Alter EGO

There is no denying the fact, that our thoughts reflect ourself. At times we become rigid, we are overjoyed, we are sad and so on... But do we realize that, at that very moment our behavior is reflecting whole of our self.

In a saying..

What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens. -Charles R. Swindoll

Each of us comprises of two parts, one is ourself, the other is imaginary.. or what in layman term called as "alter ego". Most of us might already know this, but a quick brief: "An alter ego of a person is the opposite self of himself who always drives you into the direction where you have not been to."

Point is, most of us think (or have a a mindset) that alter ego is negative you. This blog denies this fad. What I perceive of myself is that, I am living my alter ego. Let me go through this...

We all know people resist changes, which is a universal fact for all human beings. So do I. The time I left off my college, I was morally very down and upset. Nothing looks good to me. Even rainbows were like protractor those days. I was really resisting things that I left off. Then adjusting in corporate environment was another challenge in front of me. To face things I used to curtail my work. e.g I used to left off from office at 4PM (ideally 7).
Then slowly life came to a steady pause. It became my usual routine. All the thoughts from college got buried deep within me. The real me started to hide. I was like running away from myself. Instabilities crept within me.

(Scene 32 take 41 - action)
Then I met someone...

Usually its not that I make idols or (fan)tsize myself about others. But this someone was the one who made me think. I found him to be one of the fastest thinker. Exceptional analysis skill and brilliant IQ. He made me think (without saying) of what has gone "has GONE". I can't segregate myself to move ahead to the best of worldly things. I have no right to throw off my wings and letup myself to fly.

Then comes up my alter ego.. It showed me the path. I started to enrich my thought process. I started to adopt myself with changes and open both hands to accept the new phase of life. There is always more ahead. Actually more and more ahead..

Now question is what all could I do if I also feels like shit!

1. First and of the foremost importance is, love yourself. Believe me, if you could be joyous to be happy with what you are (and not what you could be) you'll never feel down.

2. Be creative: Now thats not easy. But think deeply, it indeed is. The very basic definition of creativity varies for every single person to other. For me creativity could be to make code, but for other it can be some fancy things like painting, dancing, or the oddest of them, making dumb figures out of paint dropping wall while you do shit! (Like I made the map of India once)

3. Pursuit your passion: Its the key!

4. Analyze: We go on running after things, tasks etc and find 24 hrs to be too few to complete 'em all. Just take out 30 minutes of yours where you think. Think anything.. what you did yesterday, why you said X at random, when Y thing happened and so on.

And lastly understand that..
"No one can see beyond his judgement" -Oracle (Matrix Reloaded)

Understanding to this has been left as an exercise to the readers :-)

Four years!

Four years!!

(That was what I said when I got admitted to Engineering college, JMI)

2nd August 2005, I walked to the auditorium to attend the opening lecture by the proctor.

"Welcome to Jamia, a central university by an act of parliament. Here you'll get a chance to showcase your talent and blah blah blah..
I'ld also like to tell you, please don't bunk the classes and do not misbehave. Remember you are represting not only yourself, but your parents, your colloge and your country as well."

This was how we interpreted this..

"Welcome to Jamia (and we boast about ourselves). Here you'll get a chance to showcase how well you can stand in front of our tortures.
I' ld also like to tell you on this very first day, that there is another way called 'bunking the classes' when you feel nothing is going right. And you represent literally no one, and you are khulla saand."

I entered the classroom, with 60 blank faces. Just like a new person in the puppet show, and asked myself, "Who all are these blank stupid faces? Don't they get any other place except this one? Are all of them dumb (that's including me)?"

Soon lectures, classes, assignments and exams started, and in the interim we started to gain our real treasure, its was not the knowledge, twas FRIENDS. Those blank faces started to turn out more friendly, It was just 3 days and I then knew 40 new names, rest of them seldom came up to the classes, I didn't knew rest of them till 2nd year ;-) And know what, this puppet show started to turn out a huge reality show.

Time used to run very slow, we enjoyed every mischief, every adventure, every minute of our college. In this, I met few of really good friends, Bharat, Waseem, Asheesh, Kazim, Ali, Shariq, Sameer, Aaveg, Nimisha, Anjuman, to name a few. This blog is especially dedicated to all of you, and a real thanks for being there with me in all those 4 years. Life would have been disgusting and unimaginable without you all. I still remember each and every moment, every talk and every single thing with you.

A couple of years passed by, and my second home gradually became Hostel, it indeed was sweet to smell all the rotten sox in every room, although personally, my favorite smell was from RNo. 1 AMK. :)

How could we forget the proposal of sand bag theory by Dr Kazim Zaidi, I vomited for the first time in my life laughing, and we needed to call up service to clean the room up.

