Three men and a baby

We meet many people in our lives and some of them really influence us. Sometimes it’s just a single sentence from them which'll influence us a lot. Yes, this is what we call “quotes”. We quote them later. I was thinking about three such sentences and persons who told them to me.

1. Dr. M S Anand – Free time is a state of mind

What is the great thing here? Cant you see that having free time is a state of mind? Yes, it definitely is. Lately, when I think I am getting crushed by different things to be done, I think about this sentence. This sentence is the equivalent of “There is no spoon”. When I really need time, I have it. So, the time is always there, it’s just that I got to get it. So it’s up to me and that means it’s up to the state of my mind. Abstract for you? – Learn to live with it.

And this Dr. Anand was the Director of IIT, while I was there. Probably he still is. This was heard in the first day’s orientation talk. This quote makes me regret – when I say I don’t have time.

2. Dr. Paulson – There are no failures in your life; only experiences

Last day at Prof. P C Thomas’ classes. Paulson sir – Organic Chemistry guru was giving all of us – the advice for entrance exam. He told, “All of you are appearing for entrance, not all of you will get through. Just realize that entrance is not the ultimate thing. Not getting entrance is not a failure; it’s just another experience”. He continued, “There are no failures, only experiences”. From that time onwards, I follow this principle.

Just like my well-wisher commented once – “Nadannathum, Nadakkunnathum, Nadakkanullathum nallathinu”. He means “All that happened, happening and to happen are for good” – because you always get something positive from them. So even if something bad happens, it’s not bad as long as you learn from it.

One Tamil girl came once to Munich. I was her host. I was talking with her and I told something like “It was a bad experience, anyway I learned my lesson”. She corrected, “It was not a bad experience as long as you’ve learned from it”. So that explains it.

3. Francis Pullokkaran – Life is not a bed of roses

I guess it was during my BTech days, sometime I was going through lot of tension. This friend of my father and colleague of my mother came home. We offered him a chair and he told he’ll sit down. He sat on the steps and we talked and talked. He was giving a talk on his experiences in life. He had had a couple of painful things in life, then he told the above sentence. Then it really struck me. I was having some little tension and compared to what he had had, it was nothing. I realized, if you mix this bed-of-roses and no-failure-only-experience dialogues, you get “Life is a great teacher”.

This is the story of three men and a baby. Those three men have made their impact on the baby who is/was me. It’s actually stupid that I had to have their help to figure out these so evident things. Even without their help, wouldn’t I have figured out these? Yes, Of course I’d have. They were the catalysts or rather trigger for my thinking about these. I stood on the shoulders of those experienced people and I could see far more than I could have seen by myself.

Change of topic

I am getting more and more pleasure of learning German. At the same time I am not sure whether I am learning it the way I should. All the grammar and related things, I am learning as if it’s some mathematical stuff. I ask my teacher “why?” all the time. And most of the times she replies – “Sandeep, Das ist nicht logisch” – “Sandeep, that’s not logical”. Basically, I shouldn’t be thinking why is the grammar that way. After all why should I think it has to have a logic? Is it some CFG?

Another major thing is that I am very comfortable with English. At IIT, I had a room-mate from Bombay. When we used to ask him to tell us is proper English rather than in the Marati-Hindi mix, he would start explaining things in English. After a couple of sentences, the medium becomes Hindi. Gradually it will move to the Marati-Hindi mix and finally pure Marati. The best part is that he was not aware of this transition.

This is happening to me. I start to talk in German and gradually move to English. Just like Meera Jasmine’s classical dance turns to disco-dance in the song “Enthu paranjalum nee” in “Achuvinte Amma”.

Change of topic

How can I leave without mentioning at least a single romantic incident? I was going in the train. I got in with a Cappuccino. I stood at a corner. A couple got into the same compartment and they stood hugging each other, they made it sure that the pole on which people hold is in between them so they don’t have to hold it to make sure that they wont fall.

May be it is not according to the travel-etiquette, I was looking at them. They were kissing lips to lips, all the English, German and French ways. I was simply looking at them and sipping my Cappuccino. After sometime the girl noticed me noticing them. It was during a kiss and once it was over, she smiled at me. I smiled back. Her lover continued to kiss her on lips. I continued to kiss my Cappuccino cup…. Smiling after every sip.

Later I thought, I should have winked when she looked at me. :) - would have been funny, eh?

Signing off, Sands.

PS1: My dear well-wisher, I know who are you. First time you commented I didn’t understand. But I do know now. I know you don’t need any proof. Thank you for visiting my blog.

PS2: njan-v4, if you couldn’t recognize this well-wisher, shame on you. There is no point thinking you as a mind reader.

_