Why??

Its 02:00am and I am not able to sleep. This sleeplessness is making me sick for more than 2 weeks now. I am tired and sleepy yet my brain isn't stopping. I don't know how to just stop my brain, make them calm and go to deep sleep.

Why ain't I able to sleep?
Why my brain is not calming down?
Why am I thinking so much of work?
Why am I thinking so much of the uncertainties of life?
Why do I have to think of all the daily life requirements?
When did I sign-up for all these tensions?
When did I grow up to think all this?
Why did I leave home?
Why am I writing this now?
Why did I ever grow up?

These are some of the questions popping up in my little head. I don't know how and why the complex nervous system works to think all this.. Probably because I am nervous and anxious for my PhD as this is the last year and I need results to finish it.. do I have a high achievement level and expect too much from myself??.. Or I am uncertain about the future of my personal life, if I will ever be able to live my life with the person I want to grow old with.. Or I am just thinking of my responsibilities towards the people I love and care.. or I am just nostalgic and miss my old life with my family where I didn't have to take care of anything.. probably I want to live that life again.... to depend on someone for certain things, just not to think about daily life requirements.. and not have the need to take decisions on my own... I want to be a kid again.. I don't want any responsibilities any tensions any duties.. I just want to live peacefully.. and sleep quietly...

Nostalgia

Sitting at the sea side and watching the sunset with the feel of the cold sea breeze always spreads peace in me. Today was another such day when I was vulnerable from inside so went to the sea side in search of peace. Setting sun is always a beautiful scene and takes me to its own another world, today I went to the world of nostalgia. All those days of my life when I was carefree, without any responsibilities, at home with my family and friends, were flashing at me. Life seems so unpredictable, six years back I didn't even had an idea about today (no one has).

I am a small town guy who was very carefree at the school level, was a confused soul without having an idea of the real world. It was 2002 when I finished my school with Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Computer science with a peer driven aim of becoming a software engineer. One day my dad brought a college admission form where I was suggested to tick the box of B.Tech in Biotechnology as dad read and heard about the upcoming biotech boom. First 2 years was a sine wave with absolute maxima and absolute minima though I took them lightly. After 4 years of study and fun, I was confused of what to do next, whether to do MBA that most of my friends were doing or go for M.Tech that my parents wanted. I wanted to go abroad as encouraged by my cousin settled in the US. Obviously I was/am a confused soul. I applied for passport and took the TOEFL exam. By the time I got my passport and the TOEFL score it was 1 year now I applied for Higher studies in Sweden to Uppsala University for Masters in Science in Applied Biotechnology and in 3-4 months I received an acceptance letter. The tution fee was free but I needed to pay for my living in Sweden, thus started the struggle for life and pride. Somehow the required amount was collected and I applied for the visa. It took another 2 months to get an answer from the swedish embassy this made me more nervous, anxious and was becoming short tempered.

Finally one happy day just 5 days before the course starts, I received a call from embassy that I can get my visa stamped. A month's work was done in those last 4 days, shopping and packing in 3 days and the last day for stamping the visa and booking the flight. Finally on 27th of Aug 2008, at 4.30am I was at Indira Gandhi International airport, Delhi with my parents and sister to set off for another long and lonely journey. This was the first time I saw an airport let alone boarding a flight. This was the first time I was going away from my family and that too changing the whole continent. It was time to say goodbye to my loved ones and was time to see the world. It was the weakest moment of my life I was somehow holding my tears as I knew I need to portray myself strong to support those standing and waving behind the glass doors. Whenever I think of that moment my eyes wells up, even now.

I was more nervous than being happy and excited. Nervous to travel to another time zone of the world, nervous to go to a country that was completely different including the language and most of all nervous to do this all alone. While in the check-in queue I discovered that my Air-India flight was late by 3 hours and this would have resulted in missing the connecting flight in Frankfurt. So went up to the Air-India officer with the problem who changed my connecting flight from Lufthansa to SAS. Just after security check I called my parents to inform them that I was fine and that I was waiting for the flight that got delayed. My dad was awake and was sounding upset. After much of waiting it was time for boarding and for the first time I was in an airplane. Soon I was in the air flying over the continent and sea, after a transit of 2 hours in Frankfurt I was over the Scandinavian land. The view from the plane through the clouds was amazing patches of houses in greenery with patches of lakes spread all around. I couldn't have ever dreamt of such a tranquillity, satisfaction and gratitude running through me. Around 8.30pm I landed in Arlanda airport, after immigration check and luggage collection I changed my dollars to swedish kronars and went out of the airport with a bus ticket to Uppsala.

I was in Uppsala at 10.30pm of 27th Aug 2008, I was asked to meet someone at the fountain in front of the railway station. I didn't have to wait much to meet a girl who took me to Flogsta (the student housing) where the university booked the room for me. It was 10.30pm and drizzling when I got off the bus with my luggage to experience a new student life among all the students from all over the globe. The student housing comprised of 7 buildings that has 7 floors and each floor has 2 corridors and each corridor is made of 12 student rooms, a common kitchen and a TV room. So in all there were around 1200 international students.

