I just wanted to share a poem that is very close to my heart ...

The poem is called "I Said To The Wanting-Creature Inside Me" and it's written by famous Indian poet Kabir. 
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I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?

There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is no body, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.
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Whenever my mind sway here and there and i feel restless, i read this poem. It helps me to be in the present. I hope you all like it too.

Peace,
Karan

Oh Newfoundland, I love you!

It was someday in March 2009. I was sitting in my cubical in a shipyard in Nantong, China. My company in India had sent me here for a 3 months industrial training. It was winter and temperature outside was negative 8 degree Celsius. I was sipping my favorite green tea from Hangzhou and chitchatting with my other Chinese colleagues. Suddenly my phone rung, my parents were trying to reach me from India. My life was about to change for next 2 year! 

They informed me that they have just received a letter from MUN and it has accepted my application and has granted me funding for my masters. I obviously became very excited and this news was on Facebook within few minutes (Yes, there are ways to access Facebook in China!). I took my time to digest this news, half heartedly finished my leftover training, returned to India, quit my job, spent 2 months with my family and then came to Newfoundland.  

As an international student from India, first thing I noticed about this place is it’s extremely low population density. In the first few days, the silence of the landscape was almost haunting. The population density of Mumbai is estimated to be about 22000 persons per square kilometer and for St. John’s, it is about 225 persons per square kilometer. So imagine almost 100 people in place of every single person you see in St. John’s and that is how Mumbai looks like! It took me a lot of time to adjust to this general quietness of St. John’s and only recently I have started appreciating it. Newfoundland took time to grow on me but when it did, it made me it’s own.

You have to come from a far away land to fully appreciate Newfoundland. Recently I visited Upper Amherst Cove, a small coastal community of around 25 people located approximately 3.5 hr drive from St. John’s. A friend of mine who grew up there told me that in summer, sometimes the whales in ocean next to her house would make so much noise that they would look outside the window and swear at them. Most of the houses in this community are occupied by artists who go there looking for inspiration and solitude. How romantic is the idea of living this kind of lifestyle?

In a place as remotely located as St. John’s, I am thankful that there is a thriving international student community, food is available to suit all tastes and people are remarkably nice and warm (especially locals). I am thankful to George Street for being the ultimate “Rue de la soif”, I am thankful to Signal Hill for providing the ultimate beautiful view within a walking distance from my home and I am thankful to MUN for providing cheapest good quality education in Canada.  

   

These days I do not get surprised when I meet a random person in a bar and realize that we have mutual friends, I take full pleasure in cursing the weather and I obsessively worry about vitamin D deficiency. And when I run into a friend downtown, I say “Whadd'ya at b’y?”. 

Oh Newfoundland, I love you!

………………..

Karan Bhawsinka

North American Culture

Dear Readers,

Hope you all are doing great in your respective lives. I am doing good too. Life is moving ahead as i contemplate it ...

This time i am going to write about something different. This time i am going to write something about North American (NA) culture. Yes, all you folks outside North America heard it right ... North America does have culture and in this post, i will make an honest attempt to describe it.

Few months ago i decided that i will grow my beards. I did that because i realised that i have never ever in my whole life experimented even a little with my looks. North America has an air of freshness and freedom that somehow gives you courage to experiment. So, I ended up growing my beards for a month. Then an interesting incident happened. While i was walking through the university campus one day, one of my friends from India asked me that why i am growing my beards and is Osama bin Laden my motivation to do so?!! Now off-course this friend of mine was joking but this incident left me thinking. I wondered why an Indian person was the first and the only one till now to ask this question and why none of my North American friends have raised this point yet??

I decided to do an experiment. I decided to grow my beards even longer and note how people from different countries react to it. Now i should accept that being in a Canadian university gave me a great opportunity to do such an experiments because of large international student community here. I grew my beards for almost 8 weeks after which it became unbearable to handle. So i had to shave, but my observations were really interesting. 

Out of everyone who saw my beards, my parents reacted in most extreme fashion. I usually make video calls with them on skype so that we can see each other. They saw my beards and almost tripped ... My dad even went as far as saying that police will jail me as i look like a terrorist! (by the way, he also asked if all my professors here have beards and if they are my motivation for having big beards :P) ... My mom also became very concerned ... she said that i look like a Muslim man and that i should change my looks and shave immediately. I couldn't reply anything on this and changed the topic of discussion. 

At university, all the people who made comments or gave a strange look at my beards were either from Indian Subcontinent or from Africa.

None, not even a single North American said anything like that. A male NA friend said that a hat will look great with my beards and a female NA friend said that beards look good on me and that i should always keep them. My beards became topic of discussion at one of the parties i went to with my NA friends. Everyone treated it just like a beard, nothing else ... nobody attached any images with it. 

