The Carpet Of Dreams

Tread soft, for you may not know who shares the carpet

you may not know how far it goes

where this magic carpet takes you

but it shall be your destination you know

The floor below looks warm

Inviting it appears, but not worth

stepping off the carpet of dreams

where each step makes your destiny brighter

But don’t step light too often

Seldom, dance on your dreams

go wild, invite someone, play games, sleep on your carpet

This is too precious a rug to let by, without having lived each emotion

Only when you make your dreams your life

only when you really drown in the sea

only, when you become one with them

when you lose track of what’s dream and what’s real

Do you come close to your dreams

it may not lead you where you wished to reach

But you shall reach the destination you created for yourself

Often, not the same places

So dance, walk, run, jump, sleep

for you have found your carpet of dreams

Much like the ground once beneath you

this carpet is now a part of you

And when you make the carpet a part of your soul

Your dreams take flight

Showing you the wonders of this world and beyond

so dance to the tune of life and let your carpet of dreams take flight

Vishal Gupta

October 4^th, 2013

Shanghai Sagas – Of Chicken Legs and Duck Heads

Disclaimer: The following article is not for the weak-hearted. If you despise shows like Game of Thrones or Spartacus; or dislike books like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo; or are not Chinese; this article is not meant for you. I’d request you to return to the world of Eat Pray Love. But if you think you can stand an image which is going to haunt me for the rest of my life, then please don’t forget to comment.

It was another evening at Tongji while I was taking a stroll near the campus boundary thinking about the cute German girl with the smart haircut; when I felt butterflies in my stomach. Being in China, I feel the need to clarify that I didn’t really eat butterflies for lunch, it just means I felt hungry. Thankfully, finding food isn’t a big challenge in Shanghai. It’s finding food which doesn’t freak me out that becomes a challenge. But hunger teaches us things which we don’t know about ourselves. I’d already started eating eggs, vegetable soup in meat broth, and I don’t mind if a sausage happened to touch my food. Yet there were things which I couldn’t get used to.

For example, there are many roadside barbeque stations in Shanghai. I often go there for bread, corn, mushrooms and tofu. But they also keep all sorts of meat, like chicken, lamb, fishes, and things I don’t want to know about. I’ve been going there for 2 months now but there’s something unnerving about the fish which I still haven’t been able to get used to. It’s a long thin fish with a skewer going into its mouth and coming out of its tail. The fish is fresh and uncooked yet. The guy puts the dead fresh fish on the grill and it roasts right there infront of my eyes. I see the open eye disappearing into black ash and slowly the fish transforms into grilled meat, right there infront of me. If I hadn’t seen worse, then this would’ve been the most grouse image I’d have ever seen. But in all fairness, to the Chinese that thing is still food. I might find it eerie, but to the Chinese, it’s a part of their culture and evening snack. I just have to get used to the fact that to the Chinese, the taste of the food matters, not the beauty of it.

And I would’ve given them credit for it. After all, what’s a roasted fish in a world of shell-less snails, snake juice and octopus balls (balls made of octopus meat; not octopus balls). But then, one day I found a curious thing which I couldn’t figure out. It seemed like half an octopus at first, with 4 arms. But on closer observation (and confirmation from a Chinese friend) we figured that it was chicken feet. The things which seemed to be octopus arms were infact 3 claws and the leg. What’s worse, I could see the nails still attached to the feet. Later I saw some Chinese sucking on the claws. I didn’t stop to see if they actually ate the feet or just sucked on them, but I know that was not an image I wished to see.

And I would’ve still made my peace with it, had I not seen the next level of creepiness in Chinese food the next day. I went inside an eatery to try to order vegetarian fried rice. There was some sort of meat kept at the corner table which I didn’t pay attention to at first. Somehow, a friend gathered courage to look at it and told me those were duck-heads. Two instincts hit me together. One, to scream and run. Another, to have a look. Unable to resist the curious me, whom I curse now, I had a look. There it was - skinless, roasted, brown, duck heads, with the beaks still intact. It was just heads cut off from ducks and roasted, ready to eat. A Chinese friend later told me, to my horror, that they are delicious. I still haven’t found the courage to confirm it for myself. Everytime I imagine the brain still inside that head, somehow my hunger dies. Somehow the image of being sucking on the duck’s beak doesn’t seem to help.

