It’s been a long time since I have written some shayari.. 
But I come to realize that how much I loved this hobby of mine, just scribbling down something abstract like feelings is thoroughly satisfying.!

Hope you enjoy them..

1       Unke dar tak gaye par iqrar naa hua,
         Aisa nahi ki inkaar ka darr tha..
         Bas ik kashmakash thi dil mein,
         Aage badhna bhi nahi chahte aur use khona bhi nahi chahte..

2       Chandni toh chaand ki majboori hai,
         Amaavas pe bus kuch pal ki doori hai..
         Jab tum pass the toh ik ehsaas tha ki zindagi puri hai,
         Warna tumhari yaado me toh har pal zindagi adhuri hai..

3       Rukh kuch mud gaya zindagi ka is qadar,
         Ki nayi raah dhundhne se darte hai..
         Tujhse judi hai jo meri yaadein meri rooh ko beqarar karti hai..
         Kabhi toh kiya hota mujhpe aitbar itna,
         Ki apne pyar pe mujhe shaq toh naa hota..

4       Siraane ke kinare kuch khwaab chhupe mile,
         Thoda tatola toh bahut apne se lage..
         Saje the jiski yaado se wo khwaab,
         Unke toh kareeb reh ke bhi hum unke liye sada anjaan hi rahe..

5       Shayari toh wo andaz hai,
         jisme gham ki benaqabi pe log waah-waahi karte hai..
         Sirf yehi ik manch hai,
         jispe log tareef ke liye apne gham ki numaish karte hai.. 



Lots of love,
Mrinal

Our life is governed not only by us but society at large. Humans by nature are social animals. We have tendency to live in societies and ought mutual favours. These observations strongly suggests role of society in our life and our obligations towards the society. Seva (Service) is an act which is done for others without expecting any recognition in return.

Trees are much more useful than humans, whether it is living or dead. It gives oxygen, flower, fruit, shade when it is alive and it gives wood for making home, when it dies.  On the contrary, humans create pollution and bend the laws of nature as per their needs. Most of our life is spent in accumulating ‘stuff’ for our future or in anxiety about future. People sit and worry about bread and butter, if you think yourself so useless then what is the point in living, better die, either ways nobody will ever know that you even existed. 

When you are more useful then more sort out you become and more security comes in life. Money can never bring security. If that would have been the case then all the rich people would have been blissed out but it is opposite, depression is said to be the elite class disease.! Poor people don’t suffer from ailments like depression and hypertension. In fact, depression has emerged to be a major disease in developed countries. Hence, our security depends on our usefulness. When we think that I m here to serve then we are most sort out. And we really don’t require great skills to serve, just an intention is enough. Whatever small skills we have, we can still be useful. There are so many people in this world who work in inhuman conditions for the betterment of society and you need to notice how they have blossomed in their life.

Mother Teresa for example, nobody asked her to serve, she was an ordinary service women who took responsibility to serve the society. Same was with Mahatma Gandhi and all other people who moved ahead, took full responsibility and made a difference.

Simply know that you have great potential, serve and see how useful you are. You just need to have an intention and take responsibility. There are so many organizations who are working for the upliftment of society; they are all there to help you. Get along with such organizations and you will see that you are loved and cared by all in the world. It is worth living life in that manner.

Seva has to happen with a feeling that I want nothing in return, doership needs to be dropped. If any vested interest is attached to the same, then whole essence of seva is lost. Then it was simply business relation between you and the taker. If there is any heaven then seva is your passport. Infact in all cultures and religion, seva is an integral part.

Initially, it might appear difficult to not expect return favor for seva. The best solution that I think to this situation is to take seva as your duty; if you consider yourself as the part of society then it is your duty to serve the society. Imagine a society where everyone is available for each other, where do you think space for hatred, greed and jealousy will be left? Having sense of belongingness and putting sincere efforts to bring people together will make your life beautiful and more meaningful. You are not here to just survive but live. There is an ancient saying, "Be grateful for whatever you have and more will be given to you".

Smile and Serve.!

Lots of Love,
Mrinal

This is my 10th blogpost, therefore taking this opportunity I would like to thank all my blog visitors for their tremendous support and love, without this it wouldn’t have been so much of fun and pursuit to write something readable and/or meaningful. Blog is getting continuously evolved as new features are being introduced by Weebly team, heartiest thanks to them too.

