To my childhood memories

This one's for Ati n akku...
I went to Rajghat yesterday... had a bit of time to myself coz sundays a really light day at work... n my office is almost close enuf for a walk..
had wanted to go there for years.. ati do u remember... uncle had said we'd all go there again once he was better... ive wanted all of us to go since then. relive our childhood.. when three little girls woke up at 5:30 am on holiday mornings to go to rajghat and play.. balanced on a single scooter with uncle... its weird.. neither my dad nor akku's ever went there.. or maybe i just dont remember.. the only time i remember any other adults being teher was when all three mothers came too... the dads didnt though..
Rajghat is the resting place of mahatma Gandhi.. n i was there 2 days after the Independence day.. but i wasnt there to remember the father of the nation.. i was there to remember the man wo i placed in next place.. actually same place as my own father.. the one who accepted a rather rude, violent little girl into his home and family because she was his daughter's best friend..
U know whats so weir... i dont remember us EVER actully going to see Gandhi's Samadhi there.. i remember climbing up to the top of teh hillocks and rolling down again.. n playing games like taht all morning... travelling almost 10 kms each way for the fun and games.. never seemed taht long a ride somehow.. it felt like it was taking forever to reach tehre from my office yesterday.. but the childhood memories i have seem like we got there in a jiffy.. after a delayed start from teh house as us girls bickered over wo'll sit where on the scooter.. ati won the coveted front standing place ost of the time... mostly coz she's the youngest and consequently the shortest... though that doesnt exactly apply now... she's as tall as i am.. n akku's taller. Me, the oldest of the three, am the middle one height- wise...

I climbed up the hillock.. n the day was so beautiful... cloudy and cool.. stood there for a little while.. thinking bout teh hazy memories of rolling down the hill competing against each other.. wanting to be the first one to reach the bottom..
I'd taken it as a promise from uncle that we'll all go there again as soon as he was better.. god didnt quite agree with our plans i guess... ive wanted to go there since the day uncle died.. if only as a memorial to him... all three kids go there again.. n remember how we used to play there years ago.. started crying sitting on a bench.. for the father figure who was the reason for my presence there... and for the two friends, sisters who i've barely had time to meet in the last year.. we've all grown up, gone our separate ways.. even though ati n akku are in college now and in north campus most of the day, my job's such that i havent been able to meet them... studies, activities and boyfriends have left us with precious few moments to spend so much as talking to each other...
It just feels like something's one missing from life... the closeness, the madness, the happiness of childhood are gone.. now when we meet, we talk like old ppl reminiscing bout our past, or talk of serious topics, life and college and careers and families.. we're not that old though... its just taht we've grown up a bit fast... i'm the eldest.. n i'm only 20.. but we can still talk bout watever comes to our heads.. lst time all three of us were together was more tahn a month go.. an hour snatched between college admissions for ati n office for me... we sat around discussing the future.. n giving each other relationship advice.. it was sorta strange for me to talk to ati bout HER relationship.. she's like my baby sister,... n now she's dating too.. it was usch a shock for me.. i was like.. URE TOO YOUNG TO DATE! n she's a whole year n a half older than i was when I first started "going out" with someone.. she's older than i was when i had my first kiss... n yet i freaked at the idea that some guy was with my baby sis... its weird how i get all protective bout her.. start lecturing her even though ive been thru the same situations and done worse than she has...
I sometimes wish i could go back in time..
to the barbie dolls and the dress up games..
to nightspends and midnight kitchen raids..
i miss them all so much..

This one's for you guys....

MY SACRIFICE- Creed
Hello my friend, we meet again
It's been awhile, where should we begin?
Feels like forever
Within my heart are memories
Of perfect love that you gave to me
Oh, I remember
When you are with me, I'm free
I'm careless, I believe
Above all the others we'll fly
This brings tears to my eyes
My sacrifice

We've seen our share of ups and downs
Oh how quickly life can turn around
In an instant
It feels so good to reunite
Within yourself and within your mind
Let's find peace there
When you are with me, I'm free
I'm careless, I believe
Above all the others we'll fly
This brings tears to my eyes

IS THIS WHAT OCCUPIES THE COURT'S TIME?????

