An attempt at short story writing

The following might be a very arbit non-choherent prose...use your discretion before you proceed. Comments or critiques are welcome.


"Where was I?" thought Madan as he got up with a jolt from a weird dream. The first week of training had been very hectic and as a result he had been sleeping heavily the past two days, trying to catch up on lost sleep and ended up being engulfed in the myriad world of dreams.Madan knew one thing, dreams don't predict any thing, they are a medium to acheive things that you can't or haven't in real life, a medium to vent out frustrations,yet these were the very reasons why he hated these dreams, because they reminded him of things that he was yet to do something about.

*****************************

Life felt so boring, the enthusiasm that he used to effuse when he landed up in this place seemed to have slowly faded away. "I am visiting a new place and it will definitely be a great experince..new friends, new sights, new house, new everything...hell, I am in the place where are dreams are given shape and realised..it got to be good." So he had envisioned and so it was, atleast in the first week since he had joined the company.

Dinner at a three star hotel was a rare happenstance and when he got to know that they were to have dinner at "The windmill meadows" for whole of the week as a part of the orientation and acclimatisation program, he knew things couldn't have been better. The orientation program was a mix of fun and business and Madan despised the latter. The dinners were definitely fun for him, atleast the food served at the meadows was good. Though a teetotaller, he didn't mind the company of people who had good time with a drink, infact they sometimes were his source of amusement.

Ah, those were the days, gone are those days he thought as he recalled the 'sessions' when his friends would reveal amazing lesser known truths about themselves which made them instant legends. Hostel life was something he was definitely going to miss big time; the cosy room, the endless hours of surfing the net, debating for hours about some worthless topic, the ultra flexible routine that arouse out of the freedoom to do anything at any time and ofcourse the unlimited entertainment though countless movies that he had had ready access to.
Madan hadn't taken any intitiative to participate in extra-curricular activities at college, he was more of a bookworm, gobbling up books on science fiction and abstract stuff. Now, he hardly had time for any hobbies, work and sleep consumed most of his time..Ah those days, he thought again..

"Hey", said someone sitting next to him, snapping him back down to ground reality, "the food's up for grabs, let's go yaar". Thank heavens, that lecture was outright trash, he thought. The lecture was another one in the series of lectures that was meant to inculcate the company's vision and mission to the employees and drive home the point on why their work culture was superior. He headed out to a fast queuing up line for the variegated buffet spread out in a vast ballroom. A couple of girls caught his eye as he helped himself with servings of pulaov. He made a mental note to go talk to them later on.

*************************

The orientation week flew by quickly and Madan was yet to get acquainted with many of his coworkers during his first week of training. The company was paying him a decent buck and his work which concerned developing innovative software solutions to network optimisation problems, was an upcoming and demanding field. His undergraduate education according to him hadn't served any useful purpose and he knew he had a lot to catchup on during the ongoing training of three months. It hadn't been easy since the actual training had begun. Flooded with assignments to be completed and tests to be held every week, he could only think of his carefree hostel life. He knew he would take time before he would start accepting the current situtation for better or worse, but the past memories still haunted him. He wasn't sure if he had made the right choice, maybe he thought, maybe if I had...

Job had never been his first option, he had set his sights high at getting into the IIMs, but he had been careless during his preparation for its entrance exam. Too much of idle time and lack of focus didn't do him any good.Yahoo messenger is the worst thing that happened to mankind, he thought as he painfully recollected the many hours he had spent chatting with complete strangers. What irked him most was his attitude towards work which could be summed up to "Well begun is Half done".

Whenever he remincised on the past memories of his undergrad life, Madan would enter a trance like state and let the mind and its flow of thoughts take its own course. During these times, he was just an observer, he wasn't in the least affected by what was going on.He had been a character in his past life,now he wasn't, now he was a mere spectator,he had enjoyed his hostel life, now he had those memories, he had made mistakes,now he could only repent on his mistakes if he chose to.

His eyelids were dropping down, he let out a yawn, life, he thought, life is like that. Another night full of weird dreams, another day at the job tomorrow, this monotonous existence isn't enough. He was going to be one among the many people who couldn't comprehend any joy in working all day and working to a fixed schedule, what fun was there in that? I need to do something imaginative to spruce up this inspid life he thought and he very well knew he wasn't going to do that. The frustration just stays, may be I have to live with it, he thought, yeah life sucks.

Anyone game for it?

Yeah, I am talking about the Bangalore half marathon to be held on December 18th.
Though I am nowhere near running shape, courtesy not running for the past one month, I might just wanna attempt it and if possible try completing it. Some amount of training is required you say, hmm, might start this month end or early next month. The first half marathon I had attempted was a lesson on why you shouldn't run a half with 10 days of training.
My concern right now is the status of my left knee, which will dictate whether I would be able to train properly and get the long runs(atleast one or two) before I hit the race.

