From shadows to the stars

I have always had a fascination with the Urdu language. Having lived in Hyderabad my entire life, I have found this language to be very beautiful and having a natural poetic sound to it, the way Italian supposedly has. Due to this fascination, I have taken a liking to songs, ghazals and qawwalis that are sung in Urdu. Naturally, I have come across numerous Pakistani artists. One such artist is Habib Jalib, the "poet of the people". One of my favourite poems of Jalib is "Zulmat ko Zia". When Zia ul Haq seized power via a coup, Jalib wrote this poem. The word "Zia" in Urdu means light. Using this, Jalib writes, "How can I call this darkness as light?" Over the past month or so, due to obvious reasons, this poem has become even more dear to me. I shall post the lyrics and translation of the poem. Pakistani band "Laal" adapted the poem into the form of a song. I shall also post a link to the song. Lyrics "Haq baat...

About a couple of years ago, I watched a movie called "The Trotsky". The movie portrays the life of a Canadian high school student, Leon Bronstein, who thinks that he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was a major figure of the Russian revolution and Bronstein thinks that he is destined to bring about a workers' revolution in Canada. He begins this attempt by trying to unionize the students of his school. Although a students' union does exist, the functionality of this union is limited to organizing dances. Unsurprisingly, his quest does not receive much popularity among his fellow students. Leon is faced with a question. Are his fellow peers apathetic or bored? Apathy means that one is indifferent, doesn't care. Boredom is a state in which a person lacks interest, but is not disinterested. Just over a month ago, a student in the university that I am studying committed suicide. He had been persecuted and discriminated by the university admini...

Today, I am sad, Rohith. Sad because you have left us, but also sad because I didn't take the chance to know you. The more I hear about you, the more I read what you wrote, I am sad that I missed out on having you as a friend. Perhaps, you would've felt the same about me. I wish that at the times we made eye contact and nodded in acknowledgement of each other, we actually had a conversation. Would we have discussed the cosmos, about Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson? I would have recounted something that I read on the internet and found fascinating (“Isn't it amazing that there's a possibility that the star whose light we are seeing now might not exist anymore?”). You might have shared my amazement, even utter something profound and philosophical. Would we have discussed our mutual love for Lionel Messi and his magical feet? I would've said something like, “I think towards the end of his career, Messi could become a midfield assist machine becuase his passing ...

Before I joined University of Hyderabad, I was of the opinion that due to the nature of their discipline, students of sciences would tend to be rational, progressive and objective in their non-academic lives as well. How wrong I was. In India, science as a discipline is very different from science as a way of thought. People learn science in a very industrial way. One of the tenets of science would be to question everything and anything (including science itself). Not in India. Science is just swallowed whole, without questioning anything. Thus, rationality is replaced by rigidity. The aim in scientific education here is that students are taught how to get results and not to understand why something works in a particular fashion. Science students are like workers at a conveyor belt. They know their job, but don't know what the end product might be, they don't know what the next guy's job is. Another travesty is that the top echelons of scientific education have b...