This story has been put in a paper and now even my paper is trying to investigate what the real story behind this idiocy of putting a pet dog on trial is... is it a way to keep land grabbers at bay and save a poor widow.. or is this simply an example of how low the justice system in India has gone....?

ive been taking pictures!

now... these are pictures ive taken in the course of the last week as i've covered various events as a reporter.. n happened to have my little digicam with me... they weren't good enuf 4 the paper... but I think they're perfectly lovely..

tell me wat u guys think..

This lot is pix i took of a fire at the Pragati maidan conference hall 7.

I even went inside the building... these are the embers falling from the first floor where the fire was... i went up to th efirst floor too.. but the heat was too much n the firefighters saw that i was all nervous so they told me to get back down... everything was still smoking though the fire was out.. and the water that had collected all over the floor was also really hot..

These are pix i took while on the bus back home.. its the Moti Masjid at the red fort with the sun setting in the background... i LOVE these pix..

The next ones are the pix of the partial solar eclipse on the 1st of August... I went to St. Columbus School to see what the kids were upto there.. n one of them very kindly lent me a filter... so i could take pix too!!

hmm.. n these are a couple i took while stuck in a traffic jam today... It took me TWO HOURS to get from college to Sirifort auditorium... was stuck at ISBT for almost 20 mins and then outside the National Science Centre for almost half an hour... i'm SO glad i wasnt driving coz i wouldve wanted to shoot myself... it was bad enuf sitting in the back of a car checking my watch every few mins...

a step out of the ordinary

hm... since i cant possibly spend so much time on the phone.. i think i'll describe the first two days of my newfound professional life on my blog for the benefit of my friends.. since i'm AT the office rt now and my contract forbids me to mention my work on the blogosphere, i think i'm gonna have to get aroud it by being slightly vague.. in any case, those who are reading this already know precisely where i'm working.. for those who stumbled upon this blog by chance.. suffice it to say that i'm in the journalism business, employed at one of India's leading newspapers, and as recently as two days ago shifted from the boredom of the editing desk to the agony of being a reporter..
love shows you the agony and ecstasy of things.. so they say.. "THEY" be damned.. so I say.. coz this job, which has been a dream for years, in reality has shown me both sides of the proverbial coin..
if i thought sitting around waiting for ppl to file enuf stories to be passed down to us lowly trainees for editing was bad.. the last two days have DRAINED me of energy..
yesterday as the MPs of India debated on the trust vote, i had to go chek out what the party workers at the head office of one of the major parties opposing the government were doing in the office... what no one told me was that the road that this said office is located at is a one way, with restriction on stopping any vehicle at any gate for more than about 30 seconds.. so while i got there comfortably in an auto, getting an auto back to the office wasnt quite so easy.. a couple of hours later, i was asked to go back to the same office.. and while i was there got a lead about a demonstration being held condemning the money- for votes scandal in the parliament. since i was only bout 2 km away from the parliament, this intrepid reporter decided to go check it out.. forgetting that the damned thing was in the WRONG direction to the traffic flow.. the upshot of it was that i ran about 700 odd metres in the blazing heat at 5 pm along a road lined with sentries, and got into an auto at the intersection.. thank god for roundabouts.. the autowallah however proved clueless regarding my destination.. and as anyone who'se ever tried to find their way around all those confusing intersecting round roads of central delhi will know, if u dont know the EXACT location and preferably a few landmarks of the place u need to go to.. u can get rather lost.. well.. thanks to a few good samaritans on the roadside, i reached my destination, took in the events, and climbed thankfully into a bus that would drop me right outside my office... after a whole month of getting home after 1 am, it was nice to reach comfortably at 9:15 and have dinner with my family..

