Lazarus of Grey

The society outside his window, he knew, is a crazy breed.

He was chained to the bed and to bleak medication in the hospital room. Paralysed in the war, his limbs were now merely the souvenirs of his past glory. And memories of the war, of his home, of his tears and laughter, were all faint - like a distant haunting rhythm he could barely hear.

The shadows in his room would listen to him as he tried to remember the stories of his past. But in the dark, even these shadows would turn deaf and indifferent like the rest of the world.

His mind shifted to the window again, and he wondered how the world had changed since.

He saw the painting on the curtain that hung by the window. They had told it him it was a beautiful curtain and he knew they were refering to how much it cost them. But, he couldn't know there was a really beautiful summer outside because he'd embraced the cold in the room.

But today, he wondered why his memories seemed wilder to him than his everyday battle with his past. He tried and failed to remember the details of the long lost joy. And he began to suffocate in pain.

So he instinctively stretched out his numb hand, and wrenched down the delicate curtain. As the curtain was invaded, an army of light seemed to swim in and melt the crust of his heart in silent peace.

The sudden glare burnt his sight and his eyes closed but he was smiling in the first taste of warmth. His hand grew strength and pushed out the arrogant window. And then the breeze soothed him like an old friend.

When his eyes recovered, he saw a bird dancing to the tune that played inside his heart, and he smiled wider.

But the euphoria suddenly faded into blinding fear when he looked down onto the street.

He saw a grey hunter on the grey platform by the road, aiming at her. In that paused moment, his past flashed in his eyes and he saw his own tragedy of betrayal.

He tried to scream to dancing bird, but his voice betrayed him again... and she was hit.

She was lying numb on the grey road, wings outstretched. But the hunter was gone to find another victim to impose his amusement on.

He now repeated the prayers he'd made to his forgotten god during war. His prayers were unheard then.

Now, the bird walked half conscious along the road.

Not far away, amidst the colourless backdrop of grey men and grey houses and grey cars, was a scarlett face of a child, worried by the bird's fate.

And her fears sailed through the grey air, past the colourless everything, and fell on the child's face as silent tears.

The child dared to disturb the apathy of the grey society, and ran across the road vowing to save the bird, and wake her up as angels lulled her to eternal sleep.

But running towards the bird's colour, the child was struck by one of the mighty grey cars. And the child collapsed beside her on the grey road.

The child's breath froze and the bird cut the weak thread of her life seeing this monstrosity of fate.

The two rays of colour died out as the two lives ended and the whole world was colourless again...

The clouds cried in despair and the grey men below pretended to enjoy these tears.

The sun burnt brighter for the two young lives, and the grey men pretended to enjoy its wrath. The tides rose higher in the oceans, and the grey men celebrated the mourning.

.

When the sharp pain in his heart became unbearable, he closed the window with a plain dull cloth.

In the colourless world, he saw colour again - he saw the child's smiling face on this curtain. But if someone should prove to him that the child's face and the colour are in his mind, not the dull curtain, he would wish he was blind.

.

Months passed and the seasons outside had changed. The room was now warmer than the grey winter outside.The few who DID visit his room were apalled by this dull plain curtain replacing the expensive one. But he returned to them their indifference. And he found great joy in the child's painted smile on the curtain. On some days he saw even the bird painted on the child's shoulder. In the womb of this joy, a weak hope was born.

They told him his health was improving; and he returned to them their indifference.

His limbs grew strength through this weak hope and eventually, they decided he was alive enough to face the grey world.

He weakly walked out of the hospital and looked up at where his room could be. They had replaced the expensive curtain and kindly let him take the cloth that he'd used to cover the window. Walking through the grey street, his new found hope showed him the road to his home, where they would be waiting for him. The hope weakly whispered to him - "you will grow old with the ones that love you". He heard this whisper and looked around to spot the voice. He saw many grey men on the crowded street. It couldn't have been any of their voices. He looked down into his arm and found it. It was the child in the curtain that spoke. He wrapped the curtain around his shoulders to keep away the cold, and walked towards home...