Continuing from the previous post, fund raising was the toughest part since the time was less and we didn’t have a major attraction which could convince sponsors that there will be a huge footfall for the event. When the whole event was being planned we wanted to call a celebrity like Jagjit Singh, Jaspinder Narula (or Salman Khan by Javed) but all these people charge multiple times of our projected budget, so we dropped the idea. Then we considered some of the rock bands which would have certainly appealed to the youth but the only problem that Me & Aman felt was that this is the first time we are having an event and we are expecting professors & scientists to be a part of it, so having Ghazal or Sufi eve would be a better option regarding the masses. Considering our status, I thought to contact Siddharth Mohan (I know him through ‘The Art of Living’) for Sufi eve. He has few albums under his belt and ‘Sufi Strings’ is his latest. 

Although everyone contributed for the sponsor hunt, but the people who actually stormed on the front were Arushi, Chandrita, Vandana, Srijani, Astha, Sulekha, Anita, Ankita, Mohsin, Wasi, Aman and Javed; amongst the seniors- Raghav, Sid (Swarnendra), Shruti Goyal, Shruti Jain, Jayant, Amardeep, Shweta and Vikas brought the liberal support from the sponsors. And special thanks to the parents of Karnika, Parul and Raghav for their contribution. Arrangements for media coverage were taken up by Karan (our one man army). He, along with Rimpy and Neharika reached out to almost every media house and gave their heart & soul to the job.

We also released first annual departmental magazine on the day of event, it was a collection of fine piece of work by the students of ACBR, put together by our very dedicated editorial board (Karnika, Utpreksha, Ishita and Sonia). Financially speaking, it helped us to raise lot of funds by providing a means of advertisement for the sponsors.

On the day of event, off-stage events were totally taken care by creative team (led by Astha, Zeeshan, Mojahid & Lipsa) and we got to see some eye-soothing work by the participants. Team of Jayant, Shruti jain, Arushi, Chandrita, Srijani, Abhilasha and Parul took the responsibility of on-stage events and made it a big hit.

These people used to stay in ‘library’ for hours after lectures inorder to prepare stuff for the event (few times I even requested them to change their place of work as personally I find libraries very gloomy, but they never budged). On stage events also included dance (item numbers :P ) from our side and street play from Acharya Narendra Dev College team.
In the following video, we had prepared these numbers with lot of hard work except number between me and Javed; which was prepared with almost no preparation prior.!

Now time for surprise, there are two secrets that most of the people don’t know. First, we adeptly saved decent amount of money, later which was directed towards the farewell celebrations and it turns out that you (my classmates) end up paying only half the amount that was being budgeted. Second, a part of our money was directed towards social service. As Siddharth Mohan is closely associated with ‘The Art of Living’, he has undertaken lot of social service projects and he does concerts inorder to generate funds for the same. So even after being so economical (in comparison to other celebrities), we all managed to do some noble work.

Talking about my experience during the event, I grew by leaps and bounds, seeing so many skills cropping up in people around, left me with a happy feeling. I lost regular pattern of almost everything whether it was food or sleep except one thing i.e. cleaning myself inside out. One day during this inside cleaning (Saadhna), I got wonderful idea to save big chunk of money; we made CD of our magazine for students and got few hard copies print for teachers (each hard copy costs `150 whereas CD costs under ` 10), we would have been first institute to release e-copy of our magazineJ . When we were trying very hard for the sponsors and nothing was seem to be moving, people turned towards the God for help and prayed hard; result was that in the final week of preparation we jumped from budget of 20k to 90k.! People who are closely associated with Chaperons would certainly agree that this was nothing less than a divine intervention. 

On the day of event I received as many calls as there are in a year for me. Me and Aman were running all over the place, on top of it Police also came in picture. I was thoroughly occupied dealing with sponsors, Raghav and Aman took my bike to bring electrician at the venue to fix power problem. It turns out that they were apparently bringing him on the bike with them, making three persons riding on a bike, on top of it Raghav had kept helmet in his hand rather than on his head, and to make situation more dramatic, documents of bike were with me. No prize for guessing that there was challan and I had to go there with documents to settle the issue. This along with other shortcomings during the day, delayed the start of event by 2 hours.! But skilful management of on and off stage teams took care of everything and we were able to start with Sufi concert on time. Although few people were sceptical about the quality of concert but later those were the people who came up to me and praised the concert. 