And this concept of individuality i think is one of the major pillars of North American culture. In India, we divide on every single thing possible ... religion, colour, caste, province, language ..... list goes on ... One of my relatives in my hometown in India are living from past 40 years in a house which shares a common wall with a mosque ... but they have never once visited it! Here in North America, people from all over the world come .. with their different religions, languages, castes, colours, food habits, cultures, beliefs ... they all live equally, they all excel and prosper and make a better life for themselves.

Now i am not saying that everything is rosy here, there are off-course individual cases. But in general, i find, that the ability of North Americans to see every human being on planet with equal eye is very very impressive. 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." - This sentence has been called "one of the best-known sentences in the English language" and "the most potent and consequential words in American history".

When i go back home, this is a quality, a culture, which i would like to take back with me from North America.  

Peace...

Karan

Thinking in new'fun'land ...

Holla,

me, from past few years atleast :)

Long time no see huh? Sorry, but it seems that i get motivation to write only when i am on road. Life seems meaningless and aimless otherwise which is not a very good mindset to write blogs i guess. But anyways, I recently moved to a new house and from past few days i am hanging out with a new bunch of awesome friends. It’s a much needed change in my life and i am happy at the moment :) (Wow!).

I finished my second semester few days ago and all my required courses are done. I have like 16 months to myself now for my research and thesis. This thought is scary for me, to keep myself motivated for so long to work on some random naval architecture stuff. But i guess i knew before hand that i will have to go through all this and hence i have been mentally preparing myself. Do i sound like an utterly unmotivated person? Voila, you got me right!

I think engineering as an organized profession is just a result of rat race of the world and universities churning millions of engineers everywhere are just factories fueling the industrial economy. Where are the days where people used to do things because they were really really interested in them?? This is something i see as a side-effect of globalization. An Indian is supposed to work hard because an American or a Chinese is working hard … what a bullshit! I don’t understand this but at the same time i do not have a better system to propose. It just seems to me that this is the natural way of life and somehow it makes me believe in the ancient Indian philosophy that everything is predecided. In a way it also makes me feel very very small in front of i don’t know what. I ask all humans who consider themselves as most superior of all a very simple question. Come up with a global governance system where there is no war and no inequality. Have we ever done it in past 5000 years? Can anybody do it in future?? I don’t think so. You see what i mean now? We are all just part of something random, prisoners of our own image.

And this realization sucks, believe me it does. It has made me a sad person in general. Whenever i do anything which can be considered hedonistic in a smallest possible way, i feel bad. If i drink, or eat good food or party, i feel bad. I feel bad for someone who has no access to all this and i feel bad for my helplessness in helping them. I feel bad when i waste time because i think i should work hard, but then i think work hard in what?? How is naval architecture supposed to create a world with no war and no inequalities?? Shouldn’t we put our time and resources in solving this question then in our blind quest of never-ending materialism! Sometimes i think those humans in ancient India who spent all their life in seclusion thinking about life must have pondered over this question. Weren’t they the most modern human beings who ever walked the earth, the only human beings who were real and free from the prison of their own images?? Hats off ...

At the moment, i neither have a solution to propose to this world, nor do i have balls to lead a secluded life like many of my ancestors did. And it makes me sad.

Conclusion: It’s bad for you to think a lot when you don’t have enough will power to do things that you think are right. (Huh, even the conclusion is a catch 22)

Anyways, i hope i have depressed you enough by now, or maybe you just think i am crazy. Whatever it is, I would love to hear from all of you on this. Till then, chao chao.

For a better world...
Karan

My sms conversation with a girl :)

Hi everyone,

It will soon be 6 months of my living in newfoundland. Life has been good till now. I just wanted to share some interesting sms/text exchanges i had with a girl few nights ago.
...........................................................
Me: U Blond!

She: You black … (not politically correct nay?) I refer to your hair too but now I sound racist :’(

Me: Racism is history so evolve; you are a mystery I wanna solve ;)

She: Oh dear god don’t even go there! This disease aint one you wants near!!

Me: You are not a disease but a remedy, without which my life is a comedy (H)

She: Comedy is such that one desires in the cold cruel world of Expires!

Me: World is cold and cruel when you are alone, in lonely nights you moan, let me take your pain, let us walk the tropical rain!

She: Agreed the world is a dungeon. Too bad the monsters are within. Only way is to be born again. Tho with u ive been locked in.

Me: It’s not clear to me what you said, ‘was it no?’ I dread … All I need is a chance, my heart dances at your glance :$

She: Do they dance or jive, I ask? The light flickers behind your mask. I fear the blood that runs thru yer veins is clotted and on my shirt you will stain <:/>

Me: People always complain, but it is not love if it doesn’t leaves a stain! No one is perfect give it a try, let the fucking stain dry …

She: That’s a sure problem given the stains have bled through. Now my hearts out drying and im through waiting on a cue

Me: I know you need your time, the truth is sublime. Love is the only cure for broken heart, as they say when they are high!

She: Id love nothing more now than to drown myself in a high..To be rendered totally inoccupiable for just a while by
.......................................................................

