Read this on a blog. Like the line.

"
The easiest way to propagate war, intolerance, etc. against a people is to convince others that they aren’t actually people after all. We would be wise to not only look to history, but learn from it.
"

Thinking

So I havent blogged in a long long time. Its not that I have been very busy or something like that but I have been preoccupied in the mind.

This is just to say I exist.

Will be back with something meaningful soon.

Toastmasters Project 5 speech

Again a speech with roots the past.

this is a speech as Project 5 in my aim to reach a competent communicator status(5 more to go)

A lot had to be added to make it worth it.

“Scrapped Unfortunately”

Scrap... There was a time when a scrap automatically brought visions of waste. But then occurred a revolution and they called it 'Orkut'. After that a 'scrap', it seemed had a whole new meaning for the masses.


Good evening Mr Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and welcome guests.

Yes I am talking about the website Orkut. There seem to be various descriptions for it and its bethrehen include a networking site, a community website, a social site, etc. However I will not clinically analyze 'Orkut' today, but rather reminisce about the good old times, when things were still simple


My first introduction to Orkut were the unsure steps I took when a good friend of mine sent me an invitaion and literally forced me to register nearly five years ago. Of course back then Orkut was totally unknown and I was confident that I would never go back to check on the site again.


Time it seems has proved me wrong.


First came Internet in the college hostel where I was studying, then came 'Orkut mania'. The first signs were long hours on Orkut waiting in desperation for new scraps. As one of the first victims, I remember checking for scraps every hour and getting gloomy if I did not find new ones.


Of course suddenly the number of scraps became linked to popularity on Orkut and it seemed no number was big enough and no means mean enough. One afternoon, I remember this conversation between two seniors using scraps.


Gujral- “Oye Akshat, How come you have become so rare these days. I never see you around”
Akshat- “Hi Gujral! Have been pretty busy with life. Wassup with you”
.
.
some 20 smaller scraps...
.
.
Gujral- “So from where are you accessing the net? I am using Minocha’s comp.”
Akshat- “Yaar, I am sitting on Ashraf’s comp.”

Of course they conveniently forgot to mention Ashraf and Minocha were room-mates. The two were basically sitting back to back and chatting using orkut. I heard that one afternoon Akshat sirs rating jumped by 20 percent.


Beyond the addiction there are many benefits of Orkut. Somehow, I personally have never seen any. For example what is discussed in my engg class community on Orkut? Everything except academics. There are games like, will u kiss or marry the person above, whether the person above is sexy or hot(byt the way, I was hot and heavy) , etc. Somehow all games seemed to have something to do with the person above you. Or else there is someone trying to make me rich by working from home or even worse, advertising another equally boring community.

So after some time Orkut started to become boring. I wondered, is it over? Is the colour in life gone? Will I now have to watch a balck and white movie. However I should not have despaired!! To rescue me came a knight called Sir Facebook. Suddenly everyone was in love those funny apps , that ability to poke into other people’s conversations using comments. Of course Orkut in its later avatar would suddenly sprout exactly the same features but there is a charm with the original.

These days people folks automatically assumed that everyone and anyone else is on Orkut and Facebook. And when someone states that he does not access any of these sites, people automatically assume that something must be wrong with him. Afterall since everyone else is on orkut and everyone else cannot be weird, the person not on orkut must be weird.

Of course these days so many social websites have mushroomed up that its hard to decide on an essential list of social sites. I am drowning in spam. Someone want to meet me on Hi5, a bot by the name of Shruti invites me to apna adda, someone else has sent me a private message which will expire soon unless I accept an invitation to Jhoomla.com. The list just goes on. I suddenly miss the old days when even gmail did not exist. Forget facebook or Orkut.

Recently my parents became my friends on facebook. Initially I felt proud,” My parents are so tech savvy that they are on facebook.” I felt like writing a poem about it.

Five minutes later the panic set in. “My parents are on Facebook. They can see all my pics , the flirts with girls, the sarcastic comments in my friend-circle”. Ten minutes later , my facebook account was cleansed. Everything funny, interesting and even mildly suggestive deleted. Now of course I have been joined by the entire gaggle of relatives , cousins and even family friends.