The bad words filled mail to a popular mailing list! We bunked the lecture to find a cyber cafe to post the message. One of the most devastating idea we had.

Money was in abundance, really. Whenever you need it, "oye 100 rs hain?"

JamP2P deadline was 1 day ahead, but did we had a game of BZFlag? "Abhi to puri raat padi hai, khelte hain yaar!"

2369 cups of tea at canteen! Or more? I remember those days when after entering the college we straight away reaches canteen and sat over there till 5.

Mass bunk Planning mass bunk was a daily business.

When we just needed a voice to be raised to have lunch at Al-Bake. (NARE main lagata tha, and Waseem used to say, 'main nahin jaunga')

When S***** sir used to scold us for wearing the shoes in the lab, when he himself was wearing 'em, and we all stood up in a line outside the lab for a couple of periods as punishment. It couldn't have been a 'jaza' instead of 'saza' unless juniors congratulated us for getting relieved from the practical. :)

Algorhythm/Encomium used to come up as a festival, when without reason we worked like anything.

Asheesh's leg pulling, didn't anyone noticed he grew up 6inches more in his college time? (I am specifically talking about body height, sorry no leg pulling here)

Bharat's jokes, combined with Kazim to produce deadliest fun ever.

The cup below the computer table at Bharat's room, I still imagine how could it be there for so long!

Today, its nearly an year that I am out of that world. It feels like someone has snatched the treasure from me. Why am I working? I yet have no responsibilities, is this just because everyone is working, so should I? Why I cannot continue that life?

Its only that I added a word "just" to my first sentence when I left off on the last day of college..

Just 4 years!!

How not to name you child?

Disclaimer: This is not a "how to" or suggestion list to name your child or else wise an offence to those whose name appears here. It is a work of fiction, any resemblance with any living or dead is purely coincidental.

Incidentally it came up in my mind, when I heard the name called "Chunna" (might be a nickname), when a woman near my home was shouting on her son. With this, we can very well think of the odds, that might come up with the name that we are choosing for our new ones. Here are few of the considerations:

1. Name elegantly:

In olden days, people used to name "Chunna", "Munna", "Gudiya", "Babu", "Kallu", "Mitthu" etc.

You might be surprised to know, two elderly siblings, at my hometown has names - Anno and Mujji respectively. Now think, someone calling you as, "oye mujji idhar aana". So name elegantly, keeping in mind next 50 years. You might very well know, Chiraunjilal.. (Khosla ka ghosla). These names don't work anymore in present.

2. Names based on film stars or celebrities:

This might be funny if someone calling you Shahrukh Khan. Often people name there kids, sometimes unintentionally, with superstar's name. e.g. One may call his son as Aamir. But since the family name is Khan, it becomes Aamir Khan. Which raises difficulty later.
It is left to the readers to imagine someone calling you Tushar Kapoor :)

3. Always try to form anagrams:

Anagrams are the words that are created by jumbling the alphabets. A friend of mine named Anjuman Bhatla (name changed), has an anagram of Batman!!

4. Keep in mind the reverse of the name:

e.g. Atir becomes Rita.
Amir becomes Rima. Oops, changed the gender as well.

5. Changing one or two characters should not blast out the name.

I've a good example to make here, my name itself, Shamail.. When I was in school, others just replaced 'a' with 'e' and it became SHE-MAIL! Now thats pathetic!
A friend of mine, Adil got printed on his I-Card Adick.
A friend of my brother has name Saadh, What if you replace 's' with 'p'. OH MY GOD..

6. Pronunciation:

Shamail (sha-ma-el) is usually pronounced as, sha-mil, sha-mail (as in GMAIL), shu(the one we says to dogs)-mal etc etc.
Anas, read the way you want.. !!! (Anus?)

6. Does including sir name still keeps the name intact?

A cousin of mine has a name "Taha Ahmad", say it quickly to make it "Tehmad"

7. Is the name too old fashioned or ultra modern?

Imagine calling a 2yr child with name "Maurya Ranjan". How would his mom scold him? "Maurya Ranjan ye kya kar rahe ho!"
Similarly, imagine a 60 yr old lady called Pinky or Sweety!

In my school days, when it was time when we awaits 6 days to get 30 mins of P.T class as games, and whole of the week, it was team building, making decisions of what to play etc etc.
But to note, we used to call our friends in abbreviation. but these abbreviations are not the initials of that person. Its very different. This abbreviation is the initial of the fathers name!
e.g. I "Shamail Tayyab" was called by name MT and not ST. Similarly one of my friend Mohan was called BS (fathers name Bharat Singh)

Now this is interesting, we could keep our offspring with a name subjected to a lot of filters, but do you have any solution for this? What would name your kid if your name is Anant Shyam Sundar...