Category: My Articles

Posted in Lessons Learnt, My Articles

Fool’s Goals

Posted on by Shaivalini

I want you all to think about three things that you want in life. Think of things.

No seriously, first think; then read further.

When I thought about it, the first things that came to my mind were a nice luxurious car, a comfortable apartment and the best wardrobe ever.I am assuming that you are equally twisted in your thinking, and thought of similar things.

But do you actually want these things?

Giving it a deeper thought, I realized that I don’t actually want these things for myself. I want all this so that people look at me and think “Oh wow, look at her, she has everything at this age. I wish I were like her.” So, in reality you want all that so that the people are jealous of you. That would give you a weird sense of satisfaction, which is totally mental. Just give it a thought.

And now think of your life goals. The things that you want in life. Again three things.

I thought of a house on the beach, a closet full of books, and a job with steady money. That is what I actually want in life. And I would be totally satisfied with everything in life, with just these things. So why do we let the expectations of the society get in the way of our life goals. Why do they distract us so much that we end up forgetting where to focus?

It is imperative to know what we want- for ourselves. Only then we can be contented with what we do in life. The things that the society would be happy to see with us versus the things that we really want.

The satisfaction derived from both of these would differ a great deal in terms of durability. One will be transient and the other, if you get it right, would probably stay with you for the rest of your life.

It is very easy to think that you really want all those things you first thought of, and if you achieve it, the high might not let you know that you don’t want it.

I would categorize the things that we first thought of as the fool’s goals. And the latter as the real goals.

There are people who rejoice in the happiness bought on by the fool’s goals until they realize the truth. And then there are people who live in misery until they realize the satisfaction brought on by the life’s goals. The one’s of their own.

Today, where do you stand?

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People are just people…

Posted on by Shaivalini

In a very rare scenario, I am publishing one of my assignments here. This is the article I wrote for my Ethics class. It is based on the movie Blood Diamond. If you haven’t seen the movie, I urge you to do that at the earliest. To make the article understandable, a clip from the movie is attached.

“My heart always told me that people are inherently good. My experience suggests otherwise. But what about you, Mr. Archer? In your long career as a journalist, would you say that people are mostly good?”  
“No. I’d say they’re just people.”

People develop beliefs based on their experiences in life. Both Benjamin and Danny had witnessed life in its most cruel form. But their experiences had been different. These experiences made them who they were.

It is mentioned in the movie that Danny Archer had a tough childhood. Both his parents were brutally killed in front of him, when he was just nine years old. Thereafter, he was on his own and, given the plight of his country, he must have had a tough time in his struggle for survival. This is evident as he grows up to be selfish, practical and apparently a cold person. But, that doesn’t totally take away the good in him. He knew what loss felt like. Humanity was still prevalent in him.

On the other hand, Benjamin seems to be a kind of person who had earlier been living in a comparatively peaceful environment. Later in his life, however, he somehow gets engulfed by the war, still, he works in order to make the lives of the children, better. This tells us that he is the kind of person who would still be looking for means of obtaining inner peace, in a war prone environment. And hence, he takes up the noble cause of rehabilitation of the war-affected children.

So, specific to their experiences, both of them had a different approach towards humans and their humanity. While Benjamin lived his whole life with the certainty that people are good, his exposure to the war made him question his belief. Therefore, he says his experience suggests him otherwise. Archer, on the other hand, falls in the grey area, he is not a ruthless killer; but he doesn’t mind killing if it helps him. So, he is of the view that people are just people, the situations can make even good people perform bad deeds.

If we observe closely, today, I think, most of us are like Archer. Even though, we had a normal childhood and a normal life; we aren’t inherently good. And we all blame it to the society, the world, the universe. We give excuses like, “So what if I don’t do it? One person cannot make any difference”. “Everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t I?” We are manipulated easily by what everyone else is doing. That is a dangerous thing. It kills us in a way we do not understand. And by the time we realize the change, it is too late to recover.

In my life, I haven’t met a person whom I can clearly classify as good or bad. It is more of a perspective, what I think about them, which is a derivative of their actions and thoughts. In such a case, I don’t think I will ever come across any person who is good or bad. Nobody’s perfect. We all have our greys. And it is important to accept that. Otherwise, it would be impossible to live in this world. Probably, the imagination of God that I have in my mind is perfect. But that is just in my mind. And a number of times I have told myself even God is not perfect. Because, if he was, the world wouldn’t have been such a bad place to live in. I have come to believe that life isn’t fair. It will never be.

