GRE

I had my GRE on Tuesday, 16th. This was my second attempt and was hoping to score more. I had a poor 1030 in my first go and this time its 1200. So, I did improve but not sure if this improvement is enough to get into a decent school. My scores in mock tests were consistently above 1300 and was quite sure to fall into the same range in the final. But, something went wrong and my plans went awry.

First section of Issue was quite easy. Second one ( The argument) was like a lolly-pop . I took more than expected time in solving first 10 quantitative questions and that sucked. I remember it took me around 5 minutes to solve first problem :( , and it was not that difficult but I was over-cautious at that time. So, having messed up with timings, I should have recovered from the early loss of 4 minutes. but didn't. I am quite sure of solving first 10 questions correctly, but later I must have made some serious and series of mistakes that landed me in a poor show of 690. Verbal was comparatively easy, easier than what I expected. I have a great faith in my vocabulary and that helped me somehow to get into an average score of 1200.

So, that was my second tryst with GRE. I made a same mistake of fumbling at the most important moments and thus incurred a loss of around 100 marks. If it would have been 1300+, I would have been on cloud #9. My academics are not convincing though they show a rising graph, and scoring around 1300 was a must for me. That could have bolstered the chances of getting into some of the good universities. But alas, I did not make it. After talking to some of my friends, I learned that 1200 is not bad at all, and can take you to a decent place, but I am a bit skeptical about it. So what's next? Need to find out a good counselor and search for good recommendations from professors, I am having few names to request for. On 28th I will be having TOEFL, and after that, I have to look into a list of universities for selections. I am god damn sure that this process of selection, getting reco's and SOP's , transcripts. sending them to the concerned persons will definitely take a hell out of me.

I am prepared for one more hectic month!!!

The boys are back!!!

I am back and so is The Indian Cricket Team. The only difference is they are back with a bang!!! They say that India vs. Pakistan Cricket match is more like a war than a normal game and the Twenty20 final on Monday is just the manifestation of it. Our team has done it and created a history of being the first team to win the first T20 world cup.

After 'thrown out' of the world cup, the team must be aching with the bruise and T20 gave them a way to thunder. Remember, these guys are considered as underdogs and someone who are unaware of even the basics of Cricket ( remember Ricky Ponting's bitter remark ?). But boys showed their mettle and rose up like a Phoenix.

One notable thing about this new team is its energy and zest. Young and Restless. Something that Team India never had before, a strong determination of giving an individual's 100% out there on ground. World cup title, fame and all, are secondary outcomes of this win, more important reward is a great confidence booster. And when you have a team of beginners who present itself as a compact, bundled package of talent, unity and professionalism , this confidence is just THE THING which makes such victories possible.

But it's not the end of the world, it's the beginning. On his column in TOI, the veteran Alan Border said that Dhoni and company must keep up with this tempo. They must not get carried away with the praise. Winning for the first time is easy if you have a talent of doing so, but the most difficult thing is to have a habit of winning, something that Australians are used to of. So, if we want to really perform like the world champions, we better start studying ourselves from today. There is still a lot of scope for improvement.

A road to perdition

This is ridiculous. How the hell one can build a road to Everest? And look at the reason for doing it... China wants to create world's most far reaching Olympic torch... And they find Mount Everest as the god damn place to prove their madness. How enlightening!!! isn't it? I probably feel the eternal or divine bliss when that light goes over my house. It will be like being in heaven, isn't it? But who cares ? China is notoriously known for its leaders and their ambitions . And they are right, why should they care about environment and all? They are not going to get affected anyways. Because today we are least bothered about the nature. What we bother about is everything else than nature . We bother about our career, our job, our salary, our so called FUTURE. In the rush of pursuing our materialistic goals, we are degrading the nature, which is in fact the most influential factor of the life on Earth.

History has shown it thousands of times, that whenever a human goes to any place which is naturally blessed earlier, he makes a hell lot of wastes there. And still we call a human as the most intellectual animal on Earth. God's masterpiece. Such a pity. We go for trekking with lots of plastic bags and we throw them anywhere in spite of knowing that plastic is not naturally decomposable. Similarly, China wants to build a road to Everest to make a showy display of their abilities. The abilities of crushing the rules of nature. And India is no different. Look at what we did with the lovely Badrinath in Uttarakhand? It used to be a pure place with not a tinge of pollution, and now we made it our home. A home of unmanageable people and lots of wastes.
And the saddest thing is even though we know that we are messing up with the ecology, we keep on doing the same. Imagine how pristine Ganga would have been in her early ages? How calm and clear would have been the bays of Bengal, the Arabian Sea?

