The Lost Moments...

Its a hot sunny Jaipur morning, when you get drenched in sweat in the time period of leaving your home and reaching your car. Dressed in pretty formal clothes and feeling proud of myself after having looked in the mirror a considerable number of times, I sit in my car and turn on the radio. I drive through an irritating and noisy morning traffic. Suddenly, the sun hides behind the clouds and the weather takes a sharp turn giving me the feeling of the equator. I smile to myself and drive happily humming the song being played on the radio station. The radio station decides to play a fairly old, but superbly famous song on friendship "Yaaron dosti, badi hi haseen hai...". I immediately get nostalgic and get lost in memories of the better times when I was in school. I miss my closest friends with whom I had spent some of the greatest moments ever. Unfortunately or fortunately, I pass by a city's popular hangout joint which had been our favourite spot since years. I see a group of boisterous teenagers standing outside the cafe-lounge, like we used to stand a few years back feeling like the tigers of the den.

I suddenly realize the changes that have come about in life. Ironically, the formal clothes I am wearing denote a lot of changes to me. It occurs to me that my friends have been in the city since 10 days already and we haven't got a chance to meet... each one of us is now busy with interns, office, training and other usual worldly affairs. The days are now gone... when we used to meet for hours every single day, and used to loiter around the city aimlessly with no particular destination... when we went to our favourite (and cheapest) hang out joint on a daily basis and when we would laugh for hours on silly jokes and petty matters... when we would go out for unplanned night outs and disorganized parties. The invisible strands of routine struggles of life have already caught hold of us and we have totally forgotten about the better half of life. I feel guilty and sad at the same time and wish I could go back in time... but that would be a negative approach to things... life moves on and so do we. The point is we have to manage our lives in such a way that we can take out time for things that really matter.

After hundreds of promises to meet regularly on the last day of school and millions of plans that got cancelled because of one or the other group mate, I walk down the memory lanes and realize that time cannot be reversed but what can be done is to bring back the old charm in the new life. We should live every moment and every day with a single aim of creating memories, because as a famous author said, "Its not the days in your life that you will remember, its the memories..."

The song being played ended in 4 minutes and 33 seconds and I reached my office for a new day... but with a promise to create new memories in the remaining days of summer... :)

We don't need no Education...!

So, its the result time and every morning when I wake up, the newspapers are filled with the amazing success and heart touching stories of hard working students, facebook is filled with "Yippee" status messages with students expressing their ecstasy and with hundreds of comments on them wishing them a heartfelt congratulations. Its all good and it feels very nice to see students scoring so well and succeeding in whatever field they chose. I have been in contact with lots of youngsters and teenagers of every age and every field, and I have realized that a good change has come - every student dares to dream big now. The times have changed and students are actually daring to think beyond the conventional science, commerce and medical fields.
However, many might not agree or even hate me for what I am writing now. Our education system is degrading at a scary speed! With all the results recently, I noted that upto 40-45 students are scoring above 90% in 12th board exams in every school. Besides, almost every second 10th class student I saw, had a CGPA of a perfect 10. I can get into the ugly debate of introduction of the grading system in boards, but then that will go on for long. The standards of education is on a decline and by making it easier day by day, we are just introducing students to a secure and safe environment which is absolutely not practical.
Not that seeing students succeed is bad, but there needs to be some competition. Students need to learn a basic fact - that they should work hard to achieve what they deserve. It should not be given to them like a  'prasad'. Although good steps have been taken like opening up of new IITs, IIMs and other premium government institutes which will help impart better education among larger number of students, but even there the course structure and educational approach needs a complete overhauling. Let us be real, we are far away from practical teaching, and on the contrary we are moving towards an education system which promotes mugging up day and night.
We are not the government and nor do we have the authority to change anything, but students need to understand that they should mentally keep a practical approach towards studies and try to innovate things and be creative. Every field needs creativity, else we will never have Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates in India. Let us take things in our own hands and let us be our own teacher first... :)

The Lost Respect...

The Indian social structure has a wide gap as the rich are getting richer and the poor, unfortunately, poorer. I don't want to talk about the economic reasons and financial analysis to track down the reasons of such differences. What is want to talk about is the basic generic problem with the people of our country... We do not respect people. We have, basically, lost the respect of professions and labour. This is the major difference between India and other countries, say, USA. Equality of labour is something lacking in our nation. We do not understand the very obvious fact that everyone works hard and everyone works to earn for themselves and their families. 

You must be confused that what all I am talking about and why? Say for example, how many times have you gone to a restaurant and seen your uncles and relatives talk to the waiters with disrespect and flippancy. We cannot wait for 5 minutes if the service is proving to be a little slow, our next step is to abuse - straight! And the reason? Because we are paying, so we have to be the dominant side. We are literally throwing money in their faces, and therefore the staff, the waiters, everyone should wash our feet! Crap! 

May its my curbed anger inside, maybe this is evident only in some part of the country more than others, but the underlying message is we, as a nation, need to develop ourselves... we need to develop our minds and broaden our mindsets and thinking capacities. I feel proud and hopeful in a sense, that such crude behaviour is less evident in our younger generation. We work hard ourselves and we have gone through our struggles, and we know what it means to respect others. 

There is an urgent need to change our attitude towards people, and respect all professions alike. The day we start doing it and learn to show some "courtesy", we will be a much better nation!