She was up, just ten seconds before the alarm clock could blow. She wondered sometimes about the use of setting the alarm clock, when she always got up on time anyways. But then, it had become a habit, setting up the alarm before going to sleep and then getting up a li’l before five in the morning to switch it off, even beofore it could make any sound.

She loved getting up early. It was so refreshing, and gave her immense strength.

In half an hour, she was out on the road which was still wet with dew. The breeze was icy cool, and made the early morning bed-departure routine worth following. She was happy to have her house opposite a beautiful and huge park where lot of other early risers would reach hopping in their shorts and canvas shoes. Soon like most of them her age out there in the park, she was jogging.

In about five minutes, it started drizzling. Cold freezing drops of a compound commonly referred to as water soon gained intensity, and before anyone could find a shelter, the drizzle had already turned into a heavy downpour. She was all wet. And what the hell, the water was just too cold. She started running fast to reach the nearest shed, which was aleady enough crowded with people. She ran faster, lost balance and fell down, felt the pain, let out a scream and then finally opened her eyes.

‘I am sorry, I had to kick you out of the bed. Hope it didn’t hurt, did it? But this was the only thing I could do, when even a bottle of ice cold water couldn’t wake you up. It will be 365 days tomorrow, when your attempt to get up at five in the morning will fail. Anyways, go have a shower. It’s already nine you lazy girl.’

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Why is that Aishwarya Rai looking so different here? Something’s wrong here? Isn’t she looking a li’l too young? Is she?

Okay, cut the crap, she is not Aish! Holy Christ! I was wondering, how come she paired up with someone like Sohail Khan, and how come I never knew that a movie named Aryan was coming. Only when I checked with some sites, I realized that the actress in this movie is Sneha, the girl who paired with Salman earlier in her first movie. What a look alike!

But mind you she doesn’t look so much like Aish in all the shots. I guess that the guys who worked on the above poster deliberately tried to confuse the on-lookers like me. Thanks to internet, there’s no confusion any more.

But then Sneha is cool too!

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Yes, it’s coming back. What is the ultimate purpose of my life? Of anyone’s life? A blogger-mate tells- it is to die. I refute this claim. My life means more than that. I had given up once and had declared that life didn’t have any purpose. But right now, at this particular moment, I no more believe in that conclusion.

Is it Money?

NO. I reject this idea. Let’s start from this. What will happen if I don’t have money? I wont be able to buy myself food and clothes? Yes that’s true. But I ask this: why do I need food and clothes? To survive, is it? Is this what you have to say? Well then it’s just a loop, isn’t it? The fundamental question remains, rock solid and unanswered. What is the need to survive? Earning money cannot be, because it just keeps you moving in a loop!

Getting out of the loop

Are you a part of this loop? Of course, I am. Can I get out? I want to. And since I am very sure, money is not a purpose, nor is death, I want to figure out the reason for the need to survive.

What is the future? I am talking about the future in general, that of the overall life on earth. Yeah, so what is it, how is it, the future? You don’t know? Well, me neither! And even if you can ’see’ some future, it’s still just in your mind. We have some idea, but none of us really know what the future is really going to be like.

Why did I suddenly start talking about future? Have patience. You will figure that out for yourself. Let me talk about the past now.

What about the past? Do we know how it was? Yes we do, a lot of it. We know what happened in the world yesterday, the day beofore, the year before, the century before. What do we see? Do the historical records that we have, tell us something? Anything? Some trend? I am talking about the general trend of the overall human life on earth. Where is it headed? Anywhere?

Look at all the people around you, the human beings. They didn’t even exist some time back (okay call that ‘a long time back’ if that really matters). The point is that the human species did not exist at one point of time! Some say that we have evolved from the monkeys. Quite agreeable. We, the humans and monkeys have a lot in common. The level of thinking, the so called intelligence is what differentiates us from the monkeys, besides the look and the tail of course. So, if past tells us anything, it is that the net direction of all that is happening on earth is to lead to a more and more complex species, which can think better than the one that existed earlier. And this gives a hint at an aspect of the future also. This ‘intelligence’ should keep on getting refined; should keep on getting upgraded. A lot of new things happen with this ‘upgraded’intelligence. The quest for the answer to the purpose of life is one of them!

Do monkeys think about the purpose of life? This is not a joke! Answer me. Do I hear a big NO? So you agree that these things originate only in our brains, the human brains, right? Good. And I also guess that you are already sure that this has to do with the higher intelligence level that we possess. As human beings, we have the ability to think of things beyond just those necessary for survival. As human beings, we have the intelligence to question the need for survival iteself! But then, we have got only enough intelligence, so as to raise this question. We still do not know the answer. We do not know, where to look for answers. Is the answer within us? Somewhere else? No answer at all?

