The other kind are the people I care about. More like, idolize. They don’t care about whether everybody else is lame or not. Because their coolness is self-sufficient for them. They never had to rely on believing others are, or ought to be cool.
The coolness of others, is up to themselves, and it would not really influence me. It is probably arguable, but if there are not enough people around em to learn from, there is always the internet. And my head. And when I look for them, there are cool seniors, and teachers to learn from, as well.

Thing is, I had mostly stopped hoping to find cool batchmates. I had probably thought that (near ly all) my batchmates are lame, quite some time ago. Lately I decided, to bind more to the ‘fact’, that I, am superbly cool. Doesn’t matter, to me at the very least, how lame the others are. As is almost always the case, when I stopped looking, I have not only found multiple cool people in my batch, I have discovered ever more, how I am (existent) in my own universe, and independent of everything else, unless I idiotically bind myself to it. People, surroundings, noise, time (waste), everything. I make my own stuff, and control it.

[A thing which helped… establish this for me, was the Stanford ML and AI class. And how I managed to find lots of time to focus and do it, and almost rather well. They’re pretty cool. You should do them too. ]

But the realization that there is a poor distinction in those ideas, made me understand the logic behind those apocryphal (read: densely shitty) stories which try to disprove the existence of God by showing the futility of prayer, or prove the existence of God by “He made you to do that work. You are the hand of God” kind of crap.

So I’ll abruptly end here, by saying it’s odd how few people seem to innately that God and religion can be entirely different and inconsistent thought processes. But perhaps that’s because I’m not using the same dictionary at all.

Apart from that wisdom thing I’ve read. No failures, only lessons. So, for at least two to five days, I was very upset. I might mention here that the results were that of the boards and the JEE. I was upset, not so much because of the poorness of the result, as much as the reason, the lesson I expected to exist behind it. I had been kind of failing in school throughout the year (the last two years, in fact) anyways. But I was still surprised to have failed in something like the Boards. Especially when everybody around me, at the very least, got at least 5 percent above me. It was kind of interesting to see my mother ask — “Your friend topped the whole state. Don’t you feel ashamed?” The thought of feeling ashamed at that seemed incredulous to me. But then again, I rarely ever got what my mother means when she expects me to be ashamed at a trillion different things. That’s a story for some other time.

But at that question, it was clear to myself, that I had no problem with a good friend of mine topping the state. I had a problem with my own abysmal performance. Of course a standard of expectation was defined only by how my friends performed, but not individual instances like that. I got less than 85. And I scored the least in Math. Things like that, independent of any index, for me are appalling things. However little I cared about the boards, at least I looked down on it enough to assume I’d do decently, if not well. But I didn’t. And then I performed terribly in the JEE. By my standards, that is. Again, of course. the only index of my performance is my rank here, and that is defined by the performance of everybody else. But it’s still a disappointing result. By some ambiguously self-held expectations. There was an unflattering enough ambition, as to what department I want. It’s painfully sad, that the odds of my getting that are incredibly low. And for at least four days, I have a constant headache/feeling of intense sorrow/feeling of being ridden over by how lame I am, and how presumptious I am about whatever I can manage, aise hi. And primarily because, I can’t figure out why I failed. I failed for the last two years. One and a half actually — mostly after I broke my head. But that couldn’t be the reason. I’m not that lame to blame something like a road accident and an entirely insignificant, ephemeral mastoid fracture on persistent failures of mine.

And day before yesterday, I worked real hard in the night, for Phi. I had wasted most of the day, like I waste most days anyways. But near the night, I started panicking, because I really wanted to ‘launch’ on June 1. And somewhat because of missing the SUMaC deadline twice, I have taken to doing stuff as if the deadline was one day before it is. Oh oh, I forgot to tell you the parts where I have not failed. So, I jump one para back, but not really.