It is not unknown that we will be facing a monster of Global Warming in the upcoming century. And if we keep on doing the stupid things , one day we will have to say a final good-bye to this lovely world. China and India both will be suffered from the preposterous idea of building the road. Here is what experts say...

Syed Iqbal Hasnain, senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and a renowned glaciologist, said, "Such an idea should be condemned outright. A road in an area like that can completely change the ecosystem dynamics. Glaciers are super fragile systems. If indirect impacts of warming can be seen so dramatically, such a direct human intervention would be dangerous for the Himalayan ecosystems in the areas the road goes through. Even in Alaska, the government refuses to build a second road despite people being there, because everyone realises what a road can do to such habitats."

He added,
"Already, there are reports of problems in glacial melt-based rivers in China suffering flooding, and India too has its share of problems from global warming. A road is like a direct attack on ecology. You have to put up the entire set-up to run such a high-altitude link. At present, people talk of removing debris & waste from the base camp and surrounding areas and now this shall completely change the dynamics

Right now I am searching for the ways by which I personally can protest this decision of building a road. Finding out some online petitions which I can fill. Do let me know if I can do something in this regard. After all, we must shoulder a share of our responsibility to protect the mother Earth.

शत जन्म शोधितांना

I was in my home-town, Nagar, before two weeks. I generally don't watch much of the television, but that day I planned to see French Open-2007 men's final between Fedrer and Nadal. So just switched on the TV. There came and advertisement of "शत जन्म शोधितांना" on ETV- Marathi, and I decided to watch that program.


शत जन्म शोधितांना - सावरकरांच्या अलौकिक प्रतिभेचा शोध was arranged by Maharashtra Military Foundation. As the name of the program suggest, it was an attempt to look at Savarkar from a perspective of a poet. I have gone through some of his poems earlier and was aware of his thoughts. So, this was another treat for me. The specialty of the program was its simplicity. There were no high-class instruments, neither a flashy display.

For the first time I heard a लावणी ( Lawani, a type of Marathi folk dance ) written by Savarkar. He is generally known for his patriotic songs and his revolutionary thoughts on Hindutva but on that day I was seeing another unseen side of one of the greatest legends of all times. He has even written some romantic poems, in midst of hardships when he was deported to Kalepani (Black Water) jails of Andaman-Nicobar. He has also written some of the plays in Marathi. As one of the scenes of a plot, Nina Kulkarni was reading dialogs of a mad woman who comes to Madhavrao Peshwe and asks him to take the revenge of Panipat's defeat. Followed by that, there was a पोवाडा ( In Maharashtra, the narrative hero laud is called as Powada, where a person tells a story in high pitched voice. A melodramatic acting is a soul of a Powada.) In all, it was a great experience to see that event.

I am currently searching for some of his poems and posting them here...

Freedom of expression

I don't understand why such incidents keep on happening. We had enough controversies when M.F.Hussain portrayed indecent pictures of Hindu deities. And this time we have yet another so called Expressive artist Chandramohan Srilamantula, who was considered as an award winning student from Vadodara's Maharaja Sayajirao University.

When I read a newspapers, everywhere I see people pin-pointing Bajrang Dal and other organizations who believe in Hindutva. Especially editor's of almost every newspaper try their best to prove how violent or iconoclastic these groups are. At the same time they deliberately overlook the root cause of the agitation. When someone uses the freedom of expression to express something which is morally very hateful, then he / she must be punished and should be shunned from doing so. It's because freedom of speech does not mean expressing something that will hurt the sentiments of the society. One should not take liberty of doing anything just because he / she lives in a democratic country.

Few of these questions that I would like to ask to those existing and emerging "Expressive Artists" and to the useless National Human Rights Commission of India and to all those who don't understand the difference between a sacrilegious act and a real art.

1. Why is always a Hindu god / goddess chosen to express their aesthetic approach. Why not any god / goddess from other religion ?

2. Why the name of a painting is related to India, e.g. Bharatmata drawn by M.F.Hussain? Why can't it be Queen Victoria? Why can't it be a icon of Christianity like Pope? Why can't it be Mohammad Paigambar.

3. Why is Nandita Das named as Sita and Shabana Azmi as Radha in the movie Fire? Why can't they find any other names?

4. Why only minorities are counted as seekers of justice? Why not the pracharak of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha who were hostages for a long time and found dead in North-Eastern India?

5. Why an Al-Quida bellicose who killed hundreds of innocent people is suddenly considered as humane at the time of testimony?