FRIENDSHIP

CHOOSING THE RIGHT FRIENDS

choosing Friends .. choosing the right friends is very important. friends are an integral part of a persons life. they are often a deciding factor in the direction in which ones life goes.the kind of friends you have defines you.. this is exactly what i have been hearing since .. umm i started meeting people my age, 

well i don't know whether i am right or wrong . but i believe that more than the fact that your friend circle defines you, it is you who define your friend circle. a person would end up having friends who share the same mindset as he does. one might get involved or befriend people who do not share the same thought as he does or believes in stuffs that he disapproves of.. but that would last only for a short duration of time.as problems would start arising. well then some of you might be wondering then what do i have to say about the innumerable examples of people getting in ' bad ' company ( firstly how do you define a company as bad .. its relative.. for terrorists we are bad and for us they are.. but yeah . if you are talking in the moral sense then yeah bad company) i guess everybody wants to try out the stuffs that appear 'cool' and that is when you start getting involved in the group of people you do not or did not approve of before. i believe that people are never born bad it is the situations and the surroundings they have to deal with daily that end up making them bad. similarly, even people who get involved with the kind of people who are 'bad' they adjust to the surroundings and they get 'destroyed' in their company.

cmon, now i am contradicting my own words .. well the will and the belief in your conscience is the key here.. if you believe what you are doing is not right that is you have conscience inside you , ( which by the way everybody does have) and the will to do what is right.then it is you who decides your friend circle,..in fact if you have these two .. you don't need to'choose' them , it is all automatic in this autonomous 21st century.

when i started writing this post, i had something else in mind and i ended up writing something else.. funny .. isn't it. the multiple directions in which brain can work

choosing friends..it is often said .. one must choose ones friends wisely.. but you don't choose them. with time ..before you realise they have become your friends. a person never goes to some place thinking that this is the kind of friend i have to make..( or does anybody?) it is time that strengthens the bonds of friendship and at the same time weakens the clutches of rivalry.. it is time that chooses the friends for you.. the only thing you can do is just be yourself and not pretend to be someone else. sometimes it might happen that you want to become part of a group and you do not. you may feel sad about it. but how many of us really ponder over why we weren't able to be a part of that group. maybe because we didn't fit into that group or maybe that group wasn't ready to accept you.. but does it matters?. there are another 7 billion people you can befriend.( or aren't there)..and eventually you will end up being among people whose company you enjoy and rarely does it happen that you decide .. mostly its by chance that you meet that person and he or she becomes a part of you life and you just enjoy their company throughout your life..

MORALLY CONSCIOUS

CONSCIENCE

it was not long ago .. some 4 months i guess when i came to this place, a place which is believed to be the heaven for the young generation, a place which has its own charisma, its own life, everybody who has spent time here does has a lot of memories to share and tell the heroic tales he or she has done or witnessed in this place, tales that will go down well with the folklore in the coming next 8 to 10 years, a place that has its ow share of stress and happy moments that get so deeply imbibed int the memories of people that they often find even the thought of parting with it and going to their homes scary.( OK i admit initially everyone is home sick), it is one of those very few places that somehow or the other always manages to meet the expectations that every single person has from this place.. and even when someone leaves this place he is a totally changed person.. just like a moth transforms into a butterfly ..well this place is often known to people as an ENGINEERING college.. and to me,.. umm mirror.

