Junkyard

Jostling streets. Crowding people.

Every single person engaged in a talk or an activity.

I walk past all such people, everyday.

Be it on televisions or newspapers, all people are doing ‘some’ thing.

Something worthwhile. (Well, not always worthwhile rolleyes)

The world full of thousands and thousands of people. All busy.

But I am not. I am never busy.

The above statement made by me just simply means:

I do nothing. Or I never have ‘something’ to do. But, that’s not true.

I have time for simply everything. Arrange a get-together or just a casual meeting; I will always be ready to be present for the occasion.

I am struggling to learn “stick-to-it-ivity” (that’s a word from my own dictionary biggrin). But, I am never engaged in a task for more than a designated time. I don’t have any long term activities. All that I do in a day is short term and ends “soon” enough. And I am left, wondering, what next to do.

Being BUSY is GREAT.

And I hope one day I will be ‘so busy’ that I would have a sophisticated social or professional calendar, which I would check 5 times before saying a ‘yes’ for an appointment (Does that sound good? mrgreen I don’t think so.) And meeting or talking to others won’t be ‘that’ easy job!

Well, I am desperately waiting for that day.

But I hope that day, my friends and family don’t have to wait to meet me ‘desperately’…the way I wait for them today.

Time holds all the answers. Baghu kaay hota.

The college has ended ‘officially’.
And exams are due in May.
So, I have loads and loads of time, all by myself. :D

And to while my time away, I found a new way.
I am painting my T-shirts. ;-)

I found some old Japanese Traditional Art and modified (i.e. creatively changed them to suit my needs) and in the process, tried my hand at something really new.

I always got B or C grades in my drawing & craft exams at School.
So, now you know that I am not ‘that’ good when it comes down to showing artistic skills. :-/
Thats why, I tried it on some of my old tees.
And seeing the results, believe me, they are way above my expectations! :-)

Check them out:
My T-Shirt Designs

I will be doing more. Just let these goddamn exams end! :P

You sit at the edge for a free fall.

You are so much scared that, you even forget to swallow the lump in your throat.:-? All you can see around you are clouds, clouds and more clouds. Nevertheless, you jump. ;-)

And all of a sudden, you are AIRBORNE. That’s what I want to try. At least once. :-D

Parachuting, also known as Skydiving, is an adventure where a person jumps from enough height so that they can deploy a fabric parachute and land safely.

Imagine, You are there. At some unimaginably stupefying height. And you can only see air around you and green and blue terra firma kilometers away down below you. Wind brushing hard against your face.:-o Your body pulled down by the gravitation. Nothing (on earth) can be compared to ‘that’ feeling.

I have done parasailing once, 2 years back, in Malaysia. In this, you are given a life jacket and a parachute and you run on a platform in water, and a motor-boat is connected to you, which is responsible for the direction in which you move in the air. And as you run, in a fraction of a second, even before you realize what’s happening to you, 8-O you are there, above in air.

But, Sky Diving is different. There, you are on your own.

There is no assurance about: Would the parachute open at right time? For how much time would you be sailing in the air? Would you have a safe and perfect landing? ….And that’s what makes it all the more exciting. :-D

The latest Mountain Dew ad says:

Dar sabko lagta hai. Gala sabka sukhta hai. Par Dar ke aage Jeet hai. :-P

So, it must be worth experiencing. And (I hope) :roll: we can always depend on the safety measures and backups.

A line that may make you feel, exactly the way I feel -

Only Sky Divers know why the birds sing. :mrgreen:

Yes, the title is inspired from Harry Potter’s famous tag line:

“The boy who lived”

Let me begin,

I had heard that, the only ones who took admission here were here because; they couldn’t ‘get-in’ anywhere else.

I hated being a part of this. I could get admitted in any college of “my choice”.

I opted all the best ones out and joined the college which I least wanted to be in.I thought I’d made the wrong choice back then!

I called this place names! I would say it out loud, even in the premises that I want to ‘just get out of here’ as soon as possible.

My favorite line last year was, “I want a button for a fast-forward this year.”

I was horrified by the ugly looking faces of other students in my bus every morning. The seniors (both students and other elderly people) were such that, there was no trace of smartness or a single glimpse of a scholarly or extra-curricular act on their almost-always painted clothes or faces.

