Mirrors

If you've never seen an elephant in your life, not even a picture of it, and i had to explain to you what an elephant is, would you be able to understand what i was talking about?

The picture you'd be able to draw in your head would be based on your experiences or your imagination. Imagination, that is again restricted by your direct or indirect experience of real life. So till the day you actually see an elephant, you would have a very restricted idea of what an elephant looks like.

in other words, my description will have added nothing to your knowledge, except for triggering some of your past experiences and a wonderful process of joining experiences to make up something new, a process we often refer to as imagination.

the entire process of my explanation to you would be nothing but just a reflection of what you already know or of what lies in your consideration set for your imagination.

Extend this to the people you meet.

what are other people, then, if you are going to perceive through them, only those things that you either already know or you have the capacity to imagine?

every conversation you have with any other human being is nothing but a revelation of parts of yourself that you had not seen before. every other person you meet then, is nothing but a mirror that reflects a part of you.

First week at IMT G

So i come to IMT G, i'm thinking, hmm, well i have to make the most of my time here!
first week and i have this schedule in my hand. the schedule begins at 5 am with early morning Yoga and ends at 12 midnight with some closing presentations...
first nigh and at the end of the sessions, seniors start gathering like an ominous dark cloud (like the birds in the Hitchcock movie.) looks harmless at first, but then begins PDP. Personality Development Program, which is designed to make freshers at IMT understand their true value (understatement?/ overstatement?) and to get them used to the fact that they may never get to sleep again. ever.
Orientation in full formals and half the time i'm wondering, really, what is the function of this necktie hanging by my neck? and before i know it in the midst of questions from many curious souls during the sessions comes the time for PDP again and we line up like holocaust victims, one leg of the pants upto our knees to distinguish US from THEM.
before long we are explaining the exact reasons about why we want to do an MBA to complete strangers and finding out increasingly that we really don't know why. it's all civil till now but then suddenly we hear a guy come to us shout out loud 'mein ladkibaaz hoon IMT mein meri life barbaad hai!' (apt commentary on the sex ratio i must say, but man, what happened to all the dignity?)
Before we know it we are clowns in a play. shouting out the weirdest things we can think of and all the intellectuals, all the smart asses and all the shy little things are suddenly hurled into one category: Fools!
it works guys! i kinda enjoy this first day, but little do i know that there is no distinctions like 'day' as against 'night' in IMT. the next day begins before the last one ends with a rejuvenating yoga session where we understand the true meaning of 'Shavaasan'. you wish you were really dead, but you're not and the next aasan requires you to come up with your best impersonation of a lion. I'm not joking, you're a lion on a mattress, roaring to your left and roaring to your right. you conclude with a hearty laugh directed to yourself, and that's the beginning of another day. the next 120 or so odd hours are just one long day punctuated by 10 mins of shavaasan and roaring. at the end of this day, Insomnia has turned into insanity.

It’s absurd. I’m living in a Louis Bunuel movie.
When you haven’t slept for over 6 days, you can barely tell the ground from the sky. You become a walker in the centre of gigantic softball made of sky earth and other zombies that look like you. So I’m walking this soft ball of earth and I wake up in the sun. I mean literally burning in the sun in what was supposed to be an early morning Yoga session. And what do I hear?
Are my ears playing tricks on me or is it really a 14 year old guy singing boulevard of broken dreams on an even more broken microphone?
Boulevard of broken dreams from a 14 year old! only Bunuel knows if it's symbolic.

This is followed by thank you speeches in theth hindi.
Thank you speeches!! Thank you speeches as I am burning and all the life that flashes in front of my eyes is the last 6 days of bizarre neckties strangling me in the day and Personality Development at night when each of the 420 idiots was on the verge of insanity.
Welcome to Insomnia Management Technology, better known as IMT.