a mirror.. hmm why a mirror.. for me this place is a paradise for those who always keep their eyes open for opportunities. for excelling in fields other than academics. it allows you to analyse yourself where you stand among people of the same capability as u.. people who are at par with you.people who end up being one of your best friends in the long run of time, well people from all over the country. a diverse country as India .. you gotta believe even after 700 students there are still parts of 'indian' diversity that is not present here. and to add that there are people from various parts of the world including the gulf countries.. which allows you to know about them, their culture their thoughts the surroundings in which they have been brought up.. but i have to admit more than that .. i love their food..food form various parts of country and i need not mention they are definitely delicious as they are prepared by utmost love and care by the mothers.. ( at first i thought typical Indian mothers..stereotypes.. mindset.. mothers have got to be the same all over the world right !) .. since i have really deviated from the topic that i was talking about .. lets get back to it. in one way you get to face the difficulties yourself.. for the first time your biggest shield in your childhood ... your parents are not there with you on every single issuer.. you learn to solve them yourself.. make yourself efficient .. but most important of them all you get to analyse yourself as every child is the best child in their parents point of view.. you start paying heed to what people think about you and if they think something bad.. you try to change that .. in order to become a better person ( actually to become a better person in their point of view). you start maturing .. but there is one thing that still makes me bite my nails and scratch my head.. our parents brought up,.. right.. why cant we trust them that they must have brought us well and .. not i guess one should not change according o the wishes of the others... but on second thought even gangsters were raised by their parents.. are they right.. confused.. so am i.. but then what is it that allows us to bring changes in ourselves and if we bring changes are we doubting our parents upbringing. no is the answer. we are just listening to our conscience.. 

its important to bring changes in yourselves.. its important to do mistakes and learn from those mistakes.. but its all the more important to bring changes not because somebody else thinks it is right or wrong.. changes need to be brought only when one's conscience thinks that it is wrong, only when you get that feeling internally that this is not the way this is to be done and it is a total no no.. .. but is it something to be felt ashamed of that i did something wrong.. no . but it is something..... definitely something to be felt ashamed of if i don't correct the mistake and ensure that i don't do it in the future.
conscience is a topic of morals . often uninteresting.. at least i find them so..but i guess it is fine to sometimes even ponder over the reason for the bore ..

JEE MAINS

i was privileged(believe me it was anything but privilege) to be the first batch to give the JEE MAINS… for the sake of details it was held on 7th April,2013 , had a set of 90 questions , 30 each in physics , chemistry and mathematics.

my first hand experience was bitter as well as sweet. so lets  first look at the good things about this exam.

BENEFITS

it ensured that a child does not has to go through all that stress of giving innumerable exams in innumerable cities .. leading to stress, wastage of money and most importantly time.

Also, now students wont have to prepare separately for various exams as the pattern of each exam varies and requires specific preparation up to some extent( now some of my friends might say that the core remains the same i.e. we have to study same maths , chemistry and physics… but come on attempting 60 questions in three hour and 240 questions in 150 minutes definetly requires specific preparation).

there is one more thing, i guess the fact that JEE mains is mostly based on ncert , so when you prepare for your boards … it helps in mains too.. but who doesn’t knows that

DISADVANTAGES

the biggest disadvantage is that if due to some reasons your exam didn’t go well then you will be forced to waste one year which i believe is too harsh and a solution to it ought to be found.. i have a friend who was good in studies but due to stress his exam didn’t go too well..let’s say that he was expecting 250 and got 100 and will now have to prepare for another year with the stress increasing manifold.

also the inclusion of percentile of boards. well the thing with this percentile is that if you are giving an exam from a high scoring board like andhra or even ncert for the sake and one of your exam doesn’t goes well .. then making up in other subjects is really difficult as to get a good rank you must have a 90% in cbse.. and even one bad day may ruin the entire show.. 

also, given the fact the board copies are cheked manually , there is quite a large scope for mistake in correction which is like playing with a child’s future..

the inclusion of board marks was done so that their is a reduction in the number of coaching institutes and it appears that this move will only backfire..as coaching institutes have started taking cbse pattern exams and even teaching accordingly..

all in all… this experience was nothing except horrible… especially for those who weren’t much informed about the change in pattern.. and all i can do is pray that such stuff other batches do not have to face.. but it appears my prayers will only go in vain..

on the innate drive for what is right

i was going through some of the poems and i really liked this one...

On the Innate Drive For What is Right

As life bled, martyrdom flared its buds.
Repression, red from irritation,
Rendered chinks and cracks; but thuds of
Armament - in cowardice - accomplice of the
Dictatorial blight thro' countless years -
Wreaked its retribution:
Yet hope began to bloom a coloured carapace
Enshrining their allegiance ‘gainst the
Terror in their tears.

