Broken Heart

You can very broadly categorise girls into two types, one that believe that the world is fair, there is beauty about everything that you can see and most importantly that there exists this heavenly emotion called love that is undoubtedly meant for everyone and that sooner or later they too would find that perfect person they were meant to be with. And then there is this other kind who think that it’s a big bad world out there where no one (and certainly not Prince Charming) would come and help you out if you ever were in distress, that it’s a world where you must know how to defend yourself or you shall perish like the million others that do every day.
Being an idealist since as far back as I can remember I happened to fall in the former category. And not just that, I used to be incredibly proud of it too. I would often give these long ‘inspirational talks’ about how god is just and kind; how there is a balance in everything that exists and how it is so absolute that good things happen to all people. (Yes I was greatly enthused and moved by all the novels I had read.)
This faith only strengthened when on my seventeenth birthday my best friend proposed to me saying how much he loved me and how he could feel it to his very core that we were meant to be together. Until then I hadn’t known that the feeling of happiness could be so powerful, so ecstatic that it could actually bring tears to your eyes.
The following two years were the best in my life. We ended up in the same college and almost all the same classes. The feeling of being in love was ethereal. It was like I was constantly supported and protected by some invisible shield and that somehow nothing wrong could ever happen to me again.
Only it did.
I can still recollect that time easily, as if it had happened yesterday and not sometime in the distant past. It is still so clearly etched on my mind because of the deep wound it inflicted on my heart and the scars that are still unhealed.
On the 2nd of august two years ago, I found out that the very basis of all my beliefs, of my life was untrue. It was a myth I had conjured up in my own head. The one person I had cared for, worshipped and loved beyond sanity was snatched away from me. Yes, the source of all my happiness, the reason for my being no longer existed. I could feel life ebbing out of me.
I had always believed in a fair world, in a God who was just and kind. But all that had changed. I realized what it meant to be alive and that it was nothing but pain.
And now no matter how hard I try to erase those memories from my mind they seem to make only a deeper impression. Even now I can clearly hear his voice resonating in my head; I can clearly see the look in his eyes as they had bored into mine. Waves of memories from the past as they strike my already broken heart...break it in into a million pieces. Scattering them such that I would never find them together again, to be able to try and join them somehow. Even now when I close my eyes at night the silent tear that runs down my cheek reminds me of my heart that is no longer whole and shall never be whole. Sometimes the pain is so acute I feel like ripping my heart out, just to make it stop, to stop any kind of feeling at all, because the only emotion left in me is of pain, of loss...A feeling I’m now too weak and tired to feel.

The Essence Of God

Being born into a hindu family but one where too many rituals were never follwed(though very spiritual) I had enough liberty to think in an unbiased way about what religion and God meant, or more imporantly what they meant to me.

I have somehow never thought of God as any of the idols you get to see so often. Being a bengali the Durga puja has been a very important part of my growing years, but somehow these elaborate pujas and festivals have never been much about God and feeling Him (or Her) near as it has been about the pandal hopping or the hanging out with friends and cousins. Somehow in all that noise, the sound that would tell me the meaning of it all is lost.

So here it goes..I have never beieved in religion. It just doesn't make any sense to me. How can an institution ever define something so deeply engrained in my soul, that I myself have trouble understandig? How can it define so ordinarily and collectively such a distinctive part of God that is my soul. I agree that religions were established with the pure aim of benefiting people. But now if wars and hatred and intolerance of others is justified in its name then something has definitely gone gravely wrong.

If it were for me, I would have to agree with Mahatma Gandhi when he had said that there should be as many religions as people if you equate your connection with god as a religion. My god is mine alone in the sense that the way I feel about god I could never and would never expect anybody else to feel that way. Its unique as its pesonal. In moments of absolute aloneness it is this god in the form of your soul that gives you the answers you seek.

For me these moments of aloneness, absolute darkness is special, necessary even, to appreciate that incessantly burning glow I see before my eyes when I know I'm with Him. The glow that is overshadowed in the everyday hustle and bustle. The feeling that gives meaning and purpose to the otherwise mundane life we lead.

Its unwise to generalise and then to punish for not conforming to this generalisation. It is in my opinion a murder of the very essence of our love of God.

For the love of Science

Another regular day at college. Only nothing gets creepier than this. Of the various methods available in this universe our great gurus at college could adopt to teach us invaluable knowledge of science, they decide on extreme torture and shock treatment. I mean what is more beautiful than organic chemistry with its various awe-inspiring reactions and reasons (and I’m not being sardonic here) or say the electromagnetic theory that Maxwell had discovered (and I’m assuming this with almost complete surety) with absolute passion. I know this is clichéd but if only they would allow us or just give us room enough to appreciate all this the way they were meant to be I am sure we would not only enjoy this so much more but actually get better at it.
To resume what I was saying earlier..a creepy day at college. Chemistry quiz early in the morning at 8. God save our souls. It’s already a feat in itself to wake up that early to reach class on time during the winters of Pilani and add to that the usual botheration of quizzes. And had it been only that I would still not be cribbing about it. The very next hour, ‘Surprise quizz’ in physics. And surprised we were in every sense of the word.
So basically what could be a true learning and enriching experience is marred by the absolute unnecessary ritual of evaluation. So what if some people would hardly ever open the book if evaluation was to stop, those interested would still gain their quota of knowledge (and the others could rest in peace as well).
In any case we are here for the love of science (some with the prospect of getting better jobs; but we aren’t focusing on them now) and let us all remember that in our hearts. In Einstein’s words –“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

Jobless

its after one in the morning as i realise i have been staring blankly at the textbook for the last one hour. Damn i don’t even remember which subject it was. My roomy soundly asleep, having practised all the eg plates atleast twice. I mean she is a nice girl and a very dear friend but sometimes she gives me the creeps. Like god when i go to sleep she is staring at the book when i wake up she is still with it. did she even sleep?
Oh i see now. My maths book is open in front of me. And oh..i have a test tomorrow. After having studied maths for mre than 13 yrs (and its always been my fav subject and mind u i am actually good at it)i fail to see why in the name of god we have to prove 0u=0! I mean even physics always made more sense to me than this does.

Its two in the morning now. No..didnt make it to the next page. ‘facebooking’ is somehow more appealing than mugging absolutely ridiculous theorems. ‘facebooking’...funny how people coin such terms...first it was orkutting...strange though we never seemed to have used ‘hi5ing’.
Yeah am absolutely jobless. Sleep wont come, well even if it did my heavily running nose wont let it stay. God! Such punishment for 1 choco vanilla icecream! And i thought there existed some form of justice in the world.
Ok..now the headache. Yes ye almighty succumb to your majestic powers. Let me just sleep.
Yes i will sleep now.