Now I think twice before clicking publish always wondering who all can read it and what potential scandal can occur .The good days when liberty reigned are long gone never to return.

I am now beyond Orkut having left the temptation behind. But you like this speech please ,please let me know by scrapping me. My Orkut ratings are still at 80 percent. The scraps may just help.

Over to you Mr Toastmaster

Extracts from the speech

The best lines from Obama's noble prize acceptance speech. Obama has slipped down on my fan list but there is a beauty in strong prose. Obama said a lot of things and he left some unsaid. He mentioned Gulf war 1 and Afghanistan invasion but not the Iraq war. The context tells us a lot

Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.

In today's wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed and children scarred.

To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

The soldiers courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.

And yet, given the dizzying pace of globalization, and the cultural leveling of modernity, it should come as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish about their particular identities — their race, their tribe and, perhaps most powerfully, their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict.

At times, it even feels like we are moving backwards. We see it in the Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden.

Most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint — no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one's own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but the purpose of faith — for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago: "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."

We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that — for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.

BEING IN TWENTIES - SOMETHING

Its an old forward that I had saved long time back. Read it after a long long time and it felt so true

BEING IN TWENTIES - SOMETHING

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don't recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren't really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job... and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.

Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you're doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person. One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that every one reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out. Send this to your twenty-something friends... maybe it will help someone feel like they aren't alone in their state of confusion...

We call it the "Quarter-life Crisis."

FATE DETERMINES WHO COMES INTO OUR LIVES.....HEART DETERMINES WHO STAYS

cat tomorrow

I am playing the most slow placed game in history. There is a dart-board and I have darts. However, there are two quirky rules- I can throw only one dart a year and I will settle only for the bulls-eye.

3rd attempt and counting.

I know what I want and I will fight the hardest to get it.

Time to kill the CAT.

Signing off for tonight

From tha archives-nahin,ek ghazal

Beyond my poetry and prose in English, I have also occasionally dabbled in writing poetry in Hindi, or o be more specific ghazals(Hindi and Urdu for a large part of history was the same language written in different scripts). This ghazal(the first one I ever completed) does not really adhere to traditional rhyme and meter. Thats why I call my blog disjointed verses.

By the way, I use the takhallus,(poetic pseudonym) Daag . Urdu poetry has this tradition that the poet in the last sher(stanza refers back to himself in the third person).

There is a story behind this ghazal and indeed there is a theme that connects all the ghazals I have written till now(I have written so less that its possible). But that story of solitude and loneliness is another blog post. This ghazal was part of my second year of engineering magazine(around three and a half years old.) Time flows.

Nahin, ek ghazal

Usne mujhe aashiq kahke taal diya,magar
Baat mein uski ek jaadu tha jo main rootha bhee nahin.

Kehti hai khel hain sab,magar mujhe bataaye woh aaj
Aag agar idhar hai to kya dhuan udhar nahin.

Ye khumar nahin suroor hai tera kya bataaon tumhe,
main tere ishq mein yun dooba ki jaaga hi nahin.

Main uske do isharon mein hee sab samajh jaata hoon,
Woh teen lafzon mein bhee kyun haal bata paati nahin.

Wahi meri munsif hai, wahi meri qaatil bhee,
Mere ishq ke haq mein phaisla degi ya nahin.

'Daag', jal rahee hai ek ghazal seene mein,
Arz karta hoon baar-baar, phir bhee kyun bujhtee nahin.

Syed Ashraf Husain 'Daag'

नहीं, एक ग़ज़ल

उसने मुझे आशिक कहके ताल दिया,मगर
बात में उसकी एक जादू था जो मैं रूठा भी नहीं |

कहती है खेल हैं सब,मगर मुझे बताये वोह आज
आग अगर इधर है तो क्या धुआं उधर नहीं |

ये खुमार नहीं सुरूर है तेरा क्या बताओं तुम्हे,
मैं तेरे इश्क में यूँ डूबा की जागा ही नहीं |

मैं उसके दो इशारों में ही सब समझ जाता हूँ,
वोह तीन लफ़्ज़ों में भी क्यूँ हाल बता पाती नहीं |

वही मेरी मुंसिफ है, वही मेरी कातिल भी,
मेरे इश्क के हक में फैसला देगी या नहीं |

'दाग़', जल रही है एक ग़ज़ल सीने में,
अर्ज़ करता हूँ बार-बारफ़, फिर भी क्यूँ बुझती नहीं .|

स्येद अशरफ हुसैन 'दाग़ '

And then once in a while

I must confess, I am an obsessive web-surfer. I can surf bbcnews, nytimes.com ,wikipedia etc for hours. I enjoy reading the stuff in news and the mundane stuff which is not.