With Siddharth being so accommodating, we all joined him on stage and danced on Sufi numbers.! Actually, if you know Sufism in correct sense then it is supposed to strike a chord in you that brings dancing naturally; And it gave an amazing feeling to see people dancing crazily all around :D (Oh not to mention, I was dancing too). Teaching and non- teaching staff couldn’t stop appreciating our efforts and congratulated us for the success. This made event end on a high note and filled us all with a feeling of pride. We made profit, we did charity and we had extraordinary celebrations in the end. 

Aman is the unsung Hero of this event. He was always there with me through every thick and thin, this event wouldn’t have been a success without his perseverance. There had been a situation which threw me off balance; it was when I refused to deal with ‘Hindustan times’ (HT), as I could foresee the legal problems related to it. This only Aman understood and rest of the class was in split till the time HT made their intentions clear. For me and Aman, at venue the day started at 7 am and ended at 11 pm; after settling money issues with our food provider and later collecting cheque from a sponsor.. But we knew today’s gonna be a good night. 

Lots of Love.

Yours sincerely,
Rubberstamp ;)


PS- Distinct thanks to Bose Sir and Rajinder Sir for their untiring support and faith in us.

PPS- Inorder to improve my blog, I have added a survey form at the end of each blogpost. Please do fill it up.

Writing an account on Chaperons gives me an utter satisfaction, a happyning which will always remain close to my heart.
This blog post is dedicated to all the ACBRites.

It all started during the outset of 2nd semester (end of January, 2011). One fine day, me and Aman (Amanpreet) were caught hold by Kavita ma’am (non-teaching staff member) to organize a fest in March beginning; hearing this we were taken aback, since none of our seniors (in our knowledge) had organized or even mentioned about it. She said that few years ago one of the batch organized a fest and since it was a very private (informal) affair so it was super fun, although me & Aman didn’t understand why it was called fest in that situation but never mind this was something fun.!

ACBR (Ambedkar Centre for Biomedical Research) is supposed to be a hard core academic institute (can be suspected from the name itself!) oriented towards research so cultural activities do not hold much of value. Although, I was very much fascinated with the idea of having a fest, Aman was sceptical. He reasoned that we have our GRE in the near future (mine even more nearer i.e. end of March) and taking up such responsibility would require lot of effort from our side. Next day, I talked to Arushi and Chandrita about whole thing and considering their nature I was pretty much sure that they would be very much interested.  And then Aman had no option but to give in to his dear friends coaxing! Following this we told same thing to the whole class and as it always happen there was a split, but after few rounds of talking and convincing majority of population were in the favour of fest. It was also thought out that our seniors and PhD fellows won’t be given responsibility, as they were already overburdened with their projects during that time, so majority of work was supposed to be done by our class. But later it turns out that their voluntary contribution was far more bolstering than us, it actually kindled life force into the Chaperons.

Soon, the preliminary plan was laid and we approached our Director for the required permissions; to our surprise he was very much happy with the initiative and asked us to quickly find a name for the event which is both scientific and can be implied to a cultural event. We came out with few non-scientific (like Lashkara, Dhamak etc) names but he didn’t agree and insisted for a scientific name. Since we were running out of time we picked up a textbook of cell biology and searched few names in its glossary and simultaneously people gave their inputs, list was prepared of some 30-odd names and given to the Director. Finally, after all the scientific brainstorming over a cultural event, one name was finalized - ‘Chaperons’ (proposed by Javed). Next issue was monetary arrangements for the event, when we said this to the Director, he refused to provide monetary support from the institute as this was a student’s event and they are supposed to raise the funds. Considering the fact that we are from science community, we seldom are involved in sponsor-hunting but we were certainly up for the challenge. 

