I have the whole world with me, but i do require the stipend!

I personally feel that having a good family to support you, good friends to stand by you and most of all an open mind to the world will make u a happier person than anything else in this world. Ofcourse money plays a major role in it. But it is definitely not all about money, I know many people would agree to that. Nevertheless it is strange that we tend to respect people with wealth more than a wise and honest man under poverty line. There is this song in tamil- "oruvan oruvan mudhalali", Muthu, which has lyrics about money and man. It goes like this-"If money is not your servant, it will be your master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him". All i have learnt regarding money till now is, when a person's stomach is full, it doesnt matter if he is rich or poor. I have never wanted money in large amounts. It was just to satisfy my basic needs, but sometimes i feel those needs are needs of a rich guy when viewed from a poor's point of view. I can have 3-4 meals a day, sitting in a lab with ac, while a person below poverty line has to work his ass off to earn a single meal for himself and his family. Now we can see why Gods(if at all they exist...) take the sides of persons with wealth. If he had created us so that we could peacefully co exist, he should have given equal priority(=money+happiness) to all of us. But then again if he intended us mankind to sort out that difference and help each other, then man he has no brains! If he wanted us that way he should have induced such thoughts in us rather than making us so materialistic and money-craving barbarians. That makes us feel that we do what we want to do going against anything and everything if need be. Man is made by his belief, as he beleives so he is. (a quote from Gita... I am not religious nor god-loving, and neither do i believe in destiny) .Not many of my friends are interested in literal money. But come on tell me how many of us wont take up a job that offers twice as much as what we get now? Though we perfectly know that we have been living with this amount till now, and we are well off with this amount, we want more. Why? What for? Money was one of the reasons that forced me to take up this PhD. These thoughts come to us only because there are different strata of people when the society is characterised based on money. People from villages yearns to live a city-bred life. People from city(In India) want to live like someone in USA. How many of us have cousins and friends married to people in USA and other countries? Why? Is it because the guy is super brilliant? No , its because he has lots of money to sustain both of them and probably their off springs too. This kind of divide came up only because concept of money came in. Why is earning money given such prime importance in this world? I sometimes wonder, we never should have interrupted nature in any way. That is a different kind of thought process, coming back to the money mindedness of humans like me...
After a long wait by me and hari, the much awaited stipend came by today. And i should say the excitement has not settled down yet. It is probably because this is the first salary we have ever earned till now. Like all, i thought i too would make a list of things i am going to buy( consumerism...), how much i will send back home and of course not to forget the social responsibility of charity. I will be very glad to send money back home. My parents are everything for me. They never denied me anything.I used to demand stuff and get it done. They have sacrficed many of their needs just for the sake of us children.. I am what i am because of my parents only (and friends of course).I also would like to help few friends whom i feel require monetary help.But i have a strong feeling i should do some charity in some sense.I always wanted to do something for the differentially-abled. My dad is massively involved in this blind organisation for quite a while now. I could do something for it. But it is not sinking in, probably because they do get a lot of attention these days. I want to do good to some portions of the society that hitherto have been touched. I want to see somebody happy(and happy is definitely not just money, it is a feeling that there are some people who care about the fact that they exist and look upon them as equals) at the end of the day, and it should be routed through proper channels. If you guys have any suggestions i am ready to take it up. Just leave a comment. Of course I have not decided on how much i will be giving, but i thought let me at least start this process... I maybe wrong in many of the views i have put forth till now. My way of thinking and analysing things might be very irritating to some people, but i know one thing for sure, being money minded is not me!. Hari was telling me that day (quoting from a book -Phantoms in the brain), being morale, kind and loving is there in our neurons, not many realise it, its there in our genes. Finally for what have i been writing about all this? I need some change in my thought process. I need to realise the more i get richer the more somebody is getting poorer. In control systems for any system to be stable(bare with me i am an Electrical Engineer), there must be a feedback, more importantly a negative feedback. Similarily in life we need to have this negative feedback, for the whole world to be stable, and that is by sharing the things you have , losing something you have more(could be money..)and being open to everything and most of all being a human!

It all comes down to this- my way of life!

Living life is the only common thing we all humans have in this world of rat-race. Every Tom Dick and Harry wants to live life the way he wants. Everybody has their own perceptions about life and people. Some one has rightly said living is like licking honey off a thorn. We all, no matter what, have to live both the pleasant and the agonizing parts of life.We think life as an inexhaustible well. Yet every thing happens only a certain number of times and a very small number really.

