I love this painting.
…who can Bing get pronto?
The Lost Symbol rising a Lost Interest!
Just a few days before I started reading Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. I am not going to write a detailed review on the book. No. I think there are better people out there who have done it quite well! I found this book interesting not because its fast paced or not because how Dan Brown brings realistic things in daily life so close to fiction that some times you doubt if this entire thing is fiction. I know he is good at it. And like it as well! I found this book interesting just for one thing. Noetic Science. Being a scientific researcher I was ashamed that I never knew some thing like Noetic Science existed in the first place. But I came to accept it and started reading through few more things on it in the Web. I should say its an entirely interesting concept.
There was one instance in the book Katherine Solomon talks about this secret experiment that she does. She explains that thoughts as how they are, are nothing but particles. In others words there is a basic particle that the thought is made of. Ok, you could say why a particle and why not a wave. No problems. It could be a wave as well. But the point is thoughts are made of some basic entity call it a particle or a wave. This is one thing. The best part is this.
If you have a huge collection of same thoughts(Be it positive or negative) on one concentrated thing, it could very well happen the way you want it happen! Wow! That’s like wonderful. Well I know all we Indians are very well accustomed to this right from our childhood days. We are always taught to think positive, so that our actions could always be positive and their consequences good to all.
What struck me was not this idea. When I read through this entire thing in the book, it was like some one just copied what I had in my mind and put it in the book. I mean years before one of those days when I had absolutely nothing to do I was thinking about thoughts having a basic entity to it. It was just a thought that came across my mind and eventually died down. But today I see this entire concept is a huge field of Sience and there are proper researchers who work on this and try and get some kind of understanding on this part. The fact that I had thought over some thing like this which today is at the fore front of in depth research in Science gave me a lot of joy! I know if I had shared it with some one, they would have just told me that its some hypothetical stuff and would have brushed aside the topic. But it gives a huge amount of happiness when I sense that there are people out there who spend all their life thinking about things that I was thinking about.
It would be much better if take this up more seriously and work on it more. But I am not sure if I can do it right now! But I would just love to contribute to some thing as exciting as this!
By the way if you are interested to know more I think you should check this link. Its the official website for Institute of Noetic Science.
Wait.
I had promised in my previous post that I will in my next attempt blog about how to standardize the teachers who could possibly teach students in Government schools. The entire point being education must be made free and made free immediately. By that I mean as fast as possible. Private schools cannot make it absolutely free because their intentions unfortunately has shifted from giving good education to making money(most of them, exceptions are always there as you know!)
But actually I am not going to blog about this in my current post. That post will require another degree of collection of thoughts and fairly a bit of research as well, which I have not done due to lack of time. Not that I am busy but because I am stuck doing some thing that I hate the most in my life. Course work! This ranting deserves another post altogether! Anyway that apart!
What I am going to talk about is some thing that is closely associated with my life! I have always wanted to have a big say in two things in my life. My career and my live aftermath! Nothing new here, just like any one else out there in this far wide crazy world! Its kind of really very very demanding to actually go through what I am going through! I know every other guy thinks his/her life is more complicated than others in the lot! I am not here to claim that my life is the most complicated of the lot! No that’s not my point. I am saying my life is complicated enough from my perspective!
To contradict myself I can actually say my life is pretty uncomplicated as in the daily life process! All fine doing great kind of thing. But there is this one thing that is really been very eluding to me. I know what it is exactly and I know how I can solve it. I won’t necessary call it a problem as such but nothing stops me from saying its a good and nice problem to have!
The fact that I understand this nice problem that I have and also know how to solve it makes it even more irritating to me. Why? Because I have not done anything about it. Action. Yeah I know its pretty much simple. I know the problem and I have the solution to it. So all I need to do is go ahead with my plan of action(If at all I have one) and see what’s the result! That’s where I am cursing myself every day! I think when God made me he made me with great attributes like courage for all things in life except this! Yeah you heard me write. I have found that I simply don’t have the courage to take the necessary actions for this problem(Nice one, I repeat)! I am just too worried about its consequences! That’s all about it!