A sad side of the world is that, it does not value veracity and good deeds. A simple example being, the leave application for our classes. The rule is that, if we inform the teacher beforehand via mail, about the absence, then the leave will be granted and there wouldn’t be a downgrade. This has led to more people falling sick unnecessarily, because if they tell the truth, leave wouldn’t be granted.

The choices with a student here are both bad- either fake sickness or get downgraded. If I am a good person, I might get downgraded once or twice. But, what will happen eventually, when I see everyone is faking sickness? If I fake sickness, does that make me a bad person? It is just one act. How many such acts would it take to classify me as a bad person? It is not that clear. Hence, as Danny said, people are just people. Their actions might be good or bad. Based on those actions, it is not correct to put tags on them.

As a kid, I hated people who used to use abusive language. I just didn’t speak to them. I hated people who lied. I didn’t speak to them either. After a point I realised, I wouldn’t be able to make any friends, if I kept on doing that. Today, I am friends with people who abuse, who lie and do a number of other things, which I don’t like. But, now it doesn’t matter. That is how we get used to all the bad in the world. We get comfortable. Then, after a certain point in time. It stops bothering us. Probably, that is what happened with Archer. Everything stopped bothering him. Then people were just people.

The only way out here, that I see, is to make peace with the fact that being good isn’t going to be rewarding or easy. We should go on making those choices, with which we can live easily. In our own small ways like helping those in need, we can attain inner peace. Enough for a good night’s sleep. Next day, we can wake up to add some more good to the world. Hoping that eventually, the good and bad would get balanced out. I am not saying we will create Utopia by practicing this. But, at least, we can make the world a decent place to live in. It is worth a try, I say.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” – Rumi

Posted in My Articles

The Right Place

Posted on by Shaivalini

This article is about the 5S Standards. Which goes like “A place for everything and everything in its place.” Okay, I was kidding. This article is about a Carrom Board. This time I’m not kidding. 😛

The story began in September, 2013. A lone carrom board was bought and kept in the so called “Game Room” of our campus. This room also had Table Tennis, so all the attention was towards the table. People came in played TT and went away. Poor Carrom Board also hoped that people would sit around it and play. But, that happened rarely. It was tough to compete with a sport like Table Tennis. The Carrom Board often felt abandoned; and so it was until the miracle happened. A certain turn of events required the board to be moved.

The Carrom Board, which once felt abandoned, now felt rejuvenated. It was like being reincarnated. There was hardly a time, when it was not in use. The same situation continues even today. People wait for their turns to play a game. A ten- minute break now, is a Carrom-Break. Calls are hung up early, for playing the game. People who never played Carrom ever before, now play like maniacs. It has become a fad, totally. How long is it going to last, no one knows. But these memories won’t ever fade away.

It is the same with our lives too, patience is all we need, for being at our right places. Sometimes, the right place for us isn’t what we think, even if it is logically correct. Like it was practical to keep the Board in the “Game Room.” The right place for us is where we shine naturally. We don’t have to seek attention; because there it is already ours. The only difficult part is ‘to wait’.

The game is on!
The game is on!

PS: The Carrom Board was placed at the entrance of the Hostel.

Posted in Lessons Learnt, My Articles

Guitar Teaches….Lessons of Life.

Posted on by Shaivalini
Posing with the guitar. :)
Posing with the guitar. 🙂

After a long wait, I finally resumed guitar lessons last month, after a three and a half year long gap, this time with a firm determination to learn the chords. So far it has been going quite good. So, one day I was practicing the F chord (the most difficult chord) and I came up with this sudden idea to write about the lessons of life we can learn from the guitar. My frequent readers would know that my brain is damaged in a special way, so I find lessons of life everywhere. 😛 So , here a list of life lessons that one can learn from the guitar, will keep adding more as and when I find them :

1. Having a common belief:

While tuning a guitar we need to tune all the strings to one scale only, initially all the strings may be tuned to different scales but for playing good music and for remaining in sync , it is important to tune all the 6 strings to one scale. So we have to decide upon the scale to which we want our guitar to be tuned and then we tune each string accordingly. We need to apply the same logic in our lives too, whenever we are working in a group, no matter how different each person’s opinion is , we need to develop a consensus at some point and work accordingly, otherwise it only leads to conflicts and no progress. Thus a common belief is needed, just as a common scale is needed to tune the guitar.

