2011 : The Things I’ve Learnt

This is the 2nd Post of the 2011 Series in which I’ve discussed about the things I’ve learnt (besides the tech & curriculum) all the way this year.  Of course, I’ve not learnt much this year as I told in my previous post describing how I wasted my time regards learning new things.  Although technologically, I didn’t learn new which was worthy, I did obtain a lot of wisdom about people and the way the world is. Here are those few things I’ve learned about :

1. I got to know a lot about Ayappan :

At one point, during the start of November, I heard a word about Ayappan through my friend Nalini but I didn’t pay much attention to it.  By that time, I didn’t know much about Ayappan but what I did know is that he is a god and people used to travel long distances to pray at the Sabarimala pilgrimage at Kerala. And that was everything I know about him but suddenly something started to dawn out of nowhere. When my exams started, I had to travel in the town buses to reach the college to reach it soon in the early morning to avoid tension. So I used to wake up early and get the bus. It was a private bus which has its own stereo system all around and there were songs playing on it everyday.  I found that the songs were Ayappan songs by the third exam day and soon forgot it.  And then, a new trauma started.  I had been receiving a lot of text messages from my mobile network, AirTel telling me to download Ayappan songs. Then, in the evenings when I’m at home, my mom started to put TV shows about Ayappan. That really made start to wonder ‘Oh My God! What’s going on?’, so I started to ask my mom about Ayappan and why everyone is talking about him suddenly. Only then I realized that mom knows a lot about Ayappan then confirmed my suspicion when my mom used to watch Ayappan serials so vividly a few months back.  So I finally decided to know about Ayappan and started searching on Wikipedia.  I found out that he is the son of Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu which is a fact which amazed me very quickly. Furthermore, Ayappan has several different names for him and to my surprise half of my friends’ names are based upon him.  But wait, there’s more.  After a short gap of holidays, our placement training had started and I had to go in the college bus again. And for the first time, I could see that my driver was one of the followers for Ayappan and he had playing Ayappan songs in the bus all the time! Both in the mornings and evenings! I know a lot of guys in the mechanical class of our batch and one of them was Yukesh. He used to beat me up, tease me, and scold me unnecessarily for fun. But he too was on his way to the Ayappan pilgrimage as he wore the black shawl around his neck and he was forced to behave nicely to me. Well, that’s good news for me.  Anyways, its Ayappan in and around everywhere and I’m glad I’ve learnt a lot about him at least after all these years.

2. I got to know about You :

By you, I mean everyone who read my blog.  Contrary to your thoughts, I never write my blog with you in mind.  It is and it’s always been my words directly from my heart as I would write my own personal diary.  But I realized that it could be a wrong practice because my mind tends to change even with hours or minutes, so I started to think over every one of my posts for at least two days prior to posting. I never check the statistics for my blog but I know a lot of you are reading it because almost everyone I meet, used to ask me, ‘Parithi, why you posted like this and that on your blog?’. And this is what I’ve learnt from you ‘visitors’, a few of you visit my blog just to show that you are my friend, a few visit to know about me, a few read it when they get bored, a few read it to stalk me, a few read for inspiration for blogging, a few just come and have a look just because its on my social links everyone on the internet, a few read it to know what I’ve written about you, a few don’t bother about it even if I write wrong about them, a few take a look just because of my friends told you to see it.  I don’t mind to which category you belong to, but you are always welcome to check out my blog because it is ‘you’ who keeps this up and running.  But I’ll be glad if you comment just a word or drop a smiley for the pain I take to write them. Anyways, that’s optional and it depends on you.

3. I got to know about the Government :

I used to think that the Government is for the people and by the people, until I’ve got my own hands on it and saw how dirty it is when I got my Learner’s License for Driving.  Government doesn’t care for the people at all, all they care is just the money that gets distributed to every one in the politics world.  To make this worse, Internet Censorship is on its way to bring down the freedom of students and patriots all over India.  They can’t monitor 50 Lakh Group C Employees for corruption under Lokpal but they believe they can monitor 2.5 crore Facebook accounts 10 Crore Google Users from India.

4. I got to know about Girls :

2011 has been an year in which I had more social contact with girls than boys, so I did learn a lot about them. Some can be fun, some can be caring, some can be annoying, some can be dangerous, some can exploit us, some can be selfish or a mix of any of this. Well, I like only the first one, that is, the girls who are fun to talk with, which is why I like Lilly & Nalini very much but none of the boys realize this. I was surprised to see few girls exploiting their own best friends (who are girls), cheating them, behave in a horrific way that even boys wouldn’t behave to their enemies. While few girls are like ‘snakes’ as my friend Vishnu describes about girls, some can be a slow poison, they might be killing you slowly but you might not even know it.  Some can be purposely exploiting, by having contact with us only to get things down for their use.  Whatever it is, as long as they are my friends, I still like them.  But in general, I still hate girls and 2011 made me hate them still more..

5. I got to know about Buddhism :

Although I belong to the Sambarian Religion (a religion created by myself, my bro and few of my friends when we were kids), I’m still publicly a Hindu and I worship Hindu gods as every Hindu would.  The Sambarian Religion has its own story and certain principles that should be followed by every Sambarian. My dad used to raise us, by saying a lot of Buddhist principles to stop us from asking things when we were kids, most notably ‘Wishing is the cause of all suffering’.  I had no interest in that in those times, but now when I feel like I’ve lost my inner peace and feel very disturbed, only that principle gave the perfect answer for that.  I am not a person who expects a lot of things to happen, but I am a person who expects a very very few things and get highly depressed if those things don’t happen.  So, I started in search of blissfulness and soon realized that Buddhism had answers for it.  To my surprise, Buddhism’s principles are mostly common to those we synthesized by ourselves for the Sambarian Religion.  And furthermore, my mentor Steve was a buddhist too.  I learnt that Buddhism is not religion where we pray for something to happen as we would in other religions, it was religion where we could find happiness even if we don’t get the things we wish.  Although I’m still a Hindu, mentally I wish to be a Buddhist from now on (maybe from 2012) and I’m sure it’ll be worth a try..

Well, I guess these are top 5 things I’ve learnt.  If there are things that 2011 has taught you, share them below in the comments and maybe I’ll learn something from you too…