Tried being good, repented.... Love being bad

This is in relation to the change in attitude that I have brought about in myself after around 8 months in Lucknow. I remember walking into this institute as a guy who had no exposure to the way of life in a hostel; it was like a financial consultant moving into the Bronx and trying to start a normal life (exaggerated to some degree). Most of the guys here had been in a hostel and knew how to manipulate the guy in front of you to get your work done. During the second term I realized that if you are going to let shit happen to you, people are going to give you more shit.

Maybe it was my upbringing, I could never say no to anyone or for that matter I tried not to utter words without reflecting on, would I end up hurting anyone. To say the least I would say I was highly “Diplomatic”. As usual if people know that you are not willing to say NO they will take you for a royal ride. I had my first few experiences, but I failed to learn the phrase “once bitten twice shy” somehow failed to apply to me. Guys would come up, barrow money and then would forget to return it and if you asked them they would easily change the topic, to add to that my diplomatic ass (Sorry for the French) would not allow me to get up terms with the guys. Similarly people would ask for my bike and ride it around the city on fuel I filled the last time around (Free ride if you may) not to mention the attitude (screw the bike its not mine drive the worst you can), some of them even tried to start off (learn to drive) at my expense .So thing kept happening and as the word spread I kept getting more of it. At the pinnacle of events I remember people borrowing my motorbike and totaling it, once it happened twice in a span of a week. Things got even worse the guy who wrecked my bike (the second time) instead of telling me, that he met with an accident, he hid my bike in some corner of an obscure corner of another hostel, it was around I week before I found my bike (after a friend of mine asked me confirm if the heap of wreckage in his hostel belonged to me). I immediately called the guy who took my bike and asked him what was the matter, that’s when he tells me that “he happened to run into an auto rickshaw”, now anyone would expect the #$%^ to mend the bike but instead of that the guy takes me for another ride with excuses like “the garage was closed today”, “I got a quiz tomorrow” ………. It does not end there the #$%^ finally agrees to mend the bike, that too after a close friend of mine (Manan) comes in and gives him come tonic (in short fights my battle due to friendship), so Mr. #$%^ goes to garage to repair my bike where he realizes that the bike is wrecked pretty bad and its going to make a major dent in his pocket, so he comes up with a satisfycing solution and repairs half of the damage and returns the bike. And me like an Idiot without putting up much of fight repairs the rest of the motorbike (You are right if u consider me to be spineless, but fortunately its history) all by myself.

The largest shock to me comes when I find that people who I considered friends too were now giving me shit they easily walked out on me when I asked for help. Well somehow the theory “You need to heat steel to 800C before it becomes hard” fit best here. After 8 months and truck loads of shit I realized that I can’t continue this way and I have to change for better/worse. I started off by being point blank and in the face (though I went overboard quite a few times) , but that set the record straight. Now that I consider that I have gone a bit sour , I love it and love being a bad Ass.

Meaning of Time

Its 5:45am in the morning by my alarm clock, I have made 3 attempts to try and my myself into snooze mode to no avail. I have nothing to do but stare at the watch in front of me. And while just staring at the watch it occurred to me how slow time moves. Here’s an exercise for you! just try staring at a watch for 5 minutes, its only when you stare at the watch with a thoughtless mind do you realize that time is never running out on you and its you that’s running out on time. Time is an unstoppable force (please leave out the pseudo-theory of relativity now), no matter what you do or who you are time is always going to win. Everything is a slave time, and by everything I mean all living and non-living objects, even the stars we see are slaves of time, Time takes no prisoners and everything right from tiny ants to galaxies are like footprints on the shores of time, some higher up on the shores and the others in the path of the next on-coming wave.

This reminds me of a short story I once read about two children playing on the seashore building and destroying castles of sand, the irony however was the children themselves represent the sand castles on the shores of nature and how life has this never ending urge to move to an end, taking it a step further nature itself is like a raindrop that has left the cloud which bore it and is waiting to hit the ground below to loose its existence and identity guarded only by time. This thought led me to a larger question if everything including us are bounded by time which in itself has no end, how can one quantify time? Some how the units like years, months…..seconds seem very relative and artificial. Thus, making time (as we know it) a pseudo unit of measurement based only on the human percept.

It makes me wonder how a person’s percept of time changes according to the situation. For all those of you who have ever had a chance to make a presentation would realize the difference in the percept of time. While you are up there on the stage blabbering away to glory time flies away, One never realizes how long it has been since he/she took the stage, I have had my goof ups of overshooting my time limit in a presentation, while on the other hand it’s a so difficult to even stay focused (in my case awake) when someone (like profs) else is talking and you have to listen, every minute seems like ten and an hour seems like a day (remember the exponential graph hehe). If we think hard we all will realize that time will catch up with you and the only way to live like a happy life is to leave no room for the element of time in the journey of life and let time take its toll the way it does. My thoughts can be captured very well by a verse of Pink Floyd’s song Time.

“And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death”

OK now I think I better sleep or else the exponential graph of time will get extremely steep in tomorrows classes.