Sparsh

I was reading a Jug Suraiya's column : Atheism is the best worship recently. I sunk deeply in the memories of city that I detest heavily. That city is Varanasi, notorious for touts. I will quote a paragraph here for the context : A French sociologist has likened personal prayer and the giving of votive offerings to bribery. He has noted that in countries where the tradition of personalised God-worship is most entrenched –as in India, and in Roman Catholic Italy – the incidence of bribery in everyday life is also proportionately high. If God himself is a Babu who can be bribed to do your bidding with a prayer and a few diyas or candles, where’s the harm in slipping some currency notes to a bureaucrat or politician or policeman to do what you want done? Doesn’t God himself teach us to bribe? In which case, how can bribery and corruption be bad things, if they’re God-given? Those 2004–2008 years in Varanasi felt like living inside a timeless aarti, with semester deadlines drifti...

Qualifying IIT JEE 2004 was a big event in my life. And this exam revealed certain character out of me. Now, I was going away from home as a teenager to get experience of college life. I want to start a new phase in my life by undertaking mechanical engineering as my career in ITBHU, Varanasi. I arrived by Shivganga Express from Kanpur. Story before counseling : Choosing a seat of Mechanical Eng. in ITBHU was my decision that I will remember for the life time. Till then, I consider IT-BHU equivalent to IIT-K in all aspect and do not care that it has not extra 'I' in its name; I was dreaming that no facility will be lagging and working condition will be extremely professional there. I also left Electrical Eng. for the sake of Mechanical Eng. I was fond and pride of this tough call at that time; But dreams died slowly here. City was not so good looking as seen from the windows of train. I was not hoping huge expectations from the city. We were received by a bunch of seniors ...