And then once in while ,I read some thing that breaks my heart. So while surfing bbcnews, I read this article about a woman who had gone drinking leaving her kids at home and it left me disturbed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/8362815.stm

I am not a big emotional wreck who cries at each and every moment. However the description of the kids situation was pretty saddening. There are some folks who don't deserve to be sad. Kids are one of them.

Anyway from the article:-

The eldest daughter was leaning out of the lounge window, was rain-soaked and had been crying, he said.

Stevenson's one-year-old son was "hysterical" in his cot upstairs.

The youngster was soaked in urine as was the three-month-old boy who was also covered in sick in his cot.

The four-year-old girl had tried to feed the baby by using chairs to climb up to a kitchen cupboard and reach a tin of milk powder.

I think it was the description of the four year old girl trying to feed her brother that set the rage and the outrage off. There is a feeling of helplessness there, a desperation that transcends boundaries and cultures.

I hope the kids are happy now and I hope the mother realizes, there is no injustice and cruelty greater than cruelty to the weak, innocent and the helpless.

I would be too judgemental but I do wish the mother one day may feel genuine regret and remorse.

There is no bigger and sharper prick than that of the conscience.

Am I confused?

Oh yes I am.

I was reading this guys article recently who could not decide whether to pursue a MBA or stay on with his company who were sending him to US. He said ,"I am a very confused person".

I read it , thought for a while and realized if he is in the kingdom of the confused, I am the realm's emperor.

So as a record for posterity, I will list down the choices that I have faced:-

a) Let me put it simply. If I could, I would have split into nine and followed nine different professions. And this is at the minimum.

b) I actually wanted to be a lawyer but told myself there are already too many lawyers out there.

c) One of the most gut-wrenching decisions has been the army. Being an army brat, I gave it serious thought but later decided I could not live out my life preparing for a war that never happens. Also to explain the disconnect I have reached the conclusion that there is a greater possibility of me contributing positively to the community in other roles.

d) I wanted to my BA honours in English and go into journalism. firstly my parents thought pretty low of journalist. Secondly, when I met the ex-head of Allahabad University's English department(he incidentally had taught my mother), he told me that the English curriculum is not challenging and a bright student like me will find it dry. Yes, there was a time when I was considered bright.

e) I wanted to be a doctor and this was also a pretty serious fling. It was only once I had sat for the medical entrance exams and qualified for dental that I suddenly realized, medicine as a career was a full time commitment and I really could not wait till 30 to be financially independent. (5.5 years MBBS, 3 years MD, 2 years D.Ch. Add a few years here and there and you have life starting at 31-32. Not moi.)

f) I had looked at the physics in class 11th and immediately swapped hindi for maths. So engineering was my option. I thought I could be more creative in engineering(Ah ,the days of innocence). I gave IIT a good attempt and joined computers engineering at AIT(when NIT Warrangal plans got torpedoed by the dammed naxals. Its another story),coz everyone convinced me I had an obession about computers.

g) I had also wanted to be a gelologist,a marine archaelogist, a marine engineer(gave it up when a relative in the merchant navy,told me put it after the last last option.) and also a historian. None were to be.

Now these were options that I have pretty much closed. Lets come to the options that unfortunately are not.

h) I wanted to do my PhD in computers. Now I am thinking about management. However a doctorate will push me into teaching and academic roles. I am not sure if I want that

i) I want to do my MBA and this is what I hope to soon pursue. However even here I am unsure if I want a long term plan or a short term plan. I like the short term idea. Work for six years and explore other options

j) I think somewhere in the future I want to set up my NGO to help others. However I am surprised how easily money can fill up the need of job-satisfaction.

k) I am still thinking of an IAS attempt as a viable career move. However I am unsure whether I want to commit.

l) I am also writing a book which is stuck at 15% mark. I also desire to be a motivational speaker and tour the world.

