Do U have courage to look in your own eye?

My Thoughts are stronger than I am today so I wish to give tribute to the people who have the courage to try and find themselves but sometimes get lost in the ocean of their own self.

By Anupriya Srivastava

Dated: 8 Jan 2010

We are all victims of are own self, some have courage to face themselves but most of the people shy away and connect with another identity that they feel will make them more acceptable in the society they are bound to live in (I say bound as they don't choose the society, society chooses them).

But today I am more intrigued rather scared for people who try to find themselves and get lost in their thoughts, actions and get confused with their own self.

The journey is not easy and often painful, Involves actions that one is not proud of, And suffering that u can only imagine in hell but the unfortunate thing is that its not just about them , its also about the suffering of the people who love them.

The duty of people who love these people is to encourage the act of understanding their self but at the same time declare a clear picture of what is right and wrong.

So i am trying to communicate to the people who deal with such bold and strong individuals who are unable to come out of the hell hole in which they see their self as they are.

You may feel that this person is old enough to know and differentiate between right and wrong. But the truth remains hidden in everyone's mind yet no one says it out loud- we all are capable of making right choices but only when we are in the right frame of mind and the person lost in his/her self is not in any frame of mind, leave alone right or wrong.

They are stronger then you see them but are confused and often act as if they are weak. But the truth is anyone who has the courage to look straight into their own eyes face to face, knowing that they will be ashamed afterwards is a very very strong person...

But when you look inside your own self you and you understand that i am THIS person, you often get questions like "if i am THIS why did i do THAT" and some other questions on similar lines.By the time, you realize that their is no end to this enormous load of questions and that they will always remain unanswered, its too late to come back to the place where you were not looking in your eyes and face away from the mirror believing what the rest of the world does-that you are a different person and identify with some fake personality that you idealize.

When these people understand that without professional help they won't be able to get out of the hell hole by themselves and boldly go out and seek medical/psychiatric help, less intelligent and

people with fake identities question/ judge these people.

Anyone who has a little bit understanding of how mind and body works can come to the conclusion that "IF my mind is not healthy, my body will loose its strength sooner than i thought".

So today, i am talking to the people who see/deal/love/are around such people and i will blame them if these bold and confused people die sooner than they should have or get mentally ill or sink into depression and never come back. All these people will be responsible for the ill mental health of a beautiful/bold but confused soul.

And I have high regard for people who take bold steps to make this bold/confused person to come out of their hell hole because in the process of doing so you are not just helping them you are helping yourself understand your own nature too.

May god bless every soul who has strength and courage to face his/her self . Its not easy but believe in yourself, you be drenched in unbelievable peace and knowledge when you struggle and come out of the ocean finally.

Love to all.

Now that i am looking for it (Peace), I will find it sooner or later.

What we fail to understand is that today or tomorrow is not in the fate of yesterday. Its NOW and now is the right time to think about what we hold in ourself. What we create is what we are capable of and how we want our tomorrow as.

If today i create chaos somewhere (may be jsut among three people sitting with me in a coffee shop somewhere) instead of pacifying a debate- then chaos will be my reward tomorrow. That is how simply the universe works.

The outer world (in comparision to my inner world) is much easier to live with.The chaos in my inner world spills out on my outer world affecting the people i love or hate or have no feeling for. And when i feel tortured or unaccepted i shout and take away the energy from the soul of the person sitting next to me, I don't care who that person might be.

But this is how i feel and react when chaos falls on me and i fall apart like peices of glass taking with me may be those three people and those three people taking with them their families and so on untill a whole nation breaks into pieces of land, debates, arguments and chaos wins over my body and soul and dances over a whole nation like a tornado.

I am dead and have no relevance in the outer world now but the mess that i left there is far bigger than me to repent for. I took away souls of those i loved and hated. Do i feel better that i took souls of those i hated? Yes, the delight is there but its momentarily and it vanishes much before you can even relish it leaving behind guilt, sorrow, anger, pain and feelings that you should only experience in hell. Which is what i am feeling now.