For any big event team work and organization is required, absorbed with such ideologies we divided the whole class in different teams such as creative, on-off stage event, finance etc and chose heads for them. Of these teams, most important part was supposed to be played by creative team. When I pounced onto the idea of cultural event, it had always been in back of my mind that we have a ‘Super-Creative’ set of people (like Astha, Zeeshan, Mojahid, Lipsa) in our class who can do wonders if given an opportunity; but to back them we required decent amount of funds.






Even to approach the sponsors we needed to have an outlay of event and a venue, for this we required seed money which was raised by collecting minimal amount from the students of ACBR. We had high hopes from few of the potential sponsors but reality check was not so fruitful. And this was just the beginning of the toughest task in the whole process.

Since the ACBR was not participating financially in the event so a namesake President was supposed to be chosen from the society for the collection of funds. People of my class honoured me with the same but I still liked myself to be considered as “rubber-stamp” as none of my decisions were influenced by personal bias but opinion of class as majority, after all it was there event. Core committee (Aman, Javed, Mohsin, Karan, Wasi & Mojahid) opted not to elect other positions (secretary, vice President etc.) as it would have invited unnecessary bias. Many a times, in a humorous manner though, Javed said that he is Vice President so it was fun to pull his leg; I also started a chain SMS in the class:

                                                                                "ACBR presents Chaperons 2011"

                                                                               President (Rubber stamp) - Mrinal
                                                                                     Minister (Wazir) - Wasi
                                                                             Treasurer (Dhanlakshmi) - Vandana
                                                                                 Right hand of President - Aman
                                                                                 Left hand of President - Mohsin
                                                                                 No control of President - Javed

The high point in the whole event was the time window in which whole thing was organized; to organize mammoth event like this in a fairly unsuitable condition (academics oriented institute), certainly requires lot of homework and time. In the middle of February, date for the event was finalized to be 4th of March’11 and the venue (Sir Shankar Lal Concert Hall) was booked from the seed money. In no time, Astha came out with a splendiferous poster (few of the events were totally out of our budget but still we mentioned them, hoping some miracle will make them happen).  

Now, the two biggest problems looming over Chaperons was the much awaited first semester result (certainly it would have marred the hopes and high spirits) and sponsorship. With hardly two weeks to go to for ‘Grand Finale’ it seemed impossible to raise our funds from 20k to 100k, which would have given wings to our dream.
To be continued..

Lots of Love,
Mrinal

PS- ACBR people do share your memories in the comments.

For the past few days I have been listening to commentary of Guruji (H.H. Sri Sri Ravishankar) on ‘Patanjali Yogsutra’ given to this world thousands of years ago (around 150 BC) by Maharishi Patanjali. The following contents are excerpt from the same.

As per Patanjali, there are four types of people in this world and he has immaculately mentioned how to deal with them. The sutra goes like this-

“Matiri karuna muditopeksanam sukha dukha punyapunya visayana bhavnatah citta prasadanam.”

1.  Successful or happy people-
Whenever you see someone happy (sukha) or successful then just be friends with them (maitri). Feel happy for them and their success. Be a part of celebrations.
Often when you see someone who is more successful than you, we feel lack in ourselves, jealousy creeps in and it completely engulfs your peace of mind. The reason why we feel jealous is because there is lack of belongingness; we never feel jealous from the success of a person who is dear to us. So in order to avoid jealousy we should increase our sense of belongingness i.e. being friends to them.

2.  Unsuccessful or sad people-
Whenever you come across someone who is unsuccessful or depressed (dukha) then don’t be friends with them instead have compassion (karuna).
Primarily, the reason is that if you try to be friends with them at that time then you will also land up into the ditch then how can you pull them out? It doesn’t mean you don’t listen to them but the problem starts when we try to console them by saying ‘Oh! Poor you’ or ‘God has been so unkind to you’ all these words strengthen their misery rather than comforting them. In such depressed situations, your mere presence is enough but if you wish to say something better say something that increases their faith in themselves and Divine.

3.  People engaged in good acts-
If you ever come across people who are involved in good deeds (punya) and are very blessed then you just become one with them, join them in their deeds and be delighted (mudita).
Often when you see such people then doubt, jealousy or sense of competition arises. People/organizations involved in any social work are often criticized for various activities and their conducts, they might have done hundreds and thousands of good deeds but even if there are few flaws then they are blown out of proportion. At least they have done something good for upliftment of less fortunate, what good you did by criticizing them?
Hence, we should not feel jealous of them but feel one with them, this will dissolve sense of competition and blessings will come your way too.

