Thank you 2012!

As the last day of 2012 ticks it way in my clock I have my eyes closed trying to recollect whatever I can from this truly wonderful year. 4^th semester had begun bravely with reining my heart over the bitter cease of an ostensibly infamous ad-hoc relationship. The loose ends however were luckily tightened by the love and care of a true friend who turned out to be more than that. The excitement of a foreign internship pervaded deep in the skin to be affected by the random gusts of ocular trauma. The summers came soon enough revolutionizing my life in several ways. Friendship, professionalism, inspiration, motivation, hardwork and happiness were at their zenith. I couldn’t have asked for more. The amount of experience and emotions that the life of research has to offer is overwhelming. I consider myself to be lucky, extremely lucky, to have realized the worth of academia in my life. The end is hazy but the path is clear. With the things I have absorbed and the things I’ve let out, I can just hope to live up to my own expectations. None other’s matter. With South Korea coming to an end in my journey, leaving me with a thought that I probably might not go back ever to this beautiful country, I was aware that I was taking back much more from it than I possibly contributed. I was happy to have rediscovered my own college. However, the internship filled me with a desire to run behind stats more than ever. It led to some erroneous judgments and falsification of the very aims with which I began the 5^th semester.  I paid the price of going awry but was glad to have realized it soon enough. Having already being overwhelmed with the experience of the summer internship, I was ecstatic and almost drunk with the joy and excitement to get selected for the Indo-German winter academy. It was a neat packaged, ribbon tied Christmas gift of new friends and some of the brightest minds of the country. Apart from the academic and learning experience in the field of fluids mechanics of course. The academy proved to be another high point before the culmination of this year, after South Korea. The vacation in Pune city this December of 2012 was surreal. Got to spend some of the most exciting, scary, lucky and lovely days of my life. I had never believed in using New Year as an excuse for a fresh start or having a set of resolutions. I believed in starting fresh or setting an aim whenever I felt strongly about doing so. However with some series of events synchronously falling with the beginning of the New Year might apparently disguise my aims as resolutions. So yes, I do plan to change certain things. For the better for sure. Let’s see what 2013 has in store. Have always loved this unpredictability of life and damn I am excited. Thank you 2012. I am grateful for everyone and everything that happened to me. Trying to be a better person, every second. 

11TH INDO GERMAN WINTER ACADEMY, CMERI, DURGAPUR

I recall a famous quote by Aristotle, 

“It’s the mark of an educated mind to entertain an idea without accepting it”.

I couldn’t realize the profundity of this quote until I visited this academy. 7 IITs, 1 German Institute, 39 Indian students, 6 German students and well , infinite amount of talent was mathematically available if you will but leaving mathematics aside the dynamics of the very environment was so intellectually stimulating that all I could do is wonder and wow like a 5 year old standing outside a candy shop! The academy was for 7 days and I wish it continued for more but this number 7 seemed to work like the 7 wonders for us. We all knew the importance of networking and we all knew we had to learn. This short period of time somehow enabled us to overcome the threshold of acquaintance and cross-over to immediate friendship. Professional friendship perhaps if not personal, but that was adequate and sufficed for my gray cells to sweat every second. After those long sessions of contemplating about my college culture and coveting peers whose frequency could match with mine the academy proved to be like a necessary reassurance that there is always a wider spectrum. There is always a group of intellectuals who are ready to listen. Full of categorical literature and contemporary knowledge, the participants possessed an ability to challenge the borders of infinity itself. Yeah I know, if they are reading it perhaps modesty will make them think I am exaggerating but consider them to be like mirrors. Individually you cannot figure them out, but place it with another and one sees infinity for the other. I saw that in them. I realized even I could. Every second, every moment there was something new to imbibe. Be it numerical methods for fluids or dynamics of cricket balls, be it learning about different IIT cultures or the common threads that held us in a single fabric, be it learning about foreign professors or differentiating them with Indian ones, be it about realizing we were all weird in some way or realizing we all had something unique about us, it was all there. You just had to open your eyes, seek and learn.

