Henry Van Dyke once said "Use the talents you possess - for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except for the best. " In this unfathomable network of blogs, ideas and intellectuals, I might be just another tiny speck of dust. But while flexing my brains amidst the heavy books of engineering, science and technology, I do crave for my ideas to be articulated; my thoughts to be delineated. So here's the blogspot rendering me ANOTHER CHANCE............a chance to grow up, a chance to live a new life, a chance to learn and a chance to write.
Introducing myself, I am Avinash Upadhyaya a part-time writer, full-time dreamer and engineering graduate from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani (India). I hail from Dhemaji a small remote town in Assam - the north-eastern part of India.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Finally........Wrote Something

It was 4am in a chilly December morning.After 5 long months I was moving towards home. The cab that was taking me and a few of my friends from Pilani to the IGI Airport stopped on the way near a roadside dhaba. It was somewhere near Gurgaon and the driver wanted to fight the biting cold with a cup of tea.I found myself too lazy to get down from the cab just for the sake of a cup of tea. A Bollywood movie was being played on the dhaba. I could hear some 90s-like dialogues. The people sitting on the back of the cab seemed to be relishing the movie. I could hear someone telling "Chunkey Pandey". Finally with great effort, I moved my body and faced the dhaba just to catch a glimpse of the movie. The first thing that I saw on the screen was "THE END" written in bold yellow letters............

Finally after four months, I seem to have penned down something on my blog. I had almost turned obsolete in the blogging circuit for the past few months. No wonders, laziness had overpowered me. I would unhesitatingly admit I am no busy soul that I could not afford a little time to share my thoughts in the blogosphere. But as Marquis de Vauvenargues quoted "lazy people are always anxious to be doing something". I seemed to be always more-than-ready to update my blog, then I postpone it off to later and later. Eventually, it took me four long months and a some serious days of illness to realize that life has turned too lazy for me.

As I turn back to the long semester I just got done with (although semesters in BITS never seem too long enough), I feel I could have done many more things than what I had done. Agreed, my life revolved around my friends, my non-stop exams, a few extra-curricular clubs and preparations for an international event that we are organizing the next year in our campus. Agreed, I had an awesome trip to Kanpur for an MUN and a couple of mad,mad trips to Delhi. But still I find something missing within me. I feel I had not given my best in my endeavors. I presume, I could have still done lots more for myself, for my academics, for my clubs, for our big event. Maybe, when one falls sick and then lies on the bed having nothing to do, one gets such weird thoughts about being more productive. I might be no exception to this. It was indeed after a long time that I had fallen ill. I had never been bedridden during my past one and half years in Pilani. As I laid in my room gasping and turning, yearning for someone who could go and get me a glass of water in the dead of night, I started missing my home. For the first time in many years, I actually had such a strong urge to go back to my home - some thousand miles away in the other end of the nation.
Never in the wildest of my dreams had I contemplated that the journey back home would be worth a remembrance for me. The four-hour journey by cab had nothing much significant except for the dhaba episode in Gurgaon. The next 2-hours of flight from Delhi to Guwahati was spent in deep slumber. Of course, the breathtakingly beautiful Terminal 3 of the IGI was a treat to the eyes. The magnificent lounge, the state-of-the-art runway and the cup of coffee that cost nearly a hundred bucks!!!!!! Finally, it was my journey from Guwahati to my hometown Dhemaji that was worth recounting. In the middle of night and in the midst of nowhere I found myself caught in a strife between passengers and a bus service. The bus that was supposed to take me to my hometown got damaged beyond repairs. A new bus was supposed to arrive instantaneously. But nothing such "instantaneous" took place for the next few hours. The passengers soon got enraged and there started a series of events where the bus-guy nearly got beaten up. It was late night and the weather was cold enough to let shivers down your spine. I do admit that the cold of Assam is not as severe as that of Rajasthan. But having traveled many a miles since morning, I was in no mood to sit in that open night in the group of a few furious strangers,yearning for a bus that could take us to our home still 500 kilometers away. Finally, this heavy drama ended when we caught hold of a bus that was on its way to Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh. We coaxed the driver and bribed him (a bit!) until he agreed to divert his bus to Dhemaji instead of going to Itanagar. The people going to Arunachal were made to get down and wait for the next bus while we boarded the bus and took it to my hometown. I realized at the end of this drama that all my sickness, all my illness had disappeared after this episode. I found myself rejuvenated as I finally embarked on the journey that would finally take me home. 

Finally, after three days in home as I set out for the Himalayas (yes, in this winter!!!), I presume I still have some productivity left in me and I have not been bellowed down by the ravages of laziness. And hereby, I promise to myself that I would be more active in my blog henceforth and try to write down things that would make more sense.

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