Ode to the Nice Guys

Hi guys, so this topic is literally close to heart :P.....though this one hasn't come out my pen
Haven't really had any brainwaves in the recent past, nor any interesting topics cross my mind.....So here it is, the original can be found here
And for an instance which went bad in my case, I would like to thank Vik, Bal, Goba, Sammy and the effervescent Shivu for dragging me out......needless to thank my sisters Baby and Tallu.....

So here it is an Ode to Nice Guys

This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl’s every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style.

This is for the guys who escort their drunk, bewildered female friends back from parties and never take advantage once they’re at her door, for the guys who accompany girls to bars as buffers against the rest of the creepy male population, for the guys who know a girl is fishing for compliments but give them out anyway, for the guys who always play by the rules in a game where the rules favor cheaters, for the guys who are accredited as boyfriend material but somehow don’t end up being boyfriends, for all the nice guys who are overlooked, underestimated, and unappreciated, for all the nice guys who are manipulated, misled, and unjustly abandoned, this is for you.

This is for that time she left 40 urgent messages on your cell phone, and when you called her back, she spent three hours painstakingly dissecting two sentences her boyfriend said to her over dinner. And even though you thought her boyfriend was a chump and a jerk, you assured her that it was all ok and she shouldn’t worry about it. This is for that time she interrupted the best killing spree you’d ever orchestrated in GTA3 to rant about a rumor that romantically linked her and the guy she thinks is the most repulsive person in the world. And even though you thought it was immature and you had nothing against the guy, you paused the game for two hours and helped her concoct a counter-rumor to spread around the floor. This is also for that time she didn’t have a date, so after numerous vows that there was nothing “serious” between the two of you, she dragged you to a party where you knew nobody, the beer was awful, and she flirted shamelessly with you, justifying each fit of reckless teasing by announcing to everyone: “oh, but we’re just friends!” And even though you were invited purely as a symbolic warm body for her ego, you went anyways. Because you’re nice like that.

The nice guys don’t often get credit where credit is due. And perhaps more disturbing, the nice guys don’t seem to get laid as often as they should. And I wish I could logically explain this trend, but I can’t. From what I have observed on campus and what I have learned from talking to friends at other schools and in the workplace, the only conclusion I can form is that many girls are just illogical, manipulative bitches. Many of them claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as “oh, he’s too nice to date” or “he would be a good boyfriend but he’s not for me” or “he already puts up with so much from me, I couldn’t possibly ask him out!” or the most frustrating of all: “no, it would ruin our friendship.” Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks. Sorry, guys, girls like that are beyond my ability to fathom. I can’t figure out why the connection breaks down between what they say (I want a nice guy!) and what they do (I’m going to sleep with this complete ass now!). But one thing I can do, is say that the nice-guy-finishes-last phenomenon doesn’t last forever. There are definitely many girls who grow out of that train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted. The tricky part is finding those girls, and even trickier, finding the ones that are single.

So, until those girls are found, I propose a toast to all the nice guys. You know who you are, and I know you’re sick of hearing yourself described as ubiquitously nice. But the truth of the matter is, the world needs your patience in the department store, your holding open of doors, your party escorting services, your propensity to be a sucker for a pretty smile. For all the crazy, inane, absurd things you tolerate, for all the situations where you are the faceless, nameless hero, my accolades, my acknowledgement, and my gratitude go out to you. You do have credibility in this society, and your well deserved vindication is coming.

Fu-zu Jen, SEAS/WH, 2003

Yaad aayi mujhe ghar ki.....

Yaad aayi mujhe ghar ki
Apne Hyderabad ki yaad aayi
Mere ghar, mere apne, mere logon ki yaad aayi
Is mahine mein, wahan ke dinon ki yaad aayi


Wajood hai mera mere ghar se bandha hua abhi tak
Us gali, woh sadak, us mod ki yaad aayi
Ghar ke paas chaiwale ki dukaam yaad aayi

Mere ghar, mere apne, mere logon ki yaad aayi
Apne Hyderabad ki yaad aayi


Koi apna nahin mila is paraae watan mein mujhe
Meri Naani ke lad-dulaar ki yaad aayi
Maa ke haath ki bani Biryani ki yaad aayi
Roti mili to yahaan pe, khaya bhi maine usko, dil ko raas tab bhi ghar ki roti yaad aayi

Mere ghar, mere apne, mere logon ki yaad aayi
Apne Hyderabad ki yaad aayi


Yahaan ke phoolon mein wahin ki mehak yaaad aayi
Koel ke chehekne mein wahin ki awaaz yaad aayi
Bachchon ko yahan dekha to wapas apne School ki yaad aayi
Badhon ko dekhta to maa baap ki yaad aayi