We think, think, and keep on thinking. And this is good. This way, we are actually contributing to the progressive growth of the overall evolution. It might be a small contribution, but it is helping the overall life evolve and get more intelligent. If we stop thinking about this purpose, and only concenterate on our own survival, of ways to be ahead of others, we are wasting the power that we have aquired as human beings.

Today we might not have enough intelligence to find out the purpose, but we can make guesses. We can keep attempting. We need to push our minds into this. But to keep thinking, we need to survive first of all. If we are dead, we can no more think! Looks like I am out of the loop now. I am not here on this earth, living, just to wait for the ‘inevitable’ death. I am living, so that I can think, and in the process keep refining the power that I have; the power that makes me and fellow human beings superior to any other living species.

Is thinking enough?

No. At least I do not think so. If all I do is just keep speculating on the real purpose, and do nothing else in this direction, my contribution to the growth of life as a whole, is very mild. I want to contribute, and do it the best way that I can. And this isn’t possible by merely thinking. I need to think to make guesses, but I also need to work on my guesses.

Guesses?

Till now I never talked about a single purpose! I did mention that a purpose exists, and I did mention that we are not yet smart enough to tell what it exactly is. Ok, not exactly may be, but how about a guess work? Intuition? If that’s the only thing that we can do, we should do it.

So let me make few attempts at guessing what the real purpose of my life can be. And before doing that, I will keep few things in my mind.

1. Earning any more money than what I will need to survive, and keep living, and keep working on whatever I guess my purpose to be, is stupid. Makes no sense.

2. I do need to survive and keep living. I need to use all the time that I have in this life. Life is not just a time pass, and I am not here, merely waiting to die. I need to keep living till my time comes, so that I can keep attempting to figure out the purpose. I might fail to do so in my life time, but I would still be contributing positively to the growth of the overall life.

3. I should not restrain my thinkings to myself. I need to reach out to people and spread the message of active thinking, so that the whole process continues with speed.

Well, it looks like I have already started talking like Swami Vivekananda, is it? No, I haven’t read any of his books as such, but somehow, the third point above made me feel so!

So having kept these three points in my mind, I am ready to make guesses. But that should be the content of another post. I cannot write everything all here. What I would like you to do, is share your opinions, thinkings, guesses with me. It’s important for me. And may be for you too. I believe that it’s important for each one of us to make an effort at figuring out a purpose, however futile that effort might appear to be. It’s time we realize, we are no more monkeys, and so we have other things to do than just looking for ourselves and our families; quarrelling amongst ourselves; and jumping from one tree to another till we finally die. There’s much more, and the monkeys can’t do it.

Think, think, think some more, and keep doing that. And let me know if you would like to, what you think.

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breakfast : NILL (crashing)
lunch : NILL (didn’t feel like having)
evening snacks: two veg puffs + one packet of Haldiram Moongdal + a cup of white coffee
dinner : Maggi noodles + A packet of Britannia Pure Magic Choclate Buiscuits

What have I been eating??

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It appears as if someone stumbled upon my podcast on what is life, and then wrote this post.

Of course the author of this post never saw my video. But his post definitely seems to be written keeping someone who thinks like me in mind. Read this line- ‘Perhaps you’re a rather nihilistic person who doesn’t believe you have a purpose and that life has no meaning’.Looks like he is talking about me, doesn’t he? This clearly tells me one thing. That I am not the only one who thinks life doesn’t have ANY purpose. I should read what he has to talk about. Let’s see if he can change the way I think.

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It’s 9:00 Pm now. I am sitting in my hostel room, with this stupid laptop that I have been carrying all day. The following paragraphs were written during day time, when I was sitting in a site office on the outskirts of Chennai. Read them, if you don’t mind getting bored.

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The AC office has been replaced by a FRP-on-steel-frame site office, where only a fan runs. It is one of those typical site offices erected at construction sites, where few office furniture and few site engineers and supervisors keep talking to themselves. I have this laptop here which I need to carry with me, each time I return.

Wow! The power went off just now. The poor fan can no more rotate. And that means I will soon start sweating. It’s hot and it’s humid. The battery of this laptop shall last for another one and a half hour and I shall continue writing till then. But wait a sec, I am not supposed to use this machine for writing all this. I am supposed to extract quantities from BOQ, and also work more on the quality management plan.