2. Minding your own business:

This is extremely important while one is learning to play guitar, the 6 strings are close to each other and one has to carefully apply pressure only on those strings on which it is required, if one presses the string which is not required , then the tune played would end up sounding cacophonous. The same goes for our lives too, we should try and excel in whatever we are doing, but human nature is such that most of us need to know about others work too. To some extent it is fine but if one is too much interested in others’ life (the irrelevant string) , then it won’t be of any good to anyone.

A subset of this point would be , not dominating your subordinates in the office; there are 6 strings in the guitar , numbered 1 to 6 from top to bottom. Consider the 1st string -the CEO and follow the common hierarchy model. So, if one is supposed to play string 4 , it is very normal to apply pressure on string 3 too i.e. the one directly below it. But, that is exactly what one needs to avoid, because it isn’t the correct way to play and wouldn’t sound good too (would sound “dead” actually). Similarly , if one is being too officious and making it impossible for a subordinate to work, then that subordinate will not be able to make any progress and produce dead results. Again, minding your own business is important!

3. Living /learning to impress, is easy:

Those of you who have studied music , would know that music is a profound subject and learning the same requires a lot of patience. It is only after learning all of it, one gets the confidence to create their own music. So, initially , while learning, all of us only imitate others. But, the fact is that people get impressed by it. Learning songs on guitar is easy, with a required amount of practice , one is able play very well and it sounds good, everybody around you is impressed, they say things like “wow, you can really play well”. But , only we know , that we standing on a threshold and we have a long way to go. In our lives too, people may get impressed by our opulence and may think that we are doing very good in life. But that may not be the case, even if we have earned a lot of money, still we may not be satisfied with ourselves, then all that money would seem useless , if we are not self-satisfied. So, living to impress is easy but it is self-satisfaction, that matters the most.

4. Be patient (and don’t complain):

Learning guitar requires a lot of patience; coordinating both the hands seems like a uphill task initially, one has to suffer pain , i mean literally physical pain in fingertips and arm. All in all, it is not as easy as it seems, but once one gets used to it, it becomes completely effortless, provided that one does not quit. We often quit some things in life because they seem very difficult or may be because it seems to be leading no where. But, we should always remember that if we do not quit then we are also adding a lot of value to our lives and ourselves. And as I read somewhere “If something is so beautiful, then achieving it cannot be easy”. So perseverance is needed.

5. The possibilities are infinite:

With 6 strings and 22 frets, the possibilities of number of chord combinations and music that can be created is infinite. The same goes for our lives too. I don’t think there is a need to explain this point. 😀

Guitar Glossary:

Chords– A combination of two or more strings played together.

Fret– One of several ridges set across the fingerboard of a guitar.

Dead String– When a string produces no sound at all.

Posted in My Articles

What God wants…

Posted on by Shaivalini

Only a few days back , I was listening to this song from the movie OMG! (Oh My God!) which very aptly captured the reality about the place God holds in the lives of people, these days. And it motivated me to pen down my thoughts on the same. So, after many days , I wrote an entire article on paper. But then, yesterday I went to watch the same movie and it was great , in the way it captured the truth about what God really wants from us, how he wants us to be. And it motivated me enough to put up that article here. So, here is what I wrote.

The memories of my childhood tell me , that when I was a kid , I only prayed to God just before our class-teacher was about to give us our checked answer sheets. I used to study at St. Anthony and there were crucifixes in every classroom, that explains how I started believing in Jesus. Although, now I believe that God is one , we only know him by different names. And talking of differences, I think God must be very disappointed with us- humans. For, no humanity is left in us; if we take a look on the major scale. Today, religion has become the most sensitive issue in our society , people are ready to kill in the name of God. Even though I am sure that no religion would ever preach killing over love. Loving people is difficult , may be that’s why people choose the easier way and kill. God wants us to be human.

