The 3:30am drive!

Woosh!! thats the way first year went by at MDI. Now in second year things are a little different. We no longer have weekends (we have classes scheduled on each day of the week). But luckily my subject selection allows me an off day on thursday, and on this one i went home. Even few minutes spent with my shuttle28 gang of friends at home rejuvinates my mind completely.

So i decided to come back to MDI at night by first dropping dad to domestic airport at 3:30am and then driving back to MDI campus. For those who haven't checked out the new revamped domestic airport in Delhi, do check it out. Its just fab :)

So here i was driving on gurgaon highway at 3:30am in the morning with my car radio playing soothing music. I just realised that i was driving too fast and reached my campus road at 4:00 am. Well as the campus gates only open at 5:00am i didn't want to wait for an hour on any empty gurgaon road. So i went to one place where i knew i would find people and food and an awesome cup of tea. I went to cyber park, where i used to work about a year back in Hewitt Associates. That place is always alive with people of 8 different companies taking breaks at the road side dhabas and tea stalls outside the main building. I took a cup of tea and sat there in front of the main building admiring the archietecture of that one like i always do whenever i see it. My mind began to churn out thoughts.

One year back i was working at this place. Well i used to get back home at 9:00 in the night almost always but now-a-days almost all of my ex-collegues stay up late in the night and many times till the morning. I just realized that after another year many of my friends would be living a similar life, roaming like zombies at the death hour in the graveyard called the corporate. Well i have different plans for myself.

As i took another cup of tea just sitting there i thought of how each day at MDI teaches you something. Its just that we ignore the learnings most of the times. One year has taught me a lot, it has led to emergence of different traits in me. I have seen the best and worst of the same people. It is an altogether different world out there inside the campus. Sometimes I just feel that life is a lot less complicated outside the campus. But anyways i won't complain. its been a very interesting journey, both past one year and this 3:30am drive.

I decide to come back to campus and as still am not feeling sleepy, i sit down to write this blog post about my 3:30am drive..

Jai Hind

The Racist Within!!

Watching on T.V. and reading in newspapers about the racism in Australia makes everyone's blood boil. Thousands of parents are anxious about their children living in the Oz. They don't know who will be the next Indian on the hit-list of Racist attacks. Its a grim situation.

But this has been the reality that always existed below the glamour of foriegn travel, stay or study. Its just out in the open now. Such incidents have always been there and almost everyone who is an NRI would have known and prepared for the racist incident happening with them at some point of time or other.

As we see the country united in action against the racists, it makes me wonder when we are pointing a finger outside, there are four others which are pointing at us. Don't we need to tackle the racist within to tackle the racists outside?

Yes, the racist within has also lived for decades but the difference is that we don't recoganize it in the open. We as people have been showing this racism in some form or other. Whether it be calling being late as Indian Standard Time, or calling all Indians corrupt when being at trouble at some goverment office, or when being at a traffic jam saying that Indians don't have a driving sense, or simply watching garbage on streets and saying that Indians don't have a sense of cleanliness etc etc etc.. and we keep saying all this and say that ''Yeh to India  hai yahan kuch nahi badal sakta''.. We take great pride in saying that, '' Mera beta to videsh se padh ke aaya hai, wahan woh 3 saal raha tha'' and when someone talks of Indian education and the great Nalandas and Takshashilas that India has created we say that ''come on, get a life dude''

Yes, not all of the above is unreasonable on our part, but to think about it we are creating a culture of racism within. When parents make such derogatory statements in front of young kids, the kids develop a similar mindset.

I want all of us to ask ourselves that until we gain that self respect, how can we expect others to respect our race? If we look at Germany, they take such pride in their race and identity which propels them to work hard and do the best in whatever they do to show to the world how great Germans are. And the kind of progress that they have made by the drive they get from the feeling of nationalism in the past fifty years after being a completely broken country and economy in debt makes the world take notice and respect them.

I remember fighting with a student in my IMS group discussion class who could said , ''what has B****Y India given me?, i will take my first flight to US when i clear GMAT'', as the instructor told me to calm down but i walked out of the GD saying I care a damn about the GD and the same for the people who don't care a damn for my country.

I would end this post by refreshing our memories to the amazing prayer that we all used to sing in school days, ' humko mann ki shakti dena mann vijay karein, doosron ki jai se pehle khud ki jai karein'

Jai Hind