A BOQ what? Okay a BOQ (Bill of Quantities) is nothing but a set of few pages (I have a soft copy) which lists the overall quantities of materials to be used, the rate per unit for each quantity and hence the total cost of quantities. What do I need to extract? Well, let me try explaining that.

Talk about concrete. The BOQ will talk about the quantity of a certain grade of concrete to be used, its rate and its cost. But then, concrete has to be made here, on site. And for that, you need what? You need cement, sand, 20 mm and 40 mm aggregates, water, mixer, and of course labour. So what I got to do is find out these sub-quantities from a given quantity of a material like concrete.

I hope I was successful in explaining my work for today (and may be tomorrow) to you.

What am I doing at site, when all I gotta do is “extract quantities” from a soft copy of BOQ? Well, I am here at site doing all this, just to get the feel of the construction that shall begin in few days.

Some guys are working to restore power. I am not sweating too much, thanks to the flow of the natural air through the not so wisely placed windows of this single room site office. I can hear a JCB in operation, lifting things from here and there. Don’t ask me now what a JCB is. If I have to keep explaining about the things I encounter here so often, I will die. I will put a pic of the vehicle when I get back to room. That will surely tell you what it is.

So am I at the site, extracting various sub quantities from something called BOQ, just to have a feel of heat and humidity and the sound of a JCB running on the site? Exactly. Well, I said that already, didn’t I? The construction work shall take off from Sunday. Not that I will be coming on Sunday, but the work will anyways begin. Some guys postponed the work, all because this Sunday is an Amavasya, and hence a lucky day to begin construction. This is India!

We will start with earth work excavation first, which will go on for a two three days. And after that I will have only two more weeks and some more days left for this internship. I guess that the piling work will still be on by the time I leave Chennai.

Did I tell you, what we are building here at this site, where I have been sitting all day? It’s an industrial building for Turbo Engineering Ltd. Once the job is done, they will begin manufacturing Turbo Engines here. This project is worth nearly 5 crores, and a big thing about this building is that, a part of it is being aimed to be a platinum rated Green Building. A Platinum rated what? A good thing is that I don’t have to explain this here since I already talked about it in an earlier post. Here is this link.

Well, I have started sweating finally. The guys working on electricity have given up. The battery says 1:10 minutes remaining. Enough time for me to keep typing for some more time.

I never told you about my Ladakh trip, did I? When did I go to Ladakh?? No, I haven’t ever been to that place. But I will be going to. Yeah as soon as this intern’s over, I will be flying to Ladakh with my sweet family. We will drop in at some more places after that, which should include Manali and Haridwar as per the current plans. But you never know when Dad changes plan! So there’s no point in my writing any more about the yet-to-be-made trip. I would surely update you on that. Wait for a month!

Great! Power has finally come! Talking about trip, I should tell you how I reached the site today. It’s close to forty kilometers from IIT, on the way to Mahabalipuram. Yesterday was the first time that I had visited this site, and it had been a comfortable journey in A’s AC car. To repeat the fact for those who missed previous posts, A is the project director of this company in which I am doing my internship and he is the one guiding me throughout. (More on A in this post).

And then later yesterday, I was told that a bus no: one one nine would bring me to this place, and would also take me back to IIT. I was also told that the bus stop was supposed to be outside IIT.

I realized today morning that there was no bus stop near IIT that I could find, where one one nine stops. Walking in the sun, carrying this heavy laptop was quite painful. I did spot a one one nine, but then it just passed by. It was anyways all too crowded inside. I had spotted the bus, but the stop was nowhere to be seen. So I thought that I would better go to my old Ac cabin in the head office itself, because anyways there was no work at site as such. In fact I was going to the site, all because of my own enthu. A had asked me the day before where would I like to work since the work at site would begin only on the coming Sunday. And I had told him that I would prefer going to the site!

But here I was, unable to find even the bus stop! I thought no more, and after walking for some more time, got into a shared-auto which took me to the head office.

A is smart. He found out the location of the right bus stop after making a few phone calls and then asked one of his drivers to drop me there, at the bus stop. The driver did so and waited till a one one nine came and I waved him a bye as I boarded the bus. Finally I was in the bus and after a slow journey of a little more than an hour, I reached this site. It was already 12:45 by then.

The guys working at this site where going to the nearby college canteen to have their food, in a Sumo. I met them in the way to the site, and joined them. So the first thing I did at the site today, was to have food! Funny!

Enough for a post. Rather more than enough. You read it all? Amazing ya…
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Okay, so now that I am back, and have full time access to net in my hostel room, let me put this pic of a JCB in place.

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