We all fast, irrespective of our religion and age. But I never fast, actually I don’t understand the concept at all. I mean , how would God be pleased/purge us of our sins or whatever , if we didn’t eat our normal diet for a few days. In-fact, people who fast , end up having more food when they are abstaining from it. 😛 I always end up debating with my Mum when she tells me to fast. My idea of fasting is that , one should have clean and pure thoughts; instead of abstaining from food and water, try abstaining from bad and negative thoughts about others, abstain from saying ill about others. fasting should be a mental activity, wherein one should be able to control his thoughts. It is very difficult I know, I live around people who can’t go an hour without abusing, forget an entire day. But I think God would be pleased only when our thoughts are pure. I think fasting is all about pure thoughts and selfless actions.

We all pray, and again some of us think praying is about getting up early in the morning , reading some sacred verses and burning incense sticks in front of the photo of our deity. Well, I am not saying that it is wrong to do so…but considering that God is omnipresent , I don’t see the need to pray in front of an idol or in a temple.So, I don’t understand why people stand in long queues, outside various temples, on specific days, just to pray. One just needs to have faith and it doesn’t matter where and at what time he prays. Only the veracity in faith matters.

I know I am too young and inexperienced to write about God, isn’t  he supposed to be the biggest mystery? And I hear people go to the Himalayas and undergo severe pain , live under extreme conditions..and what not, in order to find God. But , I think finding God is all about understanding how simple He is. Why go looking for Him when He is within all of us ?

Posted in My Articles, Random

Getting Inked !

Posted on by Shaivalini
Kat Von D
Kat Von D

I have always been fascinated by tattoos.And I desperately want to get tattooed. Although from where exactly this idea evolved into my mind, I don’t know. As far as I remember I liked the idea mentioned in Dan Brown’s novel The Lost Symbol, where there was this guy who was fully covered by tattoos and he was of the view that by doing so he became the “master of his own skin” . Well, even though that person was an evil one, but I can’t deny that I didn’t like his thought. And then, I started watching LA Ink on TLC, the first time I saw Kat Von D, I was awestruck by her tattoos.Not the big ones, but the small ones she has on her fingers, ears, the stars on her face. Also, I love the dark ink on my skin, often I draw some abstract designs on my skin and imagine how the real tattoo would look. So obviously, I have been desperately trying to get a tattoo, actually I want exactly four tattoos, to be precise, but then there are two problems due to which I haven’t got my wish yet.

  • What is it that I would love on my skin for my entire lifetime?
    Yeah, that is the basic problem, I haven’t decided on what I want , tattoo yes, but what design  or text I want, I have no idea at all. I want a permanent anklet on my left ankle, and that I had wanted way before Deepika Padukone got her anklet tattoo done.But this one I want to be my last tattoo, because obviously it would  very painful and the biggest of all tattoos I am going to get. About the other three tattoos, I have no idea what I want. The problem with me is that I want the tattoos to be perfect , something that has meaning, is relevant and at the same time looks beautiful too.
  • Persuading my parents.
    Obviously , my parents are totally against this idea,once I make a decision about what tattoo I want, then the only problem that would remain would be getting permission from my parents which I am sure eventually they will. Because they also know this very well that I am not going to be satisfied until I get what I want.I am really hopeful and I am already imagining that by next year I will be flaunting my first tattoo. It could be something related to faith, love or God. 🙂

So, I would want something the thought of which would not change with time, something timeless, for at least as long as I live.

P.S: Any ideas regarding, how to convince one’s parents to allow their children get tattooed, are welcome. 😀

Posted in My Articles

Being free…

Posted on by Shaivalini

“Yaar, exams khatam ho jaaye phir ekdum free ho jayenge , koi tension nahi…”

“Ek baar Lucknow se baahar nikal jaye na, phir ekdum free ho jayenge…”

“Yaar bas MBA ke liye admission ho jaaye na, phir koi tension ni hogi, free…”

These are just a few common sentences I have been hearing a lot in the past few days, so much about being free, and since the time I have been noticing I can say that it can be statistically proven that we spent a quarter of  time of our lives , talking about only this one thing – being free.

In my opinion, being free is just a state of mind, and with that thinking I am always free..I always was and always will be.

