It was a weekend day and I rose early. The morning was lovely with the sunrays intruding slowly into my flat through the windows and the birds singing the rhymes of God. The room was silent and the environment soothing. I never felt such freshness and calm. Was it different from the other days or was I missing it everyday? I was enjoying every bit of it and went on to complete my morning chorus.
The next thing to catch my attention was the dirt which had became a part of my life. The sound of newspaper flying in the room, the dust stored over TV, computer and Utensils and the stack of books lying all over the room made wonderful scenery which made sure that I never missed the natural surrounding of my village in the concrete jungles of the town. But the stillness and silence of the surrounding made me realize their true colours. I decided to clean it. Ohh..it took minutes to even locate the broom in the small flat of mine. When did I clean it last? Do we need to clean our rooms everyday? Ohh…God! What am I doing? I was standing still with my entire brain cells working actively and the images of past rushing through my eyes.
I never saw the dust on TV, papers flying and the stack of books earlier. How the things got changed so drastically? Had I changed? The only difference was that I never got to see those misadventures of mine. There was an angel who cleaned my room, who kept money in my pocket before I could anticipate that I had no money, who knew my marks before I got my results, I never felt hungry, I never experienced pain. An angel who never asked for any return, who never shared her pain, who never called me by my name. I was standing still.
I sent the same angel to old age home last week. I found the same angel to be a burden on my young shoulders. I found her to be an intruder in our privacy when she was the one who was happiest to see me married to a girl of my choice. I found her expenses created a hole in my pocket when she made sure that I never had an empty packet. The dust and dirt of mine reminded me of her. With broom in my hand, I missed my mom on the time sand.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Monday, April 9, 2007
WAITING FOR THE RAIN TO WET MY SOUL
Patience and perseverance are told to be the two of the greatest virtues of any human being. Wait..everything will be alright. Wait…there is always a silver lining. Wait …future holds good for you. These are some of the lines which we keep on listening from our parents, teachers, peers and well wishers. We keep dreaming about the better future. When we are in mid-forties and all our hope vanish. We pass the baton to our children. Wait for their better future which in turn will make our own shinning….then the baton is passed to the Grandchildren…and it becomes a chain.
The wait never ends…….it just takes away different shapes. I wonder why we need to wait. Why can’t we live in the present unbothered by the past and unworried about the future? Why can’t we accept the simple fact of today however hard it is? Why do we need to console ourselves with the unknown sympathy of a better future? The very nature imbedded in us from the childhood days makes us a personality asking for excuses at every step later in our career and a day dreamer. I quote some lines of Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee:
“ kal kal karte aaj haath se nikle saare
Bhoot bhawisyat ki chinta me wartamaan ki baaji haare”
The wait never ends…….it just takes away different shapes. I wonder why we need to wait. Why can’t we live in the present unbothered by the past and unworried about the future? Why can’t we accept the simple fact of today however hard it is? Why do we need to console ourselves with the unknown sympathy of a better future? The very nature imbedded in us from the childhood days makes us a personality asking for excuses at every step later in our career and a day dreamer. I quote some lines of Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee:
“ kal kal karte aaj haath se nikle saare
Bhoot bhawisyat ki chinta me wartamaan ki baaji haare”
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Kalpana : A flight of Desire
“The planet below you is our campsite, and we know of no other campground” said Kalpana while talking to a fellow astronaut. The only campsite they knew was planet Earth and even that eluded them when they tried to re inter its protective and caring arms.
It was not just another worst moment of science. It was the end of 7 individual stories as well and one of them was Kalpana Chawla. The girl from Karnal, Haryana, who dreamed high and one day reached there, but didn’t return home. What we have today with us is a compelling saga of aspiration and adventure, of pure heroism. Someone called Kalpana spreads her wings and flies away to play with the stars and disappears in a shooting glow in the sky. She hasn’t, she has become just another star.
It is not surprising that her mother had been hoping for a boy, being living in a country obsessed with male child. But came out Kalpana who achieved more than a boy could. She was born on 17th March 1962. She decided to be a space engineer by the time she was 14 and was the only girl to study aeronautics at Punjab Engineering College. Still, idea of going to USA was a shock to the traditional family, and they agreed only when her brother went with her to settle her in. she became an astronaut in 1994 and flew with her first shuttle mission in 1997. She could not get over the marvel of it and readily agreed for her second mission when any astronaut who has gone to space once is not keen to enter it again, as by this time, they are fully aware of the hazards involved in space flights. She was even ready to join the team going to the Mars whose return was not guaranteed.
Any risk much repeated can become routine, and so is for shuttle flights, except when they become tragic. Thats when we are reminded that knowledge doesn’t come easy and that many consequences are unintended, especially when we set off on an adventure. Its strange that we glimpse the impossible only when it fails. How can this space craft exist, one that leaves the earth like a ballistic missile, a fragile plane strapped to half a million gallons of explosive fuel, but two weeks later returns as a glider, swooping in wide S turns back to earth under nature’s power alone ? Columbia was the 88th mission since the challenger was lost in January 1986 – one flight lost to cold, one to the heat.