Speaking about the academy specifically, we all were assigned a topic from contemporary research fields such that each topic had something known and unknown for all of us. The fact that the topic was familiar helped us be engrossed in the presentations even when there were only mathematical formulae on the white projector screen. Naturally the unknown aspects of the topics were difficult to comprehend in a matter of 45 minutes but just a simple introduction to it acts as an ignition to the bomb of knowledge ready to explode our minds. 

From morning 9 to evening 6 there were a series of presentations including the professor’s bragging here and there about their research work. Day began with a lousy breakfast and ended with a lavish dinner. Obviously, it includes the super heavy lunch and infinite coffee breaks during the presentations. Although it was half-felt, thanks to the previous Indo-German being held in a 5 star hotel with IIT Delhi celebrating its 50 years, we were treated royally. The newly inaugurated hostel was like the innocent virgin about to be exploited by academia hungry Indo-German participants, turning the shiny new rooms into murky residence. There was a fully functional HVAC system, fresh new sheet covered beds, a cozy blanket, new pair of bathroom slippers, a flat screen LCD TV, a lounge area with awesome couches, a cozy balcony with a couple of chairs, personal bathroom with soap and shampoo and well an annoying cacophonous bell. These might sound very trivial and obvious details for an accommodation but well given that they said our accommodation was in a hostel and not a hotel, as Indians students we learn to appreciate. Yeah there were some unfortunate ones who got to stay at the old guest house a couple of meters away, but they were saved the trouble of walking all the way from the new hostel to the guest house early in the morning when the soul is yawning and all it needs is just some food right to the mouth to help it not depart from the body. 

After the lousy breakfast as I mentioned earlier which was only bread butter and jam, at about 8:45 am we headed to the main campus as inmates in a caged school bus with a weird mysterious entrance which could only be found once you walk the entire perimeter of the vehicle. Basically the door was at the rear end and involuntarily everyone headed towards the driver side or the front of the bus to find the door eventually leading everyone to circumscribe the bus at least once.

The CMERI campus stood proudly and beautifully like a wild animal amongst the dense forest area of Durgapur or probably the campus was gardened well, anyways the serenity was engulfing. We reached the auditorium for our welcome session. Recalling the Delhi IGWA academy we wished to be stunned by “I”-pads or “I”-phones but alas! Reality dawned upon us like Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception silently whispering “Wake up” and we became the proud owners of “I”-Cards and Indo-German bags with a few goodies.

That marked the beginning of something so awesome, so exhilarating, so motivating, so reassuring, and so liberating that I choose not to spoil it by casting in words. Those 7 days of interaction, learning and intellectual stimulation shall remain with me forever. In all probability, it will be improving my way of thinking and by extension the course of my life. I am grateful to have met these amazing guys from Erlangen, IIT Madras, Roorkee, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Delhi and Mumbai and I am sure we all are looking forward to strengthen our bonds over the internet and continue to exchange information, ideas and knowledge to reach the apotheosis of ourselves.

School friends!

Life is all about the present. The presents you have, making it worth it, breathing in and out. One such present is your school friends. You could have their faint, half-forgotten images in your mind, with a couple of year old frame of references and then you are just stunned and amazed by the fact that they've changed so much. Suddenly all your senses are alert trying to recollect how they were and constantly sinking in the fact that this is who they are now. Sometimes the child in you wants to fight with the clock trying to make it tick backwards but all you can do is order a couple of drinks and hangout with these old friends and revive those times which made us stick around in the first place. The time gap hardly matters. Whether it’s been a few months or a few years, it’s the present which makes you happy. That very moment, you realize THIS is friendship. You behave as if there has been no void. Even if you feel it the questions and conversations are enough to fill them up. Jumping from one topic to another like the blithely flying migrating birds, the bliss of catching up is beyond these walls of words. And then the topic of discussion is about you and you realize that all this while when you were comparing the present and the past of your friends they were busy doing the same thing. You realize how you’ve evolved and how circumstances have led you to be who you are, as your friends ask you whether you still do this or that which probably you might have forgotten yourself. You realize how you were paying little attention to yourself in your busy life while your friends act as your mirror reminding you of those little moments which mattered to them the most about you. It’s funny how we think and act in one direction while your friends discover the whole new side of you. Yeah! After all this while school friends are still precious. They are still your presents!

living life to the fullest!

