Sure I'm a pundit! Everyone is!

"Whatever happened to the old "I don't know"."

Now by the look of the title even a layman would have almost guessed what the passage is going to be all about. and by layman I don't mean a person who has gotten laid(for all the laymen) but someone who just isn't very accustomed to the nuances of abstruse writing.

What I intend to present here is an issue that, I'm guessing, every normal person in the world goes through on a daily basis, a disease more or less, something that makes people of the normal variety feel different from others ( the irony ). Yes what I'm talking about is the globally widespread phenomenon which goes by the not very aptly 'nomenclature'd "punditry".

Agree to disagree or disagree to agree, you've got to acquiesce if not agree that this phenomenon, this pandemic of sorts is out there, blazing in the everlasting fire of the human psyche.

Take a daily normal example which I'm sure everyone goes through now and then : You have decided to eat at some "who the hell cares" eating joint because you've got a recent inkling to splurge some of your parents' hard earned cash. Now, unfortunately, in normal circumstances you would invite some friends along because nobody wants to go out some place to eat alone. Now, how do you go about selecting this elusive perfect abode of culinary delight. For simplicity's sake, let's just say that it's only 2 friends that you take out with you for food. One goes :"Dude! Let's just eat some burgers!I hear that the burger joint down the road is quite awesome." The other one because he doesn't want to be upsided by the other friend goes :"No dude! Burgers are lame, they've got tons of cholesterol in them, let's just have some kababs down at the kabab joint,I hear they're quite awesome this time of the day." the 1st friend goes :"Interesting choice considering that kababs are also pretty loaded on cholesterol, burgers are way lesser than kababs as far as cholesterol is concerned." The 2nd friend goes :"Alright then! Screw cholesterol! I just feel like eating some kababs!". This goes on for the better part of who the hell cares. In the end : you get the food, enjoy it, feel a bit full(because eating joints never give complete satisfaction), but after having gone through quite a while of the deliberations of the 2 pundits that you brought along.

Now I know that the above example wasn't very good but it showed a general picture of how people can transform into pundits without notice or memo.

From "punditing" around about who would win the next EPL match to which philosophy in life is the best, punditry is seen everywhere.(A note: Aren't there just so many millions of lucrative philosophies in the world. One would be absolutely mindboggled over choosing which one's the best. There's the old, tried and tested "One should play safe as one's got a lot of responsibilites not only to one's family but also to one's society" and the complete opposite "It's a short life, live life fully, take all the risks, experience every experience etc" and a million different variants of these 2 philosophies mixed together in some ratio. It is close to impossible to choose the recipe for the perfect philosophy.) Everyone's got some insightful information on every subject in the world (and "if you've noticed" none more so than the subject of making a girlfriend).

So people, don't ever worry about what you should eat for lunch, or what time would it be best for going to the local post office, or what training regime you should follow, or what would be best for everything in your life. Just call up a friend, or foe, and give the pundit a chance, I'm sure you'll get many insightful suggestions to pass a lifetime pondering over. The fundey as we like to call them never stop coming.

And please after reading this, don't call me a pundit, I certainly don't intend to be one.

Again : "Whatever happened to the old "I don't know"."

It's all in the Head!

Every now and then I come across(and I'm sure you do too) situations of such stupendous knavery of the human mind that it makes me wonder,"Is the human mind really a marvel??As the scholars seem to suggest more often than not!!!". I mean, the memorable memory, organic organization or credible creativity of the mind notwithstanding, we generally come across specimens showcasing the idiotic idiocracy, perverse perversion, stupendous stupidity, contentious confusion,or the usual (some might call it meditation) still state lethargy that seem to absolutely annihilate the faith that some of us believers might have in the capacity of the Mind. It's like God created these special "pioneers" for the rest of the world to notice and take a lesson as to what one should do to become what one set out not to become(or, set out to become, don't know about these people).

Now from the above paragraph, the faint of mind might have concluded that I'm writing about the goings on in Vatican State . That's where you're mistaken. To make it simpler, you're wrong.
I am simply bringing to light a phenomenon that seems to be engulfing our generation of today(driving home the point). People are becoming stupid.(you could note that as the prime argument of the passage in case this passage is included later on to train young minds in the art of reading comprehension).

And it's just not the superstitious sentimentalist that I'm writing about here. It's the general public who don't seem to know how to get out of a herd. Taking the point of the recent outbreak of Swine flu into consideration, what's got the people into such a hubbub?? Agreed that the flu is highly contagious. Agreed that it's got a chance of causing much pain in the body. Agreed that it may cause a few deaths. But what's the point of making such a huge fuss about it. Case in point, the Supreme Court suddenly decides that it would be better if Pune shuts down for a week. Yeah the curfew would be ok for say a week, might even slow down the onslaught during that time, but I don't know, does the virus suddenly stop spreading its wrath after a week??Why did the top judiciary suddenly decide to make such an uncalled for decision??Is it because of crowd pressure, the pressure of keeping the crowd happy, or atleast in a temporary state of satisfaction for a time being?? Well if that was what you were thinking, then you were right. Now, I'm not going to say that what was done was wrong, because I'm getting a free mini-vacation out of it, but for the sake of argument, I'd just highlight the fact of how tension and unawareness of the mind rules the way of life. People are going paranoid about swine flu, but when you ask a person of how it all started? What was the root cause of this mass proliferation??
They say,"arr!um!!Pigs!!foreign people eat pigs!!".

