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‘Thoughts’ Category

  1. Where is the problem?

    September 18, 2014 by Sunit Nandi

    Picture this.

    You’re a 20 year old guy. One unfine day, you head into a really serious problem facing which will drastically change the course of your life depending on the decision you take. You call up your parents for a solution but they are perplexed too because they see things exactly in the same perspective as you and they don’t know any better either.

    Fine then, you decide to contact your social circle instead. You try to get in touch with the person you adore the most (bestfriend or partner), but then you realise what sort of a nervous emotional wreck he/she is. That person has a nature of getting into the weirdest of weird mood swings and does things that do nothing apart from worrying you. He/she probably has switched off the phone and might have buried himself/herself in the corner. You fail to get in touch. Then you try looking up the rest of your besties. Friend A is away in another nation and lost contact with you. Friend B has doesn’t like to talk to you anymore because of your differences. Friend C is pretty busy with his/her own activities and probably doesn’t have time to look back at you anymore. And have no idea what happened to Friend D. Still no solution.

    Your next step is to definitely ask other people around you about it. However, your problem is so critical that its better not giving away details about it to anyone. Who knows, some opportunistic person/adversary might use your situational weakness for his/her own benefit.

    Realising you have no option left, you ultimately try to ask questions anonymously on Internet discussion boards like Reddit, 4chan or Quora. In comes a stream of people reading and replying to the post. Some appreciating you, some condemning you, some pitying you, some posting irrelevant photo comments, some sharing your posts on their social networks and some making jokes and memes out of it and the rest bashing one another and proving their might but there isn’t even a definitive answer that you seek.

    You sit down, frustrated, wondering what happened to the world. You feel lonely like you’ve never felt. You realise how much everything changed in the last few years.

    One thing you never understand. Where is the problem?

    People be like, its 2014. Why even bother? And then rain statements on you like generation gap and equivalent shit.

    Category Thoughts | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments

  2. Why is teamwork difficult in India?

    March 23, 2014 by Sunit Nandi

    I have a wonderful friend Bijaya Lakshmi Sarma with whom I often talk a lot. We discuss anything and everything from schooldays to psychology to technology and sometimes even the Indian society. On one day while chatting with her, an idea hit me that I wanted to share with everyone but I cannot explain verbally, so I’ll write it all down.

    If you are an Indian, I hope you are already frustrated with many problems. My fellow Indians have often written numerous articles on social evils, education system, corruption and the like. Today, I’m going to write on something that has never been written on properly before, and that is “teamwork” and how it is related to our existing problems.

    Teamwork is something that is difficult to perform in India, mainly because how our social system is designed. I’ll now be stating my reasons why I feel that way.

    Let me show you the background first.

    We are born as an average Indian baby and grow up under the care of our parents and a few years later we are ready to go to school. At school we first learns that we have to compete with everyone around us in all aspects. Parents often compare their us with other kids and make us feel guilty of not living up to their so called “high expectations”, without which they will not be “respectable” in the society. What we all fail to realize is that being an all-rounder is a myth and we all have our strengths and weaknesses. That every child is special and none is perfect.

    study

    Moving deeper into school life, many of us are often not given a chance to perform in activities and fine arts, just because we failed our qualifying attempt. Same happens to sports. Schools are only interested to train and improve kids who are already good at their activity, because their “reputation” depends on such students. Hence, the mindset of superiority and inferiority starts to build up at an early age. In my opinion, a school should be an incubation zone and not an elimination zone. But more often than not, its the other way round. At school everyone should be given every opportunity to try out every possible activity whether they are good at it or not. After all many skills are gained by experience. But this never really happens.

    Then comes our famous engineering (like IIT-JEE, AIEEE) and medical (NEET) entrance examinations and not to mention, the other exams to join the top arts and commerce colleges. We’re all expected to join a bandwagon and perform “because everyone is doing it” and parents force us too, without even thinking twice what we actually want to do with our lives.

    indian-parents

    College is a rather quiet phase in the first half. Since we are un-innovative, lets not expect any fireworks here.

