Lekin

Lekin songs were classic. Still are! Lyrics by Gulzar and music by Hridaynath Mangeshkar. And this one, shines through them. I find it very powerful because of the lyrics.

Suniyo ji.mp3

So much...

for being an IITian, huh? While, I have nothing against premier institutes but I do have a problem of them being classified as an elitist group of intellectuals. That is such a gross mistake. I have seen couple of miserable failures of personalities of folks who attended "premier institutes" all their lives and proved themselves as "premier failures" and pseudo intellectuals too. One such example: IIT engineer is online sex stalker in US. On the other hand, I have also found guys from not-so-premier-institutes as great thinkers and absolutely humble intellectuals. So, I wonder, what makes things premier the way we project or are fed in our minds as?

There are couple of points that I would like to state in which first one I have a strong problem with and second one is just a deeper problem I see:

• Classifying education into lower/upper rungs and feed this in mind of students who attend and leading that to idolizing and making them believe that they are indeed some superior lot. Isn't that a systematically adopted abuse?
  
• Human debased base urges (as one example cited about) cannot be alienated just by these superficial tags that we generate and attach to people into inferior or superior lot of human beings, no?

A Woman in Berlin

After reading several personal accounts of victims and wading through innumerable real stories, one fact becomes more clear to me that they never forget, and move on to lead a normal life. One such story of broken silence about collectivized systematic heinousness, here, in, A Woman in Berlin. Few quotes from the article to think deeply about:

"I was immediately gang raped by five Russians. The memories come back to you over and over again; you can never forget something like that. Sometimes after I talk about it, I sleep for a few hours and then wake up crying, screaming. You can never ever forget," she says.

As a result, for many women, political fear and shame — mixed with guilt about Nazi atrocities — created a kind of code of silence.

"The raping continues. They are everywhere, in every home. We service the Russians now. And we women will have to keep silent. Or no man will ever want to touch us again. Wretched Germany!" she says in one scene.

"The study has been helpful. But of course it brought back everything. And I've had a lot of sleepless nights because of it," she says.

...

Given that I am such a stuck-up person when it comes to welcoming new music, I was taken aback to my response to movie, Love Aaj Kal songs. A friend delivered the entire album to my inbox and I had not heard of the movie name yet. So, that was the beginning of my trouble. Looking at the name of the movie and my disapproval for the title of the movie, I did not even venture into downloading the songs. After couple of days, I just did it with very low enthusiasm as I had my biases already formed based on the casual title, "Love aaj Kal." I had said to myself, "what good can it be" and had dismissed it. Well, I have been proved wrong. There are few very groovy songs in this album. The best one is Chor Bazaari in the album, for me (by a fair margin). Its so very nice. Second one is Ajj Din Chadheya (but only first 20/25 seconds of it) and third one is Dooriyan. I have changed my mind on this album so many times that it has shaken my confidence. I hope, I don't come back with updates and edits later. Who would trust a person who likes and dissects songs to like and dislike for chosen few seconds in it?

Sigh! Life can be complicated with complex choices to discern from.

Expulsion for them

Since, they are HIV+, parents of non-HIV positive kids are demanding expulsion for the fear of infection. This fear is of getting infected, just being in the proximity of infection. Its not bad enough that they have been infected with the disease that they also face this community ostracism?

Since the school reopened in the second week of June, these 150 students have remained absent for fear of infection. "We fear that if our children play with HIV-positive kids, they too will contract the dreaded disease. We don't want our students to continue their education in this school."

To further pressure the zilla parishad administration into expelling the students, the villagers at a well-attended meeting unanimously passed a resolution to withdraw their children from school if the HIV-positive students were not expelled.

Four gone...

..and eight more to go. Yes, you might have guessed it right. Those numbers have to do something with pounds and you can attach "desirable personal loss" to it, as well. After much dodging and bluffing, I am back to my routine visits to gym. It's been a month and I am lovin' it, seeing the visible results, beyond the mental satisfaction of following a good habit.

On an average, its 4 visits per week, when sanity prevails over lethargy and laziness. So far, its only one week that I am ashamed of, for absconding for one full-whole-complete-all seven days -week bunking. Weight of one week guilt will result in more rigorous weeks to come, so it all works out fine, you see. Or so I say and think to self.

Work-out looks something like this at the moment and I am determined to improve upon it, in next few weeks: 2.5/3.0 miles of walk/run, followed by 3.5/4.0 miles of cycling, 15/20 minutes of rowing and stepping exercises and to finish, end it with half hour of yoga (combination of 8 to 10 moderate to difficult postures).