Keeping the criticism and the seriousness aside(gosh, I can't believe that I actually wrote something serious here), I know that H1N1 has spread beyond control (the constant mention of swine flu is pretty irritating), and I hope that the mind continues to play its tricks because it's giving us all a hell of a free time isn't it!

Go!Go!Go!

So whats the deal with these tuition folk anyway???

Times are tough these days for me.

What with spending(more like wasting) my mornings and a good part of my afternoons at my lame excuse of a college, I've to come back home and head over to tuition because I'm just not good enough to clear CAT(that's right, I am going to be 99%iler this year) on my own. After having spent a good 3 hours at the bloody tuition(which is probably helping me a lot right now), I suddenly notice that my day's almost over(yeah! I have to get up early so usually I end up sleeping by an early-ish midnight. Looking at my lifestyle, I wonder what it would have been like if there were no tuition classes whatsoever.

These classes, these "helpful" tuition classes, these classes which have been built to "hone" the talent of the student, these classes which suck up the hard earned money of the Indian middle class society, are quite frankly a pain in the haas(yeah, you get my meaning!).

If there were no blood sucking, corporate, profit making tuition classes, wouldn't everything be so simple. Most of the day of the average student who's gonna be appearing in a major, life changing entrance exam is spent in envy and apprehension over how good the other students are doing and comparing the progress of these other students to their own progress. Many students have come upto me and asked "Yaar! Tooh to phod raha hai! Top maar raha hai .Kahaan se padhta hai??Kitna padhta hai??" My reply is always a simple "I know" followed by a "It's the in born talent that's coming out in the tests man" and then to add salt to the person's wounds a "What are you doing these days man??"(since the person isn't doing much study and already feels like a bum because of that).

But not swaying from the argument here, as I write, with no tuition classes, there would be no pressure. Also evincing this is the known fact that tuitions cause students to work so much harder than they're gonna work if there were no tuitions to attend in the first place. So increases the level of difficulty set in the paper and since more and more students are working their asses off in the tuitions, the competition also doesn't lag far behind so much so that these prestigious Indian institutes have become the most difficult institutes to get into in the world !
10 lac people appear for IITs for a mere 4500 seats.
3.5 lac appear for IIMs for a 'oh so less I can't believe that it's even possible' 1000 seats.
Where does the competition arise from?? One might say that this is because of the changing mindset of Indian parents and Indian youth who look at engineering and an MBA as career saviours( me being one of these unsavory lot ). Another might quip, that the level of competition has improved because of overall improvement in the education and the fact that people actually give a care about their careers nowadays unlike the old days where a person would've been thrilled to be a BA or MA or other such 'is this actual study????' courses.

But I say that these reasons are so obvious that they may not have been needed to even be mentioned. The real underlying reason, the reason that has been festering in the mind but hasn't been given voice to by the masses is (and don't give me a 'Let me guess!') Tuition. After all, these problems that I've written of have become really distressing since the rise of the tuition. I mean just look at the facts, tuition came up in the late 90s - early 2000s and the exam difficulty and competition was suddenly off the charts. Because suddenly everyone started thinking that they could now clear these difficult exams by simply paying a 30 thousand rupees.

Now I have been criticizing tuition as if they were the spawn of Hitler and Mussolini consummating, but they do have some good points as well(I'm not one who leaves a passage with a closed discussion). They help us with the usual drag. (I'm not here to expand on that, everyone already knows too much about the good qualities of tuitions)

So don't hate me if I say that tuition is the worst thing that has happened in the past decade, well apart from the many terror strikes and the thousands of lives lost. I mean it in the best sense possible, I call it a double edged sword. But I certainly hate its guts for this Catch 22 that it has put our lives in.

The revenge of the Discarded

Okay! So how are we doing today!??
If I had asked this question to someone(of my caliber and aptitude that is ahem ahem) a year ago, the reply would have been a chirpy and high spirited "O nothing much man! But you know wat i'm going to get a fantastic job(the idea is that we were high spirited back then with placements being ensured and all that)!

Cut to 2009 (mid-latish! hopefully economic condition will be ok by mid-latish 2010)! I go upto someone and ask the same aforementioned question and the reply comes "O nothing much man! And you know wat, I don't think that I'll be getting a job after all! boo hoo(to add to the whole effect)!!

