A Philosophy called LIFE!!

A crying baby, more like a doll comes out from a mothers womb, days and months pass by, you start crawling, standing, walking, talking, playing, you go to schools and colleges and then do a work, you get married, have kids and go to office day after day at the same time and return at the same time, you get money, you lose sweat, you make friends, you turn your back at some, you watch your kids grow, you parents grow, your friends come, go and many change, your hair changes colors, your skin loses freshness, your eye sight deteriorates, you become slow and shallow and you lose your parents, friends, mates , the faces that smiled and cried with you, the mouths that ate and talked with you, the eyes that saw you and the ears that listened to you, the legs that walked with you and the palms that you shook once, all perishes into the soil, into the mother earth, and the ones left back cry and weep, remembering them, the days, the time and tide they shared together. A Journey which started in a cry and ended in a breath, knitted together by the seasons and the times and the relations and the prayers and dreams.

Seconds…Minutes….Hours….Days….Weeks….Months….Years….Decades….A cycle whose tires never gets punctured, it goes on for ever and ever and ever.

A Journey to the Unknown Spaces..An Explanation!

A Journey to the Unknown Spaces!




Reviving memories, i don’t know how this title happened to my blog. It was not one, i had put up after spending hours thinking and imagining. My finger’s had just passed over a few alphabets and they formed words and those words were stitched together and at the end of a few seconds, the thing in the blog title space read “A Journey to the Unknown Spaces”. Back then i had never read more than a couple of blogs and i never knew anything about the blogs and the widgets i could put in and the financial prospects of it.


Frankly at the moment of creation, i never considered it as anything more than a personal diary, or if not so personal- nothing more than a diary, where i could periodically put in my happenings and views and ideas and thoughts and almost anything and everything. And that has been happening too, I’ve posted my random thoughts on a variety of subjects, my way of seeing and understanding certain things, but then i heard that the title of my blog ain’t doing justice to the contents in it, in an online forum. So then i tried to operate my own blog title and tried to find out the meaning of it and what i meant by it.


Is this a travelogue describing my visits to various places ??


No its rather a collection of writings which i have made inside the four walls of my hostel room or the shabby class room or the un occupied seats beside the lake just outside the campus walls. So to the question, is this a collection of travelogues, its a big no!


But then going through it all again, as a whole, isn’t this a travelogue too? If the question ‘to where?’ arises in your mind, to no where.


The journey to tomorrow!! A day or a thing that never comes. This is a travelogue of the journey, called life. A journey filled with high’s n low’s and turns and twists and happiness and sadness. A Journey filled with everything, but nothing. A Journey of which you don’t quite know who you are going to be out from collage, or where you are going to be or what is going to happen the next year, the next month, the next week, the next day, the next hour, or even the very next moment. Its the travelogue of my life, when i travel from horizons to horizons, to Explore the Un-Explored and to get to Know the Unknown.


A Journey called Life, to the Unknown. A Journey to the Unknown Spaces!


A few people have questioned the title of my blog (A Journey to the Unknown Spaces). They expected it to be a collection of  travelogues or journey descriptions, and were left confused after seeing the content. This was an attempt to explain the title in my way. 

A Serene Lakeside Evening…

It was drizzling and there was a slow and smooth breeze across the lake. As i moved far from the daily traffic, far from the crowded cities, far from the hurrying roads, far from the developed world, i found my footsteps becoming slower and the air around me fresher. There were no more horns and sounds of roaring motor engines and the only waves hitting my ear drums now were from those tiny water droplets falling over the lake and the humming of those occasional birds. Far away, there were the luxuries of modern life in the form of beautiful hotels with eye catching lights and wonderful gardens with more lightings and fountains. But on this side of the lake i was just surrounded by the moist tender grass all over in a moon lit evening beside the silent lake. There were no massage girls here as it could have been the case in those luxury hotels across the shore, but these tender grass tickled my feet and i could smell the mixture of mud and water and the smell of grass and the smell of fresh water, those smells very much of the nature and not of those costly perfumes. In front was the amazing lake and across this lake stood the attractive club houses and hotels with attractive lightings. On the right and left far ends i could see the city looming from far and the never ending array of tall buildings seemed like stars and constellations up in the sky, from this distance. As i continued to walk there were occasional couples crossing me and they were talking and feeling their love for their partners. I never made any sound, so that i don’t disturb this silence of the nature.