    Then we move on to job placements. There is huge competition in jobs and we all try to get better jobs than our peers and to secure our lives the best way possible.

    offer

    Then when we start climbing the job ladder, we Indians have this mindset of trying to make the most of it without giving a second thought to our ethics and our responsibilities as a human being. We put our coworkers in trouble, whenever we can. Some of us take bribes to fill our pockets. We don’t like to work. We look for loopholes to bypass most of the problems without actually solving them. We want instant gratification at any cost and without thinking of the consequences. Getting rich and having power is all what roams free in our minds.

    bribery

    This gets reflected in our society. We try to make ourselves look better than our fellow citizens by hook or by crook. Moreover, instead of solving a major problem we like to avoid it and shove the blame off to someone else’s shoulders. Unknowingly or knowingly we spend most of out time trying to beat people at their own game or one-upping them, instead of trying to make our own lives better. We also force our children to outperform other children in their studies and activities because “its a matter of name/pride/honour”.

    And this vicious cycle goes on.. to make ourselves honourable while dishonouring others. And that is why our nation doesn’t progress at the pace we expect. Because we have a tendency to drag people down who wish to progress.

    people

    I’m not saying we Indians are not hardworking. We are indeed hardworking, but do not channel our efforts in an appropriate manner.

    So this is the background so far.

    Now I’ll state the reasons why teams don’t go well in India:

    1. Its deeply ingrained in our personality and society that we need to compete with anyone and everyone that we see and to prove that we are better than anyone at whatever they’re good at. envy
    2. We let our honour and pride (read arrogance) overpower our logic and make us blind. arrogance
    3. We follow the beaten track that almost everyone follows. It only hampers our opportunity to create new opportunities and co-exist with others. job
    4. We only think of instant gratification and short term gains.
    5. When made to work in a team, we get deeply involved in jealousy and power struggle with other team members. (See point 1) When problems do not sort out, we tend to act secessionist (like splitting up) and not in a cooperative way.
    6. When we shirk our responsibilities, we make excuses and shift the blame to someone else in the team. Same applies to our mistakes. Painkillers
    7. We do not try to understand the efforts a hardworking team member puts in and also continue to make him/her go through all trouble. And worse, even drag him/her down.
    8. Lastly but most importantly, we force our opinion on others and try to curb their expressions and wishes. We do it on our children and force them to be like us and the cycle goes on. roti

    I know I have listed the extremities of our behaviour. But as long as these will continue we cannot expect to progress. The faster we get out of this cycle, the better it is for us.

    Our future is in our hands. We cannot continue to afford placing our ego above everything else.

    Category Thoughts | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

  3. Gender bullshit, do we really need it?

    September 27, 2013 by Sunit Nandi

    We often come across boys saying, girls are hard to understand, and conversely, girls saying boys are hard to understand. Deep down within, I feel this has nothing to do with our gender at all. It all comes down to our mindset and our upbringing.

    From the very birth of a baby, the gender determines how it’ll be treated by the parents. This begins with what clothes to wear and what toys to play with. Slowly, as the child grows, the distinction begins to harden in and kids of two genders are treated differently. While some of the distinctions are indeed necessary, most just end up to be an unnecessary barrier.

    No, I won’t be discussing in detail about gender distinctions, as my point of this post is entirely different.

    My point is how boys and girls see each other. Though the walls have almost crumbled between the opposites, still, there are some things that remain, some things that constantly remind me that most do not and will never accept anyone from the other gender, to be one of their own. And those people who do, usually don’t receive the same acceptance from others.

    Then there is another set of people who take gender stereotypes too seriously, and in my opinion, they are the ones who actually continue spreading the stereotypes. See them passing sexist comments at others, blocking equal access, ridiculing emotions and activities and more nonsense. Don’t call me a feminist or a chauvinist here. I have noticed people from either gender doing it, usually tagging anyone not conforming to the stereotypes to be sort of an “outcast”.