A lot of weird things happened today that threw me into a stack of realizations not only changing the way I am looking at my life today but also what I would choose to do next.  It’s funny how you always remember things in theory but forget them to apply in practice. I’ve always felt this self-constructed pressure on myself for a range of things I choose to pursue and I don’t know why. I’ve always known to enjoy life every moment (in theory) and make the most of it without actually realizing that I might have missed a whole lot of sides to my life which I could have attempted successfully or unsuccessfully just for the sheer pleasure of pursuing them. As confusing as this previous line could be I myself am appalled by the fact that there are so many things I wish I would have done in the past but left it as I was afraid of failure. Not just in pursuing the new task but also fearing to not be able to live up to my own expectation of my previous work. Well, it is realistic to be careful, cautious and wise but sometimes it’s worth taking a risk. Sometimes you need to hit the arrow in the dark to see where it lands. Although I still strongly do believe in not leaving your life to chance but certain decisions, certainly not all, could be dealt differently. The true experience of anything is when you could see both the high and the low of it. Unfortunately it can’t always be that ways. How could one experience both success and failure at the same time for the same thing? Although it’s easier to imagine about feeling happy and sad at the same time and even for the same thing but could it be possible with everything else as well? Would that be called the true experience of the thing in the first place? Even though I do not have an answer for that I do know one thing for sure. My definition of living life to fullest is dynamic, constantly changing and warmly accommodating every new facet that life has to offer. 

No regrets...

So many juniors came up to me saying that how couldn’t I participate in dance for Manthan, the annual inter hostel cultural festival. The question was killing apart from the expressions on their faces. It’s weird how we see movies and read books on things that you should follow which your heart desires but revert back to the normal life we live every day.  Couldn’t I have spared a little time to be a part of the practices every day? I guess I could have. Then what was it that leads me to abstain from it?

I guess they were a series of incomplete tasks and the burden of my goal for this semester which prevented me to enjoy something which so naturally comes to me- Dance. Sometimes it’s not okay to let go. Sometimes you need to adhere. Well the opposite side will seem perfectly crafted apotheosis of inspiration and motivation to have a free will and do what your heart desires but well my vision has crossed far beyond the predictions of natural successions to realize and tell myself what I need to live up to. Nobody had told me, goals especially ambitious ones would come in ribbon tied box which I would just neatly open up. The more important thing is nobody should. 

Unless you are absolutely determined to achieve what you've set to achieve you will not. Yeah I might realize in process whether it is worth it or not and that’s where I could choose to stop and let go. Do the things I do and pamper myself with a break but when I am in the middle of the road trying to reach a particular place, I cannot fancy me with break or a rest. What for? Dance for me is my hobby. I love it but I do not wish to pursue it.

I can dance anywhere. The feeling of not being ashamed and using it to express myself is priceless. But I cannot dance anytime and every time. I do it to take a break not to commit myself to it. A break from the tiring incline of the success graph I wish to see for myself. It brings a sort of constancy in me. It gives me the energy. Energy for what? To continue to pursue something else.

And  yeah this is not a letter of apology or clarification. In fact it’s a conversation with me. Talking to myself gives me the drive. My teachers have told me that I am a great speaker but a terrible listener. I wondered how I could improve. I failed. I couldn’t listen to most of them. Might sound funny now but well last option was to at least listen to myself. For now, things are going pretty well and I have taken decisions and have at least tried to proudly live up to them. For me, dance and conversations like these are my drive.  

So in the end, of course the choice is yours to do whatever you feel is right for you. Either way I believe you will land up in a place familiar to where you’d mentally limited yourself. You could be happy, you could be sad but I wouldn’t ever want to regret the path I take.  I’m happy in this case I don’t.