I really don’t seem to understand why people say that some particular things in life will set them free, either their definition of being free is flawed , or mine. I don’t understand what kind of freedom they talk about. I want to put up a question to all those people , what do they expect will happen once they are able to achieve these things like moving out of the city, getting into a good b- school, relaxing after exams…do the tensions end there? Is your purpose of life achieved?

No, at least I don’t think so…let us travel back to our school days where we used to think that we would totally be free after the exams, but were we? Then we thought we would be free once we get into college, but were we? The point is that these things do not matter much when we are talking about the free state of mind. And for all the other contexts, the more freedom we get, the more we want.

The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility states that the utility decreases as the consumption increases, but the needs of humans is an exception, the more we have the more we want…unsatisfied forever we are, and so we keep hoping that this need would be satisfied when a particular thing is achieved in life , but it does not happen that way..situations keep on changing and so does our wants, what we want may seem like an original Louis Vuitton from a distance but only on a closer scrutiny one can tell that it is a fake one, so we really need to be careful while wishing what we want from life. Coming back to my point, if people want freedom, then they should first understand what sort of freedom they want and what purpose is served if it is achieved.

I feel absolutely free only when I am at home, although I have never lived any place else , but still I think I will never be as comfortable and free as I feel in my home. So, all those who think that they are bound when they are at home, really need to understand what sort of freedom they want and also whether they really want it or not. Instead of wanting to leave home just for freedom people should try and leave home for the purpose of being independent. Now, how many of you would be willing to do that? Taking care of all your expenses on your own and living free, not so easy, is it?

And in this respect we are just like the pet animals living in a cage, if you release those animals say, rabbits , then you will find that they run happily for a while but after a few minutes they again cluster around that cage, because they so are used to all the pampering that they do not want to go out in the wild and hunt for their food, to fight for survival…in the cage they are safe, so why run away or escape? Right ?

P.S: Written for two beautiful ladies, hoping that I made sense. 🙂

Posted in My Articles, Random

‘Jungle Jaoge?’ : A Glimpse Of My Childhood

Posted on by Shaivalini

“Jungle jaoge?

Sher ko pakad ke laoge?

Darroge to nahi?”

Sometimes, I wish I could run back and be a child again 🙂

Well, the last few days demanded that  I should act and think like a grown up, and trust me it is more difficult than abstaining from shopping (for a woman). The reason is simple – I don’t want to act and think like a mature person, but being 20 , now I have to be cautious and exhibit the features which are childlike and NOT childish.

And trying to do so, I remembered so many incidents from my childhood that for each incident I ended up concluding that I was so cute back then (some still say I am cute 😉 ).

Whenever I recall about my childhood, the first picture that comes to my mind is of our home at  my birthplace Barabanki, the guava tree in the neighbor’s backyard; my elder cousin sister and I  had stolen many guavas,  the cowshed; owing to my grandfather’s love for the cows  and the graveyard; we cooked up many cock and bull stories about it just to scare each other.

The best thing about these places is that they all still exist and whenever I visit my grandparents , I get a glimpse of my childhood again, the guava tree , the cowshed , the graveyard are all still there and I find myself smiling whenever I see those places. Thus, all those memories remain intact. 🙂

Talking about my childhood I can never forget mentioning all the cartoons that I used to watch , I remember how crazy I used to be about Scooby Doo , The Jungle Book and the best characters ever created Tom and Jerry…I also remember watching Duck Tales , the best part was that I saw all these cartoons in Hindi and so for me Uncle Scrooge would not sound as the real Uncle Scrooge if he is not talking in Hindi.. 😀

Then there are some songs to which many memories of my childhood are attached and hearing them now I would surely shed a tear, these are obviously the Hindi theme songs of all the above mentioned cartoons, some songs in particular like “lakdi ki kaathi”, “hum to gaye bazaar mein”, “naani teri morni ko”….et al.