Of course I could give up on myself as if I was a trademark loser. I can’t do anything in my life, and will fail in whatever I try, especially studies. But I ‘succeeded’ last year, in this thing called the KVPY. A bit more background to why the lack of lesson of those failures disturbed me so. I’m a lot into philosophy anyways. Not the real studied, metaphysics, epistemology, etc, hard-core philosophy. The Richard Bach and Paulo Coelho kind popular philosophy. Not that they’re entirely distinct, but the latter is much less focussed and tangible. But still, so much into philosophy that I cooked up some of own, around which I actually plan (planned in class 12 actually, but failed again) to write a book upon. The line, summarily, says “You will not get anything unless and until you stop wanting to”. I would add a terms and conditions applied with an asterisk too, but since it’s so mellow-core, I wouldn’t much care to. So, over the two years I tried to apply thoughts like those into things I tried to do. It worked, to quite an extent. Except for the fact that making it work, is not entirely in my hand unless I become a much more spiritually advanced soul. That discussion for later too, but here, I want a tangible statement as to why ‘m working. Or something I can consciously do to make perhaps my own philosophy work.
So, KVPY was a quite a success. I’ll write a full length post sometime later on what I did, but I remember that I didn’t prepare anything. There was no scope to. They had given two sample papers. I did those papers again and again — like three or four times. And I remember that while giving the exam, I had this weird kind of boost that I had worked a lot, and enough. That fit in with Physics Bhaiya’s philosophy — “One does not require to study to succeed in exams. Beyond a certain point which nearly all of us are nearly always beyond. But one does need to be confident while giving the exam. By studying, one prepares one mind to believe it is prepared, giving it a sense of confidence.” Thankfully I didn’t overthink philosophy and bullshit during the KVPY exam, I just gave it, and came out grinning. Both the rounds. Both were equally fictitious, random, and done with. That was/is one memorable success I’m kind of proud of — mainly for the experience and learning it brought about, than the little knowledge of mine it really tested. {This test too, could be pushed away on grounds of having a subjective interview, at which my family tells me, rather encouragingly, how I may still be the dimwit I most probably am, I’m just a clever pretender and good interviewee. Bringing this to my consciousness obviously guarantees all future interviews are nearly always screwed, but bleh.}

And then, rather recently, was Mathcamp. Now I failed to qualify INMO both the time I gave it. I failed to qualify INOI, despite having tried very hard to qualify it the second time I gave it. And I failed to get through Mathcamp last year. It pains me to feel that I am not even half as aptitudinally skilled as I believe myself to be. That was mainly caused due to Mathcamp. So this year, I did Mathcamp, but mostly with a kind of presumed abandon that I am too lame to get through anyways. And I first go waitlisted. But then, I got through.

After getting through Mathcamp, even if it was two months of effort, and even if I (kinda dishonestly) got many of my thoughts because I kept running them through my brother, I thought gives me some index of intellect. And then I fail at the board math and the JEE. The latter being something I had worked hard for (or so I liked to believe. At least somewhat.) So, I was extremely concerned that it’s not a matter of lack of brains, and I’m not the loser to say I suck at three-hour sitting exams. KVPY was one in itself (including RMO and some other shit), hence.

Another thing that delayed my realization was the statement that my performance is nearly a function of only my performance on exam day. It’s obviously true, because my time waste of all the other days is seen by no one. But one of the things my brother had told me, that something he realized and found critical, after failing (to his expectations) in his JEE (just the examination — without knowing the results. o.O He was that … cool. ), was that an essential ingredient to doing well, was seriousness. Now, that’s not easy to get. I didn’t particularly remember being serious in getting KVPY or anything.

And day before yesterday, when I was working on Phi (yes we’re back to continuing what I wrote five paras ago), in the night, after having wasted the day, and a frantic settling down on me, and my brother making his usual snide remarks on my having wasted time and refusing to help me, I sat and worked for three hours. At that time, I only appreciated what a tough thing it is to run a site off, as well as one wants to. But yesterday, while bathing or some other chore, I realized what seriousness was. After that night’s work, after a long time, I had slept off instantly, out of sleepiness. Not out of boredom of lying on the bed for so long. And I realized that for everything I had managed and was happy about, I had spent days working so hard, that I slept after the work, not played and/or wasted time. That was some index of seriousness for me. And all of a sudden every other thing fit. I did not want the KVPY thing. I didn’t even know what I was going to get. But I worked real hard. And though I did seemingly pointless shit, I did it hard. The interview, okay, was random.

And I sure wanted Mathcamp. But I wanted the result much lesser this time. And I worked much harder at the problems. For the first time do I remember doing questions from the paper that, I know for a given, from my reasoning, are compellingly correct. Rarely before have I done good math questions that deeply. I learnt shit (the valuable kind). And I have had sound sleeps after those questions.