As the road at the other end started getting closer, the horns of vehicles and the sounds of hurrying people were again present and even the pure smell of nature was diluted with the smell of fuels and metals. I was till now, as if in a dream and all these thoughts of enjoying the silence had to be left behind, because in this world everything rested on how quick you moved and how quickly you thought and how quickly you did things. There were no place for the slow movers and lazy thinkers and i feel that's why as time goes forward fewer people believes in the fancy stories and the fantasy worlds because if you have to believe all those, you have to enjoy the slowness at least once in life to get to feel how it is!!


I am not trying to say that the development and innovations the human race has so far achieved are not good enough, but to be a better human being you also need to understand the nature and enjoy its beauty, you have to slow your steps at times and think of the things you see at your front, your back and your sides and smell them, feel them and enjoy them. After all, all these beautiful sights and smells and feelings and sounds could sometimes cheer and satisfy you more than the money you earn.


Now i had no other option, but to walk faster or else i will have to wait for 90 seconds at the traffic light.

When i learnt what “AWESOME” really means!!

  

At last i feel like I am doing some justice to the name of this blog. Yes! A Journey to the Unknown Spaces. I am attempting to write an account on a travelling experience. Don’t get me wrong by these big words like travelling experience and all, i am just going to talk about how it felt to go out and explore some new things on a relatively not-so-cold evening.There were hardly any clouds in the sky and as it neared the evening, the winds became light and all in all gave way to the most pleasant conditions to have an evening walk.

The campus have finally got back its life. The silent roads inside the campus a couple of days ago have suddenly disappeared and now there were these clattering sounds of suitcases rolling through the tarred roads, and the tak-tak sound of ball hitting the ground and baskets from the basketball court. All those Chinese who had gone home for vacations were back and they all seemed to have a fresh kind of energy. We were happy too, not because these guys are finally back, but for the warmth in the air.

Me and my friends started walking to the direction we have travelled the least and walked through those roads we have never been to. The air became more fresher and the roads emptier. The tall buildings started disappearing and there no longer were taxis in the road that could take us back to our university in case we were lost. The side of the road was unpaved, reminding us of most of the roads in Kerala. It was an area slightly in a higher altitude and we were like walking up and it was getting a bit more colder (thank god, there were no winds). There was a board intended for tourists and it had a description about the whole place in English with a detailed map too. We were walking through the road that goes to the top of (a tourist spot) Purple Mountain. It was quite far away and there was the this Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in the left side. So we deviated from the course and went into the mausoleum. There was a ticket counter in the front but none was there, and they would probably have said that visiting time is over, but luckily there were none and the way-in was open too. It was a double bonus because the place was so silent and lovely in the night and we didn't have to pay the entrance fee.  You almost wonder how you could find some silent places like this just kilometers away from the heart of one of the most biggest cities in China. We walked around and was impressed by the scenic beauty rather than the historic importance, which were discussed many a times on our Chinese Culture classes.

If i were to describe the place in a single sentence i would say, “Its like the perfect place for you to take your love on a surprise date.” The place was totally silent, not that no body was there, but everyone enjoyed this silence. It was getting darker and the view of clear sky with the moon and the stars made it even more beautiful (it really looked like a planetarium). Each and everything i saw there made me regret for not carrying my camera. You had the moon secretly gazing at you between those leafless-trees. You had the reflection of those trees ,the moon and stars on a still man-made lake, which reminded me of the song “mele velli thinkal, thaazhe nilaa kaayal”. You could hear the sound of water falling over man made falls and then see the perfect view of lighted skyline at a distance. These are some of the rare incidents when you unknowingly chants “ awesome, awesome, awesome”.  After enjoying all these picturesque views, i want to continue my journey to find more of these unknown spaces…

An Outsider.

Its 8.05 PM. Tomorrow is the Chinese New Year and the intensity of celebrations can be seen and heard everywhere. It’s quite chilling out here and the snow that had fallen on 10th haven’t totally melted down yet. The street is completely empty and it was much close to this "pin drop silence" , but for the amazing aura of light and thunderous sounds created by the firecrackers, somewhere far away.

Walking through these empty streets, I was grasping all the strange thoughts in my mind. For the last couple of days, the last phase of winter was really picking up and, adding to the woes all the shops were closed around our campus. The burger shops and the small hotels in back street have all been closed, because of the New Year. We had to almost take a complete “Pradikshina” of the campus in those chilling conditions if we had to find some food in the night. Today the traffic is much light and there are no pedestrians at all. Even though there were not many vehicles on the road, the red letters on the traffic post still read “89,88,87…0” There are predictions for snow falls for another 3-4 days and these could well be the last snow falls we might see in China. Because they say in Nanjing, if it snows this year, the next one wouldn’t.