 Reminiscing about the games we used to play , I think those games have become extinct; it seems like the games also died as I stopped playing them. 😦  We played a myriad of outdoor games , my personal favorite of them was hopscotch (staapu). I could play it all day without complaining about the heat…or may be it didn’t used to be so hot back then… 😛

Of the numerous funny incidents that I remember about myself, the sweetest one I want to share with you all (if I share all of those incidents, you would make fun of me for the rest of my life, yes you will) okay, it is not exactly an incident it is actually something that I used to do and when I think about it now , I just can’t help but laugh. I must have been in KG then, we used to write all our daily homework in our diary and I was so fond of writing (just handwriting wala writing that we used to do) that I used to add that homework in my diary “Do one page handwriting”..and I used to love writing that one page daily even though it was unnecessary.. 😀

Okay take your time and laugh about it, yes I was not being completely honest but I just couldn’t see beyond what I wanted to do..I saw something that I wanted i.e. Write a page and I decided to give it a simple solution i.e. Write it as homework. Don’t judge me, I was a kid. I have my reasons as to why I find this incident sweet, well the positive point is that I solved a problem/ got what I wanted on my own. And, I should not forget to mention that, today, I love my handwriting and why is my handwriting beautiful? Because of this one mad thing that I did when I was young. I practiced 🙂

I have a lot of memories to write about, but I just can’t remain submerged in those thoughts…living in present is very important and enjoying every phase of life is equally important…I have beautiful memories of this phase 10-20..and as my Dad said on my 20th birthday “Life goes a full circle , from 20 to 30” . That means more memories , more mad things to do and more incidents to laugh about.. 🙂

At last I would like to reveal the mystery of the opening lines of this post, the truth is that I can’t explain the lines so I would just say that if you understand it then it’s great otherwise keep guessing 😛

P.S: I would not approve of any negative comments or criticism about this post. 😀

Posted in My Articles

Madhushala :The House of Wine

Posted on by Shaivalini

When the mind knows how important it is to study at a particular time, that is exactly when it creates  the most brilliant ideas for blogging 😀 …it is 2 a.m. and I was studying for my B.com exams , well , I was also listening to some of my favorite music(I can never study without music)..the point is I heard my favorite verses by Mr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan and I couldn’t help writing about it, also it is the only work that I have read in Hindi, so here I am..  😛

Why I like these quatrains (Ruba’i- four line verses) is not hard to understand, because anyone who has read this book “Madhushala” would already know how amazing the verses are, I read the book a few years back and,  instantly what I liked was this fact that all those verses, the entire book, had been written only on one topic- liquor…obviously no one uses this particular word, but that is how I understood it, finding the meaning of each random word , I was really intrigued by how much passionate and obsessed Mr. Bachchan was with wine,  he wrote these verses beyond anyone’s imagination , I think that is why it became an instant rage when it was first published in 1935.  People usually see wine and liquor as social evils, but he wrote about it in such a beautiful way, I just fell in love with the amount of passion he soaked in his work…unimaginable are the thoughts that went behind the creation of these verses…

So here are a few of my favorite verses from the book:

मदिरालय जाने को घर से चलता है पीनेवला,(Seeking wine, the drinker leaves home for the tavern.)
‘किस पथ से जाऊँ?’ असमंजस में है वह भोलाभाला, (Perplexed, he asks, “Which path should I take?”)
अलग-अलग पथ बतलाते सब पर मैं यह बतलाता हूँ  (People show him different ways, but this is what I have to say,)
‘राह पकड़ तू एक चला चल, पा जाएगा मधुशाला।’ (“Pick a path and keep walking. You will find the tavern.”)

I like how clearly this verse captures a confusion that every person has to face once in his lifetime, when one leaves his home and steps out into the world to chase his dreams, how people always create more and more confusion about the road to be taken and how one ultimately reaches his destination. 🙂

मुसलमान औ’ हिन्दू है दो, एक, मगर, उनका प्याला, (Muslim and Hindu are different, but there goblet is one)
एक, मगर, उनका मदिरालय, एक, मगर, उनकी हाला, (One is their tavern, one is their wine)
दोनों रहते एक न जब तक मस्जिद मन्दिर में जाते, (Both are one till they go to Mosque or Temple)
बैर बढ़ाते मस्जिद मन्दिर मेल कराती मधुशाला। (Mosques and temples divide while tavern unites)

I don’t think there is need to describe the beauty of thought that lies behind this verse, it must have been apt when it was written back in 1935,  however, even today I find it very appropriate.