4.  People engaged in sinful acts-
On encountering such people, simply disregard (upeksanam) them!
If someone says something that is not true or harsh, you simply ignore it. But generally we do opposite and chew on it. This will destroy your peace of mind. If someone is involved in demonic activities (apunya) then you first educate them out of compassion and then ignore them. You need to educate them out of compassion otherwise you will take anger in your mind. If you can do something about the problem then better be a part of solution but don’t just gossip or brood about their imperfections, otherwise you will also become that. Instead you should see how many imperfections are also in you and you might be even worse than them. There are very few people in this world who are bad, but their effect is so much, as if whole world is bad. Even in press-media, there is so much buzz about crimes but hardly there is coverage to good deeds, unless they give some publicity to them. So you need to focus your energies on positive and neglect the negative.
This approach makes your mind gracious and centred. (bhavnatah citta prasadanam)

Even in today’s time this knowledge has so much of relevance; this is possible because Patanjali knew human mind very well and was aware of its tendencies. It feels amazing to be a part of such knowledge which is so ancient yet so profound.

Lots of love,
Mrinal

PS- In case you apply these sutras in life then do share your experience. :)

Our doubts are always for something positive. We never doubt the bad things. If someone says “I love you.” We reply “Really? Are you sure?”, “You kidding me!”  But if someone says “I hate you.” You never doubt it; instead you say “I was so much sure that this was coming!” If you look at your response towards your own feelings then you always doubt your happiness, “Why am I so happy?”, “I am not sure if am happy or not?” but you seldom doubt your sadness. Same way we doubt someone’s honesty but never dishonesty. We doubt the existence of God.

So having doubts about something is an indication that there is something good in it. It is good to have doubts because once you go through it, faith emerges. But the point is you need to go through them. Lucky ones drop the doubt immediately, unlucky ones take some more time. Sign of intelligence is not giving good things a chance (as if they need to prove themselves) but rather giving ourselves a chance to try good things. Being skeptical is okay but being cynical is not as it may lead to paranoia.

Once someone asked Guruji (H.H. Sri Sri Ravishankar), “Guruji, we go and tell people about the Art of Living course but at times people doubt our intention. Why don’t they understand that we care for them and sharing this for their good?”

He replied “Tum 5000 saal pehle (Lord Krishna Era) bhi gavale (Milkman) the, aur aaj bhi gavale hi ho! 
Even today milkman goes to houses to supply milk but when it comes to alcohol people go to the shop and wait in queue to buy it! So take these doubts as blessings as you are up for something good.”

“Your faith, your love, your beauty, your truth is a hundred times more powerful than the doubt. The faith is like the sun, the doubt is like a cloud. No amount of clouds can cover the sun for long. They just come and they disappear. Yes, there are some cloudy days and it can be there, let it be. The sun will eventually shine.”

Lots of Love,
Mrinal

Recently, I was travelling from Delhi to Bangalore when this thought struck me that since last year I have travelled more than 20,000 kilometres in which I have majorly covered length of India (not breadth). And every time due to some immediate plan or some financial constraints, I opted to travel by train rather than by air. It is also a fact that I always find travelling by train a bit more pleasurable. I am very glad that my association with railways has been very sound and comfortable till now. So I am just trying to crystal out few things that makes my travel worth a pleasure.

Since, I have travelled most of the time alone, so one thing that is most integral to my company is my music. As per the different moods, music always plays a complimentary part to it. For example, during the morning when I get up, since the environment is very calm it is preferable to listen to some melodious & meditative music (Sufi, Shabad, Bhajan), as the day progress to afternoon there is lot of laziness and inertia that suddenly crops up so during this time I prefer to listen to some zingy numbers (Punjabi, Rock or even item songs for that matter!!) and during the night there is no substitute for old hindi songs.. It is the time when nostalgia is at its best.. Sitting beside a window and having cool breeze touching your face in that environment is unmatchable. In short, “feel aa jaati hai.!”

Other thing that is very essential is good book. Although I am not that book worm neither very choosy about books, still I prefer books to be either light hearted or any writing with some substance and character.

