Blissful Life

When you apply skepticism and care in equal amounts, you get bliss.

Month: November 2011

  • Treating the disease and not the symptoms

    If you had the power to change one thing about India, what'd you choose? Corruption, inequality, injustice are all issues that need to be given a death knell as soon as possible. But our journey towards a better India needs a start from elsewhere – better education.
    "But we already have quality schools!?" is the question that pops up. No! You're wrong. There might be schools that produce intellectual giants, or money spinners. But there is hardly any place where nation builders – the incorrigible set of young achievers who'll strive till their last breath for a better world – are born.
    And that is where Kaliyuva mane makes its humble entrance.
    "The soul of India lives in its villages" said Gandhiji. Everyone shook their heads in agreement. And then? Then they continued their soulless city life. The 740 million rural population were left to till, plough, reap, but not to enjoy their toil.
    It's in one of these 638,000 neglected villages that Kaliyuva mane is, now, growing.

    Will it change anything? It doesn't require a lot of optimism to understand that nothing else will.

  • The Peace in being Immensely Busy

    To waste not a second, being busy like a bee, was always my dream. But in medical college it's the rule and not exception that you be busy, always.

    And I'm finding a strange feel of order and happiness in it.

    You wake up, do the record work for the day, preview the day's class, brush, rush through breakfast, ride to college, attend lectures till noon, rush back to hostel, have lunch, rest for 10 minutes, return to college for practical, go straight to library from there, come back half an hour before dinner, take a bath, wash, have dinner and chit chat, start reading till midnight, and sleep. Repeat this for every weekday with occasional inclusion of exercise. And on a holiday you pay back your sleep debt, go shopping, do NGO activity, call old friends, family, go around the town, and sleep tired.

    It's not hectic, but there's a continuity, a flow of activities from one to the other, with no time sucking in between. And this flow is addictive, albeit tough to achieve.

    And not to forget the mental stretch the textbooks give. It's one great balancing act that brings out your mettle. Medical college.