नाम अगर कोई पूछे तो, कहना बस पीनेवाला (If anyone asks my name, say, “The Drunkard”.)
काम ढालना, और ढालना सबको मदिरा का प्याला, (My work “drinking” and passing the goblet to everyone.)
जाति प्रिये, पूछे यदि कोई कह देना दीवानों की (If anyone asks my caste, say I was a “maniac”)
धर्म बताना प्यालों की ले माला जपना मधुशाला। (Religion was worshiping “goblets” and chanting “madhushala, madhushala”)

I like how this verse highlights that people are always interested in the caste, religion and work how people forget  that all these things don’t matter as much, what matters is that we are all human beings and humanity is one feature that we all need to inculcate within us, others things are just secondary.

स्वयं नहीं पीता, औरों को, किन्तु पिला देता हाला, (I, myself, don’t drink but I make others drink)
स्वयं नहीं छूता, औरों को, पर पकड़ा देता प्याला, (I, myself , don’t touch, but I give the goblet to others)
पर उपदेश कुशल बहुतेरों से मैंने यह सीखा है, (I have learned this after hearing many lectures)
स्वयं नहीं जाता, औरों को पहुंचा देता मधुशाला। (I, myself don’t go, but I make other people go to the tavern)

Since, Mr. Bachchan has only been appreciating the beauty of wine, goblet and tavern, I find that this verse very selfless , as he writes that, the tavern has all the positive qualities but he himself does not want to go there, instead he guides everyone else to it.

This is also an extraordinary fact that all the 135 verses in this book end with the word “madhushala” or “haala”…so much importance to the rhyming scheme, keeping  the meaning intact , is very impressive. 🙂

My Dad says that Mr. Bachchan was not at all fond of drinking…and that , if true would make his work all the more awesome. 🙂

P.S:  This post is dedicated to you, papa ❤

Posted in Lessons Learnt, My Articles

Waitlisted @ 45 :The SIMC Experience

Posted on by Shaivalini

“Waiting for something can be poisonous”. No one said these words, I tweeted this the night before the admission results of SIMC were announced…because after taking part in the gepi process , I was really looking forward to do my MBA from there. But I didn’t make it to the merit list of selected candidates, I was (am) wait-listed :(. May be I am just not destined to do MBA this year. Anyway unexpected things bring surprises to life and make life interesting , so looking forward to more surprises this year. 🙂

"Buddies" Photo by- Rosanna Abrachan

All those days I was waiting for the result I had accumulated various reasons as to why I would love to go Pune for my Post Graduation and the following are the most important reasons that came into my mind:

  • The most important of all reasons is this, (therefore mentioning it before everything else)- now that I have seen the SIMC campus , I wont be satisfied if I take admission anywhere else.
  • I fell head over heels in love with the way things were managed at SIMC. The entire process of admission involving Group Exercise , Personal Interview was managed mostly by the students and their efforts were really commendable. Had Lucknow University been given the same task it would have been followed by a strike , which would have been followed by a even bigger strike!
  • Also, I totally love the campus , I fell in love with it just as quickly as women fall for Jimmy Choo Stilettos :D. The hill, the view, the freshness in the air…and the promise of two best years of anyone’s life. A student aptly described the campus as being “Bloody Awesome” 😛 .It sure is. 🙂
  • And then this reason that I went Pune via Mumbai, and I enjoyed every moment of that road trip, the rocks were so beautiful that I actually wanted stop right there and climb them, I can only imagine how heavenly the valley must look during rains, when the rainwater would fall on the rocks and small cascades would be formed, there would be nothing more beautiful than just being there.
  • Since I am a huge coffee fan I noticed that there are way too many coffee shops in Pune as compared to Lucknow…in Lucknow , you have to find a coffee shop, while in Pune there are so many of them that you need not find one..just start walking in any direction and you will reach one within a few minutes.. 🙂

This post is dedicated to all the people at SIMC , who made sure that our experience at SIMC was an awesome one…a big thank you to the staff and students…to Chandan Sir for the awesome interview, to God for giving me this opportunity and my Dad for everything. 🙂

"Evening at SIMC" Photo by- Harsh Vardhan Jhanwar
"Evening at SIMC" Photo by- Harsh Vardhan Jhanwar