Moral: Pacify every debate at every corner you see, you might be preventing a major war in some other part of the world. Everyone in the world is joined to the other with a link that no one can really explain. We are all part of a big spider web and if i move and shake myself, others close to me will get affected but the effects might be seen far from my place in the web, may be a link is broken from my side and the spider web falls apart.

Love All, Bless All.

Words are the most powerful thing and voice is the greatest gift from god (after eyes ofcourse). Pls use it wisely.

-

Anupriya Srivastava

Dated: 8th Jan 2010

I am also an IDIOT

I have not seen the movie 3 idiots yet. But I am also an engineer and I would like to share something...

Today, when I was having horlicks in the cafeteria sitting all alone by myself, I had an epiphany- "A moment of total clarity" that I am a total IDIOT. I really am and that is why I am an engineer like million others who did not choose to become an 'Engineer'. Actually we do not know what to become. No one gave us a proper counseling when we were young and the only counseling we received was from our parents - "be an engineer , now the market is hot for Engineering + MBA and later you can do MBA".

I am not blaming parents for imposing/proposing this on/to their children because they want the best for their children and they only propose what they think is the best. In fact my father supported me and found out, on everything that I wanted to be, I wanted to be either an astronaut, an architect, an archeologist or an interior designer but it’s my stupidity, ignorance, lack of knowledge and may be lack of resources in my country, that I am an engineer today.

Do I regret it ? Almost every day!!! I could have saved a lot of money and time if I carried on my B.Sc Phy Hons course which I got enrolled in and which I was enjoying a lot... But I was also preparing for the famous IITs , and my coaching teachers said, i would have to stop going to college, if I am serious about IIT... They were right... But Even after studying for 10-14 hours a day, clearing the screening as well, I could not get into an IIT. I am actually thankful to god for that... Because I learned so much more in VIT.

Now, let’s go back to the cafeteria, where I had an epiphany – I was thinking about my brother, he is in 11^th standard and everyone keeps pushing him to study including me. I was thinking did I use my science/history/geography that I studied in school, anywhere after school? Or do I remember that now? Or will I ever use it again?

My father always says “Knowledge never goes waste”, I believe that but when I think about my knowledge that went to waste, I could not help but think what went wrong? Although, my faith still remains high on this beautiful phrase, the thought did really shake me.

Did my knowledge really go to waste?

It took three to four sips of horlicks to light up my bulb but I got an answer finally. The fact is that we are very hard working people, it’s in our genes, Indians were slaves for a long time and anything that any species does for a long time, gets embedded in our genes (there are some genes that get affected by environment- so my biotech-engineering was not a waste after all). But now the environment is changing again and along with it those genes are getting affected too and over the years we will change and do more smart work rather than hard work.

Then it took two more sips of horlicks and the light bulb was burning ever so brightly over my head. The answer to whether my knowledge went to waste came to me now. My knowledge did go to waste but it’s not the mistake of the phrase-“Knowledge never goes to waste”, the phrase was right when it was first spoken and it still holds true.

According to me the phrase must have been spoken in the Vedic times, when people used to preach whatever they knew to their students, when the guru-shishya kind of learning was prevailing. In those times, this kind of learning was the only way knowledge could be transferred and spread across, so no knowledge was ever wasted, as it was always transferred, passed on to the next city or next generation and it was used, and the purpose of learning was served.

In the modern times, since we have a thousand ways of learning just about everything, we don’t need to learn everything as we do not need to pass it on.
And as Einstein says : "“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”"
We should do smart learning. This is the need of the hour. And use the free time for enjoying our hobbies, or exercising- keeping ourselves happy and healthy. I really feel that I would have been much healthier if I had done smart work instead of hard work-(People who saw me studying would agree).

So, we should learn what is useful and use it and should not waste time on learning those things that we would not be using because anyways you will forget them without regular usage or practice.

So what went wrong from my end as an idiotic engineer? I did do my hard work but even on areas that were not connected to my heart, on the subjects that I never wanted to learn and on the subjects which I knew I would not carry them forward in my journey.