And on! Splits yawned - breaches in the junta:
Flesh fought fanatical minds -
Bullets welcomed into open hands
And blessed with yearnings for morality:
Chiselled man-toys of death and mutilation
Couldn't repel the might of freedom
Surging at the bright horizon.

Crepuscular rays of purpose, body,
Flooded pandemonium with
Overwhelming clarity, direction -
Burdened clouds drifting wayward as the
Light channelled out a vision,
Intensifying focus on tomorrow -
Deepen their stride
As they home in to
What is theirs,
Rightfully theirs! 

BOARDS

OUT OF THE BOX

studying for exams can sometimes get really boring .... as you have to study the same thing again and again..
and knowing that the exams are still 2 months away can be really scary and with th knid of cricket india is playing.. it appears i will have to do with the australian open.. at least there will be federer and guess what.. not a single indian.. but that doesnt trouble me at all.. what is my worry is the leve of exams that the much recognized central board of secondary education(cbse) conducts and now it will act as a benchmark to get into the top colleges of india.. good for some ..bad for many a geeks and nerds and some sensible people( actually i didnt wanted myself to be counted in geeks and nerds)..
what is strtling is the fact that these exams are totally based on your memorising skills especially in those subjects that are basically meant for applicaton.. like lets see ... the questions get repeated every year ... a teacher who has been teaching even for a mere 3-4 years can also tell you what the paper will be.. if not completely .. then at least 60-70%... and all those who are not good in maths ..dont you worry cause just mug up 120 questions( last 4 years paper equivalent) and you will even on your unluckiest day will be able to score 60% marks...

the thing is that if you wish to make board marks as a benchmark.. then i would suggest that increase the lecvel of tests and what is taught in schools .. well one cannot completely blame the board for such a sorry state.. it was in the year 2005 that board had revised the syllabus and had introduced a new set of textbooks that were not only of a higher standard but also was a lot better than what we have to study nowadays.. but sadly the board was not able to achieve it's aim.. in the next year only teachers went on strike saying that the book was of a  higher level than necessary and was not meant to be taught to students.. the statement that they gave was " if we are not able to understand what is given in the books .. how are we supposed to teach the children"... well i am  speechless about it..
also there is one more problem with the entire setup of imparting education.. the child is let free till the class 10th and suddenly in class 11th the level increases.. instead if we increase the level of studies slowly and distribute the whole syllabus uniformly in the 6 years it will definitely reduce the pressure and stress on the children and there would no longer be need of coaching institutions .. ( mind you government has tried everything from bringing changes in class 9th to changing the pattern of jee to  giving weightage of school marks and board marks for admission in 11th and engineering instituitions respectively.. and still they have been unsuccessful )..
if not think out of the box then at least think sensible

THE birthday party...

BIRTHDAYS...

it has been just two days since i have been writing the blog, and i alredy feel like i am more addicted to it than the indian cricket matches that i have been watching since the last .. i dont remember.. maybe from the day i was born.. well india has definetly  given brth to another new religion .. its just that you often ask yourself that why i am following this.. but we often do end up watching the matches and keep on discussing about them without any reason..

well the same i think also goes with birthdays.. we kindda celebrate our birthdays with such pomp and show every year whether we are 66 or 16 or 6.. its just that we all wait for that day and keep the countdown going till the day comes..

the week before passes in the unending and when the day comes it seems to have passed so quickly ..though we all ( almost.. if you exclude the 36.7 percent of the 1 billion population who do not even know when they were born and another 20 percent who know that on which they were  born but have to do away with 2 bites of a roti    on that day.... wait! did that just crossed the 50 percent... arjun munda heres your majority for the jharkhand assembly.. just pay some attention to them instead of your swiss bank accounts) seem to enjoy athat day and try to make it a memorable one...

celebrating birthdays in a pompous manner has started being a status symbol.. (or was it always like this only)..

it involves a lot of spending , time and most importantly, one tends to miss the beauty of the other days of life.

a lot of excitement surround the birthday party of a friend and people often talk about how the birthday party was last year and keep guessing how it will be this year( oh .. i think i was mistaken in thinking that it was the. friend's birthday and not the party's birthday.. or was it). 