I am expecting a dinner date with her sometime soon :D

Peace!
Karan

new'fun'land part 2

Hey Everybody, How is she cutting? (as they say in newfoundland for asking how are you)

I finished my first semester in Canada this month. I got to know the education system of western countries better then i had known ever before. My friends might take it as a joke, but i really worked hard acadimically. This was partly because of my previous knowledge which was almost zero (thanx to my 4 year holiday at IIT) and partly because i wanted to maintain an 80% this time. I almost succeded. Results just came out and i got 81% , 79% and 72% in 3 subjects i took making it a total of 77% approx. Not bad for me seeing my previous record for sure, but i will try harder next semester. The goal is 80%.

If i compare the organised university education system in canada and india now, i get a feeling that west is still way ahead. My collegues in india were by far smarter then most of my collegues here in canada but the amount of research that goes in at university here and the superorganised industry-acadmia collaboration dazzles me. In a broder perspective, it dazzles me that how a country like canada of size 3 times that of india and population 3% that of india maintains itself so beautifully. As i often say to my friends here, even the wilderness seems organised in Canada.

Anyways, i will keep trying to break the code, as always. As of now, i have decently acclemetised with the climate here. I have come to term with life in sub zero temperature. It sucks to sit in house all day because its freezing outside, it sucks to sit on the freezing toilet seat everyday, it sucks when i wake up every morning because the house heating dries my throat and choakes me when i am in sleep, but ... i am doing just fine!

I am coming to terms with life of canadians which used to freek me out when i came here. This whole society is obsessed with individuality, but somehow i find them most unindivisual (not sure if its a correct word). Capacity of canadian, westerners generally, to follow intructions is amazing. I dont know how to explain myself, its just that the longer i am staying here, the more critical i am becoming of western society. Everytime i compare the beliefs of hinduism with beliefs of westerners, it becomes evident that hinduism is by far the most mature religion. It is becoming evident to me that for hinduism, most for the things/thought processes/events that are happening in west are 'been there, done that' kind of thing. I can see christianity slowing dying here, i can see how cool it is for residents here to say that they don't believe in god, i can feel why so many civilizations/beliefs/religions came to earth and disappeared and now i can understand why hinduism stayed for ever and will stay for ever. As its famously said in india 'kuch to baat hai ki hasti mitati nahi hamari (there is something in india which makes it never lasting)'.

Sitting in this remote corner of the world, i miss home. I have good friends around and i am learning a lot academically but i know for sure that i will not stay here for more then 2 years. This life is just too comfertable for me. I dont like the differences that exist in the world. I dont like it when i see that ppl working as waiter/waitress here can afford to fly/travel around the world/use blackberry phones/ have cars where as my father who is working as a doctor from past so many years has to think so many times before doing/using anything similar. I dont want india to become like west, not at all, but i am just very uncomfertable with the differences.

Signing off,
Karan

Hi one, Hello all :)

hello europe! (cape spear)

I will describe my 10 days in new"fun"land in short...

I took my air canada flight to st. john's from montreal at 2pm (montreal time) on 5th Sep'09. The flight was usual one and as i had expected, i met few new international students going to join MUN. One guy from india and one from china, both of their name i don't remember now, were sitting around me. Chinese guy was very interested to see outside the window and hence, tough i had a window seat, i exchanged seat from him.The indian guy who was sitting just behind me had become friends with a japanese girl by now, who was coming to st . john's as a tourist. Few days later when i met him, he told me that they toured around st. john's for 3 days together. We reached st. john's at around 5:30 pm local time. So after compleating the formalities at airport and after meeting the university representatives, i took a cab to my previously arranged accommodation. I am going to stay ("surf the couch") for coming 2-3 days with a couchsurfer. For more details, visit: http://www.couchsurfing.org/. When i reached his doors, he warmly welcomed me. We talked about ins and outs of life, had dinner and retired for the day. For coming 2 days he helped me to find a permanent house, showed me around city, made me a honourary newfoundlander by getting me screeched in. I am very sure that i am the first international student of this year to take part in this ceremony.

the battery :)

Now, the place where i shifted used to be a youth hostel (mentioned in lonely planet travel guide) for travellers and the land lady recently converted it to student residance. They still have a dorm for travellers. So almost everyday when i come back from school, i meet someone from a different corner of the world. And there are full time students from canada and nigeria living here. I think it is a great way to live.

10 days here and i have already seen cape spear (the most eastern point in north america) and quidi-vidi brewery and have done a hike around fresh water bay. Till now the experiance have been amazing but i am not at all comfortable with the dropping temperature. People have already started telling me the tales about terrible winter. Window's will break, main door will not open and u will have to jump from the window, your ass will freeze, you can snowboard from your home to the university etc. etc. huffff i am kind off affraid ... but we will see ... we will join hands and keep moving :)

I have started playing basketball, today i signed up for juggling and fencing classes, i have met my supervisors, i have attended classes and i am in full spirit to cherish life as it comes.

Wisdom Unlimited ...
Karan