    My parents have always told me that gender doesn’t define a person’s personality or ability. It only defines a person’s biological responsibility, nothing more, nothing less. Yet, I keep hearing my elders (my parents included too) comment “as a man you should…” or “as a woman you need to…”, sometimes even “are you a man/woman ?” (depending on the case), so much that I actually get a headache. Call me a maniac, but I think about things that people around me usually take for granted.

    Romantic relationships are supposed to unite two individuals (usually of opposite gender), right? It is supposed to encourage love, companionship and understanding (and to optionally extend the generation and family lineage), right? What I actually see today is that most of such relationships are nothing more than heaps of over-hyped rubbish. Most people just get dragged along by their feelings and care less about understanding their partner. Add to that, tons of gender-related stereotypes, and BOOM, we have relationship problems when we have ACTUALLY no problem. 😉

    Coming to another side of the entire problem, is crimes. We have crimes against women (which gets really good attention), and crimes against men too (they just don’t get the required attention), adding to the muddle. Who and what to blame and rectify is again a twisted case here, and often always is somehow traced back to people’s mentalities and upbringing. The Indian government is so wacky, that the lawmakers try to get good mileage out of them instead of actually solving the cases, by making the situation more unequal and worse. The general public is even wackier and gives me amazingly good heartbreaks.

    The thing is, how long are we going to suffer over all this? How long are we going to forcibly divide ourselves, when we are actually meant to discover unity?

    I dream of a world, where each one is a person, and individual, and not a representative of a gender, where everything is transparent, where there is true union and acceptance. A world, where people actually try to understand each other, rather than seeing their opposite’s reaction compared with a set of rules. Once we get to that point, I hope most of our gender related problems will be minimized. We’ll also have a place for our “special cases” LGBT community as well.

    This is something that will take a great deal of time to happen, and I do not have high hopes of seeing it occur in my lifetime, but then? We can always dream, right?

    We only need to change our thinking and our mentality and see the world in a whole new light, and then that day we’ve always dreamt of will not be very far away.

    What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to drop a comment and let me know.

    Category Thoughts | Tags: ,,,,,, | 9 Comments

  4. Dastan-é-blogging

    August 17, 2013 by Sunit Nandi

    If you guys have seen my posts already, you may have noticed I have been blogging here for over 5 years by now. In this post, I’ll be telling you about my blogging journey and how I finally reached to where I am right now.

    Back in 2002, I was studying in Chatsworth International School, Singapore. I’d give the credit to one of my classmates there named Hugh Bullen for introducing me to the world of web design by showing me how to write in HTML. He was pretty pesky, annoying and awkward to most people, including our class teacher. But to me and a couple of other guys, he was quite friendly. It’d be right to say he was moody. One fine day, he wrote a basic “Hello world” page on a piece of paper and after that, I gazed at the paper for a few minutes, trying to understand the whole meaning as he explained the tags. Later that day at home, I was looking up guides on HTML and practicing.

    I didn’t know where to host the files and I was pretty much confused at that point. Then an ex-student of dad named Parlapalli Madhusudhana Rao “Madhu”, set me up to use Yahoo! GeoCities for the webpages and Yahoo! photos for the photo gallery. After that I spent a lot of time learning HTML and made a simple website for the family.

    Back in India in 2003, I finally got bored with the 15 MB storage limit on GeoCities. Then another friend suggested me to try Tripod by Lycos with 20 MB hosting. It was on that host I first started blogging. Now comes the ‘how’ part. I was once going through their CGI scripts section. I saw a ‘web log wrapper’. Curiously, I applied it, and bingo, I had a nice blog with a WYSIWYG editor. I was never serious about blogging then and hardly felt with maintaining it. But the idea was damn fascinating.

    During the time 2004 to 2005, Google began to expand, launching GMail, Talk, Google Pages and then buying out Blogger. Someone suggested me to move to Google Pages for hosting the site. There was a storage limit of 100 MB and the WYSIWYG editor with nice templates was very superb. However, I wasn’t really comfy with Blogger in the beginning, so I used Windows Live Spaces to blog instead. I liked their nicely done ‘notes’ feature and used it for almost 2 years. 