These long travels are the only time when you are most with yourself and you are actually out of any immediate social obligations (except, not to irritate your co-passengers).

And imagine if you are travelling in an a/c coach then the fun increases multitudes. Here, sitting in a cosy blanket and reading a book or listening to music is a real treat. The only thing that you miss is cool breeze besides window but that is generally compensated by occasional visits to door and a relatively cool afternoon.

On top of it, if that a/c coach is of Rajdhani express then being served is a total pamper. In the morning, coach attendant comes & wakes you up for bed tea followed by breakfast. Not to forget Barista ice cream after lunch/Dinner (in case of Bangalore rajdhani). And last but not the least, a charging point through which mobile can be charged all through the journey and you can log onto Facebook. So, stay connected whenever you feel like. 

It is one of those experiences that I always cherish and recommend all to have once at least.!

Have happy vacations:)

Lots of love,
Mrinal

Yesterday, I was going through one of my old diaries and found this piece of work. This was written by me when I was in senior secondary school. I couldn’t control my laughter and immediately wanted to share this. Please excuse me for my emotional outburst at some places. Hope you enjoy them.. ;)











1      Kohre me khushboo aaj bhi hai,
        Raat me khamoshi aaj bhi hai,
        Adhuri si kuch baat aaj bhi hai,
        Tumhari yaad ka toh pata nahi par aankhon me aasun aur intezar aaj bhi hai..


2      Haadso ki kadwahat ko kismat ka naam dete chale gaye,
        Ek ittefaq se wo is bewatan ki zindagi me aaye,
        Aur usi ittefaq se wo hamari manzil bante chale gaye..



3      Yaadon ke saaye me sukun kisne paaya hai,
        Hamare jaisa dard ishq me kisne paaya hai,
        Wo toh jee baithe hamare bina zindagi,
        Hamara dard toh khuda bhi nahi puchhne aaya hai..



4      Chup rehne par bhi khamoshi me ik shor hai,
        Hamare jaisa ishq karne wala shayad hi is duniya me koi aur hai,
        Hamara waqt nikalta hai unki fariyad karke aur wo kehte hai ki
        Tumhare jaise ashiq toh kai aur hai..



5       Pyaar ki raaho me yun laapta naa hote,
         Agar dil lagane ki khatta naa karte,
         Pata hota kuch manzil ka apna,
         Agar izzhare mohabbat kuch pehle karte..



Lots of love,
Mrinal

PS- I don’t indulge in such shayari anymore.. :D

Nature around us is perfect example of Unity even after having so much of diversity. I always wonder how much effort it takes for us to move together. We are generally bound to our concepts that don’t allow us to grow and bring forth our hands for joining more hands. There is always a set of people with whom our frequency matches and there is another set with whom things are entirely different. But my point is how big this difference is that we start to partway our niches.

Although in urban world discrimination on the basis of religion is quite uncommon, mainly because of education and interdependency, but still it exists. This is one of the most unfortunate things because it creates a wall that can’t be brought down with ease. In fact a truly spiritual or religious person would strongly condemn this discrimination. People have often misinterpreted secularism; this is the favorite pawn in Indian politics, I would rather say deciding factor for power. Being secular doesn’t mean that you don’t have a religion instead it mean that I follow my religion and respect others religion too. No God is going to get angry if being a Hindu you say ‘Allah’ or ‘Christ’, all these concepts are brewed by some religious fanatics or insecure priests. Today writing this blogpost I realize that I ve friends of almost all religion and it is almost unimaginable my life without them. It is always great joy to get acquainted to their rituals and culture.

It is also evident that there are much discrimination that is based upon our own notions and judgmental intellect. We have a set of frame of fixed dimension in which we try to fit things (people), if anything doesn’t fit it is often molded as per convenience or label as ‘unfit for use’ and discarded. Many of us would agree that it is normal ‘Human tendencies’ but I would like to phrase it as ‘Human acquired tendencies’. The reason for this is that a kid never has such tendencies; he will smile and radiate love with same innocence to everyone; he can become friend to anyone instantly. It is only in the process of growing up that we lose these qualities and get into all sort wrong tendencies. And it is for sure that all of us would agree that in childhood life was much easy and fun than it is now. But when it comes to compliment the cause of shift nobody sees change in their perspective.! We should not barter our innocence for maturity; we should keep both of them. As friendliness was our nature being a child, it shouldn’t wither with age. If another person is being squeamish then we should not lose our innocence and have compassion, this I feel is real maturity. In the race to even-up things we ruin many things knowingly and unknowingly.