About the Lecturers, I think, most of them (not all, but most), never knew the subject well. Sometimes, they confused us. They could never answer our queries. Well, eventually we stopped asking them any. (May be because asking them queries was like challenging them. And that would annoy them. And if we did that, we would not have left ourselves any chances of getting good ‘internals’ and we would be rather the target of constant humiliation , taunts , dark looks or what we call ‘khunnas’ )

What about the infrastructure? If you ask me that, the answer is: They promised us world-class infrastructure in those ‘glossy’ brochures. But, the building wasn’t/isn’t even painted. Sometimes in initial days, while entering we even had to make our way, on one leg, through bricks, big stones, cement and sand. And the Accounts Section, Students Section or Library facility almost would threaten/haunt/harass/bully us.

What else is left? The atmosphere was good only when it rained. Rest whole year we would be ‘ever shining’ with the scorching Sun rays.

Apart from this for past three years, (Yes! I have stayed (or should I say somehow survived) in such place for 3 long years), if someone inquired about my college and if I said polytechnic, their faces would invariably be ‘the look when one is disappointed, but doesn’t what to show that, and says, “oh!” The face is sympathetic.

So, It’s hard to describe in words, but I still am unable to resolve how did I manage to survive in this place, where I would be, for 6-7 hours each day, each week for about 30-36 months or what my friend calls : “1095 days”. In short nothing was, ever ‘cool’ or ‘nice’ about my college.

But, I don’t have second thoughts, while saying, Now that it’s all about to end,

“I miss it. I miss my college. I miss it all.

And I won’t mind spending some more time here.”

See, Datta Meghe ji, we are willing to stay here, but please don’t ask for more money. We have paid enough. But, we never have had enough.

I must have been 5 or 6 years old; when we went together each evening to play “dukaan-dukaan” (I don’t know what we can call that one in English!). Invariably, I used to be the seller, almost everyday. :razz: And he used to come and buy things from me. He never even once showed me how stupid he thought the game was! But, each time he used to come with a serious face, even bargain on some items and buy something.

Every summer, we (his grandchildren) used to gather at his place. He has a big garden surrounding the house. I and my sisters used to fight on who will water the plants. He would divide the area for us so that we could water the plants turn by turn! :grin:

Whenever we got bored, he was ready for playing cards with us ‘anytime’ of the day. He would team up with my youngest sister and play against the rest of us.

He was a doctor by profession. He lived in remotest areas in Maharashtra and served innumerable poor people. And though he said that his knowledge is outdated (compared to the new technology antibiotics), His medicines always worked for me.

His life was full of adventures and breath-taking encounters. And unlike many of us, He remembered all the incidents clearly. He had an amazing ability of describing his stories to us, as if they were happening right in-front of your eyes. What can I say; we could almost feel those stories.

Apart from his knowledge of science, I always thought of him as a great-thinker. His knowledge about Politics, Economics and History was fantastic!

He always said, “If I had not been a Doctor, I would I have liked to be a professor of History.” :shock: He would tell the ‘exact dates’ of any historical event accurately in no time at all.

There is one more thing, about which I have always wondered since I was a kid. It is his skill about analyzing things and convincing it to others.

Elders in the house would always sit and discuss any current issues or some past events (like why/how this happened?)

While playing nearby, I kept my ear to those discussions. And I don’t know how, but he always analyzed the thing so properly that his side only proved convincing to me.

For e.g.: If asked, why would the saints in India, thousands of years ago just did yadnyas (light a big fire and say mantras out loud sitting beside it) the whole day?

On this he explained, “The TV Serials are idiotic people. They take the meaning of the written words as it is. Why would those people sit whole day and put ghee in the fire? By ‘yadnya’ our fore-fathers wanted to say that, the saints did deep thinking and focused on developing new technologies.”

He always said that, our ancestors were much advanced in every aspect than what we are today. And the wisest part was that they knew which knowledge to pass on to coming generations and which not to!

That’s how my grandpa was. Though a bit ‘backward’ for 21^st century, but way ahead in thinking capabilities of any of us today.

Sadly, he passed away yesterday and is no more with us to give us that kind of teaching.

I will miss him a lot.:sad:

Dear Aajoba,

Though time has left us being slightly apart,

Just know that, you will be remembered always by heart.