Athena's Notebook

All these years of self obsession has taught me that the best way to write is to learn how to melt into the background and be the medium through which the world shows its intricacies and although it pains me to think that I will have to hide in the deep and dark corners of self evasiveness, I believe that it is the right thing to do.

But still, the strength of “I” cannot be thrown away. Just like sawdust, it irritates your eyes and even after an extremely chiseled life left after all that exquisite carpentry that you did, you would still see distorted & blurry projections of grandeur or your self- your self that is made of nothing but illusions. In the spirit of all that I, at the age of 25, still aspire to be an astrophysicist.

I was born in India and that taught me how to live in fear. In fear of- freedom, western thought, sex, VHP/RSS on Valentine’s Day, teachers(I have a lot to say on that), parents, gods (which are probably anything- from cow’s dung to its urine), religion, saints and sadhus, exams, results, failures or life in general. I learned to sing Bollywood songs before I could understand the meaning of my country’s national anthem and was taught the intricacy of eastern mysticisms only by reading exquisite Meera’s Bhajans or experiments of Gandhi when love and truth, both, for me were as abstract as Platonic existence.

My observation is that India is made of two kinds of people- people who work and people who beg and I have an absolute contempt for the latter. Thus, I planted this dream in my mind to start a small school for beggar kids in my hometown, Bhopal (a small place still emerging from the health and corruption issues triggered by the Methyl Isocyanide tragedy that happened several years ago.) And believe me when I say that it is not out of any sociological or nationalistic guilt attached to anyone who comes to US from India for more money, success or mental simulation, but completely out of extreme hatred towards beggary.

I think, that in India (of all the oldest civilizations on this earth), knowledge is either highly misinterpreted, extremely scarce or a combination of the two. So, there! That’s my third dream (after PhD in Astrophysics and a school for beggars). Starting a library of my own.

Humph! At first when I look at these three dreams, it feels like a tall order and life seems too small for it. But in a way these are just three points in my life that I want to touch before I die. It requires an extraordinary amount of effort, intelligence, work and a constancy of vision (which is harder to achieve than the former three). Sometimes it will be painful and darker but I guess it’s worth it.

So…what do you think?

Email me or leave a comment here if you have any suggestions to help me achieve my big goals (except for telling me, “You need big heaps of money for all that!!”, because that…I already know. )