By the way if after reading all through and you still haven’t got what I am talking about, I think its fine. Its suppose to be that way! I always beat around the bush for those kind of things that I do very little about but I know there’s a lot to do about it! But I think its fairly simple to guess what I am talking about here!
If for any reasons readers(if at all there be any readers!) bring this up when you meet me and ask me what’s it about, I am quite sure I would not like to talk about this! I will rest it right there.
Take this post as a personal ranting that I have done here! I could have found some one personally and talked about this, but that’s not what I want to do! As simple as I possibly could put it!
Finally I think I will end this post with this image! It kind of summaries my situation. More or less!
Reservations
Just a few days ago I saw some Tweets in my time line which were about Reservations. For a long time I too wanted to jot down my views on it as a blog post here. But some how did not make enough time for that. But happy that at least now I am doing it. Better late than never.
There has been enough times and enough number of people who have been cribbing for and against the concept of reservation(for education and job opportunities). For that matter I have also got nothing but crib in my blog here. There have been instances where people belonging to castes who come under some form of reservation have talked against reservation that they don’t require such a thing and that they can do well even with out it. At the other end people who have been poor belonging to the same kind of castes have praised that its because of reservation that they are able to have a better life. More often than not politicians are obsessed with reservations for backward Muslims. Lets face it that politicians on a broader scale have both right and wrong intentions when they talk about this issue. The right ones are those who really care for these people and the wrong ones as you would know are directed towards securing the vote banks. Again there have been instances where a guy from a caste which does not come under reservations has blamed reservations for screwing up his life. Also there are instances where people from same kind of castes have praised reservation when they have seen that it really helps the economically backward class of people coming under reservations.
Also there have been instances where people from two different castes but not too different from each other, fight for reservations purely because one of them come under the reservations banner and the other does not. The ones who are already under the banner oppose it because they will have to share the fruits and the other one fights because they feel they are deprived of some thing.
Apart from all these things lets look at one more aspect of it. Reservations in place. People in general entitled for reservations make use of it and when they try to get into some kind of job they are told that they are not good enough. In fact there are so many of job vacancies and educational opportunities which go vacant every year because they are not able to find right people to fill them. I agree that there are instances where similar kind of people have done well to get good jobs as well.
Above all there are these selfish politicians who promise people during election campaigns that they would create a new window for their caste of people under reservations. Yes I know you see it. Its vote bank politics as how the media has rightfully coined it. Some times these politicians do bring what they promised to the people and some times they don’t. Under conditions where they don’t they have purely failed in their duty as long as the people’s views are concerned. And in cases where these politicians do bring in what they promised the people don’t realize that the amount of people entitled for reservations is now more than what it was previously. I agree that the ones who did not have reservations in the first place now come under the banner and so its useful for them. But consider the fact that these politician morons don’t stop with just one caste of people. Once they are done with one caste of people they will move on to the other. As such there are no limits to the number of castes that are there in India(No disrespect though). So in essence at some point it will become like there are enormously so many different caste systems coming under the same banner that one day you will need to have reservations under reservations. The opportunities for each caste shrinks because the number of people entitled for reservation increases.
Added to all these there are now stories of people faking a caste certificate. Well yes it sounds crazy but I have gathered it happens.
People who have debated far and long on this topic have argued that reservations based on caste system is useless and that it should be on economic back ground. Now when you can fake a caste certificate I don’t think it takes too much for people to fake an income certificate. One option was to standardize the system which gives the exact income of people and UID was some thing that could have taken us closer to it. But now with lot of people questioning about UID that looks a far distant implementation.
So what would be a practical solution for this issue. I would say make schooling completely free. I know that there are already thousands of Govt schools all around India. The only problem is their standards. Obviously students from poor economic back ground find themselves in this setup and eventually do not pass out with the best of the knowledge or exposure. Now I should mention at this point that there are instances where people from such setup have also gone further to make great strides in their life. Hats off to them. But we are talking about the majority of those students who do not make it big in the real world. Making education free and accessible to every one is the only way. I understand that when you propose a solution to the problem you need to be complete with it. Leaving it here would actually be incomplete. I should also be talking about how to maintain good standards in these school. But that all together deserves a new blog post and that’s what would be my next post!