Diaries of a... sophisticated Adolescent 'kid' - 1

I wonder when the age of adolescence really kicks in (probably everyone does ) is it the age when you really stand up to your parents and start making a few decisions on your own ( mind it a few !! ) or … the age when you really hate going out with your family especially to some family occasions of family members of whom you have not much idea about. Well I am sure everyone has their own story. As for me it I felt it began when I was able to start lying to my parents without any much hesitation or remorse and trust me I am no spoilt kid who has a girl or a drinking problem. I am just a guy with usual problems and weaknesses every teenager has .

This age is a unique one where you don’t really have any proper set up priorities such as in the case of childhood where all you have to do is play and rough up the alphabets or the numbers taught in the school, or like in the case of grown ups where you have a job and an imperative responsibility of taking care of a family. It is an age where you are allowed to explore your true abilities, hidden talents and weaknesses and the best part of it is you won’t be blamed much for the mistakes you do because you are growing up and everybody gets another chance. But this age does have its downsides. People do expect a lot from you particularly on the academic side especially parents and relatives who are in a misconstruction that the excellent grades obtained by us in  primary schooling is an indication of the future geniuses we are about to become.

But the best part of learning, in any teenage kid , comes with friendship ; it is one of the vital things in any teenagers life . Friendship teaches you a lot about life , the world around you and the unfamiliar world within you . I suppose all of you would have had one good friend or a group of friends in your teenage life with whom you had boundless and uncontrolled fun.  And not only do they influence your life but you are who you are because of your friend(s). There has been a lot of instances in my life where my friends have stood with me and some where they haven’t , but all I can do is look past and learn a few valuable lessons from it because as they say “ experiences are what people give name to their mistakes in past  “ .

Love is the another thing which occurs in our teenage life (atleast in mine) or what I would decently call as crush. I am sure many of you would have a had a slight encounter with it. Many people do ask me what is the definition of love and there are lot of them ; its actually mind boggling to know that there are a lot of various definitions and descriptions given by each person if you go on asking and at the end you could roughly gather up around 7 billion definitions and still have no clue about what it is . Some would say its friendship while others would say its affection and the more psychic ones would say its lust but if you ask me I would sit and wonder for 10 minutes and would calmly reply “ it is the one thing which I was never able to achieve “. Well I would like to wrap up this article now and I do hope you have enjoyed it and do keep looking forward to my next one. Love you. Bye my fellow readers .  

PS: The characters involved in this or any further article may or may not be fictious and is not targeted to a single person or a group of people and apologies for those who find it repulsive.

Life without oil

“Civilization is coming to an end.” This is not a wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult or or Apocalypse bible prophecy sect. It is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, widely respected geologists, physicists and people who have been one step closer to the terrifying phenomenon called “The Global Oil Drain”.

After its discovery in 1859, oil has seeped into our everyday life and the global economy. Oil makes up 40% of our total energy consumption and powers 96% of our transportation. So far 875 billion barrels have been extracted and another 1000 billion barrels of proved and probable reserves remain. They are expected to sustain us for another 40 years.

By 2020, our consumption rate is expected to increase by 60%, cars would become 1.25 billion from 700 million, and global consumption of gasoline would double and then… we might very well scrape our rigs for the last drop of oil in another decade.

Oil is key component to many more things than just gas for the stove and fuel for the car. India consumes about 2.13 million barrels of oil everyday. All that oil goes somewhere significant.

7-10 calories of fossil fuel is required to produce 1 calorie of food eaten. Oil powers our machinery and railways. Food in our country travels 600 miles before ending up on our plate. Without oil, we would have to travel that distance just for our lunch. Oil is used in making pesticides, fertilizers, modern medicines, plastics, dyes, polymers and what not? Oil is used in water distribution and most of all, our national defence.

We are gobbling oil like two legged SUVs.

After being aware of such a threat, oil was scientifically classified as fossil fuel and defined as non-renewable, exhaustible and non-conventional source of energy. This urged to find alternatives.

A life without oil is far beyond imagination. After the last drop its just – good night, sleep tight and wake up.. only into the stone age. Taps would breathe air and highways would have a ghostly silence. Before long, man would have to walk for miles for the next meal or drink like nomads.

