My experiments with the blog

Immediately after coming back to Houston, I had to go back to Toronto for work so spent around good 15 days of December month in Toronto - also got a chance to catch up with my cousin. Common, how come me being a Punjabi and won't have any cousins in Canada :) Not possible!! Again, this year as well like last year got together with few friends, cousins and went to Austin for New Years and got sloshed!! Nothing's new in there.......

Anyways, this was the summary of last two years of my travel which I enjoyed thoroughly - always observing and learning while visiting new places which gives a whole new/different perspective! I hope I continue to see new places, get to know different cultures, people and make new acquaintances along the way.

Dad always used to call him as his third son and O boy truly he was! He was something special to all of us and gave us so many special moments as long as he was there. Now he's just a memory.....

2009

From last one week I have been thinking about him and so many thoughts came to my mind which I thought of putting here but now as I finally sat down my mind is blank - all I can think of is his innocent face asking for nothing but just giving love. He was the one who brought smiles on all our faces every time we saw him.

It will be tough for my parents to believe he's gone but as we all know nothing is for ever and one has to just accept it and move on - at least we all have good memories with him.

2011

2010

2009

Thank you for giving so much happiness and moments of joy to all of us all these years, you will be remembered for ever!!

REST IN PEACE......

Well this year so far has been very eventful for me - lot of things happened and majority of it was involved with my travelling which is still going on. Part of my travelling required me to be in India for a while (around 3-4 months) and it's been an experience!! One very obvious observation being in my native country is people here are too much judgemental, from the day one it's been going on and the unfortunate part of it is that includes my friends as well to some extent. Funny thing is my year started of me being adjudged of something that I am definitely not - anyways that was just an excuse I guess.

To add to this, people have wierd and interesting ways to judging people - these days when we are in the era of globalization, world has been engulfed by these plethora of networking sites where each and every move of an individual is being monitored. I have even heard that if someone is not using any of these networking sites to a GREAT extent one is not considered a social person, if someone has not posted funny pictures on the site that person does not enjoy life at all - he/she gets a comment "please go and get a life for yourself". I have seen some instances where some organizations before interviewing a candidate goes to that individual's profile and try to figure out what sort of personality he or she has - boy way to go!

I agree to the fact that human being is an expressive social specie so we can't avoid expressing our feelings and remain in a solitude but taking things to that extent where people getting crazy about putting where they are, what they are thinking, what they like on a daily hourly basis is beyond my understanding and on top of that we start complaining about privacy issues. May be I am missing a point here but reason of bringing this point of usage of these networking sites is it is becoming one major factor in judging the lifestyle of a person which in my view is not the right thing.

Coming back to the point of being judgemental, people try to MAP each other - MAPPING is one word which annoys me very much. I am not able to understand one simple thing that if one has to work with someone then why mapping is required. If a person is soft spoken and only speaks when required that person is adjudged not being capable of resisting anything, some cased considered as timid. If one thinks then every action of an individual has a reason behind it so in my view instead of making an immediate judgement, one should go an extra step in finding out why that individual is behaving in a specific manner. I know that there are some scenarios where we won't have enough time and will have to make a decision in a matter of few minutes then obviously we will have make use of our judgemental skills but it should not be a common practice is general. I guess I have to take it easy and get used to it !! Oh by the way time to check my profile and post some udpates ;)

http://www.openculture.com/2011/05/the_guitar_prodigy_from_karachi.html

I still remember very clearly, as a child whenever I used to sit along in the late night get togethers with my Dad's friends, one song was everyone's favorite and every time it was asked to be sung by only one person gifted with a very beautiful soothing voice (One of Dad's good friend). And everyone will become so silent, listen, feel the song in a way as they have actually gone in their prime time, gone 30-35 years back. I didn't use to understand meaning of the song that time at all but now I listen to it and realize what all those guys must have had felt. I keep my mind free from everything & just listen to this song few times continuously and it brings all the past moments in front of me as I am watching a virtual movie of myself, feeling I am in a neverland. I see endless moments spent with my family growing from an infant to a boy and then from a boy to an adult, time spent with friends playing, studying & having fun all the time with no worries with no exposure to how the outer world is.

With each moment we are loosing time and sometime it makes me ask myself a question what purpose I am serving in this lifetime when I see everything is just passing by me non-stop with each second. If I think, only few moments back I see myself a kid preparing my school bag getting on to my bicycle saying good bye to mom-dad waiting for my friend to join and heading towards the school. I still remember when I won first prize in drawing competition held in Shivalik Public School (Phase-6, Mohali) I was in 2nd grade then & nothing can beat how much happy I was, how excited I was to tell mom dad about my achievement....it was so natural. But as we grow old our brain starts getting more mature, we start to apply our mind in everything, think about our surroundings, society, people around and thus learn to control our emotions never expressing in a way it is meant to be.

Just few weeks back my brother was here in US with me, I felt so excited and we really had a good time together sharing with each other what we never shared before but at the same time I also felt we have grown so old because as kids we always used to play together, fight with each other all the time with all the freedom and now we were sitting next to each other no fights at all, talking about worldly things/issues and about how life is. I still carry a picture in my mind of him holding my hand walking me through or sitting on the back seat of the bicycle after him coming back from the school or him making fun of me all the time or playing with him cricket in the backyard or playing carrom with him & crying on loosing.

My mom dad has been a great inspiration for me throughout and I feel lucky when I hear dad sharing about his youth days with me. He always goes back to his college days and the time he spent in Hind Motors Colony, Calcutta (now Kolkata). I can realize how much he miss those days and that's why he has always encouraged me to write journals so that when I get old I can go back read it and recall exactly how my past went because if you look back and try to recall the moments one would be able to recollect only a handful of events but what about rest of the times. A year has 365 days and if one multiply with how many days he or she is old, try thinking of how many hours are recollected!!