I was wondering what to jot down now that I am in my final weeks of college life, which perhaps is one of the most significant moments of everybody’s life. Looking back at these 4 glorious years makes me wonder how these wonderful years have affected the way I think about life, about my perceptions of people and the way I want to lead my life. These 4 years have definitely taught me how to live or at least the way I want to cultivate my priorities in life and give a helping hand in the greater good!

Everybody needs everybody’s help in this world in one way or the other. No one can victoriously proclaim he can travel with the tide in solitude. Likewise u can’t have people always around you though u might need them. I am one such person who needs to have people around me and friends to share. But again there is an alter-ego which prefers solitary confinement. I guess every body has this two-sides-of-a-coin life!

The situations and problems I faced in my college life changed my perceptions about everything in a significant manner ( and I hope in a positive manner too..:).Usually i enjoy talking about my opinion regarding any subject, especially to a person who has an honest interest or even honest skepticism towards the topic.Most of the times i meet a person who is committed to not accepting my answers because he enjoys the role of having me strain to make contact with him while he sits back. I can nearly always see why I'd begun to press so hard.The person either hasn't responded to what I've said or he's been smug or he dint acknowledge that I've answered them. In the beginning i used to argue back if i felt i was right, but then now i have learned to be thankful to the feeling that warns me to stop. I feel that, most cases when you know what you are feeling, you are less likely to act irrationally.

Your thoughts and attitudes are special to you. Some of them are almost universally shared and others which you consider indisputable, are not nearly so obvious to people with different vantage points. I started accepting the fact that I'll hold nearly every attitude at some time, even toward people closest to me.I have faced situations(well.. i feel everyone would have..) where i momentarily feel enraged at anyone and acknowledge the fact that i feeling this way is the best safeguard. Feeling of rage is not wicked, in fact no feeling in itself is wicked. Attempt to deny the existence of such a feeling only has repercussions very harmful to you.

Of nearly any purely personal attitude that we have held for long, we are unknowingly reproducing it, or holding it in place not by a single activity but by a multiplicity of them. I understood this the hard way that we can seldom alter attitudes by adopting single practices or stopping them and not condemning other people is a good step toward relieving the tension of unwanted attitudes.

One of the most significant things this college has taught me is- love and friendships. However, it was very easy for me to understand the latter much better and feel has more significance or reality than the former. Love, like life also seemed an elusive thing to me or at least the so-called love i have been seeing in my college. Is it man's nature to be able to love only what he cant fully possess? I feel there is not much love in the word love. Love when done unconditionally and unquestionably is the true love u can get in any forms of life. But sadly, we are left with the fact that only few love their mates forever and others find it difficult or rather impossible to love or respect those who become accessible. Such people, no matter how much they acquire, feel unrewarded.My experience is that whatever we most esteem and try hardest to attain declines in value the moment we secure it. Probably, most of us have this illness. We perpetuate the belief that easy availability decreases value of what we own. This phenomenon is observable in everyday contacts, where our feelings are not so intense as in the so-called love relationships.If some one has known us for years and has watched us grow and learn, he or she may forever refuse that we have become capable.The philosophy seems to be-"If you are familiar and especially if you have needed me then i cant respect your skills".

How far does a prejudice against familiar influence us? Don't we all tend to treat the dinner guests than people who live with us? We keep our near and dear ones waiting many times but be very prompt in meeting a stranger because we don't want to give a bad first impression. Time you allocate for a stranger(probably a girl... in case of a guy) seems to be more important than the time you devote to your own mother.

Perhaps, the main cause of decline in feeling in love relatively, is that after assuring ourselves we have secured our loved one's affection, we slack in our efforts to treat them as respectfully as we did.When we come to feel relationship is secure, we see no reason to continue that behavior and love diminishes.

The miracle is that each choice we take modifies our subsequent views of ourselves and the world. We must rejoice this miracle though at times it produces tragedies. We must make those choices in life that enable us not to look back but to move forward in the right direction.At this juncture, when the time has come to bid farewell and move on with our own ways it makes me wonder where is the good in goodbye?

Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos. ~Charles M. Schulz

An episode of my life is over, and perhaps the most important one, but the greatest happiness lies in the fact that it couldn't have been more memorable. And there goes my life in a nutshell...