राखीपौर्णिमेनिमित्त blog entry :

एकदा एक मुलगी राखी पौर्णिमेला राख्या घेऊन आली कॉलेजमध्ये.
अशी अन् तशी प्रेझेंटी कमीच होती मुलांची, त्यात उरलेले पसार झाले.
एक स्मार्ट मुलगा बसला होता कट्यावर
ती तिकडे गेली आणि म्हणाली हात दे, राखी बांधते।
तर हे साहेब म्हणाले मुळीच नाही।
ती म्हणाली का? काय झालं काय?
हा म्हणे वा ग वा! शहाणीच आहेस की, मी उद्या मंगळसूत्र आणतो, तू घेशील का बांधून? :))

(एक प्रांजळ कबुली: तो स्मार्ट मुलगा मी नव्हतो ! :D )

Understanding of the world around us! (and Theism)

My intution now tells me that its not only GRE exam.... everything that we see, touch, hear, smell, experience is telling us something..... essentially same set of facts, only that I do not have ability to decode everything.

Call this view as spiritual, but I don't find it confortable to see myself associated with an adjective "spiritual" because believe it or not, I feel the word has a negative connotation, and I am sure you don't agree with the last statement. I am not so comfortable with the word because of my strong disgust towards Sadhu babas, maulas or priests that act superior towards people around them and quite contradictorily state that no one is superior or inferior in front of god. Everything about them is self contradicting. They enjoy all the luxuries, indulge in all kinds of politics, earn enormous amount of money and ask followers to free themsleves from urge, hunger, anger. But why am I attacking spirituality? Actually speaking, I don't have anything against spirituality but its just that this word brings many such culprits (like Aniruddha baba, Mungle Maharaj, Vamanrao Pai and list goes on...) in my mind. I confess that I am unnecessarily mixing up 2 different isues here.

To be frank, as orthodox as most believers are and as blind as their faith is, one day I was a "blind" atheiest. I used to object to everything that has even hint of theism. But now, I have started realising that whatever is there in our religious texts or spiritual ones, really makes sense. It involves great amount of logic, study of nature and its laws and also moves on to draw inferences. It is a clearcut cause-result relationship that was presented. We find a common ground or foundation over which laws of any religion are based. But I guess, over a period of time, everything was intentionally made obscure, meanings were distorted by selfish, hypocritical people which has resulted in a chaos we see today. So, coming back to decoding, we need to filter out such 'noise signals' and then decode them. That might enhance our understanding of the world and utilise our sensory inputs more efficiently; read the first line if its not clear to you what I am talking about. Yes, I know what you are thinking... Right, I sound as confused as usual...

Thoughts on GRE

Today was my date with GRE exam ;). Though I didn't score as much as I was expecting, I liked the way this exam is conducted. You may be aware that it is computer adaptive test i.e. difficulty level of next question depends upon the correctness of your previous answer. Also, you cannot go back to a question and change answer. Though this was known to me even before I registered for the test and I had appeared for many practice tests prior to the exam; I don't know why, I kept thinking about this feature for an hour or so after the exam. It was quite appealing to me because later, I arrived at a conclusion that this exam bears a great amount of resemblance to the life we lead, barring eccentric exceptions.
Some examples:

1. You can never go back and change your answer.
(You cannot go back in time and do whatever you "should have". You are bound to face consequences of whatever you do (or don't do) in the past.)

2. Attempt your first few questions properly. They matter the most. However, it is important not to get disheartened if you are not sure about one or two. It is not necessary that all of the initial answers 'must' be correct for a reasonably good score. Also answering them correctly doesn't guarantee very high percentile, you may spoil it later in haste.
(Yeah, as they say, first impression is the last impression. But of course, we do know, it is not always the last impression, you can always spoil or make up your image.)

3. If you answer correctly, you should expect next question to be slightly tougher than previous one. If you don't, expect an easier question.
(When you manage to do some work properly, people around you expect you to do even more difficult tasks. Your deeds only raise or lower their expectations).

4.Therefore, getting harder questions is more beneficial than getting easier questions.
(Greater the responsibility, higher is the social status and also.... income.)

5. There is an unidentified section in the exam that is not scored. One is advised to attempt all the sections with equal attentiveness. You never know what is going to count and what is not.
(Legendary quote in Bhagvatgeeta "कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन" or simply put: Do your job, don't look for profit or gain when you are doing that।)

There may be even more, but I thought of only these.... :)