Ash is all this post is about. We at Korba have been facing an Ash crisis since last few months details of which I can’t go into but just understand that the situation is like ‘you are eating too much while the toilet is already overflowing!’ Got it na? Anyways in this regard only Iwas alotted 2 shifts at the Ash Silo and man isn’t that place a living hell ( while I was driving for my shifts I literally listened to Highway to Hell  by ACDC!!)

When you start getting near the silo area all you can see all around you is white powdery substance (which you may or may not confuse with snow at first sight! I did BTW! ) And then when you finally get you are greeted by a landmass that really looks like an island of snow or an iceberg or a glacier or a white sand beach or whatever…you must have got the picture (Again if you haven’t,  can’t help you out as pictures aren’t allowed I think!). Its when I finally settled down there for my shift that I began to realise how much more stuffy the air in that place was ( I am comparing with the Plant ofcourse!) and then the 8 hours seemed like Dilli Door Hai!

The night shift was even better(Sarcastic!). The ash, I was told absorbs lots of moisture leading to lowering down of the temperature of the area as a whole and thus comes the heading of the post : I thought Hell was supposed to be scorching! It seems that whenever we humans try to enact God, we do screw up bigtime. I mean the hell that we created was Freezing man, comeon! Anyways am glad that the tryst is now finally over, so Homewards Ahoy!

Not Snow Balls..these are Ash Balls...!

Thats the place which I call home now. Naah home will always be Ranchi however crowded or conjusted or painful the capital of Jharkhand may be, it will be the only place that I will ever call my home.

Coming back, yeah Korba. So, being true to its name Korba greeted me with Cobras within the first week itself and it was like great to see the cobras frolicking in the wild! (obviously I am kidding…it chilled my spine!!). And the city’s air is like the most pure I have ever experienced (SARCASTIC!); I mean the first storm of Korba left the visibility to a big fat zero…yeah it was like standing in a pure white chamber, a chamber made up of pure white ASH! Yeah the ash that our company the several others like ours cough up all the time. With the ESPs being turned off to cut down on APC the situation is hellish sometimes. I have always wanted to see white snow covering the ground. Here the ground sure is white, but its snow at all, and sure does not become water upon melting!

The plant’s quite good though. But it seems that we do carry ill luck around. As soon as we came, firecrackers went up in the plant with Transformers bursting one after another. And you know what was the best thing, I got posted in the Transformers Group right when the group was going through its most troublesome period ever! Yeah I got loads to learn, but what the hell man. I couldnt even go to the wildlife park that my friends went to (Although the park did close as soon as they went there as the monsoon came knocking HEHEHEHEHE).

Negativities aside, the place is quite good in itself. Although I wont recommend any tourists here, people who want to see industries sure should come here. I mean there are 5-6 power plants, an Aluminium plant and many more industries still coming up. Its not the 5th most polluted Indian city for nothing!! Anyways I am liking it here at the moment. For being  just a  stop in the journey this place is quite good, but to make it a permanent residence…Nopes never. Lets see what the future holds.

The diary sure will continue!

But the journey that enraptured me with emotions(all the wrong kinds of them) was the one that I made yesterday : to Bhagalpur! What started off as a trip to the (in)famous city turned out to be quite a treat for all the people who love BADDD journeys! We were six people off into the blue. Our errands were different but destination the same. It was the first time that I travelled for more than a hour in an auto-rickshaw and man it was like hell. The roads initially were like you could find some amount of metaled road in a group of several potholes, but steadily the conditions became better to the extent that now all we could see on the roads were herds of buffaloes! Well I’ve to say one thing it was the very first time that I saw trained buffaloes…I mean they were all moving in a line behind their masters..an extraordinary feat really!

Then came the famous Bhagalpur Engineering College (BEC) from where one of my housemates, Shashikant (better known as Konchi @ Danda!!) has completed his Engineering. It was great to see an institution that churns out the electrical and mechanical engineers plunged in darkness…afterall people do good things only when they are forced by the circumstances, in this case the darkness or perhaps there is a rule there to go to bed by 6.30 in the evening (that explains Danda’s habits!)

Jokes apart, I was really saddened by the rampant unemployment and hence the immense poverty that’s spread all through Bihar. I could see beautiful farmlands for stretches as far as my naked eyes could see, and yet the very farmer who is toiling day and night to make the farm the way it is, lives in stark poverty as the money made out of the crops doesn’t manage to trickle down to them. Moreover each family was having a bunch of kids, all half-naked, roaming around in the streets, some helping their fathers in herding the cattle while some just loitering away: In short no signs of schools. Whatever the politicians might be saying, this is the ground reality of Bihar. Yes the situation has tremendously improved from what I had earlier seen in the rule of Lalu Prasad Yadav and the criminals that were the MLA’s back then but still loads of works remains to be done. At this juncture it is quite laughable that LPY is tempting the Bihar public with the offer of a motorbike for every Bihari…what the hell…when will these people learn? All I can hope is that the Bihari junta has come to its senses, risen out of the rampant caste prejudices and will vote the correct people onto power and not the one’s who go promising Bikes to people..

