Taken For Granted

Back in the days when mobile phones had been just introduced in India and the most popular TV channel was Zee,I was pulled up by my class teacher Ms.Padma Uchil,for laughing and elbowing my buddy Siddharth Vaingankar in the ribs.

“Both naughty boys,with the same name,disturbing the class!,”Ms.Uchil with her accusatory stares and obvious obliviousness to the difference of one N,one R & one H in our first names,cantillated at us.

“You fellows are breaking my concentration………don’t think that just because you have paid the fees,you can take us teachers for granted……,” this is all I can remember from that fateful day.Oh yes…..and also a bad remark in the school diary and getting my right ear pinched-twisted-turned by my dad,when I asked him to sign against the remark

But what has stuck with me for all these years are my teacher’s words”for granted….”.I never understood their meaning then or till a few years later,when my mental growth started competing with the physical one and I started feeling,thinking,understanding and contemplating things.

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The Hindu religious scriptures talk of Maya or illusions which surround us in this world.And yes,to a certain extent I agree with this point.Modern India-or for that matter the rest of the world is so busy in their education,9 -5 jobs,malls,television,entertainment,mobiles that we have created around us an impenetrable fortress of Maya.

Most of us have heard this line somewhere or the other “Technology has made the world a smaller place,”.But in actuality human-beings are getting farther away from each other,with every new discovery and every new invention.

With every Facebook,every Google,every PS3 and every iPod we are becoming handicapped.Gone are the days when friends used to meet in the evenings to talk chat and laugh.Now all people from ‘friend list’ do is LOL,ROFL and .The ‘Google search’ which is pushing circulating libraries into bankruptcy is contributing in making our fat asses even fatter.

Remember we used to play Sakhli,Dabba Ice Spice,Langdi,Chor-Pulice?That all has been now replaced by Counter-Strike and Dota and NFS.

We have become so enveloped in this maze of ‘scientific advance’,that we are ready to ignore,avoid and forget the beauty of Truth.We have taken for granted just about anything and everything around us.

Think about the following few things.

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FAMILY

Stop seeing your family as a family.

See the four or five different people living in three or four rooms.Just look at the faces of your parents and hear their voice when the talk.Observe your siblings with similar characteristics of yours,yet so very different from you.

When you observe the shapes of these people around you,you start seeing their actions and reasons differently.

These people are with you for a very short period of time.After that we all will be again lost in the darkness/light we have come from.So think,enjoy and live this precious time with them.

ASTRONOMY/SPACE

Tonight go to your window or balcony or terrace and see the moon in the sky.

What you are going to see is basically a huge white round rock,floating above and revolving around another brown wet rock on which we live.

Just imagine,man has managed to jump from this piece of stone to that!WOW!

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Anyway,we all are familiar with the 9 planets of our solar system(OK 8!)

If we observe from space-as it is shown in our text books-we will notice that in our solar system the planets on our left are blazing hot,while the ones on right frigid cold.

Our earth is a single planet in that narrow belt,which is neither too hot,nor too cold.A belt that makes it just perfect for life to flourish.

Now the thing is,contrary to what Sci-Fi movies depict Earth it the only habitable planet we know of!

[Though I do not dismiss the fact that there may be other life in cosmos-or the whole universe will be such a BIG waste!-it might be hundreds of light years away]

But we the shameless creatures,in our impossible quest for superiority are destroying this-the only place where we can live-with our wars,our pollutions and our reproductions!

We in the 21st century should have discarded the killing and fighting cultures of our cave-men ancestors long back.But we haven’t.Because we are no better than APES!!

Consider this-you are in a ship with a group of people,in a dark sea.It is extremely cold outside,with icebergs dotting the water surface.You see a few burning small boats,at some distance from you.So isn’t it obvious that your only chance of survival is staying in your own comfortable ship?Actually here’s the catch-the idiots in your ship are breaking everything with axes,burning wood,killing each other.This has guaranteed the sinking of your ship.Drown Well!

Same is the case with our Mother Earth.

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Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
How I Wonder What You Are?
Up Above The World So High
Like A Diamond In The Sky!

Stare into the night sky and note the diamonds thrown carelessly on the black velvet.

There is a theory,which says that the stars in the sky which are visible to us have died out long ago.It is only because of their enormous distance from the Solar System,that it takes millions of years for their light to reach Earth!

Now isn’t that just beautiful and fascinating?!

What we are staring into is the past!(This point is further elaborated in TIME section.)

See that is why I love star-gazing so much!

PLANTS/NATURE

Something green and brown and hard comes out of something brown and particulate,and gives out something transparent with which we living things breath!

Take a deep breath now,and know that this piece of air  has come from some tree which would be soon cut down for road widening.

Go to the kitchen and drink a shimmering cool,transparent,tasteless liquid which will quench your thirst and satisfy your parched throats.Soon there will be no more left to drink.

Can we even imagine living without these?

Just think!

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

OK so technology is not such a bad thing  :P

See the cars on the road,the planes in the sky,the ships in the oceans?

If people from a thousand years ago would have witnessed this,they would have called it magic.And in a sense it is actually a bit like magic

What we have done is,using the good parts of our brains,we have extracted some solids and liquids from the Earth’s Crust and transformed them into machines which take us around the globe!

VOILA!

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Descending further,as we all know,everything is made of atoms.

But the reason for shapes,colour,smell,taste of everything to be varied is because of different arrangement and positions of electrons and protons in the atom.

So this proves,we all(everything in the cosmos!),are made up of the same stuff!

Your tongue ,the Pyramid Of Giza and the nuclear bomb are made of the same basic material,only with a twist

Amazing this world is,isn’t it?

TIME

Now we finally come to the last and the most important point in this post-Time.

If I asked you to define time,you would probably not have a conclusive answer.This is because,time is relative and there is no perfect definition for it,as theorised by Einstein.

What the genius Albert Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity says is that time is relative & it depends on the situation and the perception of situation.

The following are two examples to prove this theory-

Case I-If you make me sit in an economics class for one hour,I would start staring at my watch from the third minute itself!Seconds will turn into minutes,minutes into hours and that one hour into days!

Case II-Let me spend even twelve hours with two of my best friends-Raghav and Pankaj,and those hours would seem like just minutes to me,which got over too soon…….

This shows brain and perception can alter time(although not the clock)

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In the ASTRONOMY part I had mentioned about the stars.

This proves that distance too can alter time.

The distance between galaxies is so large that time is altered and past travels to present.

We sitting in 2010 are seeing in the sky,a period when there was no concept of time!

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So this in brief is my perception of the world.Thank You for seeing the world through my eyes

Instead of taking everything for granted,contemplate things.Instead of watching vile shows like Bigg Boss 4 or UTV Bindass Emotional Attyachar,go and see the time when there was no Earth or Saturn or Jupiter or Sun!

Open the eyes of your mind and soul and experience happiness.

Think!