Mere ghar, mere apne, mere logon ki yaad aayi
Apne Hyderabad ki yaad aayi


Rehta hoon yahaan par, basera hain yahin par
Dil hai mera abhi bhi mere ghar mein, gaya na tha woh kabhi usko chhodkar
Watan hai mera kahin aur lekin, mann lagta nahin kahin aur mera
Jahaan apna dil paao, wahin ko Afroz apna ghar paao

Mere ghar, mere apne, mere logon ki yaad aayi
Apne Hyderabad ki yaad aayi


Khoon khaul utha mera, Bomb ki qabar sunkar
Beeson jo bekasoor mare unki yaad aayi
Jiska javaan beta shaheed hua, us boodhi maa ki yaad aayi
Mecca Masjid, Lumbini Park ki yaad aayi

Mere ghar, mere apne, mere logon ki yaad aayi
Apne Hyderabad ki yaad aayi


Kahoon aur isse badkar kya main
Do guz zameen na mili kuh-e-yaar mein !!

Keep Fighting !!

When all the world is up against you
When the going gets tough
And you know it
Keep Fighting !!

When all seems lost
You feel the allpervading crap around you
And all you have is you own will to work for you
Keep Fighting !!

Your sinews and your mind
Are the only friends that you have
And when you are convinced what you do is good
Keep Fighting !!

If you have a cause
Or if you don't, but know something is wrong
And can't tolerate injustice
Keep Fighting !!

Your conscience is the one that matters
And if it does not pinch you
For you know that you are right
Keep Fighting !!

When the going gets tough
The tough get going
And if you know that you should
Keep Fighting !!

Do what you love
And love what you do
There is no going back, and therefore
Keep Fighting !!

For your Heart and for your Mind
Never forget but that there is love
And there is the sweet rain
To fall in love is a sweet thing
And to come out of it a poison
Even then life is tough and oft less forgiving

And hence you know
You have to
Keep Fighting !!

The Islam of Urdu Poetry

Terrorism and chauvinism are not exclusive to any one religion. And there is more than one Islam, just as there is more than one America. The Islam found in humanist Urdu poetry is very different from the Islam as practiced by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.

The original article which I intend to produce appeared in The Hindu by RALPH RUSSEL, who is an eminent Urdu scholar and translator and has authored many books on Urdu literature.

There are millions of people who now think that our enemy is not only Osama bin Laden and the Taliban but Islam itself. It isn't. Edward Said wrote in an article published immediately after September 11 that there is more than one Islam (and more then one America). Indeed there is, and it is on this that i want to concentrate here.

In Urdu poetry there is an Islam that runs clean counter to the Islam of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. My profession as a university teacher of Urdu for more than 50 years has given me abundant opportunity to study its literature and form friendships with many of its mainly Muslim writers ans scholars. Urdu literature is, for the most part, the work of Muslims and portrays the life of the Muslims of the Subcontinent, but it is rarely concerned with the propaganda for Islam, and where it is, it is for an Islam as different from the Islam of the fundamentalists as chalk is from cheese.

The 18^th-century Urdu poet Mir said-

Go to the Mosque; stand knocking at the door
Live all your days with drunkards in their den
Do anything you want to do my friend
But do not seek to harm your fellow men.

I am not a Muslim. I became a convinced atheist at the age of 15 and have remained one for all my subsequent 68 years. So I am "against" Islam (and Hinduism, and Christianity and every other religion). What I am most emphatically not against is Muslims and Hindus and followers of other creeds. Nor am I against all religious tenets. As a humanist, I wholeheartedly support all those tenets which accord with those of humanism. Urdu poetry does this. The most popular part of Urdu poetry is the ghazal, which, thanks largely to Hindi films, is loved by millions of non-Muslims and millions of non-Urdu speakers.

It deserves to be. Its message is one of vigorous humanism and of loathing and contempt for fundamentalism. It has a long pedigree. Its classical forbear was Persian, as Latin was the classical forbear of the languages of Western Europe, and already in the 13th Century the great Persian poet Sadi was declaring:

The religious path is nothing but the service of humanity.

Hafiz a century later wrote:

Do not distress your fellow men and do what else you will.
For in my holy law there is no other sin than this.

Mir, as we have seen, echoes Hafiz's words, and has many other verses in the same vein:

What have the angels got to do with man?
The highest rank belongs to him alone.