    While all this was going on, I’d share URLs of my sites with classmates enquiring about their opinion. But, I was often always laughed at and often called nerdy. Some even said I was doing a pointless job.

    In the meanwhile I switched to a good reputed free web host (I don’t remember the name now) which then recently began offering 5 GB of space plus PHP and MySQL databases. I was new to the Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP (LAMP) method of hosting websites, so initially I tried to make a basic webpage for family with MS Frontpage and embedded PHP scripts in the syntax.

    In 2006-2007, our school started off a Ecological and Environmental club and then they appointed to make their website. While I was in the process of doing so, I came across the WordPress blogging platform for the first time. WordPress had just reached its v2 state. After some initial discussion, we decided to go forward with it. The school, however, refused to grant us hosting on their own server. So we had to buy our own hosting to get it working. I learnt a lot working with WordPress in the process.

    As this was going on, the free host I was on started leaning towards bankruptcy. They began asking for donations to run. Soon afterwards, they had to shut down. Then after that, we had Live Spaces deprecating their notes feature, so I moved over to TypePad. I loved TypePad for its simplicity, and back in those days, it beat both Blogger and WordPress with their design. I wasn’t still a serious blogger. I just blogged about life events, few ‘yay’ posts and random stuff.

    After days and days of searching on the internet, I finally found x10Hosting. Their free plan gave away a whole LAMP stack with 2.5 GB of space. I thought it was too good to be true, but still signed up anyway. My account took a whole week to get approved. I was at the verge of giving up, but when I tried it, I was impressed. It turned out to be better than the paid host our club was using. TypePad then decided to go paid, making me leave their service. Then I got a .co.cc free domain name and with my hosting account I rebuilt the family website and also installed WordPress 2.2 to serve my blog. And since then, history was made as I never changed this set up ever again.

    Then came the blogging buzz in India in 2008-2009. Bollywood stars like Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan began to blog. It was heavily publicised in the media, with articles on how to start a blog being printed on every other newspaper. Blogging was on everyone’s lips. The people who once dissed me for ‘pointless efforts’ began creating their own blogs like there was no tomorrow. I had one of the greatest LOL moments of my life then. It just seemed that the public memory is just like a beach. You make a mark on the sand, very soon its washed away. However, when the tide comes up, it stays there a while before leaving, making the beach appear like it isn’t there. Here the beach is the public, and the sea tide is the media. People only accept what the media says, not what you as an individual say.

    Soon enough Twitter took the world by storm. In India, it was more of a hurricane. Again the media went maniac over it. Then our nation’s honourable ladies and gentlemen joined Twitter. The common man made his account to follow them all. I watched the whole drama unfold itself like a poor joke. News and music channels began to display those ‘elite’ tweets on their scrolling tickers. I laughed at the whole stupidity of making a mountain of a molehill. I wasn’t inclined to join Twitter because I did not have a proper reason to actually use it. It’d have just been another unused account, like most old Twitter accounts that were created by humans of our nation.

    I finally got the message that the people around me were just trying to be hippie kewl dudes and babes by keeping up to the trends, and they weren’t the right guys to ask for any sort of opinion. I realised I needed to find the right people to discuss with.

    Its year 2011. My friend Farhan Hussain, a senior at school, was very much into web design and web application projects. His activities were quite popular, and got immense support from numerous friends. His only problem was that he never did anything for long terms. He used to start a project, develop it, maintain it for a month or two and then move on. This attitude of his was rather irritating to me, and we often had ego clashes and exchanges of harsh words took place. To be really honest, we never looked like friends to everyone else. Even though we had differences, we still started Techno FAQ with couple of other friends, and it turned out to be quite successful. Then Farhan left school and within a year, joined a college in Bangalore for a course on Mass Communication. Finally, according to his nature, he wanted to shut down Techno FAQ saying, “Dude this is just a technology group, the fact that has progressed this far is something significant. Now I think its time we move on and deal with more important things in life.” I vehemently refused to let it shut down when it had already come this far, and that I had made a whole new circle of friends because of it. Plus, I had my own plans of extending Techno FAQ. We again had fights over it. He first made me quit the group and asked me to build my own. But a week later, he asked me to join it back and he himself left it for ever, for reasons I don’t even know till now.

