Why I Speak my Mind And Do As I Please

Because i dont give a rats ass so as to whether people think i am a "subservient suck-up" sucking up to profs for marks.
Because i know myself, I know that i DONT do it, no matter what people think.
If i like a person, and if he/ she happens to be a prof or if i respect teachers or if i like to answer in class or if i get the highest marks - it's not my fault. I talk to them because i like doing it. Not because i get more marks by doing it. You dont get the highest marks by "sucking up"
You get marks by studying, attending regularly, maybe even mugging. Prof's are not that dumb so as not to see through someone's sucking up act if they are doing one. Marks are not alloted for how nice you were to the prof or how sweet you were. they are alloted for the stuff wrtitten in your answer paper, the content up on ur slide during a presentation, and the depth of the knowledge you have about it. Somehow' profs have a way of knowing who has worked hard and who hasnt worked at all.
You dont get marks because if u attend the prof likes you, or if u dont attend u'll get rusticated - but because if u attend u will learn all that the prof has to teach:which is my main aim for being here. Unfortunately my dad daoesnt have all the money in the world to ssquander off 5 lakhs and have me behave in such a manner. This is where my self respect lies. When my father looks at me, he doesnt regret anything and i mean anything about me. My self respect lies in my father's pride. Definitely not in letting him down - bothering him for things that I am capable of getting myself, or should be.
My career doesnt depend on my sucking up skills. It depends on my capability.
I'm not talking arrogance here. I am saying that somethings are more imoprtant than a smile (huge or otherwise) on your face. Like a smile on your parents face. Like realising your responsibilities in life, and rising to fulfill them. Like letting go of your much coveted carefree-ness so that someone else can be carefree. And anyways, the smile that fulfilling your responsibilities brings to your face outlives the one brought about by carefree-ness by eons.
In short, I am what i am , on your face.I dont be nice to people on their face to get something from them and then say horrible things about them behind their back.
Until next time...

Shadows

Exams are over, and after sleeping for 10 hours straight I did what I really wanted to do: read a good book. At the insistence of a friend, I picked up A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, and finished it off in one non-stop go of 6 hours.

Does the above sentence seem like a dream come true to you? Hardly, right? I mean what's there in that sentence that's even worthy of being called a dream?

The "doing-what-i-wanted" part.

The story is about two women protagonists from Afghanistan and how their lives changed because of the turmoil that the country was in from the eighties till the early 2000's. They went through the Communist rule, the jihad, the Taliban, and what not. I'm not going to give you the story or a review of it here. It's a good book, maybe brilliant even. But if you want to know more about it, read it. What I want to talk about here is what has been in the whole book, like the far-away smell of rain just before the monsoon: always there but never in-your-face.

It's a well established fact, at least for me, that life changes in an instant. I've been there-done that, so I know it only too well. And after things change we wonder: what why when where how and all other possible questions, trying to find answers to what-if's and but's. Everyone in life has problems and everyone has eyes only for their problems. We tend to forget the good things that we can still enjoy, because of the bad circumstances that we find ourselves in.

Leaving the house when you want to, eating 3 square meals a day, wearing the kind of clothes that you like, living with your family, living in land that is not constantly war-ravaged, where you don't have to go to sleep everyday wondering whether you'll be alive the next day or no: these are a few things that we tend to take for granted. This is the way people in Afghanistan have been living for the last three decades or so. We're talking about three square meals a day? Sometimes I have six. My problem feel so inconsequential compared to what these people have been through. Not one family, I repeat, not one family has been spared the ordeal of seeing a loved one die. Some have seen their entire families being obliterated. And they still find the courage to move on. What right do I have to complain about my problems? I have a roof over my head, a loving family, food to eat as and when I want, whatever food I want, clothes to wear, the kind and color that I want. I even have the right to tell my father, when I don't agree with what he's saying, "Dad, what crap are you saying." And that too in so many words. Women in Afghanistan didn't even have the right to look into a man's eye, forget not agreeing with him, and that too, definitely not in so many words! They'd probably get beaten till they bled to death, and then the man would go around saying that she deserved it anyway. This is a not a man versus woman, and woman is suppressed but still better than man naari mukti morcha that I usually support. This is much more than that. This is about humanity, about strength and about shame. There are people out there who have problems. Real problems. Death due to starvation, being abandoned by family, being orphaned, being in a war-torn country etc. Let's not belittle their problems by giving our inconsequential problems so much importance. So big deal if life is not what it used to be. At least there is still life. So what if you don't have that much money as much as you'd like. At least you have your family. Intact (touch wood) and all yours.