I heard other stories such as boiling live crabs to death. The restaurant owners had a tough time explaining to me that when I say I don’t eat animals, I confirm that I eat fishes and poultry as they are not “animals”. I went through a phase of trying to explain to them that I don’t eat anything which does not grow in or on the soil. I don’t eat anything which moves or has moved on its own. Finally, I found the keyword – meat. I simply needed to say that I don’t eat meat. Thankfully, there’s not a culture of eating worms in Shanghai, else that would have been a different challenge, because worms don’t have meat.

As I end this post, I must say that even though food here sounds uncanny, it’s a part of Chinese culture. I’d feel bad if someone called me creepy for drinking milk, so would the Chinese. Most species kill to survive, the Chinese just take it one step further, in a slightly (not overly) unhygienic manner though. There can be ways improve this but one must remember that just over a decade ago this country was starving to death. They adapted to stay alive and eating anything which moves or grows became a part of culture. I think even I’d eat anything if it came to a choice between dying and eating worms. The food shortage created a culture, and as it often happens, cultures are harder to eliminate than crises. There’s more to Chinese food that its brutality for those who have the taste for it, and Shanghai shows that a lot of the world does. And if a Hindu-atheist vegetarian boy can learn to tolerate these differences, then perhaps the world can too.

Memories from the Past

A new life entices a young boy

with gleaming lights and wide roads

He misses the land he comes from

not as prosperous, but far more beautiful

Where honour is a liberty earned

and conversations have more depth than words

As the fast paced life tries to grip his soul

Memories from the past, set him free

He remembers a smile on the lips of an angel

and remembers how she hugged him last

Faring well, for the voyage he was embarking upon

Not knowing, when they’d see each other again

He knows not if she will feel his absence

but he wishes she wouldn’t, at the cost of her smile

He checks if she’s available to say a “hello”

but she has her own life to go on with

And he smiles, knowing she has went on with hers

and he, smiling, goes on with his

He remembers the land he left, and is grateful to it

For all it taught, for all opportunities it gave

Selflessly, so the boy could survive anything the world threw at him

Lessons of the soil, are all he carried

lessons of the soil, was all he needed

His life becomes now a testimony, to the place which renewed his soul

Which gave him an identity, higher than his own

He promises to honour it, with his life and might

For years, he was revered for where he came from

Time has come, for his land to be revered for what he is

He remembers the tears of a mother, worrying in anticipation

She wonders who will take care of her child in a foreign land

she’s scared if he might forget her in the blazing lights

But she also understands her upbringing wouldn’t let him

and he would survive in the harshest conditions without a flinch

He was taught well, with love and anguish alike

She loved him, tutored him, nurtured him and also freed him

For she knows love is tested, when it comes to letting go

for the biggest test of love arrives when you let go of the one thing you love the most

And it takes a mother’s love to be able to do so

He promises himself to respect her love, trust and upbringing

he promises himself, to come back to her, an evolved man

When life trained him in success and failure

In wisdom and knowledge, in ambition and content

and when the world said there has been enough learning

Life gave him a higher standard to learn

a bigger battle, with bigger rewards

He prays to keep himself together, during this new voyage

he hopes to grow, not change in the foreign land

He smiles, at the unique challenge life found him worthy of

he promises to honour that quest, embarked to him

And whenever the fast paced life tries to grip his soul

Memories from the past, set him free

Vishal Gupta

August 27^th, 2013

IIT Kharagpur – My Alma Mater. My Home

As soon as you walk into those gates proclaiming the big bold letters INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, KHARAGPUR, you know your life is going to be changed forever. You are no longer the passionate geek who enjoys pulleys and complex numbers. Now, you are a part of a heritage. A heritage which allows you to make a choice about where you wish to go in your life. As soon as you enter the gates of IIT Kgp, without you realizing, every gate in the world opens for you. It doesn’t matter whether you have it in your heart to be a poet or a scientist or an entrepreneur or an Olympian or the Prime Minister of the nation. IIT Kgp will give you every opportunity to strive towards what you wish to do and make a life out of it.