    This is year 2012. Now that Techno FAQ was in the care of the remaining members, we added a whole lot of new members in the management to take the group forward. As it was expanding, we decided that a website was necessary. To fulfil the requirements, I upgraded my hosting plan to premium paid hosting. The web host promptly moved to my account to their premium servers. technofaq.org was bought and started our site and began some serious tech blogging. We also joined Google+ and Twitter to make a presence.

    A few months later, I decided it was time to resume building my personal websites too. So I bought nandifamily.in and moved all my sites from the old domain to the new one. Then I imported all old posts from the older blogs I once had and imported them here. Finally I shut down all other other blogging accounts. After a little bit of touch-ups, this blog was ready, and I was finally ready for some serious blogging. Also a point worth mentioning is that I finally have people around who love blogs and are willing to read what I write. I hope to maintain this blog for as long as possible, and make it close to a personal diary as far as possible. Hope you guys continue reading it.

    I also joined Twitter as I had enough friends to tweet to and enough topics to tweet about.

    In case you want to read my old posts, you are free to do so. This blog has posts dating back to 2007.

    With this I end my post. A few words I wish to tell everyone is: No matter what anyone says or if anyone stops you, do what you love to do. Any good activity that is going to benefit you or people around you is worth doing if you love doing it. Don’t listen to negatives. Remember that all people will not be able to appreciate your work. Just carry on and find people who will actually love doing things with you. The world will seem much better and happier.

    Category Computers and Internet, Hobbies, Thoughts | Tags: ,,,,, | 2 Comments

  5. Oh my girl! – Extended edition

    August 14, 2013 by Sunit Nandi

    This is my own composition, rather a poem written in a non-poetic manner.

    So basically, it is a story of two childhood friends, a boy and a girl and how their reality changes with time. This is written from the point-of-view of the boy, with an emphasis on his adoration for the girl, which ultimately turns into love. But it goes unappreciated in the end as the girl falls for a guy who doesn’t care for her and in the process takes her closest friend for granted over and over again.

    This story is also represents a phase of my childhood. Hope you guys read and enjoy it:

    Oh girl, I first saw you when I was 6, in your “bandages”.
    Probably you were suffering from measles.
    I was watching you from the window.
    We talked. We got to know each other.
    We became great friends, playmates.
    And it was nice playing kabaddi.
    Time flew by, we grew older.
    I began to love you.
    You were not pretty, had no charms, nothing!
    Yet I liked you.
    Because you were serene and had the sweetness of mother.
    Our friendship grew closer each passing day.
    And life seemed to get better.
    I realised my love for you was beyond what I could think of.
    I always told you about it, but you kept putting it off saying it was just an attraction.
    But, I was still happy, just because I was still close to you.
    You gave me my first kiss on my 13th birthday.
    I thought you loved me back, but then you claimed you were just trying to surprise me.
    Never mind, I was still happy being with you.
    Then, when I was 15. Something serious happened.
    You had a crush on another boy.
    He was a good friend of mine.
    And was very charming.
    You finally fell for him.
    You confessed your feelings for him on the first week of November.
    But he began to detest you after that.
    You discovered that he never liked any girl.
    I felt very hurt. Not for me. But for your fate.
    For two days, I couldn’t talk to anyone. I felt numb.
    But it wore off, after I realised I was going nowhere.
    Soon, you persevered to win the heart of that boy.
    You asked me for help, I did that with a heavy heart.
    But I was happy that at least you could be happy with that guy.
    You tried every way. But with no gain and full pain.
    You requested me for help.
    And I went around knowing his likes and dislikes, his ideas, his thoughts, etc.
    Telling his private stuff to you to find a route to his heart.
    Bearing the brunt of my classmates and that guy for it all.
    It went on… but no success.
    You realised that guy was wary of you.
    He avoided you in every way.
    You went mad.
    You started pouring your heart out with SMSes you sent to me every day
    I busted my SMS limits. My parents got worried.
    But it went on..
    Until one day, you decided to fix the problem once and for all.
    You told me to ask him if there was a girl he liked.
    He told me he hated girls and that they were all sick.
    And greedy, and opportunistic, and ready to ruin a boy’s life.
    I told this to you.
    You confronted him.
    A fight happened. You began scolding him for
    playing with your emotions.
    He said he hated you. He had no business with you.
    He complained about me to you.
    Said I was a cheat who went on revealing his secrets to everyone he liked.
    You said you requested me to do it.
    He said he didn’t care. He wanted a justification.
    You couldn’t give any. You decided to leave him after all.
    However, you went mad again.
    You put out all your anger on me.
    Said I was responsible for all your problems.
    Forbade me from talking to you.
    I could not bear it.
    My eyes filled up with tears.
    I could say anything no more.
    I said “Why did u put me in such a situation?”
    With folded hands, you said “Please, no more.
    Had enough.”
    I was broke. I felt sick.
    But surprisingly, I wasn’t depressed!
    Because I had other stuff to be depressed about.
    But please don’t feel bad, girl.
    I have learnt how to live in all this madness.
    Very soon, I will be back again.
    Looking for your serenity.
    I know I might be “crying for the moon”
    But “I was made for loving you, baby!”
    It didn’t end there though.
    We ended our differences and became good friends again.
    As times passed, we got closer again.
    You fell in love with me, and I with you.
    Life never seemed more beautiful.
    However, that guy you once loved blurted everything out to our parents.
    My mom began to hate you.
    When she discovered that I still texted you, she forbade me from talking to you.
    But that meant nothing to me, we still enjoyed times together.
    Then came the school farewell.
    We promised to stay in touch for ever.
    After that I never really saw you.
    Our texts were few and far between.
    I joined college.
    I had a deep crush on a pretty girl out there.
    But then she treated me so harshly, I was her friend no more.
    I realised no one else was like what you were to me.
    Soon enough, you contacted me.
    I was happy to share my thoughts with you every time we chatted.
    I was always wishing to see you.
    But again came a November.
    You said you still had feelings for the guy you loved before.
    Said you never actually loved me.
    Said the only person you loved in the universe was him.
    I knew you did love me, but you loved him more.
    I wasn’t really concerned about your feelings for me, as long as you were happy.
    Months continued with both of us texting each other.
    One day you picked up a fight.
    You started to blame my mom for harbouring hatred towards you.
    You blamed me for all your misery.
    You cursed me claiming that if I wasn’t there, you’d have won him over already.
    You blocked me on all networks.
    Then sent one of your friends to argue over this.
    I was sick of your antics, and I wanted to cry.
    After that you never again talked to me.
    I waited for your responses, but in vain.
    Hesitatingly I accepted you aren’t coming back.
    Nothing is ever going to change.
    I cried and cried and cried all over.
    I am here, still waiting…
    Let whatever happen in the end, just hope that we meet again.
    I am here alone, with no one as close as you were with me.
    Living my life with tears in my eyes.
    Still hoping that we meet again.

    —-

    My belief is that love and affection is a follow-up of friendship. Without kindness and friendliness, you cannot be close to anyone. Unfortunately, almost everyone in the present generation confuses infatuation with love, and continues to chase someone who never actually cares about them. In many cases, the one who actually cares about them all the time is the one getting abused and ignored.
    It seems this entire world runs not on understanding one another, but on pleasing one’s own self, which is rather sad.
    Teenage has taught me several life lessons, and this is probably one of them.

    Category Literature, Thoughts | Tags: ,,,,,, | 9 Comments