Of dosas and long queues

Its been a long time since the hostel messes here have been contracted to a private caterer. Though they charge a good amount, the quality of the food served leaves us frustrated. When things get a lot worse as it happenend last week what we get served is diluted milk, white water(butter milk), yellow rice (read lemon rice) to name a few edibles, a pretty colourful menu actually. Inorder that the hostel management doesn't inflict any stringent action on the caterers, they hold a food fest once in a while as a precautionary measure. Today was one of those days and it was a great revelation that these people do know how to cook!
The menu was to state simply - 'dosas demystified' - Yep they had the colour, variety, taste and appeal that would leave a stranger to southie food flabbergasted.
As far as I can recall from my poor short term memory, there were atleast 5 varities of chutnies to go with the dosas - mint, onion, coconut, methi, pudina and tomato . As for the dosas themselves, you could chose from plain dosa, onion dosa, podi dosa, spl masala dosa(!), rava dosa, upma uttapam (hearing for the first time), tomato pesarratu, panner and gobi dosas, ghee dosa and a few more which I forgot to memorise. Naturally there was a long queue for each variety of dosa. I must have spent atleast an hour and a quarter going around and collecting my share of the spoils and to economise on time, I had most of my grub while waiting in line for the next variety, a neat strategy I must say.
I finally managed to gobble in close to 6.5 dosas after which I had to call it a day for fear of any digestive repurcussions.

It's 4 am in the morning
I can hear the birds start chirping

It's definitely going to be fun
If I am gonna go for a run

Oh! hear my plight
I haven't slept through the night

Even if I summoned up all my might
My leg doesn't feel all that right

There shall be soon someday
when I will have my way

Till then shall I make do
With enjoying the fresh morning dew

Life

Life..what do I seek in life? Is mere existence enough? That I will anyway do, oneway or the other. What is it that I want to do in life..? Looking at things as of now, my plan's to get a doctoral degree, but what after that? May be a job in a company or a prof in some univ...What after that?..This question can be asked n number of times till I reach the time when I look back on all things I have done at my death-bed and maybe have one or two regrets about things I could have done, before passing away!...
My point is, is there any meaning to any of the choices we make in life ,or is it more meaningful to analyse what is it that we do once the choice is made.For example, I think it wouldn't matter to me whether I were to live a life as a farmer or a scientist, provided 'I like what I do and I do what I like'. I have always wanted be an astronomer, but having entered an engineering stream , it might be difficult now to revert back to my initial interest. Now, whether what I am doing right now interests me is the question to be asked and to that I answer a resounding yes.Why? - Why not? My other interest has been trains - Every year during summer vacations, we would travel from hyd to chennai to my uncle's place. I used to simply get awed looking at the train, the engine chugging in to the station, the sounds and ofcourse the sights from the "window seat".Though I never fancied being a train driver, I wanted my work to be associated someway to trains.
Coming back to the original question, even if I were to take up a career that were related to my interests, is that enough? Isn't what you do after having made that choice more important. Taking up work that I like will only help me get into the 'thick and thin' of things quicker, but to sustain it is an altogether another task, which I think is what is I should be aiming at.

Let's take an example: You have two tasks A and B. A is something which you like to work on based on your exposure to the field to which the task A belongs and on the other hand B is a task which is not to your liking.
Whereas you might get a good start on A and maynot even start B, the sustenance of the work towards the two tasks is altogether another issue. In a work environment, a tough supervisor might do the trick, but what if there were to be no one to monitor your work..how is it that you
ensure that you keep up the pace of your work and not end up in stagnation...? The only way I see this happening is through setting up goals...Not goals that are merely to be acheived as in a deadline, but goals which really serve to keep you motivated through your work...These goals boil down to the core things that we seek in life.They are mostly related to the improvement of self, either intellectually or spiritually or both.
Even the will to 'just do it' is a form of spiritual exercise, if the will is strong, you wouldn't have to look for motivation...you just do it, no matter what.It is interseting to note that people of great acheivements are people with great will power and this is something that is developed over a period of time, and the best time to start is when you are really young. Unfortunately, the current education system does not emphasise development of these core values and are rather career oriented and competition rules here.Instead of just mugging up facts in history, if opinions were to be asked of students as to the analysis of a particular event , thier critical thinking skills would be enhanced.Courses in logic and problem solving would do a world of good in paving the path for a better life. Though it can be argued that children aren't that mature enough to start thinking logically at an early stage, we haven't really experimented to see if that is true.It is an irony that the need for these things are felt later on in life and nothing is being done about it.