I am sitting in front of my computer, with my favourite word processor flashing its pale blue light on my face, thinking what to write today. Nothing special is going on around here to write about…

Yeah rail accidents are occurring: so what they have become now a very normal occurrence with one big accident happening every month. Yeah there have some more disgraceful antics of the politicians to garner mileage from the accidents: so what, it’s what they do the best.

Yeah, the Indian cricket team has lost the 1^st test match to the Sri Lankans like no other world number one team is expected to lose: so what, with the Indian cricket team you get what you least expect every single time.

But yes, there is one thing that’s going to happen after a long long time! I am going to away from the computer screen for quite a long time now that I am going for my job and am not taking my dear computer with me. So it’s going to be a pretty long break, I guess from the world of blogging, starting the 1^st of August (although it was already so a few weeks ago!)…the question is will I be able to survive without it?? Let’s see, because that’s one of the most difficult things: to be away from the computer after being hooked to it, virtually 24X7 for the past 4 years! It’s going to be interesting seeing all the extra time that I will be getting and all the things that I can do with that extra bit of time!

Let’s see!

College life has ended. I am on the verge of entering into a completely new life, a life quite different from what I am used to as of now. A dream from a distant past has been fulfilled : I have become a professional, a working one! But today I realised that there’s no end of dreams;big or small; important or trifling dreams are a constant phenomenon.

Well yes friends, not for the first time in my life, today I say it again : I have a dream. This dream has somehow forced me to think…think about so many things; think about what have I achieved in my life? How have I helped my country? How have I rendered my services to the society? So many questions, but the answer to all of them was a big fat NOTHING. Till now, I have had nothing that I can be proud of truly.

This dream has forced me to think…what next? Is this it? Or is something still remaining? Kya Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost…or has the movie ended and the time has come for the credits to show themselves up? Well I don’t think that its over, I don’t think that the time for giving the credits has come yet…I think its still the formative stage, the dramatic climax is still to come….so keep watching because yes my friends, I have a dream!

Things change so dramatically, sometimes in a blink of an eye, sometimes before even you could think a thing. Today its exactly a year hence and some change or another had to be there, but a change of this nature and this proportion was something that I never expected nor a thing that I ever imagined. And today, I feel so strange, so very strange.

Every year on the 18th of July, right from 2006 we went for a franctic search for a suitable gift for Chotu as his birthday would be  at the brink…looked for it at so many places, so many shops, and then finally settled every time for a box of Ferrero Rocher and a book or a game CD (pirated of course!!). But it’s not the case today. This time there’s no box of Rocher, no book, no CD, no expectations of a great card, nothing at all.  One single incident took away so many things from so many lives…God! Sometimes it feels like blasphemy even to think that it was the work of the almighty, ever kind, the Lord God of ours.

If things weren’t like what they are at present, i.e. if everything were normal i.e only if he had worn a helmet that day or perhaps crossed that place one minute earlier or later, he still wouldn’t have accompanied me to one of those annual frantic gift searches as he would have been basking in the summer of California at Google, but there would have been a satisfaction and conviction that he would call from halfway round the globe just to wish Chotu a Very Happy Birthday…That conviction is what I miss the most and so does Chotu and everyone else who knew you…

So here goes:

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
… My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

- Invictus by William Ernest Henley

About the movie : Its a yet another scintillating performance by one of the biggest names in Hollywood when it comes to “real acting”. And the storyline being real it was even tougher for him to live up to the expectations…but you know what he has dazzled. The best part was how he ingrained all the personality traits of the great Madiba and executed them with a flair characteristic of Freeman…In other words the movie was brilliant and heart-touching. Its a must watch!

And now the poem: Do you really think I have to write anything about it?? The poem speaks for itself!

So lets take’em on one by one :

1. India becomes No.1 in Test Cricket

Well I started watching cricket and obviously supporting India when I was in Std. III (God that’s more than 11 years back now) and believe me I had never thought that India will achieve these heights ( though I dreamed of this a many times!) Many captains and coaches hence India reached this milestone under the captaincy of the one and only, The Golden Boy, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and the coaching of the South African great, Gary Kirsten…its seems like a dream but its true and am really loving it!   (Related NEWS : Dhoni got married (yeah so?? Let him be married its his personal life man why the hell do all the NEWS channels have to telecast this story forever and ever??)

2. Life

I found my life…and she found me too…and so did the family as  a whole!!

