An agnostic's FB reply to his fundamentalist school-friend

"And coming to the point of there being a mosque or not, I think I made it very clear in my status msg that I believe having a temple or a mosque over there is going to be equally useless (or even a church, a synagogue or a fire-temple for that matter). And I have never understood this concept of your god and my god - Greek and Latin might be more comprehensible to me. What Rajiv Gandhi did then and what Manmohan Singh and the Supreme Court do now is none of my concern, because I am content in my (human) life and don't need to worry about what happens on a little piece of land somewhere in UP - It will be like worrying about "who will be staying in my house 200 years from now". Obviously I do not care about the history (Thanks for the offer though).

"The only thing I know for sure is that the Universe (or the Multiverse if that appeals more) existed far before man and his temples / mosques / churches, and it is going to exist till eternity long after the last man is destroyed, and not a trace is left of any of his 'achievements', including religion. For the brief period of time that man lives, if he is keen to divide his race on the basis of the name that he wants to assign to the Universe and its Creator, then I am not interested in being a part of any such division. For holding this belief, I have been cursed and criticised too often, but an agnostic never really cared about others' opinions, did he?"

Let me live one last moment........

Let me live one last moment,
In which I care about what befalls
To a story left untold,
To a wish left unfulfilled.

Let me live one last moment,
Of infatuation, of irrationality, of adolescence,
Of fantasies, of thirsty souls, of broken hearts,
Of reminescence, of tears, of dreams dead.

Let me live one last moment,
In which lies the entire life,
Of me and of the things I have ever loved,
The things, alas, that I had never owned.

Let me live one last moment,
Of stagnancy, of resistance, of attachment,
Of vulnerability, of concern, of respect, of care
For all those dear and near and far.

Let me live one last moment,
Of vicissitudes, of emotions, of unease,
Of trust, of insecurities, of faith,
Of being weak, of being human.

Let me live one last moment,
Of non-rhyming poems, of imperfections,
Of pretenses, of pretensions,
Of conceit, of anger, of envy, of sadness.

Let me live one last moment,
In which is buried the truth of past,
In which dwells the void of present,
In which awaits the illusion of future,
In which I forgo the life I cherish,
In which I forgo the life I could live,
In which I forgo the life I should live,
In which I forgo the life I would live.

Let me live one last moment,
Let me live one last moment.......

Commandments of Sarcasm - II

Thou shalt never stop being sarcastic, public reaction notwithstanding.

Commandments of Sarcasm - I

No matter how much thou art tempted to make it clear that thou art not being serious but merely sarcastic, thou shant use a ;) or 'lol' or 'rofl' or any other intended-to-show-amusement expressions at the end/start/midst of the said sarcasm. Rather thou shalt proceed with the flow even though the converser might think for time indefinite that thou art being serious.

Random Ruminations - V

Change is good; but no-change is better.

Random Ruminations - IV

The main growth driver of the pornographic industry worldwide, is our lack of faith in our own imagination.

The Tale of Three Losses

Part 1: How I lost my dignity.....

Date: 10th April, 2009; Time: 10:00 A.M.;

Venue: Room no. 12, Ground Floor, B-building, Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology & Applied Nutrition (better known as Dadar Catering College), Veer Savarkar Marg, Dadar (W), Mumbai - 400028.

Occasion: PI (Personal Interview) for admission to IIM-C

Background: Yours Truly (hereafter referred to as YT) had never seriously planned on embarking on the journey to acquiring the most-hyped educational degree, straight after (presumably) acquiring the second-most hyped one. Nevertheless, when a free, non-poisonous lunch presents itself on your table without any initiative on your part, you start believing that you had desired to obtain that lunch all along. You even start imagining that devouring the plateful of delicacies would be the best thing to happen in your life. Now discontinuing the no-longer-palatable-food-analogy, in layman's words, at the mentioned time and place, YT's sole objective was to get into IIM-C (IIM-A had never really spawned a similar 'ambition' in YT and IIM-B had always had a rigidly entrenched idea about what constitutes 'ambition', while being ignorant about ability and smartness).

The GD (Group Discussion) as usual tried to bring out the animal inside all of the 'aspirants' present, by enclosing 12 of us in a semi-circular imaginary cage and asked to keep shouting at the top of our voices whatever we want to, for around 10 minutes. And as always, a topic (on the lines of 'Success of NGOs implies failure of Government') was given for the sake of formality; everyone of us knew that we were free to vigorously exercise our vocal chords to our hearts' content about what we had for breakfast in the morning, why we left our job at Microsoft/Google/Yahoo/Nomura (and for lesser mortals like YT, Infosys/TCS/Tech Mahindra/Wipro), why did we not eat the previous night, and how-can-anyone-forget? 65%-of-India's population-is-younger-than-30, and somehow connect all these to the 'given topic'. After the expected test of the 'survival of the outspoken', the turn came for each to prove that one is the least worthless of all present there, namely, the Personal Interview.

So, now the real story of the assault on YT's dignity begins (does YT oblige???)

To be continued..........