If in school/college/workplace/etc. you have 30 people around you and in them you have 5 best friends then it shouldn’t make others unimportant. Being fastidious never benefits us in long run, we should not get into nepotism/cronyism. 
 
We often complaint that the world is much not the way we expect it to be. We always blame others for it but seldom look into ourselves. We need to be part of change that we want to see in society. We need to have sense of belongingness. A fist always has more power than open five fingers. For this we need to broaden our vision and deepen our roots. Life is too short for differences.

Lots of love,
Mrinal

It was almost a week before my second semester exams. I was as usual in my room studying (most probably) and then as usual Anupam came stalking in my room (wearing only shorts which I am very much sure about :-P ). He sat on my bed and out of the blue he said let’s give ACBR exam for MSc again this time when we go to Delhi. I didn’t pay heed to his idea as I was already preoccupied with my worries for semester exams. But then he started to speak about Delhi and being back to university.. in short he succeeded in taking my attention of my studies or probably only worrying part.

Before moving ahead let me just give you the background of whole situation. I had been doing my MSc in Marine Biotechnology from Goa University. I had reached there by JNU common entrance exam for biotechnology 2009. In the same year I had given exam for ACBR but couldn’t make through. In Goa, I had been doing fairly good academically and had wonderful pack of classmates. We have had faculty who used to take care of us like their own children. In fact I have had an ideal journey so far (apart from insipid food). And the guy ‘Anupam’ in story is obsessed with Delhi. He did his graduation from DU but he is originally from Bihar. All he wants in his life is to be in Delhi, and bring his family to Delhi as well..!!

So as soon as Anupam finished talking he got my interest into the idea. He assured me that he will give exam this time and hence dragged me into the alluring idea as well. Last thing I remember is that I wasted almost two hours with the thought of being back in Delhi, doing the course that I always wanted to do and moreover helping my family out (daydreaming I mean). But this was not healthy thinking just before semester exams, especially when you have killingly vast subjects like marine ecology..!!

Therefore, I thought to pass the ball to Guruji (His Holiness Sri Sri Ravishankar). In the evening I did my Sudarshan Kriya and made three chits namely ‘Goa’, ‘ACBR’ and ‘MSc Biophysics in AIIMS’ (this is another exam I thought I should give again). Then I prayed to Guruji and picked one chit at random to get ‘ACBR’. I shut the topic then and there, gave my semester exams and came back to Delhi. Soon I filled up for ACBR entrance and then got myself into a summer training at DU. Later, when I got back to Anupam, he took a U-turn on entrance and refused to give it, although he is quite popular for such U-turns but I thought he was serious this time. Nevertheless I sworn him off and continued to follow Guruji’s message.

I tried to prepare for exam few days before it, but was certainly under prepared compared to last time. I gave the entrance exam and it may sound surprising but 20% of the questions in exam were directly from GRE practice papers which I had been practicing in vacation, 10-15% questions were exactly that I had studied on the previous night and 10% questions were sheer guess works which were dead right. Hence almost 50% of the questions were under ‘Guru Grace’.

On the basis of entrance, I got call for interview and group discussion. In interview I happened to answer those entire questions which I usually goof up at such places and the last question that they asked was most decisive and I somehow managed to answer that question to my surprise and the panel was thoroughly impressed. In group discussion I got the topic of ‘Cricket being obsession in our country’ which apparently my gut feeling was indicating very strongly on the previous night.

Next day when results came out my name was there on the list.. I got First rank. I was completely awestruck. Last time, I couldn’t even make it to waiting list (i.e. around 70) and this time when I was least prepared, I not only made it to final list but right on top of it.

I still remember when our teacher in the ‘Art of living’ course used to say ‘check your Guru’, ‘try him out’ and then faith will follow on its own. Now, I have no option but to believe in the power called ‘Guru Grace’.

JaiGuruDev (May you be wise & playful)

Lots of love,
Mrinal