Oskar Schindler

I had promised myself that I wont write another post after the last post but the circumstances (read Watching the movie Schindler’s List) forced me to write another one and try as hard as I can, I cant stop myself from writing this post.

Starting with it, first of all I would like to thank all my friends who advised me to watch this movie and I suggest you too should see the movie, it’s a bit long (3 hrs) but if you can invest your time in watching some crappy two and half hour Hindi movies then you should see this movie too.

I am somehow amazed that prior to this day, I was unaware of such a great humanitarian deed by a person. The media and the world of books always depict the atrocities and inhuman deeds which were done by the Nazis during the WWII period but feats like this are never highlighted much. Why don’t they bring out the goodness remaining in the world and try to paint a bright picture of the world if it can be done.

For the information, Oskar Schindler was a German businessman and a member of the Nazi party who saved about 1100 Jews from the Holocaust, who came to be known as Schindlerjuden (Schindler’s Jews), trying all the ways straight and crooked, often violating many rules which could have landed him in trouble, losing a lot of money in bribing the officers just in a bid to save those Jews. I don’t know whether this is a historically correct fact or not but it was shown in the movie that he bought the 1100 Jews, paying money for each and every Jew he saved.

Very rarely for me, I am overcome by emotions, will just paste a few extracts of what people saved by him have to say about him

Poldek Pfefferberg

The man instrumental in telling the story of Schindler to the world, he tried all he could so that the world could know him and finally the world(atleast a part of it knows)

On his efforts to tell the story to the world, he says

“Schindler gave me my life, and I tried to give him immortality.”

“Oscar Schindler was a modern Noah”, “It was like the saying: To save one life is to save the whole world. Schindler called us his children. In 1944, he was a very wealthy man, a multimillionaire. He could have taken the money and gone to Switzerland … he could have bought Beverly Hills. But instead, he gambled his life and all of his money to save us …” “

Abraham Zuckerman

“He bowed to you, and he said good morning to you,” Zuckerman says, which may not sound like much of a favor, but to those beaten-down Jews, that small acknowledgement of their dignity gave them enormous hope.

Helen Beck

“We gave up many times, but he always lifted our spirits … Schindler tried to help people however he could. That is what we remember.”

Stories are too many , In the end I would just like to salute the great man. This might seem foolish and stupid to you but in this state of my mind , a feeling I am sure you will also share if you watch the movie once . This is the only thing I can do to tell the story to a further few, the least I can do.

I just can’t imagine how many blessings he must have got in his life with the lives he saved, he must sure have died a happy man.

Go through this site to read a few stories of the Schidler’s Jews.

Once again I strongly recommend you to see the movie and go through the link I gave above.

The famed Schidler’s List can be found here.

Edit : I was told by a friend of mine that you will start hating Hitler after watching this movie, but I am glad that nothing of that sort happend and I still appreciate the man as much as I did before watching the movie. Ofcourse the cruelty to the Jews can never be justified but I have known this earlier so nothing new in this regard so no harm done to his reputation

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Tags: Schindler, Oskar, Germany, Jews, World War, Holoucast

A year closer to Death

For a student, the years of life don’t pass by with the birthdays but with the passing of each academic session, this is the indication that now you have passed one hurdle in the life and you are one year more mature, having a year of life and study in your kitty. Browsing through my archive, I realized to my amazement that I haven’t written any year ending posts yet so this can is beginning of sorts for me , only thing which comes close to this is the semester ending post which I wrote at the end of 3rd semester which seems like quite some time now, one and half year to be exact (almost). I had planned on writing one more post before this one but Wonder Years always has that strange melancholic and nostalgic effect on me, so I am left with no option but to write this post.

If I say that this has been the most eventful year of my life then it might not be a fallacy altogether. This has been a year of highs (literal and metaphorical) , lows, success, failure, happiness, hurt, finding new friends, rekindling friendship with some, deteriorating relationships with some. I think I have seen it all this year.

One of the biggest event this year was undoubtedly Felicity, 2008, it will sure be a memory of a lifetime.

Had many career issues had to decide on the path to chart after I am done with my B. Tech, started off the year garnering ambitions of a MS, which changed to thinking about MBA and finally now deciding upon job (lazy ass that I am, kaun padhe yaar)

Had one of the best and worst times which I could have with a friend.

Had one of the most painful time and it did hurt and the happiness on the ending of that phase was just exemplary to say the least.

Had the leisure of having two homes in the city where I don’t have any LGs and the pleasure to go there and have a ball while eating good homely food.