Children being orphaned at the age of 16, going from being a teacher's daughter brought up in a relatively modern way to being a shoe-maker's wife, a man who is over30 years older than you. Can you imagine yourself in that kind of situation? And worse yet, can you imagine still living, everyday, for the sake of your unborn child. A sixteen year old – a child herself – sacrificing peace in the form of death for her own child, choosing to face abuses and get beaten up every day, only because the child has no fault that it was born. And I crib because life's been a little unfair to me? Am I shallow or what. These people go through pain every day. They have nothing to fall back on, no support system. No food, no family, no future. And yet they have hope. And we? We have a family, we have food, we have clothes, and we have everything. But no hope. Only despair. I need that job. I want that promotion. If I don't get that raise, I won't be able to buy that nice expensive car that I've wanted all along. I want- I want- I want. All the time. Never looking at what I-have.

Words fail me now, to describe the shame that I feel; the guilt for being so shallow. For being ungrateful of whatever God has given me: always mourning what he has taken away. For thinking that a small hiccup in life is the end-of-the-world. For always seeing the thousand shadows, instead of seeing the thousand splendid suns that caused them.

What is worse is that even though this book, its story, has touched a nerve, all I can, or rather will, do about it is cry when I read the book, and write a blog about it.

Somehow, I really don't think I like myself today.

Though nothing can bring back the hour,
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower,
We shall grieve not, rather find,
Strength in what remains behind…
-Wordsworth

Until next time…

Hey Girly

After 24 years of living like a tom-boy, and refusing to do any beauty-thingi's, I finally went to the parlor to get my hair blow-dried. Usually I used to go there just for a haircut, in and out in like 10 minutes max. But considering that the occasion demanded that I look a little presentable (had to get a photograph clicked for the placement brochure) I realized that since nothing else about me can be made beautiful in such short time, might as well do something to the damn tangle on my head called hair. So I sat there, let her pull on my hair with a brush made of pig hair (eewwww) simultaneously attacking it with a blast of hot (very hot) air, actually paid her a bomb for it and left looking nice. Really nice. Finally I understood why all models have hair while I had a tangle. Because they did this pulling-hot-air torture regularly. But it was worth the pain. My hair was shining, all lustrous and curling a bit at the ends and all nice and voluminous as compared to the flat thing I had to make do with regularly. This whole exercise made me realize that why exactly do people take the pains to look good. (People as in girls). I never really got the hang of wasting hours in front of the mirror to apply makeup but in such a way that your face looks natural and devoid of any make up. (Rather not put it in the first place right?) Or this blow-drying routine that many of my friends follow regularly. (I mean its pig hair, for god's sake, if not the pigs!) But now I get it. Looking good, or rather feeling that you are looking good, does wonders for your confidence and mood. Just feeling that I was looking nice that day actually made feel like a princess. It made me wonder exactly why I lived a tomboyish life for 24 years where I could have felt like this every day.

I introspected (big word na?) to realize that the answer was very simple: it's just not me! Ya its expensive ( oh boy o boy… very expensive) and time consuming but people who really want to get it done get it done. I'm just not one of them. I don't need to do this to feel like a princess, I can just talk to my dad and feel like that. :-D
But I don't condemn this whole routine as much as I did when I hadn't gone through it myself. Typical me, judging without experiencing. I am a bit more tolerant to people who love makeup and hair do's. But I am not one of them. It felt nice to be a part of their world for those few hours, but it felt even better to be back in my world today morning when I left home with dripping wet hair, falling flat on the sides of my face.

Until next time…