This is one way to be happy

Something has died. What it is, it cannot be seen. It only sits and rots. And what died once also lived. All that begins must end. But an end need not mean death; it may also mean completion, it may also mean fulfilment. What they only share with death is finality.

That which has died, that which once lived, sought completion, fulfilment. It sought to achieve the end of its being. It was a thought, and that thought sought expression.

Indeed, the only difference that there is between death and fulfilment is immortality. For when a thought is expressed, it will remain until it is finally dissolved, along with all of the known universe. But it is truly the lack of that expression that kills the thought.

And once dead, it cannot be revived, it cannot be reanimated. It simply rots. It fills the mind with a stench so foul and gas so vile, it must surely bloat and explode. There is no decomposition in that sphere, like on the physical sphere. But make no mistake, it will rot.

Heed my words; they will save you from certain trouble: Nurture the living, fulfil the ripe, and expel the dead. Happiness, if any, may be found then.

Bathtub

केहने को तो अब तक दोस्त ही थे,

पर जब दोस्ती निभाने की बारी आई,

वो भी हमारे साथ रो पड़े.

आंसुओं में नहा रहे थे हम,

उन्होंने कम पड़ने परे bathtub भी भर दिया!

... And this is how Kushal Asawa prepared for CLAT!

Life before March 23, 2009 was pretty dull. A little time had passed after the 12^th grade boards got over, and I was preparing for the CPT examinations, which were to be held in the end of June. The plan was to complete CA, CS, and LL.B. in the least possible amount of time. CA and CS, because they are mutually compatible, and LL.B. would come in for graduation. Actually, LL.B. was on the back burner. All of it changed on March 23, 2009, in just a couple of hours.

Abhijeet bhaiyya (Adv. Abhijeet A. Joshi, an author of repute) was visiting us. In course of a casual chat, he asked me what my career plans were. When I told him (what I just told you), he gave me good piece of advice. He said, ‘If you are considering pursuing LL.B. for graduation, why not go for it from a National Law University?’ It hit the bull’s eye! I visited the NLSIU site, and it was from that very moment that I had decided that this is where I would graduate from!

A couple of days later, I made it clear that I would be appearing for CLAT 2009, and started preparing accordingly.  To begin with, I started preparing with the final draft of Abhijeet bhaiyya’s book (The same book that I mentioned in the list). Since this was only my second time with an OMR sheet, I messed up the examination form several times before I actually sent it. Also, I did not read the instructions very carefully. So, the form, which should’ve been dispatched by 1^st of April, got delayed till the 7^th.

Soon, I got my hands on Guide to Common Law Admission Test 2008 by Hema Raman, and concentrated most of my time and efforts completing this book. Back then, it seemed very logical to read a single book that had something from each subject, an AIO (All-In-One), than read a lot of books dealing with specific subjects. It was actually a blunder on my part that I did this. If it hadn’t been for the Legal Gk and the Current Affairs books, my rank would’ve been lower. It also taught me an important lesson. AIO books are not to be trusted. In trying to provide for something from every subject, AIOs end up accomplishing nothing. The only reason why I would recommend an AIO is either, because it has a question bank, or because it is popular.

The exam, which was to be conducted on the 17^th of May, got delayed till the end of the month. This happened because the container of the papers which were on its way to the Lucknow centre was tampered with. It was evident that the papers had been leaked. Anyway, I wasn’t very prepared by then. An extension was what I needed the most, and that is what I got. With the extension in hand, I started preparing with the Legal GK and the Current Affairs book.

By May 31^st, the actual D-Day, I was much relaxed. It was pre-decided that whatever be the result, good or bad, this wasn’t my only chance at the exam. If I did not make it, I would get a second attempt. And then, finally, at 3 pm, we received the exam. Save English, all sections of the paper were terrible. Somehow, I solved most of the paper, but I could not complete the paper in the allotted time limit.

Once out of the examination hall, I was quite optimistic. But the optimism crumbled soon. I kept on hearing that the new papers were quite easy, so the cut-offs too would be high. The only optimism that had remained was that I would make it to NLS, Bangalore in the second attempt. With CLAT concluded, I had to start preparing for the CPT examination, which was due by the 28^th June. Yet I just didn’t feel like going for CPT after CLAT.

The results that came out on the 15th of June confirmed my optimism, that I would make it to NLS in the second attempt. I only had two months of preparation behind my back, yet I still managed to score 151, and secure a rank of 488. I also got an offer from GNLU, Gandhinagar, which I had to reject. (GNLU’s not NLS, Bangalore, you see.) In the second attempt, I would have much more than what I had for the preparation this time. I would have experience which would guide me through. Besides, I wouldn’t be making the same mistakes again!