Had the good luck of my sister coming to Hyderabad for a job, making 1 out of the 2 homes I mentioned above.

Had the displeasure of trying to handle politicians in the college and realizing that there are very few people you can trust.

Had the realization that somehow I get all too senti about people and things even if they don’t mean that much to me and go overboard in praising them, should try to control this trait in future..

Had 2 road accidents this year, the most for any year till now. 😛

Had 3 of the most beautiful accidents (not sure I can call them accidents) of my life 🙂

Went to quite different levels in some things which need not discussed here.

One of the highlight of this year was me discovering the music of Beatles, a thing I am sure is gonna influence my whole life, I just cant seem to get enough of them.

I am pretty sure that a few years down the line, I am gonna remember this year as one of the most important in my life and a turning point in many things for me. A few many know, few are known to a select few and some might die with me. This has been a year of a lot of firsts for me and except the points mentioned above, I am sure there is not going to be a recollection of my past in my future which will not consist of this present (this year). I am not sure if I can classify this as a happy year or a time of misfortune for me (there has been a bounty of both), rather classify this as mélange which is the case with the life of all of us but I am thankful for all the experiences I had this year, whether they have been good or bad but they have taught me a lot.

One thing more is passing 3rd year makes you feel all grown up as you are now in the final year of your college and ready to step in the big bad world. Ready to face the real music and test the success or failure of the years of preparation you have been doing for this stage of your life.

All in all, a year to cherish consisting of tears and laughters galore, sometimes even tears of happiness and at other times laughter in the face of adversity and heartbreak. Just getting a taste of life and though I lost a few very precious things which never could be mine but still I am loving it.

Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai…

Song of the Day: – Yellow Submarine in Pepperland by Beatles

PS1:- Sorry guys for not replying to your comments.. Am too lazy these days.. 😦
PS2:- Will be departing for home in about 48 hours.
PS3:- Intern of almost all the people of our batch started. Moi will get almost a month free.
PS4:- Am addicted to the blog of this dame since yest night.. Must read, you guys(& gals too) !! On my part, must have read more than 50 posts I guess..
PS5:- Please, please, please even if you are amongst my best friends even then don’t ask me about the things written in here, if it was worth telling then I have told you and you can connect the things.
PS6:-This makes it 5 posts in half a month (equals my maxm blogging frequency) and the last post for about a month, will be back to Hyderabad on 9th May.
PS7:- Thinking of writing another post of my girl series making it a trilogy, will do it after coming back I guess.. meanwhile if you want you can check the 2 posts here and here.
PS8:- Well the title and the content of this post dont match much but both are true.
PS9:- I know some of you might be cursing after reading the title and the post.. He he 🙂
PS10:- SA seem to be the only team which troubles India in our own den, they are the best touring team to India without any doubts. Even Aus with their all conquering record falters here
PS11:- Bbye, tata, ciao, sayonara, conge bloggin and you guys for sometime.

Time of Posting – 5:37 AM 4/15/2008

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Tags: Life, Age, Year

Whatever Happens.. Happens for good

We have oft heard this phrase being said, sometimes to console us in times of grief and some other times from the mouth of others but its rare that we realize the value of this line when it is needed the most, that is, just after some unfavourable thing has happened to us and our immediate obvious reaction is that we start blaming each and every thing which we can somehow associate with our failure and it all starts with complaining to the God but somehow we don’t realize that in the larger scheme of things, things aren’t supposed to stay bad forever and somehow a thing which has turned sour today will surely yield some good thing in future.

Somehow these days I have started believing in this philosophy, a thing which is not favourable for you now will surely yield results which you will appreciate in the future and thank the God for making you fail in the endeavour even when it was not any fault of yours. I have seen this happening quite a few times to me and now I try to find a silver lining in every dark cloud I encounter in my life, it was, is & never will be easy ever in life and you are bound to end up frustrated but next time anything bad happens to you and it is something which was not in your power and you couldn’t have controlled it whatever you did, then just look up and try to see the silver lining and I am sure, you are bound to find one. The things are not supposed to be bad all the time and one thing is sure to lead to some other thing which you are bound to enjoy later.

Song of the Day: – Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side by Bob Marley

PS1:- Finally I am listening to Bob Marley.. 🙂 As you can see
PS2:- Requiem for Dream, a must watch.. Such an intense movie.. :O
PS3:- Finally started with my NLP App course project today

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Impressionable MindS

One thing which always remains a puzzle is the thinking of the human brain and the things which have the effect on the working and thinking of a human mind. In very small time, your thinking can change from completely detesting a thing to supporting it by your life and there sure are quite a few examples where a single lecture or a speech has changed the view point of people. One of the reasons why people started flocking behind Hitler was that he was one of the best orators and could persuade people and make them think the way he did, and thus succeeded in getting a huge support. Sometimes same thing can have different effect coming from different mouths.