Gradually I made friends and started enjoying this new life full of adrenaline. Always busy in either studies, assignments or parties parties and Parties as if I was young forever. I have some wonderful memories from Sweden. Some great travels in Europe were made from there. When I was about to finish my masters I started applying for PhD positions in Europe as I was not yet ready to leave this part of the earth and I met Silvia Onesti (my prof here) in a conference thus I am here in Trieste, Italy doing my PhD in Molecular Biomedicine from University of Trieste.

My Parents

My beloved Sis

I have and am going through struggle everyday, everyday teaches me a lesson. When I was in India, I was not what I am today, I am self-dependent, confident, enthusiastic, broad-minded and a person with high achievement level. I can now see things very differently than what I used to. All this I became after leaving my home, my parents, my country. But still I miss the most is my place, my home, my parents, my sis and most of all 'the little me' who didn't know that a real cruel big world exists outside the boundaries of my small happy world. Everyone always talks about and gets fascinated by the far-fetched green colour of the grass but things are not as they look like. Although an independent life is very important to learn more about life, to grow into a better human, the moments with parents that usually teenagers detest these days are the days that makes you cry when you leave them. No other place is as calm and comfortable as mums lap and no other place is as safe and relaxed as dads arms. So enjoy those moments that you have now with your loved ones and be prepared for the open hostile world.

P.S. - I don't know if anyone will ever read it completely and even if someone does I am not sure that I will be able to convey the churn of emotions happening inside me completely to the person unless that person has gone through the same situations in life.

The Inception.

Today when I logged-in into my FB profile, I saw some posts from a group named "NOW THIS IS THE TIME OF HINDUS TO RULE THE WORLD" that was liked by someone in my friend list. Those posts and comments left me agape and that churned up my wheel of thoughts resulting into this piece of writing. Although India is developing in science and technology but it is still lagging thousands of years from today's west world. People just couldn't think ahead of religion. There is so much hatred and envy among people of different religions for each other dwelling in the same society in the same nation.

Lets say the story of hatred started from the conquest of Sultan of Ghazni in 11th century, when he ruined many temples just to get the gold storage or from the period of Mughal empire in India during 16th to 18th century or when britishers ruled over the nation and adopted the "divide and rule" policy. Whatever may be the reason of this hatred but now its time to forget those old hard times and move on and get together as humans. This fire of hatred is fuelled by certain group of people who don't want peace and prosperity in the world by reliving those eras of war and conflicts among the religious groups. And we forget that we are one of those people who just want to live peacefully regardless of the religion.

Thousands of year ago when humans started evolving from apes, they were hunter gatherers for much of the time. It was around 7 million BC when our human ancestors evolved in African continent that migrated to Asia and Europe around 1 million BC and 500,000 BC respectively, which further migrated to Australia and its islands and American continents by around 40,000 to 10,000 BC. During this period they lived a life of hunter gatherers when they fed on wild plants and animals. As they were getting more in number and wild food was getting scarce, they gradually started settling down thus the period of food cultivation began around 8500 BC. Further down the lane, during the period of 3000 BC scripts and languages originated differently in different places which gradually got spread with lots of modifications all over the globe. To start a civilization they required peace and prosperity and to reach that goal the knowledgeables wrote some scripts which were named differently in different languages like Vedas in Sanskrit, Quran in Arabic, Bible in Hebrew and others. These books told us how to live peacefully in a society so that the country can flourish and prosper. Some mythological characters were created to (which are now known as gods/godesses) to guide humans towards righteousness. As the time passed, and trade between different civilizations started, traders started travelling and wars and conflicts took place to acquire more land and more resources, hence resulting into a mixture of people from different parts with different languages and following different books came together in one land. Slowly due to the differences in the language, scripts followed and thus differences in cultures people formed different groups and "religion" came into existence.

The term "religion" is since then misused and misinterpreted. Religion now has become the strength of "bad" and weakness of "good" (bad and good always being respective words for a person). If we see the past any religious conflict or riot has killed so many innocents irrespective of the community they belonged to. So lets be patient and use our brains instead of reacting vigorously to any such situation. There are many other problems and issues in this developing nation to deal with instead of fighting among each other. Lets be "humans" and serve the real purpose of these "holy" books. After all we were born humans and not hindu, muslim, christian or any other and our purpose should be to serve and follow humanity religiously. Rise up of the religious rivalries and hatred and bring peace and harmony in the society.  That will be the INCEPTION of a new era.

JUST THINK !!

P.S. - I can just vent out my thoughts here, I know it will not make any difference to the world but I need to write.

Exaggeration...