Now, with the results out, and the fact being clear that I wasn’t going anywhere for another year, I had to start preparing for the CPT examination. Leave out a day for dilly-dallying, and on the 17^th of June, I had exactly 12 days before the CPT exam. I was quite unsure if all these days would suffice. My father then made it clear to me that it would be all right even if I failed the exam, and also that it would be a serious lapse on my part if I decided to skip it altogether! And then, instead of burying my head inside of the textbooks, I bought question banks, and studied them. With little more than a week’s prep, I appeared for the exam, and passed it too! That done, I had some more vacations to take care of.

Since it was evident that I had another year before CLAT 2010, preparation for CLAT wouldn’t be the only thing I would be doing. The academic plan that was made earlier was scrapped, and in its place came a new plan. I would either pursue law from either of the Top 3, or I would go ahead with CA and CS. But pursuing law from either of the Top 3 was not for me to choose. I could only appear for CLAT, and hope that I made it there. So, I would have to appear for the CS Foundation level examination as a contingency measure. A prerequisite for appearing for any CS examination is that one has to write the test papers given at the end of each textbook, send the answers to ICSI, and receive a certificate stating that one has passed all the test papers. I prepared for those papers and wrote them, from the end of July to the end of August.

It is important I tell you why I was appearing for the CPT and CS examinations. CLAT may or may not be a difficult examination, and the same can be said about preparing for it. If you don’t have the right materials, it takes a lot of time. It’s like, you start off with a book which you think is very good, and later when you find out that it is totally irrelevant, you have to start over again.  The right materials eliminate this wastage of time. And when a lot of your time is saved, you do not have much to do, if you’re a dropper. Let’s take my example. I took a drop because going for just any degree course would be a sheer waste of time. Even if there were no issues with the attendance at college, I would still have to prepare and appear for the exams. Also, when it was decided that pursuing law from either of the Top 3 was a definite option, killing a year at college would make no sense at all. The college option was out. It was planned earlier that I would be doing CS and CA. So I stuck with the earlier plan, for the time being.

By the end of August, I was done with test papers. I planned to study for the basics (Math, English and Logic) till December. The intention was to get done with the basics till the end of December, so that I could cover the extensive GK section in the first four months of 2010. September 1 onwards, I started preparation for CLAT 2010, and I started the preparation for English, Math, and Logic. But then I also added Legal GK (History), and GK to the prep list. These were the books I used:
English – Word Power Made Easy, by Norman Lewis
Math – Magical Book on Quicker Maths by M. Tyra
Logic – Magical Book Series' Analytical Reasoning by MK Pandey
Legal GK – History I book of the NLS
GK – Manorama Yearbook 2009

I studied these till the end of October, because then I had to begin preparations for the CS Foundation examination. November onwards, I set out on an experiment. I tried speed-reading. I had already bought a speed-reading book, and had a notion that if got really good at speed-reading, I would finish the whole course, which were just four fat textbooks, in just a month, complete with revision. It turned out that I was mistaken. For more than half a month, I actively pursued the speed-reading exercises, but I wasn’t really getting anywhere with the textbooks. With that realization, I quit speed-reading, and began preparing for the Foundation. I had, at most, a month for the preparation.

The examinations commenced from December 30^th. Four days, four papers, three hours each. I wrote all I could. At the end of the exams, I wasn’t very sanguine about my performance. But the results painted a totally different picture. I had passed yet again, with bare minimum preparation.

I resumed the preparation for CLAT in January 2010, after I was done with the CS exams. I bought some more books during this time. I bought Manorama Yearbook 2010 and Pearson’s GK Manual 2010 (the big fat one). Since LexisNexis’ The Ultimate Guide to LL.B. Entrance Examination 2008-2009 wasn’t available at Nagpur, I got it ordered and shipped all the way from Mumbai. I bought this book because it was famous, and the CLAT 2009 paper had many questions that belonged to this book. I don’t really know if it was my copy, or the whole batch, but the book had a lot of serious mistakes/misprints, and it had made studying quite miserable. In the meanwhile, I also studied some logic, math and GK, though I can’t specifically recall studying for Legal GK.

In March, I bought an AIO called Universal's Guide to LL.B. Entrance Examination 2009-2010 after I discovered that there were some questions that had been borrowed from this book. As there was no latest edition, I had to buy the old one. I also bought the LexisNexis book’s second edition. This was much better than the one I was using earlier.