but the question here  is firstly, just what is so special about this day that has the capapcity to undermine the importance of other days and what is the chance it will be the most memorable day of your life..

well, some may say that it is just a way to get in touch with old pals.. but how often is it that we end up calling our old pals.. the friends who end up being at the party are mostly the one's a person meets often if not daily.

or are birthdays a means to celebrate one's existence on this planet.... hadn't some wise person( not aasaram bapu obviously) said sometime that the happiness that giving is the biggest source of happiness...

its not that i am against celebrating birthdays.. in fact even i do celebrate birthdays ... but the thing is that what is the need of celebrating the day with such pomp...
recently i was reading a news which stated that dior bags were given as return gifts( though at a pre wedding ceremony).. but for christ's sake if you are in possession of such great wealth then please give some to the IT( income tax not information technology) department ... so that they can at least give respite to all those rich who are might be worried about the government seriously considering taxing them more... just kidding... i mean if you have so much then please do something for all those people for whom that same day holds as much importance as to you.. those people who share their day of birth with you.. but unfortunately in the worlds largest democracy cannot afford even one time meal. just spend some time with them and the joy that one gets to see on their faces is just unmatched.
well, at least that's my idea of birthdays..
there is one more thing which i find pretty odd about birthdays.. people expect you to remember their birthdays and wish you on your birthday.. and may god save you from the ire and the tantrums.. if BY MISTAKE you forget their birthdays...its kind of a bigger crime than those the delhi gangrape.. and may god  be with you if you forget your girlfriend or boyfriend's birthday...we just seem to forget that the person who failed to wish me a HAPPY BIRTHDAY was there when we neede him the most..
uuuhhh.. there is one more thing which i find very odd and even after putting all my wit i am unable to understand it.. we often keep a check on who all invited us to their birthdays and make sure that the person who celebrated his/her birthday without inviting us ... is not given an invitation to our birthday... i guess had we had the same tit for tat attitude in other situations then this world would have been totally different .. dont you agree?.. its just the way it is .. isn't it..
but i still hope that people do celebrate birthdays whether i do or not... 

SORRY STATE: MATHS IN SCHOOLS..

HISTORICAL MATHS

maths a subject ... umm i think its more of a language whose importance cannot be undermined.. and a language which cannnot be understood without the proper desire to learn it just like the other languages. well still english, hindi, french spanish, etc are some of t he languages that are spoken all around the globe but only by a certain group of people generally those groups where people have been speaking that language for time immemorial.. but i guess maths is the only language which is written if not spoken by everybody, a language that has the capacity in it to bind the people of this world together...

this is what w t gowers a famous mathematician himself had to sat about the importance of maths

It is with some disbelief that I stand here and prepare to address this gathering on the

subject of the importance of mathematics. For a start, it is an extraordinary honour to

be invited to give the keynote address at a millennium meeting in Paris. Secondly, giving

a lecture on the signi cance of mathematics demands wisdom, judgment and maturity,

and there are many mathematicians far better endowed than I am with these qualities,

including several in this audience. I hope therefore that you will understand that my

thoughts are not fully formed: if I had been asked to speak on this subject ve years ago,

I would have given a completely di erent lecture, and I am con dent that in ve years'

time it would again have changed.

If I fail to convince you that mathematics is important and worthwhile, I will be letting

down the mathematical community, and also letting down Mr Clay, whose generosity has

made this event possible and is bene ting mathematics in many other ways as well.

Unfortunately, if one surveys in a super cial way the vast activity of mathematicians

around the world, it is easy to come away with the impression that mathematics is not

actually all that important. The percentage of the world's population, or even of the

world's university-educated population, who could accurately state a single mathematical

theorem proved in the last fty years, is small, and smaller still if Fermat's last theorem is

excluded. If you ask a mathematician to explain what he or she works on, you will usually

be met with a sheepish grin and told that it is not possible to do so in a short time. If

you ask whether this mysteriously complicated work has practical applications (and we all

get asked this from time to time), then there are various typical responses, none of them

immediately impressive.