The life and deeds of Montu, Kalpana’s nickname, is a way for the whole India to follow. A girl born in a small Indian town went up to fulfill her dreams and came out with flying colours. Kalpana’s study started in her hometown karnal itself in Tagore Baal Niketan. She completed her Pre-University from DAV College for women and Pre-Engineering from Dyal Singh College, Karnal. She later moved to Chandigarh to complete BSc in aeronautical engineering from PEC in 1982. She then shifted to US where she married a French national named Jean Pierre Harrison who was her flight instructor in a pilot training institute in 1983. She completed her MS in aerospace engineering from university of Texas and PhD in aerospace engineering from University of Colorado in 1988. She was selected by NASA as an astronaut in 1994 and had her first flight mission in 1994 and again in ill fated 2003 which was to be her last.
Some of the famous sayings of Kalpana are:
Follow your dreams
The path from dreams to reality does exist. May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get onto it and the perseverance to follow it?
The quickest way may not necessarily be the best.
Pioneers don’t have role models.
Her last day in space began with ‘Scotland the brave’ piped over radio. “Wild are the winds to meet you. Staunch are the friends that greet you, kind as the love that shines from fair maidens’ eyes “.people watching in eastern Texas heard a crushing rumble outside and a rain of shuttle pieces fell onto backyards, roadsides & parking lots. It felt like an attack on the calm of watchful winter, in this case no apparent evil, no enemy other than the limits of man and machines and tension between the goals we set and the risks we take. Just in few seconds a promising career and a great story came to an end. Kalpana who always wanted to live with stars became a resident of Milky Way. I would conclude with these very words:
“What she did is past, what she would have done, would have been the present, but what she showed is the way.”
It was not just another worst moment of science. It was the end of 7 individual stories as well and one of them was Kalpana Chawla. The girl from Karnal, Haryana, who dreamed high and one day reached there, but didn’t return home. What we have today with us is a compelling saga of aspiration and adventure, of pure heroism. Someone called Kalpana spreads her wings and flies away to play with the stars and disappears in a shooting glow in the sky. She hasn’t, she has become just another star.
It is not surprising that her mother had been hoping for a boy, being living in a country obsessed with male child. But came out Kalpana who achieved more than a boy could. She was born on 17th March 1962. She decided to be a space engineer by the time she was 14 and was the only girl to study aeronautics at Punjab Engineering College. Still, idea of going to USA was a shock to the traditional family, and they agreed only when her brother went with her to settle her in. she became an astronaut in 1994 and flew with her first shuttle mission in 1997. She could not get over the marvel of it and readily agreed for her second mission when any astronaut who has gone to space once is not keen to enter it again, as by this time, they are fully aware of the hazards involved in space flights. She was even ready to join the team going to the Mars whose return was not guaranteed.
Any risk much repeated can become routine, and so is for shuttle flights, except when they become tragic. Thats when we are reminded that knowledge doesn’t come easy and that many consequences are unintended, especially when we set off on an adventure. Its strange that we glimpse the impossible only when it fails. How can this space craft exist, one that leaves the earth like a ballistic missile, a fragile plane strapped to half a million gallons of explosive fuel, but two weeks later returns as a glider, swooping in wide S turns back to earth under nature’s power alone ? Columbia was the 88th mission since the challenger was lost in January 1986 – one flight lost to cold, one to the heat.
The life and deeds of Montu, Kalpana’s nickname, is a way for the whole India to follow. A girl born in a small Indian town went up to fulfill her dreams and came out with flying colours. Kalpana’s study started in her hometown karnal itself in Tagore Baal Niketan. She completed her Pre-University from DAV College for women and Pre-Engineering from Dyal Singh College, Karnal. She later moved to Chandigarh to complete BSc in aeronautical engineering from PEC in 1982. She then shifted to US where she married a French national named Jean Pierre Harrison who was her flight instructor in a pilot training institute in 1983. She completed her MS in aerospace engineering from university of Texas and PhD in aerospace engineering from University of Colorado in 1988. She was selected by NASA as an astronaut in 1994 and had her first flight mission in 1994 and again in ill fated 2003 which was to be her last.
Some of the famous sayings of Kalpana are:
Follow your dreams
The path from dreams to reality does exist. May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get onto it and the perseverance to follow it?
The quickest way may not necessarily be the best.
Pioneers don’t have role models.
Her last day in space began with ‘Scotland the brave’ piped over radio. “Wild are the winds to meet you. Staunch are the friends that greet you, kind as the love that shines from fair maidens’ eyes “.people watching in eastern Texas heard a crushing rumble outside and a rain of shuttle pieces fell onto backyards, roadsides & parking lots. It felt like an attack on the calm of watchful winter, in this case no apparent evil, no enemy other than the limits of man and machines and tension between the goals we set and the risks we take. Just in few seconds a promising career and a great story came to an end. Kalpana who always wanted to live with stars became a resident of Milky Way. I would conclude with these very words:
“What she did is past, what she would have done, would have been the present, but what she showed is the way.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)