So dont talk to me aout how confused you are. I am way ahead of everybody.

And I think I missed out a few options

33rd verse. Wisdom of the TAO

I am replacing my desire for power
over others with my efforts
to understand and master myself
in any and all situations.

The things I love....
I have to learn to leave alone.

Simply adore the last line. Even the idea about knowing oneself is powerful.

Feelings

Feelings always seem,
a mirage.
A rainbow sandwich ,
with layers,
unknown,unseen and
untasted.

I bite, I munch, I savor,
I introspect,
And I still dont know,
what I feel for you,
how your memories bring up the tastes,
they do.

Doubt is my enemy,
I know.
There were the sparks,
But I thought it was just a phase,
You and me had nothing in common,
I thought and I told myself.

Now the cycle of doubt completes,
You hang over me and all around,
Like a smog on a wintery morning,
And on a happy day or sad day,
I replay in head again and again,
Your laugh,
Your smiles and the waving of compliments,
Your random new accent.

In times like these,
Where I am myself unsure of the truth,
How do I tell it to you,
For when you will read this here,
You will smell a scent from the past,
And wonder if it's you,
This narcissistic refers to.

Realization !

Just read this poem . Liked it. Thought I would share it.

What is within you is better than
What is behind you and ahead of you
We should live like a Lotus leaf
It is surrounded by water but dry
Not a drop of water settles on it
It is detached attachment or nishkama karma
Do your duty and leave the rest to GOD
We have free-will and choice as
we have reason but there is a subtle
distinction between GOD’s will and pleasure
He wills both vice and virtue but
what pleases Him is virtue.
Destiny is real as birth and death
Many are called, but few are Chosen
Self-pity is defeating but hubris is a delusion
we surrender not because we have to but
as we are United in Spirit, the spirit that was
never born and shall never perish !

Late night regrets

A dark cloud muffles the stars,
Its now late at night,
Loneliness creeps upto me in the darkness,
And I am there looking at your number.

I want to call,
Feel a frayed connection,
Imaginary or real,
And simply talk my heart out.

I look at the past,
And wonder ifff,
Just if,
I should have taken the risk,
And created magic myself when I could ,
Rather than hope for it to rise from nothing,
For I wonder if just maybe,
Just Maybe,
There could be a story between us

The connection though frayed,
Still exists.
Maybe time has not all,
Run out,
For I still remember you,
Pretty as the flowers,
With the flowers,
But now time has taken you,
So far far away

I ramble,
Delusional,
Hallucinating on a dark night,
Its late and lonely,
And I look at your number.

Again as always,
I wonder if I should call,
For you shall never call,
But I must maintain facades,
And today I feel overcome by regret,
So I shall call when I can again,
Fake the laugh.
And the attitude.

Eid Mubarak

This is a belated Eid Mubarak to everyone around.

This Eid has been the loneliest Eid's ever for me. In the entire mosque there was no one I know. Even in the years I have been away from home, and even last year I always had company. Classmates like nayab,tosif etc. Now they are all elsewhere. After the Eid namaz , I wished Eid Mubarak to the imam with the traditional hug and then some random people. I like the way how you can wish a totally random person Eid Mubarak and he will immediately wish you back.

So passed my Eid namaz. I came home and spent hours calling up relatives. then I gave myself a treat and prepared a multi layered custard as desert for dinner. All I can tell you there were five distinct layers .

Anyway so this Ramzan taught me a ot of things. The early morning five to evening six-thirty fasts were a bit hectic. I would feel very sleepy around 3 and my PM for lack of a socket was sitting next to me. The yawns were devastating. I also learnt I am very weak. However alhamdolillah the month passed. At the beginning it seemed a big task. Now I just dont know where the days flew.

Anyway Ramzan is the month where we forsake food and water.But more than that its the month of self-control. And I realized I was weak in many aspects.

Ramzan is a month to retrospect. I did not really get the time to do it often but still I carry forward valuable lessons.

Untile next year. 320 days left. :)

Eid Mubarak everybody.