One is the line taken by the famous Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy, who

was perfectly content, indeed almost proud, that his chosen eld, Number Theory, had

no applications, either then or in the foreseeable future. For him, the main criterion of

mathematical worth was beauty.

I don't think this philosophical question has been satisfactorily answered, but we can

be grateful that in our world it is possible to use simple mathematical models. These can

describe, or even explain, the great complexities of physics and to a lesser extent the other

sciences. Once again, complexity arises from simplicity, and, once again, beauty reveals

itself to be important. Thanks to this piece of good fortune, we can be con dent that

mathematicians, if they are given the freedom to pursue the subject that gives them so

much pleasure, will continue to produce a body of work that is important in every sense

of the word.

  

well but why i am writing this post has got nothing to do with the importance of maths....( despite of hatever is written above).. 


i write this one because of the  sorry state in which maths is being taught in schools.. its basically more of mugging and none of learning ... today i just came across a school which focuses on solving the same questions a hundred times over and makin them remember the answers to those questions.. and to think that the schoo is a reputed school in patna, my city.. i feel kinda ashamed..

maths according me ought to be practised.. it is a way of attaining enormous joy.. where every single question possesses a challange before you.. its a subject that makes you ready to face the challanges that life will throw in front of yoou .. its a medium to ge ready for the future..
and considering that it is happening in a school that boasts of giving state toppers every year gets me worried about the state of education. 
what i feel is that it is not only the schools fault, the education system is to be blamed as they have provided an easy alternative for students by repeating the same questions year after year... sadly such  shortcuts arent avavilable in future and the children will eb the one to suffer...

when i was going through the preious year question papers , i realised that the same questions with the same data was repeated. the maths paper is now more of hisory than of maths ....

LETS CONDEMN ..MORE THAN FIGHT...

 

        

THE ART OF CONDEMNING

its been .. umm i don't know how many years , but at least from the day i have been born it has been there , India has been at war with its neighbor Pakistan..a country which has those people as its inhabitants who were considered to be our brothers and sisters.. but now... what has happened and the existence of tension between these two countries is clearly visible in the light of recent events that have taken place now.. the killing of two Indian soldiers and a Pakistani soldier.... i do not say that it was Pakistan who first killed the Indian soldiers or the Indians first broke the ceasefire.. i just say that lets condemn that three of our fellow brothers , three of those who had made it a motto of their lives to protect us, three of those who were living in those difficult conditions for our safety are no more...

feeling really sad....

nation in mourning

                 DELHI AGITAED...

it was the 16th of December , 2012 when Delhi was witness to one of the most heinous crimes it has ever seen( or is it so?) the question worth asking is that is it the first time that a girl has been raped in Delhi or was it the last time.? sadly neither of it.. it has been more than a fortnight since that brutal incident happened in the capital of India  the news channels and the newspapers and the blogs and Facebook and twitter are flooded with this issue but the sad part is that we don't know why? we have been telling via various mediums that we are agitated and we want a change  because we have seen enough and faced enough but the real truth is that it is because we fear  that what if the same thing happens to us. it is because we are fed up of the system not responding time and over again.( not only on this topic). 

since that day what has been noteworthy is that newspapers have suddenly started carrying an umpteen number of cases related to injustice against women to make a person fed up of reading the same news again and again..

but what has brought about this change. is it this incident ... well if that would have been the case then i assure you every 40 minutes you can find one of those reasons. actually it is because people have started voicing their views. the mass uprising in delhi made people aware of what has been happening in their surroundings out of the blue moon. it is because the youth have done something which has instilled a sense of belief among people that all good is not lost.

but i am not writing this blog because i feel pain for the victim or i want to make people aware that i am with them in their fight for justice. i write this blog to ask myself some questions .. questions that have been troubling my mind since that historically important 16 of December .

how often have you heard that a crime is being committed against a women?.. well one is committed every half an hour in India . and how often have you heard that a crime is being committed against a man..? i haven't heard till date. is it that the almighty started the discrimination of making women pure at mind and fitting dirty minds in men? i don't think so... then why?