Two incidents which happened recently made me think this way,

First was the issue of Olympic Torch, the day Amir Khan decided to carry the torch all the newspapers were fill with views that Amir should follow Baichung Bhutia’s example and refrain from carrying the torch, I too had the same view but a few days later, I came to know that none other than Sachin was also asked to carry the torch and my thinking changed at all and never for once did the thought crossed my mind that Sachin could be doing something wrong by not supporting the cause of Tibetan people coz Sachin being the paragon of all things good and right for me cant ever do any thing wrong and this action by Sachin made me change my views a bit about the topic. The thing is, Its not only me who thinks, No newspaper has raised a finger at Sachin, no open letters have been sent to Sachin on this issue which somehow show the working of human mind.

Another issue which made me think on these lines happened today (When I started thinking after this issue, that’s when Sachin issue came to my mind). Some of you who might have had a glance at the news sites must have got to know that Supreme Court has upheld the quota for OBC which was first proposed by the government 2 years back and while I think many people wrote then and many must be writing on it now, so no need to write anything about it. So coming back to my point, when it was announced by the Govt. in the first place, I never even thought about this even for an instant and straight away rubbished the thought from my mind but today when I learned that Supreme Court has given the verdict in favour of the quota, I was forced to think for sometime atleast that there must be something right in giving quota to the OBC because such a respected and learned body like the Supreme Court of India thinks so though even after some thinking this thought didn’t appeal to me.

Just two points to show that however strong we consider our mind and claim to be learned , our mind will always be influenced when someone whom we consider more learned than us comes and tell us something . I just wanted to know that do the leaders of the world and I mean leaders in true sense, not the general politicians (people like Mahatma Gandhi, Hitler, Napoleon, Akbar, Alexander,Ashoka) , people who have shaped the destiny of the world also get influenced by other people because they are the people who influence millions of people.

Song of the Day :- In Lamhon ke Daman mein from Jodhaa Akbar

PS1:- This is more of retrospection than a post
PS2:-All said and Done, Sachin is, was and will be the God
PS3:- Listened a lot to Lucky Ali in the past week and rediscovered the love for the music which I admired before Beatles came into the picture
PS4:- Hyderabad seems a deserted place now… 😦
PS5:- A week from now, I would be about to reach Delhi on my way home 🙂

System Time Of Posting :- 4:53 AM 4/11/2008 (New Feature from now on 😛 )

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Tags: Sachin, Amir, Quota, Supreme Court, Olympics, Mind, Leaders, Impression

Rock Music n my take!!

I don’t know since when but I had heard that there are two things which are associated with the life of a college going guy which are Rock Music & CZ and while I haven’t touched much upon one of them i.e. CZ but have listened quite a lot of Rock Music to stand myself in a circle where people are talking about Rock, unless the only things they are talking about is Thrash or Death Metal.

In India generally people don’t know about this genre of music called Rock and people who see people listening to this noise generally dub those people as insane and anti-social. When I tried playing this music in front of my parents and my sister, I was dubbed as mad, but I think the Rock culture is catching up quite fast in India too and a testimony to this is our juniors who when came to the college knew about all the major bands and knew how to perform Metallica songs, this is a far cry from most of the people of our batch who came to the college after listening to the usual Pop music and may be some of LP.

There is a line which comes to my mid when I think about music and it goes something like this “Rock is not music, it is a way of life” and I can’t agree more. Rock music isn’t just some music which you can listen to and forget, instead it is something which has power to take you to other places and spheres which you haven’t touched as yet.  The thing is, Rock music has the power to get you on a high without having any other thing to get the feeling. I have had the feeling of being high many times without taking even a cigarette.

One thing which people hold against Rock lovers is that they are associated with drinking, smoking and other things. This in itself is a very controversial statement coz we have had all these tings for ages in India even before there was a thing called Rock Music. And even if it is so, then also by observing the Rock gigs I have been to in Hyderabad over the last one year, one thing I have noticed is that the Rock loving crowd is always able to handle the drinks which they have had and it is always the general crowd which behaves in erratic manner. So I think people should stop blaming rock for this vice.