And,

Man, formed of clay, gave lustre to this mirror.
None would have looked into it but for him.

"This mirror" being the universe, which is the mirror of God's beauty. Ghalib, still probably the most popular Urdu poet in India, wrote a century later

The object of creation was mankind and nothing else.
We are the point round which the seven compasses revolve.

The seven compasses meaning the seven skies, whose revolution determines our fate. And this is not "just poetry". In one of his letters he writes, "I hold all mankind to be my kin and look upon all men — Muslim, Hindu, Christian — as my brothers, no matter what others may think." Hali, half a century later, wrote

The first lesson of the Book of Guidance was
The whole human race is God's family.

In a country where Hindus greatly outnumber Muslims, the ghazal poet stresses that Hindus are as much members of the family as he is. All true lovers of God are a single community, regardless of the name by which they call Him. Akbar Ilahabadi in the first decades of the 20th Century writes:

His radiance fills the kaba, He lies hidden in the temple.
It is to Him we cry, whether as Allah or as Ram.

And Iqbal, by far the most popular Urdu poet of the 20th Century, says:

The infidel with a wakeful heart bowing before his idol
Is better than the religious Muslim asleep in the mosque.

And so on, so far as I am aware, to the present day, although I am not very familiar with the ghazal poetry of the latter part of the 20th Century and so have confined myself mainly to the earlier classical poets. To the Muslim mystic, whose mouthpiece the ghazal poet is, the formalities of religion are unimportant. Love of God and of God's human creation is all. In his vocabulary the shaikh is the personification of fundamentalist doctrines and his colleague the vaiz — the preacher — the disseminator of them (And the shaikh has his counterpart in the Hindu Brahmin). Keep away from both, says Mir:

Mir, quit the company of shaikh and Brahmin
And mosque and temple too — leave them behind.

From Mir's time onwards both shaikh and preacher have been the object of ridicule and contempt. Mir writes:

If pilgrimage could make a man a man
Then all the world might make the pilgrimage
But shaikhji is just back, and look at him —
An ass he went: an ass he has returned.

The man is such a dunce that he cannot even understand what Mir is telling him:

Mir's every word has meaning beyond meaning
More than a worthless shaikh can understand.
The preacher too comes under attack
I grant you, sir, the preacher is an angel.
To be a man, now — that's more difficult.

Not only Urdu but all the other languages of the largely Muslim peoples of the subcontinent of which I have knowledge — Pushtu, Punjabi, and Sindhi — carry the same message. To which, regrettably, one must add that most of them like this message but don't allow it to have much impact on their daily lives — rather like Christians who have for centuries sung the praises of God because "He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek", but have no sympathy with those who seriously commit themselves to exalting the humble and meek. And of course the shaikhs are still playing their accustomed role of intimidating those who do not toe their line.

Non-Muslims, particularly those who are familiar with this humanist Islam, must do all we can to make our compatriots familiar with humanist Islam and deeply appreciative of it. People who value the Hindu tradition of bhakti and love the forceful poetry of Kabir should have no difficulty in this, since that tradition is exactly the same. Peoples with a long Christian tradition too should find no difficulty, since the message of Islamic humanism is exactly the same as the message of Christianity. The Bible tells them (Galatians, 5,14), "For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." And St. Augustine's succinct "Love, and do what you will", uncannily prefigures the couplet of Hafiz which I quoted above. And while they are about it, both Hindus and Christians would do well to reflect too that they have a fundamentalism nearer home, a bigoted Hindu or a bigoted Christian fundamentalism, which need to be combated with the same zeal as Muslim fundamentalism further afield.

Yaadein yaad ati hain...

Woh school ke din.... Kuch baate bhuli hui, kuch pal beete hue, Har galti ka ek naya bahana, aur fir sabki nazar me aana, Exam ki puri raat jagna, fir bhi sawal dekhake sir khujlana, Mauka mile to class bunk marna, fir doston k sath canteen jana. USKI ek jhalak dekhne roz school jana, usko dekhte dekhte attendance bhul jana, Har pal hai naya sapna, aaj jo tute fir bhi hai apna, Ye school ke din, In lamho mein zindagi jee bhar ke jeena, Yaad karke in palon ko, Fir zindagi bhar muskurana ..............................