Its Diwali, the festival of light, everyone is very happy wearing new clothes, decorating their houses with lights, eating lots of sweets and expressing their happiness by firing crackers. I am in India for Diwali after 4 years, sitting on the couch, annoyed by the noise pollution caused by the crackers and thinking. This piece of my write-up is the result of it. Just like my previous post, I will raise some questions here and will try to answer them.

Do we really have to waste so much of electricity in lighting up our houses? Don't we light up our houses everyday then why a special day to spend more electricity.. I can understand that people are really happy and they want to celebrate this festival of light so they use electricity to express their happiness but doesn't this expression of happiness should have some limits?! On one hand people complain for not having sufficient electricity on a "normal" day and on the other hand the same people waste that electricity. Instead of blaming government or any authority isn't it better to stop and check our own actions!!

Is firing crackers a status symbol? You bought crackers of Rs 2000 so I must buy it for Rs 5000.. and burn them all.. do we know how much noise and air pollution this way of "expression of happiness" causes?! Anything over the limits is bad and leaves an after effect but no one cares for it. Thousands of years back when human civilization started prospering and these kind of festivals were brought into existence, the festivals were not harmful because firstly, there were very few people to celebrate it compared to now and secondly they didn't have too much to do and even then they expressed their happiness.

The Times of India news

Now moving on from Diwali to a general question of donation in a temple. Ranging from a big celebrity to a poor person donates in a temple like Tirupati Balaji. Wealthy donates chunks of money and poor donates their hair which is later sold to toy factories. Wisdom doesn't come with wealth this can be proved here. Isn't  helping a needy a far better job than donating crores of rupees in a temple, and when we know India is full of unprivileged people?! All these donated money gets blocked and never used in economy. Instead they should be used for the welfare of the deprived. India will be a better place if organised.

How can I forget the lavish and extravagant indian marriages while talking about exaggeration.. some things are really unbelievable in this country.. out of the total expenditure in such celebrations only some looks reasonable.. I can understand that all the important people needs to be invited, gifts to the bride and groom needs to be given, clothing and jewellery are required too but why all those band baja and Dj music? Now marriages are a show of status.. more you spend higher is your status in the society.. by spending more we are raising the minimum expenditure bar and that pressurizes other not-so-wealthy people to spend in their family weddings but who cares!!

There is so much of illiteracy, so many people are sufferers of natural calamities in India if we can use this amount of money to educate one child per person or help those survivors to get back to their feet, much of the nation's problem will be solved and we would build a better society for our next generations. Its high time to pause and think about our own actions and draw a line between necessary and unnecessary things on which we are wasting our resources. Otherwise forget about the nation's development.

Happier life or just a Cultural difference?

Yesterday while talking to a friend over lunch we bumped on the topic of Indian social norms, culture and traditions and now being a resident of Europe since almost 4 years I am unable to understand it. There are some questions which I am unable to answer about the so called "social norms, culture and traditions".

Why arranged marriages are STILL considered better than love marriages?

I know Indian society is changing its outlook on this topic but from what I hear and experience, its a long long way to go to disregard my question. So I am still trying to figure out the answer of this question. Are there less divorces in arranged marriages? or the couples remain happier? or all this is just to keep the society, family n friends happy and satisfied?

Until I was in India I never thought of all this because firstly, I was not matured enough for this and secondly and most importantly, all this was very common for me. But now after this much of exposure I don't understand why an individual is not left to do whatever he/she wants to do with his/her life ! Be it good or bad, the individual learns from it and that is how it should be, isn't it?! The probability of choosing a wrong partner by an individual is same as that of parents.

Why two people in love should marry and not live-together instead?

Isn't it the same thing except that the poor couple still have the money they would have spent in their "wedding". May be the society (made of people) gets angry and reacts because they were kept away from there chance of eating, drinking, dancing and showing-off for free.

I know some really happy unmarried couples here who don't plan get married in near future. Some of them are even raising kids happily and peacefully. Will you have more respect for these relationships that are existing solely based on love and respect and bringing harmony in one's life or for those relationships that are enforced by the society and might not have the same/any love and respect.

Talking about marriages in India, I have another question.. Why marriages are set as point of no return?

Humans are continuously making mistakes in their day to day life and correcting them. Then why there is no chance of correction in such an important aspect of life?!

Why a divorcee (especially woman) is looked down and disregarded in the society? Come on !! the person is just trying to be happy by correcting his/her/ family's mistake and living peacefully.. 

I don't know why people here in Europe are so cool about all this compared to people in India.. And I can not buy the reason of being born and brought up in different societies. We people make the society each one of us is the part of the society, then why people here and people there are so mentally different? I think Indian society or I should say Indians need to grow up and change their prospective towards such issues to make it a better place to live and survive for ourselves.

I know me sitting here far away from the place and writing about all these issues is of no use but I have no other way to blurt out my frustration of being a part of that society. However, I am doing my part by trying to explain all this to my family and friends so that atleast a part of that society thinks differently.

This is the first time I tried to pen down my thoughts, have always tried to run away from writing anything but this piece is a result of an intense urge within.