Gemini

I once read a book by Sidney Sheldon called "The windmills of the gods". Not that I am a great fan of the author, but something in this book caught my attention. There is a character called Angel who is the villain of the story. Until the end, the reader unknowingly assumes that the character is a man. Well, thats justifiable! When one reads accounts of gruesome crimes and cold blooded murders committed by a paid assassin, one naturally assumes that the villain is a man!! The startling finale, revealing the fact that Angel is a woman makes the reader hurriedly turn the pages and reread certain parts of the book to make sure that the author had infact never explicitly ascribed a gender to the character. As a matter of fact, this tactic is going to come in quite handy to me in this article. Well, my aim is not to mislead the reader into making assumptions. What I mean is that I am going to write about someone whose identity, I will take the utmost efforts to conceal! And yet I am going to write about this person elaborately! Henceforth, I shall refer to the protagonist as Gemini for reasons that may become obvious later on.

Gemini puzzled me; not intimidated, confused or overwhelmed like most people felt where gemini was concerned. I was just, well, puzzled. It just didnt make sense. It seems like I have known gemini forever! We have known each other for quite a while, but the time we have spent is not enough for me to substantiate the feeling of forever that i associate with our relationship. I have seen gemini change, grow, mature and wisen. Did I miss something there that I should have seen? I must have been too engrossed in my own tumultuous process of maturing that I didn't notice it at first. But when I did, gemini puzzled me.

Gemini has always been a person to reckon with. Someone more self content, I am yet to meet! Gemini exudes so much of confidence and vitality that i sometimes wonder if Gemini has ever felt out of depth. The ease with which Gemini could peel the layers of irrelevant and redundanct facts off any issue and get to the core is utterly fascinating. It wasn't a surprise that many of our conversations would turn out to be stimulating and enlightening. For a time I thought that perhaps we were two of a kind! No matter how incoherent I sounded, Gemini would understand what I meant and I didnt have to explain myself as I did with others. And yet, when I think about it now, we arent so similar afterall. Well, Gemini just puzzles me!

I am not really sure, when the discordant note first struck. I guess I must have dismissed it in the beginning. Maybe I wasn't astute enough to recognize it. But it must have gotten registered in the recesses of mind somewhere. Gemini and I would have intense quarrels and it would leave me battered and hurt. And I would reconcile myself thinking that since I wasn't as good and capable as Gemini was, it must have been my mistake. Finally, one fine day, when I let my mind wander aimlessly, the situation suddenly presented itself to me. I realized that there were infact two distinct facets to Gemini. One of them was the one I admired, the mature, wise and logical individual that Gemini seemed to be most of the time. The other side to Gemini had all the qualities that I found irksome in people in general, namely, immaturity, irrationality and dogmatic beliefs.

Without really giving it much thought, most people at one point of time or the other, gravely remark that there are two sides to every coin, as if that should satisfactorily explain even the most baffling anomalies. Come to think of it, sometimes a coin, in no way has any similarities with the situations that elicited its reference. But whoever came up with the phrase in the first place must indeed be a wise man. Well, for one thing, if we start questioning the wisdom of such pithy sayings, life would become more complex than it actually is! And yet, I wonder if this is one of the things that the saying explains, this apparent dichotomy in Gemini's nature; these two inexplicable unresolvable facets. Maybe they exist for the sake of being irreconcilable, bringing about an equilibrium in a strange sort of way. Does everyone have these faces then? Do other people identify in me two such facets? Is this what makes Gemini tick? Does Gemini manage to swing as much as possible in one direction, secure in the knowledge that life's forces will balance it out, and swing the opposite way?

Maybe everyone of us has these extremes and I happened to notice Gemini's only because I was uncomfortable with one of them. Perhaps, it makes sense in a wierd sort of way, the way two negatives seem to make a positive or the way opposites seem to attract. Many a time, people accept the most illogical of things without a second thought, convincing themselves that this is the way the world works. I wonder if this is one of those things that I should just accept and save myself all this rigorous analysis. And yet...and yet, no matter what reasons I come up with to explain it, Gemini continues to puzzle me.

Engineering craze or crazy engineers?

"Our society ought to stop forcing students to take engineering!", I heard a friend vehemently exclaim for what seemed like the nth million time! When something is so oft repeated, it just fails to make a significant impact. Not surprisingly, the passionate statement didnt so much as ruffle my feathers. But well, in all fairness to the speaker, the only things that extract anything even remotely related to a passionate response from me are cheese pizzas, icecreams and occasionally male chauvinistic P**gs! But undeterred by my lack of enthusiasm, I wondered if it would make a good enough topic for a blog. Well, there is only one way to find out!
For starters, people often fail to see the kind of society we live in, atleast the society that i come from. Its the kind of society, where the society itself is of utmost importance. Given that, a logical result is that fact that individuality is sacrificed for the greater good of the society. Another logical yet not obvious result is the fact that the society perpetuates certain trends which catch on quickly. More often than not these popular trends dont even have much of a basis, but most people adopt them for fear of being left out. The "engineering craze" as I'd like to call it is a perfect example. It would be perfectly reasonable to ask why it started in the first place. Simple! The engineering route is the easiest and fastest way to get a degree and start earning good money! Atleast thats what i was told when i was faced with a choice! Getting an engineering degree is quite simply, the easiest course one can take. The sudden mushrooming of engineering colleges in every nook and cranny has decidedly made a degree all the more easily attainable. Now thats a typical chicken and egg situation for you, the chicken being the deluge of engineering colleges and the egg being people wanting to become engineers!
There are 4 different ways in which people deal with this kind of a situation. One, they go along with the flow hoping that the destination they get to is in fact where they wanted to get to in the first place. Two, they furiously paddle against the flow also hoping that the opposite direction is the one that will lead to the right destination and taking great pride in doing so! Ofcourse, these are two extremes. The last two are somewhat more subtle. There are those among us that actually like doing what it is that everyone is doing. One might conclude that this is the best scenario: not only are you taking the easy way out, you actually like what you end up doing! But, its hardly that simple. People who belong to this category actually have a tougher life than those who chose to oppose the whole thing. Not only do they have to prove themselves in an arena teeming with a million others, their job is made more difficult by the teeming millions threatening to engulf them in mediocracy. Lastly, there are those that dont care about what trends are existent and who simply take the unpopular choice becuase they like it. But this is much easier said than done! Not only do they have to wade through all the obstacles, they have to keep believing in themselves against the odds. The people who are different for the sake of being different atleast enjoy the battle against the majority, because thats what drives them on. And well, no matter how often we tell people to "not care what others say" and no matter how often we hear it said to us, we do care, very much so!
My aim is not to be judgemental and say that a particular group of people is noble and another isnt. It takes different kinds of people to make up this world. To define one kind, you need another! But what does amuse me is to see people being hypocritical and blaming someone else for their deeds. And whats even more amusing is to see them blame an entity like soceity which is infact an organization of their own making that thrives solely because of the importance given to it! So, to me, it seems that as long as we remain the same old human beings with the same old needs and wants, these funny little trends will continue to be a part of our lives and if we werent caught up in the "engineering craze", we would get caught up in yet another craze!

.....Oh and if you are still waiting for me to tell you which of the four categories i think i belong to, you just have to keep waiting!!