I'm bored

I hope this piece of my writing will make the above point clear beyond any doubts...for mentioned herewith is purely inconsequential nothing, pure gibberish, utter waste of time and timepass ..... for i am getting utterly bored at this point of time, with all the things in the world to do but no will to do them, because i am getting bored and I shall prove to you beyond any doubt that i am , as i mentioned before as that being the aim of my present venture...I was contemplating the sheer lack of topics to blog about, or perhaps the lack of will to actually blog one, so i decide to blog about nothing, pure inconsequential and worthless nothing......now as you say an idle mind is devil's workshop (and believe me I have had more than my fair share of contributing the large thing that is between my ears to his workplace), but this time i think it is finally giving way.....because it has nothing to do; actually it does have somethign to do but actually the work has been stalled *by this time i think that you are somewhat convinced that i am really jobless....Warning If you continue further i assume you are jobless too and may as well go mad after reading this, so please proceed at your own risk).......so the time that i write this i am inside my lab and ready to sleep there , because i am not working or put it better not in a mood to work, or might be better put still; my efforts now would be purely inconsequential and fruitless as my work has been stalled and it is beyong my scope and power to put it somewhat back on track; or so i shall attempt to do after blogging my frustration out.......but as for now as i have already mentioned before a hundred odd times { i know that is plain exxaggggeration (yes it is exxaggggeration, spelt with one extra x and two extra g's)}.....(well nice bracketing that)........so as mentioned before a hundred and one times ( sorry was a PJ ; but now you may seem to unsderstand how jobless I am ) that i am about to bore you, as i am bored myself and talk about pure, plain, bland nothing, because i have nothing more enlightening to talk to , no operating systems, no sad poems, no wardens no nothign to blog about just the oldest thing i know....how to get bored...and talk real crap.....as you know a wise man (read Me)once said that "Life is full of Crap. and Crap is caused due to human joblessness" (actually Buddha forgot to patent his "life is full of sorrow and sorrow is caused due to human desire" wala dialogue...).....nowi would really appreciate your courage mate if you are still reading this because reading this requires an unusually high level of focus and dogged determination.......but i promise you that i wont be writing such masterpieces of human expression again (because you will kill me the next time you meet me, after reading the full blog, and are alive after that)......so i congrtulate you again for having read this piece of pure rubbish...........and i congratulate myself on my newfound ability of boring people, and getting bored myself......(these .'s really come handy)...........(sorry PJ but they DO come handy)......(give you thinking time).......if you still are in doubt that i am bored......."god save me"

Mera Windows Shaheed hogaya

Refer the blog below......grrrrrrr..........

7 times I had to switch Linux Versions....Ubuntu Edgy, Mac (attempted, not a Linux),Ubuntu Edgy (again !)...Ubuntu Edgy (yet again , the previous one had developed some malfunction), Sabayon (could not configure the network settings), Ubuntu Edgy (yet yet again, my pet Linux), Ubuntu Fiesty, Ubuntu Edgy (by now can install edgy with eyes closed :p).......and enfin all this had a toll on my beloved Windows :( ......
.....trying to get my Windows back...........

My recent ordeals with Linux.....(and my penchance for getting tortured anyways)

Of Open Source, unearthly commands and Idiot Friendly OSs (read Windows)

Being a Windows user since the Jurassic age, it is that uncomfortable feeling one gets out of using other OSs that drive people like me away from them, Computer Geeks seem to love those billions of Linux and Unix variants.....seem to be one for each letter of the English alphabet...Ubuntu, Gentoo, Knoppix, BSD, Fedora, Red Hat Linux, Mandriva, Vlos, Sabayon, Slax, Lg3d, Kororaa.......You pick a letter mate and I will tell you the name of the OS......

So drawing HUUUUUUUGE inspiration from Ananya Pareek (my wingmate from the Electrical Engineering Deptt whose sole aim in life i guess is to keep on installing Linuxes and playing the guitar; it is rumoured that he once installed 10 in 3 days; all he seems to be doing is changing his OS, not using them but changing them; anyways that's a metter for some other post for some other day) and from CSEwala obsession with Linux ( strictly in that order) I decided to give it a try myself, so off went my HP recovery partition (only way i could allocate space) and in came Ubuntu Edgy 6.10 ( It is considered impolite not to mention all the versions and the numbers :P)....with Beryl.......and trust me it looked awesome....Beryl I mean looked just fabulous...all Linux look drop dead gorgeous for that matter... the beauty for idiots like me end here (except that they may have real nice sounds...Sabayon for example)....then there is this dreaded thing called the console, terminal..with its oh so lengthy and those fizzler commands (look at an example HERE) that make you realise that apart from the dog, Google is man's best friend....trust me if you got a problem in Linux, i mean any kind of problem trust me someone has encountered it earlier, and someone else has solved it :P......
.....True and being open source and free ( my friend ordered 50 Ubuntu CDs and got them free of charge !!) Linux is definitely the future, its because when you have a problem you fix it yourself because you know the code, you dont have to be dependent upon anyones service center for that matter, and because it s modifiable by the user it is best suited for their use by definition ......
....As for me i write this blog out of my frustration, for the nth time the grub has acted stargely....just after copying some linux files in ubuntu and shutting down proerly, ubuntu does not boot properly, what's more neither does windows.....that is being too lenient...it just goes POOF just before coming to the login screen (...encountered a similar problem while installing Mac OS X 10.4.7 (as again a different story for a different date..)........so there i went again (and as before) installed Ubuntu all over again, looked plain this time ( no beryl )...then went on to Sabayon...now thinking to switch back to Ubuntu..(couldn't configure the network settings in Sabayon :P)..Ubuntu is much simpler...
........
I would like to quote Varun in the end
"Linux is user friendly not Idiot friendly..."