I really hope people in power learn from this and do something good to our country.

Laters........

This incident happened in my 5th semester of my Undergraduate days in Ferozepur and remembering it made me burst into laugh. I am sure that my friends who were there when this incident happened will make a lot of sense and would be able to correlate it!

So we had a lecturer whom most of the students of my batch used to respect a lot and certainly no doubt he was a good lecturer. In one of his classes, he gave a lecture as he would normally do and we all were about to leave at the end of the class saying ...."okay one more lecture over and it's time to go to our Hostel's Mess and have a good lunch" but just before leaving the class, the lecturer sat down on his chair, called names of five guys to stay in the class and asked rest of the people to leave. Those five guys were Siddharth, Deepak, Pankaj, Aman and ofcourse me so initially we all took it light, whats the big deal...kuch kaam shaam hoga. We all were standing with our heads high, confident looks on our faces and the next thing lecturer told us very politely to write down our home addresses, parents' name and their contact information, their profession one by one on a piece of paper and leave it on the table. We all were still cool and wrote all the information without any hesitation, dropped the papers on the table and just when we tried to grab a chair and sit down - a huge roar (with lot of anger in the voice) came "Don't dare to sit...keep standing". At this particular moment we looked at each other's faces and all the coolness vanished in fraction of a second. Usually, we didn't use to care for any lecturer but when you respect someone you tend to get afraid from that person also. All our confidence shrunk into timid faces and for the next 15-20 minutes we got incessant bashing and threats from the same lecturer whom we even hadn't thought of doing anything wrong in any of his classes. He started in a mysterious manner and asked us a question "What would happen if I make you guys pack your bags and resticate from the college? What would be the reaction of your parents to hear this?" We literally had no clue what he was referring about and why he's accusing as if we had committed a felony . We again looked at each other with blank faces what's going on?

For 5 minutes the lecturer didn't tell us what it was all about. He kept on asking us to name the person who has done this....but what...Kuch idea hi nahin tha ke chal kya raha hai!! Then one of us somehow gathered enough courage to ask the lecturer ke " Sir, what happened?" He finally brought out all of us from the confusion and told us that someone has been whistling in the class intentionally and despite his unhappiness shown indirectly whistling has been going on for a while. Well, we didn't notice whistling of any sort in any of his classes so we were still shocked and petrified that why he has chosen us. Obviously Pankaj, Deepak and Siddharth won't even think of doing this in their wildest of dreams as they were the most decent fellows (at least in the class, in hostel they were alltogther different guys which I don't think I should be mentioning here!!) so I just had a smirk on my face and thought - Dude this lecturer is doubting the wrong guys. We told the lecturer that we didn't even know that something like this has been going on in the class then how can be it one of us but he was very certain that it is one of us only so after all those threats and showing his darker side he told us that he will give us 2-3 days ( I don't remember exactly) and whosoever is the guy doing this either come to him and accept himself or if anyone of us can tell him privately his name OR we all would have to face serious consequences. Once the lecturer left the class we just sat down and saw each other's faces with total dismay....What is all this and now what to do?? We went back to hostel and told other guys who were waiting for us eagerly to hear about something masaaledaar.....and guess what - they just made fun of us, especially Ajay....He's the guy to whom one would definitely not like to go when your chips are down because he would never leave a single chance to make a mockery out of you....Woh kehte hain na "Jale pe namak chidakna"...... he has mastery on this. But jokes apart frankly speaking he is one of those rare guys who would make you laugh and make your tensions go disappear in a flash as if nothing had happened...I owe a lot to him and always thank him to be there with me during the days of my college. Even today if I am in some tension or feeling a bit low (which I hardly feel) I just give him a call.

Anyways coming back to the topic, our next class with the lecturer was two days later and in between none of us went to him thinking that he might cool down by himself and will say it is okay now. Moreover, we ourselves didn't have a clue what to do....so in his next class we went with our heads down and in this class his rage was even more stronger....He seemed vey furious and embarassed us badly in front of the whole class. Siddharth is one of those who under tension and pressure won't be able to utter a single word....he starts mumbling and suttering badly and I still remember the lecturer made him stand in front of the calss and asked him to keep his hand on his heart and say that you don't know anything about who's whistling....he got so scared that he kept his hand on to his right by mistake and seeing this the lecturer got even more infuriated and shouted back at him..."Siddharth, heart is always on the left so keep your hand on the right place".....Siddharth's face became white as it took him a while to say all that and the manner in which he said that can't be described in words, it was just so funny and we still laugh about this whenever we talk about this heart incident. So one by one we all confessed that we have nothing to do with whistling and we really don't know who's doing this. So finally the lecturer cooled down (I guess he got satisfied by embarassing us badly) and warned all of us that he won't bear such a thing if repeated again......and we all took a sigh of relief!! Thank God ..bala tali.....And later we found from our secret intelligence people that whistling was being done by a girl...We all were shocked to hear this and we said ke woh lecturer faaltu mein humein tang kar raha tha and when all of this was going on she didn't even uttered a single world....we finally got the point what girls are capable of (I won't disclose the name of the girl due to privacy issues ;)).....Well a moment to think back and laugh !!!

Couple of days back only Abhishek told me about this website and found the following short documentary on Mustangs. I have been always fascinated by horses so liked this one instantly....hope you all like it !

http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/the_noble_horse/

Don't get bothered by the 'Citi' adds in between.