Its the eye of the tiger i want to hit. The tiger signifies the ultimate goal. I have been lucky all my life to get such good friend with whom i can share my inner thoughts. They are always there to help me. I think rather believe that one's life should be measured by how many friends one make. By friends i mean good friends. If I were to measure my life according to the parameters that i have mentioned above I feel very good and lucky to be placed in the high ranks.

We are all social animals and cant live in isolation. Who created us? Thats a question that leaves to be answeed. If people say that it is God then i am going to ask those as to who created him/her? I believe that God is the biggest philosophical creation by human being. I believe God is fear which is created by our ownself. Had we been devoid of fear there would not have been any God. We all need a my baap above us who could take care of all of us. Fire, water, air, earth and eather are those natural elements human being have always feared. Probably the enormity of those would have created the feelings. To save from the wrath of those elements , human being created God.

It is the faith in something which has been the key to our survival. Faith is God. Had there been no faith there would have been absolute chaos all over. But unfortunately nothing is ideal and some chaos does creep or should I say it has. Infact chaos is the definition of the way we lead our lives. Chaos is what we live in day in day out. It is what we breathe. It is what we do every second of our lives. Having said that I do belive that I do believe life can be judged in many other ways, I have tried to delve on certain aspect.

We being mere mortals can only touch on fewer aspect. However we may try to get away from mortality, it catches us one day faster than we can try. This is one thing we cant get away with infact as one truly said that" this is your life and it is ending every minute". This means we start to pack our bags the moment we enter into this very life. Some die early and some die late but in the end every body has the same ending to their life. While I can be happy that I am still alive and being able to write about my after thoughts.

The Second Innings

Ah! It feels so good to be a student again. It’s been quite some time and I am enjoying every bit of academicia. Strange it may seem but it is true that it all started on a normal working day afternoon in the loo of Brickwork India, the place where I used to work. Archimedes found the buoying principal in the bathroom and said “Eureka”. I too, on the other hand found or rather came to know my result of IIFT. The relation may not be that profound but I would like to believe the feeling of ecstasy would have been the same. I could have sung a eulogy for the person from IIFT who let me know the result, such was my elation.

Rewind 2 years from now and the situation was not the same. I had just graduated and was feeling elated albeit in a different sense. I was finally free from studies. I had got redemption. The sense of being independent overpowered that of being student. The umbilical cord was sort of broken though IIT was still in my heart. A child had entered into a world totally different from what he had seen for the past 4 years at IIT. I was enthusiastic about the then job which was to come then. But little did I know at that point of time that there would be reversal in the feelings after few years.

Come September 2007, I started valuing my student life. Perhaps not being a student anymore for a good time made me realises that how much I craved for student life. The value of a particular thing can only be realised when you don’t have that thing. I realised how life was much better in graduation days. IIT was like a pseudo world for us with students inside constituting the population sans the leaders. The equations, the theories that I used to hate once became my friends again. One is actually a lot more secured there than in job life. He/she can afford to commit mistakes and get away with it. It is not that I would deliberately want to commit mistakes but the fact that one feels so secured in the four walls of college. The sense of responsibility takes a back seat. These all made me all the more determined to crack the B-School tests and IIFT proved to be boon in the sense that it allowed me to feel that lost sensation of being a student again. A sensation, so valuable. A sensation as pure as driven snow.

While getting to IIFT has made me student again, it has also given me another chance to rectify the mistakes that I had made during my graduation at IIT. No more do the round the clock classes/ assignments drive me insane. I don’t fear them anymore. In fact I have started liking them. While I may crib at the hectic schedule but I do it for the heck of it. For I know the price of the substitute is very high, which in my case is job life. While I may not be able to remain student forever, I have still been able to keep the professional life at bay for another 2 years. The feeling of being a student is so overpowering that it has made me to write this article which I would not have done had I been the person few years back. I feel rejuvenated. I feel reborn again. I feel like playing the second innings.

HOPE

Faith, charity, fortitude, justice, prudence, temperance, and hope, as we all know in a better way , are the seven virtues . Wait a minute!! did I mention hope?

"Sorry you are wrong". I am not talking about the famous Hollywood comedian Bob Hope either."Hope. What is hope ? Hope is a wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment. Hope is Something that is hoped for or desired: Success is our hope. and....Is that it or is there more? Let us see..

According to Greek mythology, after Pandora opened the forbidden box, entire evil escaped out with hope being the exception. It was hope which eased out her pain of releasing all the evils. It took dwelling in her heart.People curse her for letting all the evils but i think we should be thankful to her for letting hope out , which provides a shield to every evils that pose a threat to us.

Well that was history speaking on my behalf. I beg to differ when people say hope and desire are synonyms. I dont agree with it.I feel hope comes from desire. Had here been no desire there would have been no hope. With every desire born ,a hope is born. Desire is the mother of all hopes.They are the two sides of the same coin.But saying that I dont question their interdependency. Hope is what helps in getting one's desire fulfilled.They are the driving force to evolution. Desire is the fountainhead of great discoveries and inventions. The world without the present day inventions would have been unthinkable , if not for the inventors who had hope and perseverence which led them to their discoveries.They had desires and hope saw them getting through.I,or to put in a general case, we woudnt have born had not our parents desired to have us. With every person born, a desire and hence a hope is born and it grows with him and continues to be with him with never to lose his side. Just as a person is born with a shadow, in the same way one is born with hope. It is we who are the culprit of being a traitor to a lifelong friend who without fail follows us till the end.It is the best friend we can have , if not better. It is the reason for our existence. 'Hope can neither be destroyed and defeated.'

Desire and hence hope differentiate two persons.People have different desires and have different perspective towards life which make them different personalities.It has given rise to two adjectives which are given to the human nature i.e. an optimist and a pessimist.Being a pessimist does not mean zero hope but having negative of it with the positive part of it being suppressed deep inside one's body.There are innumerable peoople who are visually and hearing impaired, but there is only one Helen Keller who had hope and belief even when she didnt have anything else.It can do miracles if one wants to call them so.It sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible. Hope is a necessary diet for being sucessful. Unless and until one believes in himself/herself he/ she cannot make it to the top .

We hope for many things but don't get all of it. We get some and we dont get some. life is all these type of unfulfilled hopes but anything except it.Life is all about conquering these negative hopes and convert it to the positive.

Hope is all we will have even when every one else desert us.hope is the reason to live .It is the reason for us to live. It has given us the power to trust and have belief in people and this is one of the reason that life still goes on.It is the prized possession of every human being and people should not be deprived of it as ' who knows it may be the only thing he/she is left in the world.

PS: written on 04/04/2005