And I can definitely say that I have done nothing remotely like that for any school exam of mine. Not in a good spirit, at least. And mostly not for the JEE, either. Not at least as far as I remember.

I think I learnt my lesson from this failure. I look forward to what’s to come next. Ciao now, from this 1753 words long post you just read. Or, by most chances, that you didn’t.

Save the tree, save the bees
Save the whales, save those snails

And the greatest arrogance of all,

“Save the planet”. What?! Are the fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. …

Or at least, so I believe. When Lockhart said,

In fact,  if  I  had  to  design  a mechanism  for  the  express purpose  of  destroying  a  child’s  natural curiosity and  love of  pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a  job as  is  currently being done.

I didn’t quite agree with him as the current system being that bad. After all, we had lost the thingie of using canes, and as the CBSE would like to believe as well, I thought we’ve come at least some way from where we’d started. When I heard my fellow classmates laughing at that joke (unfortunately, not at me), I realized we’ve come absolutely no way. For all the prefaces filled with curiosity and scientific nature, and the unanswered questions in the book, it is rare to find somebody who realizes that we need to learn to ask questions, rather than know answers. Every step  in the education system goes ahead to fill in this prejudice — it is wrong to not know answers, and absurd to ask questions without answers.

It is out duty to believe everything we are told is the gospel truth, juxtaposed with the fact that we don’t really care about it at all. Teachers bullshit us about how being educated is different from being literate. And the English teacher no less — somebody who chose to study language for maybe the reason that she had no idea what knowledge really was. We aren’t ever even hinted that there is something called being knowledgeable, which uncomparably superior to being educated. Being educated simply involves being a drone. Being knowledgeable, gives us some right to be human.

Similarly, there’s a joke which goes on the lines of, if the teacher asks you a question, you ask her the reason for asking — “Don’t you know the answer yourself?”

It remains as a joke, because any question discussed in any place like the school, is bound to have an answer, isn’t it? What would be the point of discussing some bizarre unsolved problem at all?

That’s why I hate exams. I feel sick that I actually used to practice all the questions from all possible reference books for Math way back in 9th. I actually believed it’ll be better if I knew the answers beforehand. Even I, effectively, treated Math like a subject worth rote memory (though not as terribly. Other wise I would’ve failed in it as badly as I did in Social Studies).

I hope I get freedom from this wonderful system of creating obedient robots called education, soon. Very soon.

Trivially, we all begin by thinking how to circumvent the hardness of the concrete, or the weakness of the egg. We do not keep conscious of how much more essential the journey is, as compared to the end.

We would live our lives wanting to procure one or another thing, but, say, if Einstein had deduced the Unified Field Theory, or Beethoven had completed the “Unfinished” Symphony, either they would have found another objective to accomplish, or died as impoverished people; impoverished of a desire, of a target to achieve!

If any of us got everything we desired for –even if we unthoughtfully asked for immortality — we are sure to realize how pointless life would be beyond that point of time — when we achieved everything we dreamed of. We would be left with no reason to live; no motive to work towards.

Just as they say, thieves steal so that the police has someone to chase!

One might realize that an egg could be made to fall through four feet unharmed, simply by dropping it from a height of five feet, and catching it mid-air.

Also, as Ayn Rand wondered in ‘The Fountainhead’ — “His head thrown back, he felt the pull of his throat muscles and he wondered whether the peculiar solemnity of looking at the sky comes, not from what one contemplates, but from that uplift of one’s head.”

P.S: This essay and the previous one were practice essays for my SAT. In which, I eventually did terribly — even in the essay, which I thought wasn’t that bad.

When was the last time you were delighted to get something you were ‘supposed’ to? For instance, how many of us would actually delight in receiving breakfast? Not me!

What we do not struggle for, we take as granted — the most fundamental example being our own existence. Rarely would one find somebody so conscientious, he actually valued the mere presence of himself. Why? — because one did not have to struggle to be born.

Very unexpectedly, we attribute more value to something of such necessity, we anyways get it. Air to breathe, water to drink, are some more instances of existences having incalculable , and equally unperceived value as well.

Hence, we only value what we struggle for. As is again noticeable — how many memorable stories would we have read — of love, achievement, success, anything! — that did not involve a struggle, an effort? And that was the only factor which gave it the value it attained.