If you are able to adjust with whatever that comes your way, the life in China has to be funny and enjoyable. Well, first of all let me give a brief introduction about what China is because I don’t think many people are really aware of how life is in China and how everything happens here. It’s this country that lies directly above India. Yet can you name a city in China other than Shanghai, Beijing & Hong Kong? China is one of the emerging superpowers says the magazines and surveyors, then have you ever, bought any of the Chinese products for their quality and brand name rather than their cheap price?

“All that glitters aint gold” is a good old say, which summarizes about China. It’s the place with tall-tall sky scrapers, the cities where the cultural depth is as important to them, as the scopes for development, where the city looks so clean and looks so "westernized" . But you will be stunned at the sight of people spitting in the floors while they eat in restaurants. It’s the country where the university campuses are so vast and the class rooms are so luxurious, but the only thing you will have to compromise is, with the teaching and evaluation standards. Anyone going abroad would be hoping that he can nurture his English communication skills by going to a foreign country, but here in China, 9 out of 10 can't even speak a sentence in English confidently. It’s the country where, one of every three popular social websites could be blocked or banned. The list includes Youtube.com, Facebook.com, Twitter.com, Megavideo.com and even this blogger.com. (am logging in through proxies.) . It’s the same country where the internet giant Google has threatened to stop their internet services. As I said, its all about adjusting to the place where you live and once you do that, all these extreme irregularities becomes extreme fun.

In this 21^st Century when the boundaries seem to erase and the whole world starts converging into a single home , when anywhere in the world you can communicate with a single language, China remains the only place , where you could still feel like an Outsider.

China.....

Today is 16th of Jan 2010. My 5th semester have finished today. Well, not the perfect of the ends one can wish for, considering the fact that, am surely gonna fail the last 3 exams. This semester was really fast, as if powered by a RAMJET (sorry lads, just to show off that am here 2 study and not on a tour :P). Well, not just this semester, the life here in China has been really fast. And after each an every semesters, we used to think the same, the last sem was the fastest. And now i dare to say that, "The last one was really the fastest :P".

OK, setting the time machine back to 15th of Oct 2007. I think Neil Amstrong, wouldn't have felt this strange when he stepped onto moon for the 1st time. Ethnically, the Chinese are so different from Indians, that you feel you have traveled to farthest country in the globe. And when you hear them speak or read their boards at the airport, you know why your "bemused" friends back home asked , " Y China?!!" .

So we knew that Nanjing was like 300 Kilometers away from Shanghai and we were travelling by a bus, the university had sent for us. So on the way, we stopped some where for out dinner and it was so fabulous that, we were almost asking the driver to take us back to the airport, so that we could catch the same flight back home.

But all-in-all, the life in China has been worth all these. Enjoying a life ain't a new thing, but enjoying a life with this kind of freedom is not something that every guy gets in life and i think i am really fortunate.

A Note...

Life is already flying by fast, for an aspiring aeronautical engineer ( not a lie :p), and i still remember the day i sat in the Auditorium of Sainik School, listening to the speach of George Fernandes, then the Defense Minister of India, often pinching myself to make sure i really belonged there.Because, i never seriously believed that i could clear all those exams, interviews and craps and really make it through to Sainik. But yeah, it was a truth and i was sitting among other guys of Tagore house on the 6th of Sept 2000. Those were the 1st days of hostel or boarding life for me and now, its been nearly 10 years and its been how life has been for me.

I joined that institution only a couple of months after my 10th b'day. A couple of moments later, on my 17th b'day i was having my last dinner at the Kazaks Mess, probably after the worst board exam i ever wrote ( maths). And on 23rd morning, i took the Parasuram Express just like any other vaction, but then this time, i was neither provided the lunch pack ( poori & egg curry), nor the concession card for the return tickets, for coming back after the vactions.
It was never the end of days as expected though. Technicaly speaking, things always started getting better and better, because after 7 years being locked inside classrooms with only boys, i was for the 1st time in my teenage life sharing life... oops... ..classroom with girls. Totally, the 1 month i spent there was kinda totally fast & Fun  ( my parents won't be too happy about the fun factor ).  I donno if i really learnt anything at all there, other than the hotels, cafes & theatres over there at Trissur

And a while after my ranks came out, i thought my dad was joking around when he described some courses in China. But it seems like am enjoying that "joke" really well.