I would like to quote myself
"I am an idiot" (all kinds of pun intended)

Of Wardens, the Queen's English, and Irony all over.....

Below is an actual sequence of mails exchanged between me the three wardens and the rest of the HEC, HEC for the uninitiated is the Hall Executive Committee the body of elected students in a hostel which govern it, with ofcourse due "advice" from the wardens......
The backgroud : A HEC Meeting wanted soon.

My First Mail:

Respected Sirs,
we would like to have a HEC meeting with you and the new HEC so that it may be easy for them to dispense their duties for the next term.Please let me know your availability for 6pm on Friday the 18th.

Thanking you

Afroz Mohiuddin

--
We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know.



The next mail came as shock for some one with "..over 35 yrs of experience in the professional industry..."

The Warden's mail (all details leading to the discovery of his identity have been curtailed form the mail;lest he be passed of as a man from some Dharm Satsang Sabha with a blind faith luck, charms etc etc(in short all crap which science squarely dismisses) and not a man from the IIT)


Friday is a bad day. I suggest saturday any time.
--
Dr **************
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Kanpur-208016 India


My next mail (after recovering from the shock of the above mail, quite literally:

Saturday 3pm how would that be ?


.....normally a mail in reply to the above means unavailability on somebody's part ...then happens the Mahabharata.....as it happens no one replies back and none of the wardens turn up.....the warden who in all earnesty had quite something against me right from day 1.....

Look at my next mail framed to be Algorithmically compact, to-the-point, dealing with all cases, no loopholes left, no chances taken, "ab to meeting karvake hi chhodunga"

My mail:
Sirs,
we would like to have an HEC meeting at 5pm on Sunday the 20th of May. If anybody has any objections about the time and the date please mail me at the earliest failing which the meeting is scheduled for the above mentioned time and date.
The agenda is as follows

1)regarding proposal discussion
2)water coolers of B-mid and E-mid
3)permission to photocopy vendor for stationary items
etc.
4)mess coolers
5)any other matter with the permission of the chair

Thanking you
Afroz Mohiuddin

--

We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know.

Afroz Mohiuddin


You bet i patted my back after writing that one(ke isse to nahin bachega kalia)

The reply from the warden was a shocker, was a reply to all, (as was the "Friday is a bad day")

Warden:

Dear Afroz,

I think, 5 PM is okay but the tone of the email reflect arrogance on your
part, possibly unintentionally. I think, as a professional, one needs to
be more courteous.

Best wishes,
--
Dr **************
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Kanpur-208016 India


:( <-ME plus the smiley (what have i done ??!!) (i am bad at smileys, help)

My next mail was a toned down version of my angry self, framed in beautiful Queen's English which has caused quite some problems to us poor indians

Sorry Sir for the perceived impertinence on my part, but i think you read a bit too much into the mail, I only think that tone could have been a byproduct of writing a crisp and to-the-point mail in order to compensate for the folly of my last mail, and the confusion caused due to it.
Thank you for correcting me, and i hope you continue to do this in the future

Thanking you
Yours Truly


After that the fellow shouts at me in the meeting, which i don't attend due to this anti....some crap and some irony.

I leave you to judge whether i was rude and unprofessional or he was being uneducated and high handed.

Comments are Invited !!

have a look

BookRags: Self-Reliance Summary

Whatever !!

Do guz zameen na mili koye yaar mein.....

Zindagi bhar intezaar mein kat gayi
Jo milna tha woh to kabhi mila nahin
Jiski ummeed thi, usi se naummeedi hui

Jashn hamare saare pheeke rah gaye
Jab uski talab hi khatm ho gayi