During the show there was another thing which came to my mind. The thought was, we go to almost all the gigs we go to these days and you generally find the college crowd at all these places but the question is will this generation of Rock Lovers stay rock fans to an extent that we will go to the Rock shows when we are middle aged people or wud we have mellowed down and stick to listening music only at home. Lets see, this is a question for which we have to wait 15-20 years.

Well now coming to the end, I would end this post with a list of my favourite Rock Bands in order of preference
1.    Beatles (Who Else!! ) – Classic Rock
2.    Nirvana – Grunge
3.    The Doors – Classic Rock
4.    Pink Floyd – Psychedelic
5.    Led Zeppelin – Classic Rock
6.    Avril Lavigne – Punk Rock
7.    AC/DC –Hard Rock, Heavy Metal
8.    Jimi Hendrix – Hard, Blues Rock
9.    Queen – Classic Rock
10.   Metallica – Thrash, Heavy Metal
11.   Iron Maiden  – Heavy Metal

I know I am gonna be killed by Metal Heads for putting Avril Lavigne above so many bands.. but that’s my choice!! 😛 And one thing which is also evident is that I am a more of Classic Rock guy.. Somehow after sometime all that loud voice puts me off and I have to resume to some thing mellow and that’s why Metallica and Maiden come lower down the order.

Song of The Day: – All along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix

PS1:- Went to the Rock show at HCU yesterday, wasn’t that great just an average gig!!
PS2:- Had been going out for the first 6 days since the hols started, today was the first day when I didn’t.
PS3:- Hostel seems so empty these days… I wanna go home jaldi se!! 😦 Waiting for 17th with baited breath.
PS4:- Btw Pussycat Dolls are freaking hot!!
PS5:- Guitaring of Hendrix is just freaking great
PS6:- These days I have started using freaking instead of fucking to make this a more family oriented blog 🙂

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Tags: Rock, Music

Benefits of being in IIIT

    It’s been 3 years since I joined this wonderful college and there have been a million times when we people have had so many sessions of BC where we have criticized so many things in IIIT so I thought of writing a few good things in IIIT.

1.Strength – One of the very good thing in IIIT is the low strength. We have 175 people in a batch that means 700 in B. Tech and as far as I remember IIT-Kgp takes in   >700 people every year. So coming to the benefit, the low strength you know each and every freaking body in the college from the first year to the fourth year and if not by name then you atleast recognize the faces. Recently after my injury many people came and asked me about my injury though they didn’t see me with a bandage, I didn’t tell them and they are also not as such good friends of mine.
I also have heard that due to such a large strength in other colleges, there is a lot of politics for getting even small posts which is so simple here in IIIT, no politics.. 🙂        
This thing has one more advantage, anytime you do a kand anywhere faculty comes to know about it 😛

2.Girls – We always rue the fact that the girl strength in IIIT is so very less but isn’t this a blessing in disguise??? We can concentrate on our studies. Bade log hamesha bolte hain ladki ke chakkar mein mat padna beta.. Sab chaupat ho jata hai. This also means that generally the groups in IIIT are all boys which have their own benefits which are a matter of a different post.

3.Classes – The best part of life in IIIT is the classes (or rather the absence of them  🙂 ) IIIT is bliss when it comes to no of classes. This sem I used to have  6 classes a week, out of this, I rarely used to go to 2 classes coz there was no attendance so this made it 4 classes a week, now tell me can it be better than this???

4.Research – One of the things of which both the faculty as well as students are proud is the research at undergraduate level in IIIT. After studying these years in IIIT, I don’t think there could have been a better curriculum of CS anywhere. I have compared our course with other colleges in India and we are 1 year ahead of them which leaves us the last year almost free to do anything we like and even in our courses we have projects which doesn’t happen even in IITs. We can even take Projects instead of courses and that’s why we are a research Institute. Btw IIIT is the only institute in India which provides MS degree along with B.Tech, I guess IISc gives MS but doesn’t give B.Tech and hav heard that IITs have started giving MS from this year.
This sure is one thing we should be proud of 🙂
I guess itni tareef bas hai.. Isnt it???

Song of the Day :- Man tu Talbat from Super Star

PS1:- I finally got my MS offer letter 🙂 Am I happy?
PS2:- Big Bang theory is ruddy cool
PS3:- Test Match starts tomorrow 🙂 Sachin not playing  😦 What the hell!!  Whats cricket without Sachin
PS4:- Simon & Garfunkel also rock. I don’t know why I like 60s music so much *confused*
PS5:- Btw expecting a lot of brickbats on such a memdiocre post from you guys but as I always say, I can’t stop myself from writing what comes to my mind.

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Tags: IIIT, College