know how to express it in words. I am handicapped by the sheer incapacity of any human language to accurately describe complex feelings arising deep inside our hearts. All I can say is, it just happens as those lines say. The simple thought that you are going to be at home in some time make your heart feel that it actually is at home. The rushing memories, the forlorn feeling, the gushing happiness, the aimed-at-nowhere smiles, the ethereal sensation... Hmmm. I felt it most recently stronger than anytime before.

The stage was set 3.5 weeks (am an engineer :P) back! Though I had been home just about 2 months back, there began this strange desire to get home. And for things like these, obstacles on the way enhance the effect! We could not have had a better fuel for our fire... Yes, the bad old exams were back!! :) If you want to know how big an ordeal exams have become to me nowadays check out a blog article a few 'page-downs' away. Again the same old story, 5 days and a lot many exams! Add to this, absolutely no mood to study :D If you have 2 things to look forward, one so-good (read going home the coming weekend) and other not-so-bad (read exam next day), which one will you choose? For us the choice was so simple :) Oh yeah, it was us not just me!! The whole campus was feeling it the same way. Nobody was even bothered about exams. The questions asked in the corridors changed from 'Did you study this chapter?' to 'When are you leaving home?', mess conversations shifted from 'subject 1 or subject 2?' to 'bhai train or flight?'. They say, Do as Romans do in Rome. The whole NITIE was not studying, so didn't I! If I was half the reason for my not studying, my room mate was the other half. This is what happens when you get a roomie with a great frequency match. Your frequencies match and.... what else, resonate! (engineering brain, I can't help it!!) Adi, I don't know how many more modules we are going to end up screwing and still smiling! But not many left! We had fun alright. The useless chats in between study breaks, the long slide gazings that usually end up in 'mama nothing went inside', the screw-this-i-wanna-go-home outbursts, the nescafe coffee breaks which usually last longer than our single-stretch-study-time, the going home discussions regardless of what exam it was... dude, we had a great time at 422! Thanks for being with me and supporting me through the testing(!!) times :D We will face the next storm together!

The exam timetable actually added icing to the cake. The exam on the last day 'Procurement and Materials management' was the ultimate paper. Nobody knew what to study and nobody seemed to do anything about it. NITIEians can vouch for it. It just got over. Somehow. And suddenly it was time to go home! I was smiling all the way from Mumbai to my home. The reactions of my fellow passengers made me smile more :) No dear world, MBA has not yet driven me mad... Hmmm, I went home. But what did I do? Eat, sleep, pick up and drop mom from and at office, watch movie and occasionally tv, do some grocery shopping, scold my sister, travel a little and WTF!! They said it was over. Those 15 days had just flown by even though I had nothing to do and was bored like hell. I was at home doing nothing useful and I am back here doing nothing useful again. Why did I even have to come? Can't I do that 'nothing useful' from there itself? Crazy world, just doesn't understand my profound thoughts! Hmmm... Its just more than 24 hours since I arrived here. I don't know when the next official holidays are. But I have started to think about my next trip home now itself! The journey home is never too long, your heart arrives before the train. But this time my heart chose to stay behind instead of travelling back and forth!! :)


And yeah, I have added a new feature called 'reactions' to my blog. You can find it right below the post. Use it!

Sunday, December 7, 2008

The DREAM code

Dreams, a rather abstruse but fascinating dimension of the power of human brain, is a difficult topic to write upon. On any average day, I would say writing on dreams is not my cup of tea. But today I had a dream that has prompted me to do this piece of writing. I don't know if a person who reads through this can identify with the fascination that dream left me with. Nevertheless read through. This is an interesting journey into my brain. Everyone of us have wondered what causes those little movies to run through our mind when it is suppossed to be resting. It is another big surprise that we are not able to remember all of it. A colleague of mine gave an explanation to this. Dreams are a result of the subconcious brain. When we sleep only the conscious brain goes to sleep but subconcious keeps awake. This subsoncious fellow, a rather dumb one, tries to make sense of whatever info concious brain had processed. Since he is dumb he uses improper logic and creates senseless videos that get screened inside our skull theatre as dreams. Till yesterday I thought this could be true, but today I say this could be the most plausible explanation for dreams. Here is the dream I had and its signifance.

I am roaming in some place in Bombay where I meet Adi and Sambit. They are buying shoes. It is afternoon time and we decide to lunch together. But they both dump me and run away in a bike. I am worried about eating alone and lo there comes Sankara. We both go to lunch together but he chooses to have just a black currant ice cream. We then decide to take a walk. We keep on walking and suddenly reach a small pond. By now Sankara has disappeared and I have a group of friends with me. After exploring a bit, we find out the pond is an extension of huge lake and there is also a dam on the other side of the lake. My friends decide to get to the other side of the dam. But I don't go with them as the width of the dam is so small and I fear I may trip into the water. After some time I start walking alone. At the middle of the lake, I find the dam to be transferred into a railway track and a train is coming towards me. I cramp myself below the tracks to let the train pass. Suddenly I find Joey's leg is caught in some barbed wire and I help him out of it. Then everything goes black and soon after I woke up.

I got this dream at around 12 noon when I was both hungry and sleepy and not sure which one to handle first. All characters featured in this dream are real and I interact with them on a day to day basis. All the words in bold above are a direct reference to what is going on in my life now.
  • Adi & Sambit - Two of my best friends at NITIE and with whom I interact the most. Adi is my roommate and Sambit is my neighbour + team mate
  • Lunch - It was 12 noon and I was really hungry when I got this dream
  • Bike - I miss my bike so much and I think everyday of how to bring it in here
  • Sankara - He is coming to India on Jan 1st and I am drawing plans to meet him
  • Black currant ice cream - They gave us black currant ice cream in the mess instead of the traditional vanilla
  • Small pond - Obvious reference to the NITIE pond
  • Group of friends - I remember everyons's face. It is the same group with whom I play MAFIA every night
  • Joey - Nowadays I have started watching a lot of FRIENDS
This is too much to be true. Direct references to all that is happening in my life right now! Yes there are some bits that don't fit into the jigsaw puzzle. But they could be a deja vu. OMG! Are our brains recording all that we do? Some sort of a log file! If so how big is it and is there a way to find what all is recorded in that till now? I used to advice people I know to develop thinking capability. But people, think twice before you decide what to think. Your brain is recording all of it. I am absolutely enthralled after this experience! Dear Sigmund Freud, I have really started to feel the power of human brain. It now seems, after all, those super computers are no match for the human brain. But there is a obvious question that crops up in my mind. Why us? Oh god, why did you make the human brain so powerful? Is it because humans would achieve unprecedented levels of advancement in science  and technology or is it because at some point of time these so called advancements would wipe out human race from the face of earth? Was it given as a means for unravelling all the mysteries around us or a means for effecting self destruction? If I ever get a chance to meet god and ask him this question, he would perhaps say, "BOTH!!".