One would not measure the height of the fruit on the tree by a meter scale from the sea level — but by how hard one had to jump; or carefully one had to throw a stone, to get it!

Know thyself. — Oracle

‘Nuff Said.

That perhaps why I asked the question in the first place. Also because the question troubles me. When I used to do it, I never even thought about it. Just like I never thought about anything I did at that time (:age). I was made to write the English as well as the Hindi alphabet everyday, at least once. With the Hindi alphabet, my mother gave me special motivation — They even ask it in the IAS exam and people often don’t know it! Hence, I should! It seems embarrasingly hilarious now.

But the important question remains. Why should I remember the alphabet. In today’s world I don’t see any point of it. In my life — did/does it help me in my usage of language? As I speak or write it? In anything I do? I don’t see if it does.

In my life, the only place that organization might help is that it would be a basic layout for me if I start out to design a font. Which I might at some time. And that is following the fact, that it perhaps helped me remember all the shapes. But really? Is that it? Don’t you  fell grossed out?

I do. Because I don’t see my past as my ages — I see it more as my classes, and the essential things I learnt in those (wherein essential=remarkable). And I see that my entire 5 years of life before I started class 1 was actually simply spent on this! The alphabet! (Mind you I’m not criticizing the Hindi alphabet at all. It’s just so awesome the lines in which letters are collected imply the part of the mouth used to speak them, with the eccentric last alphabet in each line being the one for which you also use your nose. And even other stuff — Hindi, Sanskrit, and most stuff specifically Indian, are pretty cool. )

This is also one of the vents when I’m feeling angry at our English education entirely. I think it sucks so bad, I’m beginning to have a terrible hatred towards all pedagogical English teachers. Mainly for the Literature section. I love reading books, and the stories and the stuff we’re asked to. I hate the fact, that when a question says, “Express your opinion…”, or “What are your views…” I never have the option to keep them mine. Especially in usual school exams. This problem emanated most, when in one of my monday tests last year — the teacher crossed out an answer of “what your views on.. [something about the frog and the nightingale nice poem]”. And I felt shocked.Especially when the teacher said, “Your answer is wrong”. Dude! That is a language. Not math! You can’t say an opinion is wrong! No opinion is wrong. And I mean that absolutely. No opinion is wrong. That obviously has the parallel implication, no opinion is right either. That is why I wrote that random inconclusive post on stop having opinions. Cause my mother can reach shouting levels to say, “A certain thing is wrong. And there can be no denying that!” It is absolutely absurd to think so.

Of course I bifurcated terribly, but the point was that the question should actually read “What are your teacher’s views on such and such event?”. Because that is what we are expected to right in the end. This anger is also from the fact that our current English teacher has interpretations which are radically different from the ones I have, lately. We have a story called the “Summer of a Beautiful White Horse”. A dude called Mourad says, “I have a way with horses”, “I have a way with dogs”, “I have a way with farmers”. Not in consecution, but over the story, and with supporting relevant things happening around — most of them support his statement. Hence, our teacher actually wants to write, “He was such a clever boy, he had a way with horses, dogs and farmers.” Now I think that interpretation is hilariously naive. I think that boy “as stated by his brother, was a crazy dude. He strong belief in his capabilities, which was a baseless belief, but immense self-confidence nevertheless. The events that happen go on to affirm his beliefs, and exhibits the strong and self-confident resolve in the boy which drove him to live life the way he wanted to. In the route of which he even bent his clan’s traditions, and etc. shit”.  Hence, I think the education system sucks. Overall, and everywhere.

All opinions are spurious, and delusory. Believe in this opinion of mine.

Have fun dealing with that one!

It seriously pains me, how every body opinionates on every other thing, person, and activity. The worst part perhaps, is how even I, despite being conscious of this terrible habit, fall prone to it often.

I want to stop making opinions. And especially forcing them down other’s throats. It’s annoying, and it renders me prone to prejudice — and other anive people too. X(

I want the world to stop objectifying stuff, so obscenely — that is wrong, that is right. You are nobody to decide for others. Neither am I. Our rights end where the others’ noses begin. And I hope, me, as well as all you, get that. Accept it, thrust it down your throat, and imbibe it. It is quintessential, to live a good life.