3. I Got a Job

Yes, finally I got a job. 5 interviews, 8 writtens later finally I landed into a job and that too when I was least expecting it! And you know what, I ma looking forward towards the joining with all my heart…if only it came a bit earlier or if only I knew when I have to join!! (Yeah I know!! Keeping my fingers crossed )

4. Back to Fatness

Now this is where the ones with a dark tinge to them appear, I mean the NEWS. I have again started piling up weight..Gone are the days when through ultimate determination and perservation I had succeeded in cutting myself down to the eighties…but somehow, due to one reason or the other I am back in business and i think the dreaded century isn’t that far away!!

5. Bandhs, Strikes, Naxals and Politics

This particular week has like something I had never ever envisaged. I mean out of the seven days of the week, 4 were bandhs. One , Bharat Bandh against inflation. Two and Three, Bharat Bandh by the Naxals protesting the killing of a top guy of their cock-n-bull outfit. Four, Jharkhand Bandh protesting the vandalism of the Rajrappa Temple.

About the Bharat Bandh, it was an all party thingy (of course it means that it was led by the opposition parties) to protest the decontrol of the petrol prices, which was a inevitable step that the government had to take one day or the other. I mean it was like draining the government off  Thousands of Crores of Rupees every year which wasn’t helping India’s economic growth in any possible way. Yes the step will now cause people to dig deeper into their pockets, but I don’t think the calling and staging of Bharat bandhs is ever going to help in any fathomable way. About the Naxals and their various sympathizers like Arundhati Roy, all I can think of is SOD OFF!

The vandalism at the Rajrappa Temple was something very very unacceptable. How dare looters break the idol of the Shakti, the guilty must be caught at the earliest and the punishment should be as stringent as possible, because you can’t hurt people’s religious sentiments and get away man, you can’t ever.

6.  Rupee gets a symbol

Well this was today. Its great isn’t it…we have got a symbol for our currency : The Rupee.

Will giving a symbol to the rupee raise its international standard, its international value? yes I know its only the fifth currency in the world to gain a symbol, but still is it going to be of any significance at all as far as the strength of the rupee is concerned? I don’t think so…but anyways lets see…

7. I BECAME AN ENGINEER!!!

Promises and beliefs…why did I choose such a topic?? Even I don’t know a thing about it…but since it came and threatened to blow my head off with the accompanying throbbing, I decided to give it a jot.

Promises

“Promises are made to be broken“, yeah a trite saying that features only in the B-grade Hindi movies these days. Believe me this has become something archaic. These days people are making promises while totally meaning to keep them with all their hearts. If it weren’t so, would we still have been getting the water and electricity and the food that our politicians promise us while begging for votes? They keep their promises…believe it or not they do…even if the urgency to fulfill them comes to their minds only when the next polls start knocking the doors.   The frantic pace with which the roads are built, the electrifications are done and the other promises are fulfilled, all by the MLA funds and MP funds when the polls approach simply fill us citizens with hope and awe. ” Ahh!! Minister Babu is doing work…see how much he cares about us…” It is really great to see how punctual our great politicians are…poll time comes and they are like omnipresent too…with garlanded visages on every nook and cranny of the street, requesting our votes. No no, don;t worry Minister babu isn’t asking for our precious votes for free; in return he has  many new promises (and some of the old ones that he couldn’t keep). Cast your vote in his favor and see those promises come true when the next polls come!

Beliefs

Now talking about beliefs…they are the most complex and abstract of all the human emotions that God has made for our use…believe me!! Even the English dictionary confirms the importance of this absurdly absurd emotion. There are more than 100 words in the English dictionary that are related to belief only. Some mean lack of it while some mean the abundance of it. Some are severe quarrels due to them while some are peaceful marriages because of them. If we concentrate on just 1 hour of our lives…we will see how much we believe. We believe in our army for our safety, we believe in others for most of the work in the world, we believe in God and feel blessed, we believe in our parents for all nit-bits  in our lives, we believe in our spouse, we believe our friends, we believe our sports persons (most of all Sachin), we believe in luck…most of all we believe in ourselves.

SO…

All I can say is keep on believing and keep on fulfilling your promises, because whatsoever you do in your life comes back to you, in the same form or an altered one, but in the end it comes back. So do good if you want to see good thing happen to you. Keep your promises to see the promises others make to you get fulfilled. Keep on believing people and yourslef, if you want them to believe you…because thats what life’s all about!

I mean 5 decades -  50 years, that’s roughly around 18250 days…God that’s huge. But more than the years or days its the amount of love and respect that he has earned in the past years that matters…wherever he has gone in his tenure as the Jail Superintendent he has earned a lot of both…

He is my idol, the exact thing that I want to be…not that I wanna be the prison superintendent exactly, but that I wanna be like him. I want to have love for people like him, I want to have admiration for elders like he does, I want to be the bridge between people that he has been throughout his life. I want to be the boat that he has been in helping people cross the river of troubles quite so often.

When I will be 50, I will really be proud of myself if can be anything that can be compared to my papa!

Papa you ROCK!!!