 

An opportunity to make a life out of doing what you enjoy? How many people in the world get that opportunity? To make a life out of going up on stage every day and making people laugh? Or designing the state-of-the-art technologies on which the world will come to depend?

 

But it doesn’t come for free. There’s a catch. There’s something IIT Kgp asks from you. You know you can work hard. You know you’re intelligent. And you’ve proved that you understand ideas and concepts better than most in the world. You’ve already come a long way. Now it’s time to go the extra mile, or rather, to go the extra .2 km. IIT Kgp will demand that you really strive towards what you believe in. Be it making money or making music, you need to believe in what you do and you have to do it well.

 

You’ll fail. You’ll get the most cynical feedback one can ever get. You can trust that you will not be appreciated for bad work. You will never get a Kgpian applaud for horrible art. People will walk out in the middle of your concert if they don’t like it. Your work will be a public joke if it is mistaken. If doesn’t matter if you’re A R Rahman or Raghu Dixit. Bad art is simply not tolerated.

 

Do not be daunted. These are the most valuable experiences you’ll ever have. Try to remember the most moving speech you’ve ever heard. The story which inspired you. The tale which you go to when you look for motivation. It’s never a story of success. It’s always a story of bouncing back. Success never breeds without failure. Perfection never precedes mistakes. And this campus will give you the opportunities to as many mistakes as you can imagine.

Want to give up when it gets too tough? The campus helps.

Want to get drunk, desperate and depressed at the same time? The campus helps.

Want to work on a long term project before an immediate problem? The campus helps.

Want to spend the last night before the exam writing about the campus? The campus helps.

 

The campus will support you in every mistake you wish to make. And the campus will help you to correct those mistakes. And when you give them their time’s worth, they stand up in admiration.

 

Every decision you make here may go a long way in defining the direction of your career. It might be as simple as going for a Hall-dramatics practice or as big as contesting for the position of the VP. Your decisions will define what you become later in life. Do not let this worry you. As long as you take decisions, they will be correct. As Steve Jobs famously said, ‘in the end it all makes sense. But only in the end.’

 

Having left that small world of boundless energy, I realize what I’ve taken along with me. I went in curious. I’ve come out more curious. I went in looking to follow great footsteps. I’ve come out leaving some of my own. The campus gave me an opportunity and I’m grateful to it. Sometimes, I miss the 2.2 and the wing and my society and the girl I loved. And I know they are there whenever I need to look back. All it takes are several clicks and there’s a sea of support which I know I can rely on. I know I shall never again be in dearth of both intellectual and nonsensical discussions because that is what I’ve brought along with me.

 

As I move out of the shell which is Kgp which protected me from the outside world for so long, I do miss my alma mater. But I know it’s there for me when I need it. And it needs me to go out and show the world what its patron is capable of. What it is capable of. How it can change a life which can change the world. I feel myself standing on the edge of a new world. Behind me lies a glorious past with a rich heritage. Before me is darkness and I can only know what lays ahead by walking into it. As attractive the light may be, my time has come to move on. My lessons at Kgp do not let me be afraid enough anymore.

 

And so, I walk on, leaving a legacy and carrying a heritage. I found my story in campus and lived my life. My only hope is, everyone finds theirs. The rich environs of Kgp have lots to give and ask nothing in return except for a little love. As Sam Cawthorn said in my final semester at Kalidas Auditorium, 

 

‘The Universe has conspired to bring your life at this moment in time and space. This is a unique opportunity which never was and will never return. Better make the most out of it.’