April was very eventful. I had been skipping Current Affairs from the very first day of my preparation. So I had to cover all of that using Manorama Yearbook, magazines, online records, and old newspapers. It’s a very tough job, which is why I would advise you to read the newspapers, and magazines as soon as you get your hands on them. As this was the only month before the exam, I started reading past year’s question papers (solved ones). This month also saw IMS’ mock tests. They were good, and helped a lot with devising a strategy for solving the paper. It was also during this month that I had to confirm a lot of facts. Basically, each textbook has factual errors / misprints. How many errors, depends from one book to another. One has to be very vigilant while studying. Near the end of the month, I bought another book on math, to get a better grip on the subject. Even that didn’t help. It just ended up being a burden.

Finally, on May 8^th, I left Nagpur for Raipur. I feel obliged to tell you how prepared I was. Frankly, I had not even read some of the books of all the books I had bought, let alone complete any book. I do think I had solved enough of practice examples for logical reasoning, but I did not revise anything. Actually, logic was the only subject where I had completed all the parts that could’ve appeared in the exam. I sucked at math till the very end. I did not even complete the GK Manual, upon which I was concentrating all the time. Yet, I was confident.

On D-Day, at H-Hour, we received the exam. I made my way through the questions just like I had planned. GK first, followed by Legal Aptitude, then English, Math, and Logical Reasoning, leaving all the difficult questions for later. And it was during these two hours that I realized how very lucky I was.

I can recall two instances of answers falling into my lap. It so happened one day, I was searching for Arthashastra on a website that provided a lot of e-books for free. I never found Arthashastra, but I downloaded Mudra Rakshasa. And that is when I found out that Vishakhadutta wrote Mudra Rakshasa. And, in November, I was working on some project delegated to me, regarding the Mumbai terror attacks. It was then that I learnt that Muridke was in Pakistan.

There were also some things that my head had retained. There was one question about Parvez Musharraf and the 2001 Agra Summit. I remembered seeing a picture of him and his wife with the Taj Mahal in the background on the front page of some newspaper, which I had seen way back in 2001.

The bottom-line is that I am not what everyone thinks I am. When they see me, the first thing that comes to people’s minds is that since this guy wears glasses, and looks geeky for the most part, he must study like hell! Well, I don’t think so. I am not going to lie to you about anything. I have always sailed through every exam without much effort. You may want to call it luck. But you know what? Luck may get you through once or twice, and you do run out of it. Providence is at work here. I never made any efforts for preparing for CLAT. I was guided only by impulses.

I can advise you to not make the same mistakes I made. Other than that, I can’t tell you anything that may be of any help to you. You might want to read my compilation of the books that I used and my comments about it, but other than that, you have to decide everything for yourself!

All the very best!

Resources for CLAT

CLAT 2010 was awesome, and so was the preparation. Took me two attempts to secure a seat in India's premier law school. And why did it take two attempts? Three reasons. First, time constraints, second, absence of a studying strategy, and third, lack of right material. This post addresses the issue of study material. I compiled a list of all the study material I had, their authors, publishers, and my comments about it. Hope this helps with the selection of right study material.

Resources for CLAT

Coaching for CLAT

Do you even need it? CLAT covers five fields: English (including Comprehension), General Knowledge/ Current Affairs, Elementary Mathematics (Numerical ability), Legal Aptitude/Legal Awareness, Logical Reasoning.

Out of these, GK does not require any kind of coaching. After all, all you have to do is read facts, and remember them. Legal aptitude is also the same thing, except that you have to get your concepts clear over it. Mugging up definitely doesn’t help here. There can be trick questions. And then, there are also principles-facts questions, where you’re provided with a legal principle and a certain situation, and you have to correctly apply the principle to the given facts. This is a bit difficult, yet the difficulty can be overcome by sufficient practice. If you’re good with math, you can ace it easily. This year, they asked the square roots of 400, 289, and asked us to identify prime numbers. But I would still advise that you be proficient with math that is taught up to 10^th grade. You can never trust these people. Ever.

That leaves us with English and Logical Reasoning. Now, English is where you have to rearrange phrases to make meaningful sentences, choose the correct synonym / antonym, spell the words correctly, use prepositions, articles, etc., use a bit of grammar, and lastly, read a passage and answer questions based on it. Foreign phrases don’t always figure, but it would be better if you’re prepared. Even then, its not difficult enough to require you to go to coaching classes. And then there’s Logical Reasoning. This requires a lot of practise, I would say. Indeed, there are puzzles and easier questions, but then, there are also questions that require your decision making ability, skills at deduction, and the like. This is the part that requires the practise. Even after going through several questions, you may still make mistakes. But its okay! If you take it up as a challenge, you’ll realize that even this does not require coaching at all.