today was a much more tiring day.. i guess i'm gonna have to toughen up a hell of a lot to continue in the job..
had to take a looooong bus ride all the way to noida, n then when i got back i saw a political rally in progress and decided to follow it... got into one of the cars participating in the rally n ended up all the way in shahadara... took me almost 30 mins and 50 bucks in the Auto to get back to my comfortable airconditioned office and collapse in a chair... worst thing.. the stories i went chasing after werent even important enuf to go into the paper.....
The day taught me what NOT to do when looking for a story.,.
1. DONT LEAVE the airconditioned confines of the office to cover an event before finding out what mode of transport is available to get to to the said event and back... yesterday i found, much to my despair that the organisers of the event i took the long bus ride to NOIDA to sent a car to pick up the journalists who were invited... running into the Radisson hotel looking like u've just tumbled out of a DTC (which IS exactly what uve just done) can make u feel extremely uncomfortable in the midst of a glitzy launch event...
2. DONT care what you look like when u get to wherever it is that u've been sent to get a story... as long as uve got clothes on your back and your hair doesnt look like a bird biult a nest in it.. its FINE... u're a REPORTER for heaven's sake.. NO ONE CARES how u're dressed... seniors at my office even told me how they just went off to party after a tiring hectic day without bothering to change.. the press card does the trick..

3. NEVER let your phone balance run out... u dont want to be stuck somewhere wondering whether its worth your while to even pursue the "story" further.. and u cant call the office n confirm whether it wouldn't be better for u to simply return.

4.NEVER just go off to see whats goin on... landing up at a major party's media cell on a day when some superemely important political event is on , without any idea of what u will ask is NOT a good idea.. u'll only end up feeling rather embarrassed..
5. and this is THE most important.... DONT expect to find a story wherever you go... u might go chasing after something for an exhaustingly long time only to realise it was really not worth the wasted time... BUt it IS.. since its teaching u what NOT to go running after..

ah well... I think i've learnt a few lessons...

The Butterfly effect

The butterfly effect is a phrase that encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. So this is sometimes presented as esoteric behavior, but can be exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.

why i feel this way?? coz something i thought would not mean anything suddenly has become the cause of a major hassle.. truth and lies, hiding and exposing.. why cant i ever figure out when to keeep my mouth shut n when not to???????? i said something that i shouldn't have ages ago... n didnt say something i should have.. today that comes back to haunt me.. n its taken on a much much larger meaning and importance than it could ever have..if only i'd done something different..

'if only'... thats a phrase that'll rule my life for as long as i live right?? things i've done that cant be undone, unsaid.. things that i've left unsaid that cant come out now.. decisions that i sometimes regret but sometimes think its better to have things as they are....

saying something that i didn't think mattered much.. brings up a terrifying spectre of broken promises and lack of trust.. a little thing as far as i was concerned.. something that really couldnt matter to me.. n today its shaken the ground under my feet..
as the theory sez... a ball being rolled down a hill can roll into any valleys.. so can one sentence be interpreted in different manners and elicit varied responses.. some expected, some unexpected...
i thought saying something tonight would be okay... but its only opened a pandora's box....
n i havent quite managed to keep the insect of foreboding from escaping...

COPIED FROM THE HINDUSTAN TIMES WEBSITE

EDITORIAL WRITTEN BY BARKHA DUTT, JULY 11 2008.