I should have attainted knowledge in those fields which I knew would help me in future and should not have diverted my attention to other fields.

I really feel that everyone needs to change, I was dependent on my father to provide me the information of current working scenarios and he was giving me information from all possible sources but his belief was and still is hard work.

We all need to change, today kids are much smarter than they should be, and parents can use this to their advantage. Parents should ask their kids what they want to be but should also ask them- how do you propose we do that? What are the various options of pursuing the course and what is the cost involved and let them do the research on this subject. Once they have done that, it will be much easier for parents to see what the child should be focusing on instead of pushing the kid for studying everything.

Also parents should not encourage their child to rely on them for any help other than financial.
But that too should be made clear in the beginning by the parents, "that we can spend only this much or that much, choose a course accordingly or propose a solution to raise money for your course".

Instead of hiding the amount they intent to spend on their kid’s studies and saying we will handle everything, parents should declare what they can spend otherwise it gives the child a kind of safety that they can rely on their parents and they do not work hard on achieving their own dreams and they do not push themselves to their limits.

Readers must be thinking that all this is fine, but we still live in the same society, with the same schooling methods and standards. So if we don’t push our kids they will fail and be disappointed in themselves. But think again, don’t you think the kids are smarter than this, they never fail, it’s just they never meet the expectations you have set in your mind for them.

And for getting a respectable job anywhere your kid needs only 60% in tenth and 12^th. No one even sees the certificates when the interviews are conducted, so it does not matter if you scored 70% or 90% in your 10^th and 12^th. And if they want to study English(Hons) in St. Stephans, they know which subjects they need to work on. This has become clear to them in their research which you encouraged them to do.


So why not let the kid enjoy what he studies and why not let him focus on what he wishes to, keeping in his/her mind and ours that he should at least read(not study) the other subjects and get more than 60% in each of them. Which most of the students do, as far as 10^th and 12^th is concerned.

Well, as far as the horlicks is concerned, it was over by the time I came to this conclusion and then I called my brother and asked him to enjoy his eleventh standard.

I also request all parents to consider the health of the child as a priority over his/her studies too. I have seen kids carrying very heavy bags and thinking too much about a test that they get fever. Life is too big for matters like this. Kids should be able to enjoy their childhoods. Today kids are maturing faster than ever before and there is nothing wrong in that but some part of me feels that its affecting their childhood.

So, let’s all take a moment here to think about this and think whether your child is enjoying his childhood? and I don’t mean financially, I mean mentally, physically.

There is always more to what you can see and comprehend!

Love all, Bless All. Idiot signing off…

Anupriya Srivastava

A Clueless Engineer

Dated: 11-Jan-2010

Eunuch, A human or an Animal?

Every time, I have to address a crowd. I am confused, nervous and sad. Why sad? In my head there are these thoughts...of how will i address them and why should i address them like this and why is that no one questions my wrong statements.

I am thinking about the opening lines...

"My brothers and sisters..." No does not seem right...Let’s take it from the top... "Dear Men and Women..." No, even worse... “Dear Ladies and Gentlemen..."- wait am i right?

What is that I am missing? Why is it that I don’t feel right about this...

Dear People of this world... Ya, I got it correct this time.

And these lines, take me to a place where I feel extremely sad and sacred. As if I am in a holy place but where I do not see holy people , I see dead bodies, bleeding wounds and crying children. So, I am sad too. I am unable to ignore their cries but I am too weak to protect them from the misery ahead of them. I am unable to comfort them, because the cause of their pain is not physical. Their pain, which some men and women can see and feel, resides in their heart.

I am trying to reach there but there are too many barriers. I need to break them and I am too weak to do such a big, important and obvious task.

We call these people - eunuchs, hijras, human hermaphodites etc.

People, we the people often forget that a eunuch is also a part of we, the human life form.

Men , Women and eunuch ...

