Pointless.

Of late, the point of us living out our respective lives has eluded me. What are all of us doing in this world anyway; apart from taking in oxygen and giving out carbon dioxide that is?

Some carry out revolutionary biological research while others murder people. How is it different if you die at the age of 80 or are murdered when you are just 5? Nothing – you are equally helpless either ways.

I have food that I don’t like; a poor guy doesn’t have any food. The conclusion – we are going to be pissed off; one way or the other.

We fight for survival this whole life – to top the school; land up with the best job; earn loads of money. You name it and there are innumerable number of us willing to slug it out for the piece of shit. Some people go to banal 9-5 jobs others are making big bucks working day and night. At the end of the day, where does it all take us to? The crematorium or the cemetery.

We find a cure to a deadly disease and the next day a few more of them crop up. We use air-conditioners to keep us cool and the earth starts to warm up. I can’t help but think of us as a bunch of people as confused as the protagonist in Memento – setting inconsequential problems and targets for ourselves and going through the motions; just for the heck of it.

To sum up – what is life? Pointless. What is a plain sheet of paper? Pointless. What is this post supposed to be? Pointless. ;)

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The feel

It was the 10^th of July, 2009; around 10 in the night. The last day of my internship was over. I attended to a few daily chores (for the last time in Germany). I was getting a weird kind of feeling as the day to depart was around. I had to return a couple of books to the library at MPQ. Then I found some excuse to visit the laboratory I had been working in. After changing the names of a couple of folders in the computer, I was ready to leave. At that very moment I had this feeling. It dawned on me that I wanted more of it all. Back then I had told to myself that I would be getting a Ph.D. degree for myself. Everything was decided in a split second! I was dead sure. Certain that it was a thing I was “born” to do!

A couple of weeks and mind starts to get confused! What if I could somehow miraculously land up with a decent paying job? What if I find later on that I never had the temperament for research? What if the nice time I had this summer was only because the time was just a couple of months? Should I give CAT a try? Wouldn’t I be better off living in India rather than some foreign land? These and many more questions keep clarity at bay. I find myself sometimes “planning” to get a decent job and at the next moment hoping that I somehow get a nice Ph.D. offer. I’m afraid this is not the best way to prepare for either of the two.

Today morning, while listening to “Viva la vida” by Coldplay, one thought led to another and I got into the “Ph.D. karna hai” mood. I asked myself what are the two possibilities if I get a Ph.D. offer and end up taking it. I told myself that it would either turn out that I was indeed “born” to be a researcher; or, after a couple of years I might end up damn frustrated at being stuck in the wrong place. If it turned out that I have got a few research bones in me; my life would be a perfect romantic story; in view of the thoughts I have mentioned in the first paragraph. On the other hand if things turned out otherwise, my life could still be interpreted as a cool comedy flick with the hero being a total dumb ass; who actually thinks that he is “the dude”. Seems like a risk worth taking given my liking for either genres! ;)

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