There was another solution that people keep talking about. Its about having some kind of qouta in private schools where half the students will study free of cost. But how do you decide as to what should this quota thing depend on. Should it depend on caste or economic status or merit? Quota based on caste and economic status are both not error free so cannot be taken here. And free education based on merit would mean even a student whose parents have all the capabilities to get him educated can avail for it(Who does not want to save money). Or in other words a student who does not come from a strong economic background might miss out. So I would say this entire thing of having some reservation in private schools is not gonna work out.
The only way in my perspective is to start improving Govt schools as soon as possible and get their standards better that parents would want their children to be enrolled in Govt schools rather than in those private schools paying lump sum of admission fees.
Course work.
Exams given. Interview was done. Results out. And I was in. I was obviously happy that I got my ass into one of the most premier Institutes in India for Research. Its a different matter that I struggled but as they say when you have passed out people are not interested in how you got in but what you did when you passed out.
As any other student I had to take my course work. I chose my courses, rather my boss chose the courses for me. In reality I was not interested in taking up the courses that he asked me to do. But he is my boss so I don’t think I had any other choice but to listen to him and do my courses accordingly. I registered to the courses and I was going through them as how any other student would go through. One month went by and things were absolutely fine. I did find it tough but was prompt for the classes and assignments. Just over a month I came to realize that I had too many things to do and I had absolutely no one to rely for help except my lab mate who finished his course work some 5 years before! Yeah you are right he’s quite old. I slowly realized that I was the only guy cornered out and rest of class mates sat together for discussions and did every thing together. Consider this that the things given to us to do were as such quite demanding and over that I had to compete with the whole class with my rusty old brain. Well honestly speaking I did not have a choice but to live like that. I tried my best but beyond a point I could not do the tasks given, right on time. So the assignments piled up and we were close to our end sem exams. I had to submit them one way or the other. Else I would loose my grades quite badly and might even reach a situation where I might have to redo them again! Assignments I did but not in time. But I did. And all in all completely by myself. The point is I learnt some thing out of that course.
Now I am in a situation where in I might loose my grades quite badly. All because I did not complete the tasks right on time. I was really surprised at this notion. The entire concept of having a course work is to make sure that the student learns some thing. I did all the things myself so yes I did learn. I don’t know about others but definitely I learnt enough. The others might have copied and shared ideas and did any thing they wanted to but still just for the sake of completing the tasks on time they get better grades. The point I am talking about is not just the grades. I don’t care about what they score as long as I get a bare minimum that’s required of me. But for some one who has done the courses honestly he/she should get a bare minimum. Just because you have submitted the assignments late your marks in them are cut by half and at last grades screwed up. I am not complaining about any thing to anyone. In fact the mistake majorly is on my side. And I completely accept that. But should we not have some kind of consideration for some one who does some thing honestly, considering that there are not too many students just a few tens of us here. It kind of becomes relatively easy to consider each student’s case.
But personally the tutor who taught me this course has been absolutely co-operative. When I wrote a mail to him giving him all these details he immediately responded to me in his extremely busy schedule(no seriously he was busy) and told me that he would take up the matter and see what he can do about it. I don’t think I could have expected more from him.
Well all is over now and all that’s left out is my final grades. In about a couple of days I think I should get them. So will get to know the actual out come of things I have done. I clear it I, will be more than happy and if i don’t I would have to get a proper strong and painful session of advice from my boss and probably will redo it or may be take a different course. But the higher point is that at the least in premier institutes in India there is this good habit for tutors to listen to the student’s problems and take them up seriously rather than just hearing to it and brushing them apart later. Seriously its amazing here how people deal with things. All I wish is that in every other educational Institutes in India, regional or otherwise, such minute attention should be given to each and every student so that the student later on does not blame the system.
As far as the results are concerned, fingers crossed!