CAMPUS CHRISTI
A couple of months back I was moderating a TV discussion between writer Amitav Ghosh, and a perky, outspoken bunch of university students. One of them popped up with the invariable, but clichéd question: Did Ghosh believe there was a ‘Stephanian school of literature’, given how many famous authors seem to walk off its shining green lawns?
Amitav and I, both from ‘College’ (if you want to spot a St Stephen’s alumnus, that’s the surefire sign — there’s no article or pronoun when we talk of our campus years; it’s just ‘college’ — cringed slightly at the presumptuous tag. But then he went on to say, what many others — bureaucrats, businessmen, journalists and artistes — have said before.
“College,” he said, was where he met the most extraordinarily bright and, perhaps, the nicest people he has ever known and its diversity and ideas shaped him in an indelible way. This, from someone who has also studied at Oxford, taught at Harvard and lived in New York.
I knew exactly what he meant in the implicit bonding that only a shared experience can create. But, if usually, meeting someone from College evokes a quiet pride, this time I felt a mild panic and deep sadness. Was this going to be the last time someone would describe those deliciously textured and passionate years in a way that was immediately identifiable across generations? Was the St Stephen’s ethos — built assiduously over 127 years — now terminally ill? Would College ever be the same again? The Church, you see, is killing our alma mater. The monstrous culture of quotas is all set to swallow its soul.
First, the (ominous sounding) Supreme Council that controls St Stephen’s, increased the reserved seats for Christian students from 40 per cent to 50 per cent.
Then, finding that many of these blocked seats went empty over the years because of a lack of qualified candidates among minority students, it drastically pulled down the cut-off marks needed for admission to 60 per cent. So, while, every other student passing out of high school needs anywhere in the range of an 85-90 per cent score in the board exams to even eye three years at St Stephen’s, being Christian means you can walk in with a much lower grade.
These were decisions that ripped through the heart of college, pushing its faculty, students and alumni onto different sides of ugly battlelines. Soon, the contentious principal who began the process had to exit, but the college was left headless and steeped in petty politics and volatile internal divisions. It’s so ironic for an institution that was always accused of being elitist because it did not even participate in the Delhi University students’ elections, preferring instead to create its own student body.
Those days, our defence used to be that we didn’t care to be soiled by the muck and dirt of campus politics. Who would have thought then that the same institution would end up being mired in controversy? Two ministers in the present union cabinet — India’s foreign secretary and the head of the country’s Planning Commission — are all Stephanians. How ironic then, that at this point, the College doesn’t even have a principal — it has been orphaned by an appalling lack of leadership.
But unmindful of the storm raging all around it — a storm that could bring more than the building down — the powerful mafia of Bishops that control St Stephen’s (supported by others within the college) are going ahead with another outrage.
Now they want to reserve faculty seats for Christian teachers. The administrative body that controls the college has quietly instructed heads of department to fill vacant posts with Christian candidates.
Just recently, a former gold medalist student, who wanted to come back and teach at College, was rejected for the job in favour of a Christian alternative. Teachers have protested, argued, dashed off angry letters — even gone on TV to make their point — but the stern men in the purple robes have the ruthlessness of the old Crusaders. They really couldn’t give a toss.
And why should they? They have an inspiring role model in the Human Resource Development Minister who just this month ordered India’s IITs to reserve teachers’ seats for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs. Not one of the IIT directors was consulted before the dictatorial memo was circulated asking that the faculty quotas be implemented with ‘immediate effect’. The IIT teachers have attempted a few, feeble street protests, but they all know the die has been cast and there is no looking back now. When Brand IIT can be mauled beyond recognition by subversive politics, why would anyone care about a small island of excellence called St Stephen’s College?
For very long now those who oppose reservations have been branded as ‘casteist’ and ‘elitist’ by the quota-pushers. But actually, the debate engulfing my old college has precious little to do with caste, class or egalitarianism. In the name of religion and Christianity, St Stephen’s is being pummelled by bigots and autocrats into the very opposite of its essence.
Yes, St Stephen’s is a ‘Christian’ college. But back in the day, what that used to mean was that the choir and the cross, and the little chapel at the back would be the setting for an ensemble cast of hundreds of people from different faiths, backgrounds and castes, to make a home for three years; a home that we never wanted to leave. And its Latin motto — ad dei gloriam — ‘For the greater glory of God’ — always made perfect sense. It was hopeful, inspirational and filled with the grand possibilities of Life.
Now, we can just sit back and watch another institute that India was proud of being destroyed in the name of God. And we can’t even turn to faith and ask that they be forgiven, for “they know not what they do”. The tragedy is they know exactly what they are doing. And you and I can do nothing to change it.
(Barkha Dutt is the Group Editor, English News, NDTV)