So what was the reason for this detrimental (more like totally mental)turn of events!!!
Well! The answer my unaware reader is Recession, yeah the most famous word in the world right now, ECONOMIC RECESSION. ( point to be noted : it happens to be the most famous word in the world, but when you go upto a "learned" bloke and ask him/her the reason for this recession or what is it exactly, the reply would be a "Uh! um! uhhhhhh! eh! ooohhhh! Hey I'm getting late, I really gotta split! Catch you later!")

Yeah so what I just wrote above wasn't all that informative, was it!! Recession!! so what!! big deal!!, we all know everything about it! But I was writing about the replies of confident people at different times, wasn't I! So concentrating on that!

So back in the day(I say it like this because it really feels as if the good old days were a looooong time back), a person would come up to me and say "Are you filling up the pre SSB form?","Are you trying out for Google internship?","Are you interested in a demonstration at this very important company which would help you get a job?", my answer would be a flat "No", because I knew that all this was just plain "unnecessary" and that my job was "ensured" by the "college placement cell". Recession has, you could say, marked a small crater on that confidence.
Now I go upto people to ask"When's the CDSE coming out?","Should I apply for NSE exam?","Shouldn't we also apply for BSF and maybe for Railway engg exam as well to go with?" as if my life depended on the opinion of the listener.

Are those discarded offers and chances coming back to haunt us!!!!

What are we feeling at these crossroads(just adding to the effect) of our lives! Are we feeling a simple "depressed" because we don't think that we might be able to land a job in these gruesome circumstances; or are we hopeful that maybe the recession cloud will finally lift and everything will be back to its previous glorious self; or are we confident that there's going to be major downs in life as there are going to be ups, what matters is how we rise from our downs and try, try to transform them into our ups; or are we impressed at the amazing writing skills of the writer who manages to confuse the reader yet bring the message across fantastically in a subtle way(had to add that).

So what are you going to be now! Taking a page out of Lance Armstrong's book(yeah he has written a book but this is just a phrase, so don't start reading his book now, or you could if you're a fan and don't have anything to do in your life, like preparing to get a JOB most likely) I'd say that we could only fight and hope to live strong.

The Importance of Glut!

This might be a situation that you all might be accustomed to. You walk into a restaurant and you hear these squelching noises coming from somewhere. You turn around and see this bizarre person vacuuming his food (except that he's not vacuuming! don't get carried away)in front of your eyes at the speed of a Sukhoi and with the precision of a blind Wild Yak. You look at this poor soul and go "UUgggHHH! Wat a glutton" or simply don't say anything and go ahead and order your food(but still feel uncomfortable because of the squelch and belch) or you simply leave because you just lost your appetite.

Zooming now to a whole new situation.

How often does this happen to you. You wake up late in the morning , you check the time - go "Oh! S***!" and then hurriedly go about your morning business. You somehow manage to complete everything in time, albeit with the hedge on your head for want of combing and the occasional unpolished shoes, unmade tie, unpressed shirt and other minor details. You go "Chalta hai" and walk towards your destination with a mission : to reach your college in time man. Meanwhile, the breakfast you were supposed to eat dignifies itself in the refrigerator or becomes fodder to the cockroaches in the dustbin. You reach your college in time happy that you won't have to face your teacher's rant and that your term work is still safe. You take great pains in attending the oncoming classes, holding your eyes open so that your teacher(read messiah) doesn't catch you snoring. By the time you're finished with your morning onslaught, you suddenly hear a painful plea...... a protest..........arising from the center of your abdomen. You feel as if you've been invaded by a thousand tapeworms and this sudden feel of hunger, this ravenous hunger, which is plaguing you like the BUBONIC. You ignore the pain, being the man(or woman) as you are (duty comes before pleasure or somesuch). You attend another enervating session : this time a practical if you're lucky. Thinking that you're going to gain a lot out of this, you attend it again more for the sake of the messiah's approval than your own well being. After what seems like a lifetime you wind up and thankfully head for the canteen, your hunger absolutely killing you by now. With dangerous thoughts in mind( because of the terrible day ) and the hunger of a hundred to back you up, you attack the food like a wolf attacks its prey. Your food becomes a live thing in front of you, flying off the plate to land on the table, then on someone else's lap, then maybe,  an this has been reported on some rare occasions, flying out of the window onto somebody's face. People pass by looking at you as if you are some circus freak, comments fly in from all corners of the canteen , people start criticizing you for your table manners, accusing you for making their visit to the canteen such an unsavory experience. You don't care at that time do you, not when you are in the "Wolf Trance".Words fly in like "Such a glutton",  "Look at that fat***!As if he hasn't eaten in a million centuries". You suddenly look up and forget about your food for an instant (introspect basically). Hadn't you felt the same way about some chap a few days back ( or whenever, basically you feel sorry ). You get this strange feeling in your gut and you know it's guilt. So you see(Here 'See' is of special importance, not simply meaning percieve, look, detect or glance but the much deeper "comprehend").

In the end I'd just like to point out that Glut comes in handy to save your life in a life threatening situation as explained above.

So before you go 'ughhyy' on someone else, just cool down and think before your react.

RESPECT GLUT!