I feel extremely correct and a sense of righteousness settles in me, when I say this. I feel so holy as if I am carrying a torch in the darkness of ignorance and abandonment. But to my surprise, I am not alone. There are several others who believe in providing the rights of eunuchs, who believe that eunuchs are humans too and deserve to be treated like one. But I am not sure, if they are ready to help yet. Everyone fears the unknown and we do not know how the world will react, when we stand and talk about a very critical, controversial issue. But, do we let the fear stand in the way of something that is so right?

Think about this!!!

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There are two ways to look at things. For e.g. a glass having some water is either a glass half full or galss half empty.

So why are we unanimously looking at the matter of eunuchs as a glass half empty. What happened to the other part of the glass that is half full.

Its not a new problem, Its age old now.

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Although in the hindu(India) culture, we are suppose to pay our respects to them. And during the protection of queens and princesses, these people were preferred over men. Somehow, over the years,though we were supposed to be evolving, i guess that process stopped once we became homosapanies from homoerectus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunuch

But we, homosapiens, the human forgot to behave as human.

We became ignorant.

The condition/Abnormality with which they are born is not what they asked for. (add)

If a girl is sitting and crying on the road, the people passing by will give a glance, some will ask if she needs any help and some might get the police for help.

But if a eunach is crying on the road, the world will turn its back on them.(add)

I am too weak to stand up and move a rock by myself, I need help and i have only my voice, my words to win each one of you over.

Like any other issue, this has to be looked at objectively.

1. Getting to understand them: I am trying to contact eunachs through social networking sites. We need to understand them, their emotional needs, sexual needs, trauma that they went through and treatments that they tried.

2.Awareness: We need to make people aware about the current unfair situation regarding eunachs.

3. Changing Polices: We need to have a section for eunachs like we have Male/Female/Eunachs.

4. Acceptance : This is the most important part of the process/revolution. Even if we have all the rules and regulations for them, we need people to accept them.

My Life Dream Unknown

When did I dream of being a Teacher? Never Ever. I used to play a role of a teacher, when i was in 3rd or 4th grade, as most kids do.

I never thought that there is a teacher building inside of me. I am not sure how can i make this a well paid proffession. I am still struggling in my mind.

I remember a Civil Engineer lady who left the industry and joined my school as a teacher when i was in 11th standard. She gave a short speech about job satisfaction and I was shocked to learn that people could leave high paying jobs for a satisfactory Low paying job. I did not appreciate her. I thought she is too nakchiri (a Snob). How easily she is saying- "I don't like this so i wont do it".

And I remember telling myself that "Life is not that simple, we need to take tough choices and hard decisions, sometimes against our will, to keep ourselves and our families happy".

Turns out, I wasnot wrong! I was right on most part but i forgot to add one thing... "How long can you stick to those tough choices and hard decisions, depends on how strong is your will against your own will."

Today, I have knowledge of Physics/Chem/Maths and Computer Science, Biotechnology being a non-bio student, and currently, I am in an IT Industry. The shock here is that this situation is not shocking at all. As this is the current situation of 80% of the B.Tech graduates.

Why don’t we stop and ask the question - Why are we fed irrelevant data and why we dont get suitable jobs. Why is money driving the souls of mankind. And how are people surviving it.

I really need to understand this, why are my parents not angry or unsatisfied by their jobs. Or if they are, why doesn’t it bother them?

May be it is selfish of me to be satisfied by my Job. Or is it?

I never dreamt of being a teacher. But when I teach someone, I feel i am doing a very noble thing. When I finish teaching someone I feel the power of giving...To be able to give and spread knowledge coming solely from my own mind.

Why should not I enjoy it each day... Why should I punish myself by going to the IT industry every day.

Though, I am still confused-if money is a good enough reason to punish yourself? I will not be able to leave this soul-sucking job beacause i am not strong enough to fight with the people I love. And I dont know how comfortable i will be by- not being able to make enough money for my husband, siblings, my parents ,my parents in law, my children and my dogs.

I am sure the answer is hidden somewhere inside me but as many others i am unable to find it...