the answer to this as far as i have been able to decipher is because  of the society that we live in. the thought process that runs deep in our nerves are they of medieval times when women were considered as objects? or is it that we are still in that time? 

the fact is that we are yet to accept the fact that men and women are equal... as i was reading the editorial of economic times ( as my television is facing some technical difficulties in overcoming the overdose of the same news 24*7) written by yusuf begg i realized that it is we , are thought process that is responsible for such incidents. today be it any field women have performed, although i do not agree that all of them had to face a lot of difficulties. shown that they can equal men. well this is the attitude that we ought to change .. why was it not that men have showed that they can equal women. its like saying that David is as tall as jack adding a sense of superlative to jack.

the point that i wish to make is that if both David and jack are of the same height .. why cant we say that both David and jack are equally tall. to stop these incidents from taking place it is essential that we start treating both the genders equally.

as i was writing this, the cold shivering wind just blew a thought to my brain.. there have been widespread demand for change in laws to facilitate stricter punishment for those who have done a crime against women( i am fed up of this term .. why cant it be crime against humanity or something like that) but have they ever given a thought that what all does this crime against women would include or have they ever thought about that if for an example suppose a women files a case that a certain person has tried to o something  wrong with her, then it i s noteworthy that the society would not wait for the court to give its judgement , it would decide on its own that the person is guilty , totally discarding the possibility that the person might be innocent and the woman might be trying to take a revenge. so all that i ask is that indian government has a system( which is not totally correct due to its delay but i would like to ask just give it some time to frame the laws ,... well not much though).

also now there has been a controversy surrounding aasaram's remarks, well what he said was a direct implication of what some of our politicians have already said in an indirect manner. consider this, an MLA from Alwar has asked to ban skirts in school... this is just another way of blaming the girls for whatever wrong happens to them.
so lets take a pledge on this new day to live as equals..

iit and beyond

            ENGINEERING..A DREAM?

well its been a long time since i wrote a blog.. now that i think of it i realize that i was small then.. maybe 5 years from now again i will  be thinking that i was so small then.. it is just the worst time to make a comeback of a sort in this huge blogging world..at a time when the jee mains( thanks to kapil sibal ) and the boards are just round the corner..
but as i was reading a shobha de's blog i realized or should i say that the lost love for blogging just once again rekindled back.. a big thank you to her..
i just dont know what to write about because its all studies at the moment..( do not take me for a pessimist)
uuhh... well about engineering in india.. maybe. yeah that will be it for today

in india... especially in the northern regions engineering in kind of synonymous with iit. (feels awkward to see them in short forms).. the very idea that a bright kid is not taking up engineering is indeed unbeleivable kind of stuff... there have been people who have showed great potential in them towards other fields but have oftn ended up being a part of this rat race where there are hundreds of thousands  ahead of him and hundreds of thousands behind him... and to think that none of the IITs rank in the top 200 among the best engineering colleges is amazing( falling short on words.. i guess i need a rogets thesarus)..
and what amazes me all the more is that getting a good score in sat ( to study abroad) is a much easier task than getting into iit.
attempts are being made to reduce the stress among the friends cum competitors  and the pressure of expectations.. not to much avail.. just like some medicines have cause more problems than solving them.. the same has happened with jee mains idea.. what it has basically done is that it is making the students go another extra mile to achieve the goal.. and its just that the timing has been just perfect ..5 months before the exams.. i guess that is it for us.. but looking at the optimistic side of it .. it is evident that at least efforts are being made to make it easier for the students
there is one more point that i would like to point out that it is high time people learn to judge.. it is important that the student , the parent and the teachers understand what the student is capable of doing and have expectations accordingly.. (now i would hear people saying where there is a wish there is a way.. well for them doesnt everybody wants to be an einstien.. lets look how many do we have with us?) .. actually when i think of it .. i realize that it is not the competition but the expectation that i killing the child's creativity..
it like iits are machine who convert normal people to big earners..( no wonder there hasnt been a nobel laureate from the prestigious iits)..its time to look beyond the iits and encourage talent.. in fields other engineering for once and look what this 1 billion populated country has in store for us..