Now, icing on the cake! Time management is of paramount importance in this examination. You have to solve 200 questions in only 2 hours. At most, you have 36 seconds for one question. If you’re contemplating on checking your answers as well, leave 6 seconds for that, and leave out another 6 seconds as a contingency measure. That leaves you with 24 seconds, per question. Since it’s an OMR sheet based exam, you have to darken the circles, which should take at most 10 seconds. Do you really think you can read, understand and choose the correct answer to the question in 14 seconds? Not me! If it weren’t for the mock tests, I would’ve never finished the paper in time. You really should go about with these mock tests conducted by the coaching agencies, because they conduct them in examination conditions. Gives you enough chance to practise time management and devise your own strategies for going about with the paper, and you get a basic idea of what the real exam would be. What’s more, you even get to know how prepared you are for the exam.

Conclusion: Coaching or no coaching, you should definitely go for mock tests!

The closed eyes of Thine, my Lord!

Mom's Rangoli

Svayambhoo, Padmanaabha, Hiranyagarbha, Satya, Rudra, and Aravindaaksha. These are only a few of the one thousand names of Lord Vishnu, the Supreme deity in the Hindu mythology. Aravindaaksha, which literally means the one who has eyes as beautiful as a lotus, describes the beauty of His eyes.

In South India, Tirupati is a pilgrimage city located in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. It is located at the foothills of Tirumala. It owes its existence to the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple situated on the Tirumala Hills. The Tirumala Venkateswara Temple, situated on one of these hills, houses Lord Venkateswara, one of the Avatars of Lord Vishnu. This temple is the richest and most visited place of worship in the world, so says Wikipedia, not me. However, if Lord Venkateswara is an avatar of Lord Vishnu, the one with eyes as beautiful as a lotus, why are His eyes always closed? Why can’t we mortals have a glimpse of his beautiful eyes?

In iconographic depictions, Lord Venkateswara's eyes are covered, because it is said, that his gaze is so intense, it would scorch the universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venkateswara#Symbolic_Description


I guess what Wikipedia says indeed is true. Not because Wikipedia says it, but because I have a theory of my own, based on some of the facts.

Lord Venkateswara, or Balaji, is always depicted with golden ornaments. This, actually, is an understatement. He is adorned with the gold ornaments as if it were his armour, as if he were preparing to go out for the biggest war. This analogy isn’t really politically correct, for He too advocates non-violence, but I find this a good way to explain it. This does make Him the God of the rich people! If not, keep reading. The pilgrims who come to worship Him, most of them are either filthy rich, just rich, or aspire to be rich. And to be rich, one must keep honesty at bay. You have to be Macbeth!

Macbeth, a play by Shakespeare, is a tragedy about a general in the army of King Duncan, Macbeth. The Three Witches in the play hail Macbeth as "Thane of Glamis", "Thane of Cawdor", and the third proclaims that he shall "be King hereafter". After the first two of the prophesies are fulfilled, Macbeth’s wife goads him to kill the King, so that the third prophesy be fulfilled. And then, when the two sons of the King flee for their lives, Macbeth is proclaimed as the King. He does get his just deserts later, but who gives a damn if you get to be the King!? And “that” is what most of the people who are filthy rich, just rich, or aspire to be rich, think.

I have an explanation what Macbeth has to do here. If you have a rich dad, and no siblings, and your dad loves you blindly, like Dhritrashtra loved Duryodhana, you have nothing to worry about. Your hands are clean. If, however, they are dirty, they are only a consequence of this inheritance, or the knowledge of the fact of inheritance. You don’t have to get your hands dirty to inherit the wealth.

But if you have a rich dad, and siblings, or a rich dad who is just too ethical, or any of the permutations and combinations, you sure as hell have to do a lot of dirty work. If you aspire to be rich, the same goes for you too. Honesty might be the best policy, but it never makes everyone rich. Dishonesty will make you rich, but you can’t be dishonest if you’re conscientious! If you have something called conscience, you have to kill it. If you don’t have any, skip the first step. ;)

Conscience is like a pair of eyes, and to be dishonest, you either have to close your eyes, or you should be blind. Either way, you don’t need your eyes, so you can keep ‘em covered. Now we get back to Balaji. You know why Balaji has his eyes covered? It is because He is waiting for us to open ours. Balaji is much too patient, for he has waited for a long time, and such patience is not humane, it is Divine. There is a limit, indeed there is one. And one day, if we fail to open our eyes, He will have to open his, to save his innocent children.

Have you opened yours?

How to download stuff using torrents

Namastey! Its been a long time since I made a post, and I desperately needed to make a post. :D This post is about downloading stuff using torrents. Many people know how to download stuff, with or without torrents, but what about the noobs? With this, I dedicate this post of mine to the noobs! ;)

This link, right here, will tell you how to download movies, and other stuff from the net. Well, its not exactly the link that will do it, you'll have to download a file called 'How to download a movie.rar'.

I wonder if noobs will ever find this post! :D