Life without oil would be the annihilation of mankind.

Dead plants of carboniferous period, compressed for over 360 million years have resulted in the formation of oil. Today neither do we have plants from the carboniferous, nor that much time.

The oil is over.

Oil is nature’s milk, has been responsible for the rise of mankind and sadly, will be responsible for our fall. Despite being aware, very little was done and there is a lot left to do.

We have only one planet, we get only one chance. Do something, anything…

Remember, oil is not gift from nature, but is debt from our children.

Experiments With Aspiration Expectation and…….Life

We live in a world full of insecurities, passion…etc etc…but most importantly aspirations and expectations. Well aspiration and expectation are at the giving and the receiving end. But whatever it is the person who faces them faces the blunt. 

Out of my personal monodrama I feel grasping for breathe during my 10th 11th and 12th class of my academic life. We were all groomed right from our early days to jump right into the rat race. We thus got caught in the vicious circle of aspirations and expectations. Everyone expected us to get into IIT the premiere engineering institutions of India. Well it was such a strong stereo-type that even we oriented ourselves to believing that we ought to get into IIT and we will for sure get in there. 

Fate beholds…..me and my circle did extremely brilliant in 10th and our scores there fortified our belief and we ensured ourselves that were cut out for the best. Post success we enrolled ourselves into various coaching classes. In the subsequent days reality slapped us…we wrote our school exams and the coaching classes progressed…we couldn’t digest the fact that IIT was not our cup of tea. Following which we in a false sense of pride and kept on making excuses and kept on assuring everyone in and around us that v would put a good show in the final.

The whole 11th passed on…..we enjoyed and enjoyed did we till the brim. But all was not bright sunshine; we practically had fun in every aspect our lives except academics. But we stuck to our excuses that 11th wasn’t important, all that counted was our 12th. 11th ended with below average results, but our pride stuck us to our IIT aspirations. It is in the early 12th session that we realized that IIT was dream too far for us. We Indians are known to be adaptive and compromising. Our “chaltha hai yaar” attitude has a legendary fame in the society.  We carried on the great India legacy and came down to AIEEE, which was the next best engineering franchise. Even in 12th school exams our performance was below par and as usual the procrastination infused attitude compelled us to think that we would perform in the final Boards.

The countdown for our Boards started and reality revisited us. We did sober down a bit and I guess it was a bit late but not too late. Last few days we put in mid-night toil and stuff and finally managed to scribble something in the Boards. Well after boards we thought we could get back to our fun and harmony days. But post exams it become very clear that we were in a lot of trouble. Our anticipated experiments with passion, aspiration, expectations and time had landed us in a peculiarly sticky situation. We finally came to terms with our fate and realized that it was now or never and we ought to make a final stand against fate.

We shunned away all our pride a false sense pride that is and thought AIEEE was not a sure shot but CET the next option was a practical option. Some of the people stuck to AIEEE and some like me who were tired of playing our lucks and of not much aspiration opted to coach ourselves for CET. Our parents who spent thousands on IIT coaching were a bit orthodox of us giving up on it but they too came to track with us and very willingly paid thousands more for our AIEEE and CET coaching. 

Often I’m troubled by the guilt of letting down people but at the end I’m and Indian and I’ll compromise and move ahead. The collect noun “we” I’ve used includes all the people like me but it definitely excludes the other breed of people who dreamt worked and I’m sure will achieve what they wanted. I envy and respect those people who did so. But I do also pat the people who dreamt worked but improvised a different path to success. My hearty best luck to all the people of all the breeds.           

       

     

Breaking the ice...

Hello all. This is the first post from the ROFL team. I really don't have much to say. But all I can say is we are bunch of bloggers who are going to blog about the things happening in every nook and corner of the world and the things happening in our lives. Our articles might hurt the hearts of a few and will be liked by much more. But all those doesn't really matter for we are set upon to accomplish our goal that is to convey our message to every human on this gifted planet.

Our main writers include The Sage of the six Paths, Obi Wan Kenobi, The Beast and the Demented Skeptic. I am supposed to introduce them to you all, but I feel it is unnecessary as I am sure that you will learn a lot about them by their posts.

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