EMSP.

Congratulations!! You have been academically accepted for the European Master of Science in Photonics. The day I received this email was the most happiest day of my life.From the day , I received my admit ,I started counting days to go to Belgium . To be true on my side, I did not have any information or a contact in EMSP so that I could use the opinion of someone with their experience in this master program. I just googled about the Master courses in Photonics in Europe , and EMSP came across. and went across the information given on their website and reviews online - and was excited to apply ( This Master Program is gonna be excited ) and this is exactly true , I am not bragging about it.

I took a flight from Bangalore to Abu Dhabi and from Abu Dhabi to Brussels ( The capital city of Belgium). I did had a layover in Bangalore too, as I come from a mediocre city , Raipur in India which does not has a international airport. While I was sitting in Bangalore airport alone, A weird feeling cropped up inside me on the day when I was sitting in airport , thinking how would everything go , how would be the new culture , a new country, a new way of living far away from home 8000 kilometers away across the ocean. Leaving your parents , home country is definitely difficult because due tot his huge distance you can't visit them often. But, deep inside I had a feeling too, I was going into one of the best school of Photonics in Europe and so everything would be nice, but it turned out to be amazing. The initial days I felt a little home sick, but thanks to Nikhil ( he is my classmate ) , he made me feel Ghent so homely . I was also lucky enough to get a accommodation from my home country , so this made my life here much easier. Also, I would like to mention that finding accommodation in Ghent is so difficult , so make sure the first thing after you get a admit, search for rooms.

I always had a fear of living in European city because of the language barrier. I thought I would feel always left out among the locals, because they will talk and laugh, and have fun in a language you would never understand. But, Ghent is a truely a international city and . If you love parties and socializing , join the Erasmus Group. They are a group if exchange students from across the European Universities. Also, in EMSP there is a good diversity and we are like a family, we do help each other.

I love this medieval ancient, yet modern city of Ghent. Ghent is one the charming"darlings" of Belgium. I have been to Leuven, Brussels , Dinant , Genk , Ardennes, yet I love this city the most . It's so different than what I saw in internet. Internet can't do justice to any place and this is quite true. The Gothic Archietcture of Cathedral, the eternal silence of sunsets across the river , and the colorful bubbles at city center are some of the things I can always keep in falling with love. Graslei and Korenlei are one of my favourite streets. These streets are so magical during the day as well as in night. And also, not to forget the amazing fries and waffles . If your first love is chocolate, trust me you will love Belgium. Want to fancy student life, just go to Overpoortstraat ,grab a beer and you will find the craziest of students there. I had a impression that no one here would speak english, because their native language is Dutch, but this conception turned out to be wrong. Almost everyone , old and young can speak English. So , whenever you get lost , don't worry. Belgians are among the most helping and friendly people. With Belgium lying at the center of Europe, it's so easy to fulfil your dream of travelling to all the European countries. Paris is just 2 hours away from Brussels , and Amsterdam too.

Ghent University is one of the best highly ranked university in the world and our professors are so friendly, nice and their knowledge incredibly amazing. The academic staff are helpful, caring and make your arrival in Belgium so smooth. When in problem, they are always there. There was a introductory session by Ghent University common for all students and also some fun activities like Kayaking, Going to Belfry tower , to have a magnificent aerial view of Gent and many others!!( Make sure to check your emails before your arrival , where you register and just a tip, Kayaking is filled up very soon ) . There was a kick-off event by Photonics Group . Every little detailed information was given which made me comfortable enough to plan out my studies for 2 years ( This is really not a piece of cakewalk ).The professors are so kind and prompt to every question you have. So the transition from culture in my home country to a European culture was so smooth. Now I feel so confident about the perfect career choice I made. In the kick-off event , the information was so crystal clear that I could figure out my way through these 2 years ( I have a sound plan of going for international internship to CEA-LETI, france , I will share my experience , if Corona Virus outbreak doesn't fuck my plan ). Also, since our program and our professors both at Ugent and VUB have so many industrial contacts , that getting a job won't be like walking through thorns in a garden of roses.

Coming from Engineering background, the first semester courses are very challenging and difficult . I didn't even have a space to breathe in .The first semester courses are fundamental physics and some mathematics ( I have a math phobia, but thanks to professor Peter, he made those lectures amazingly well planned and a cakewalk for me to study). The courses are difficult but not impossible. Everyone does it , because the professors do explain the concepts very well. They are brilliant, experts and genius , I would say . Although, I would mention, that balancing your time is very important. Well, I gave six exams in 20 days , so that was a bit more challenging.

The second semester is rather easy and less dense completely manageable, but you have gotta do more lab reports. The abstract concepts ( For me all the Fourier Transforms, Periodic Structures was abstract and imaginary) , but when I actually did them in labs , I realise how fascinating they are. I couldn't say much about the second semester now, because it went all online because of this corona virus outbreak. Also, after one semester in Belgium, you get used to culture , and the lifestyle which makes life so easy.

To get a truely international experience , this master program offers many exchange oppertunities to almost all the Best Universities in Europe like ITMO, EPFL, DTU, therefore, you also have a chance to experience another European Culture. All the professors have a extensive industrial network, so finding a international internship is not so difficult. I too got one in my first semester !!. If I could go for my internship ( Thanks to this corona outbreak making me confuse about doing my internship ) , I will surely share my experience.

If you have any question ( Don't worry , you can also ask silly questions to me ) get in touch using my contact.Always Happy to Help .

Being beautiful is good , but being good is beautiful

What exactly do you think being good means? I’m sure I can guess a few standard responses. Helping others, contributing to the society, maintaining cleanliness, not being rude, being compassionate etc etc. Well, I don’t really consider them as being attributes of a good person. These are logical things that are expected of any human being. If any of these qualities aren’t being fulfilled by you or anyone, you really urgently have to re-evaluate your approach to life.

I’m basically talking about being good within yourself. Your first relationship is with yourself. Don’t you think you need to take heed of your own self before stepping out to take heed of anyone else? No I don’t mean positivity or patience. They’re essential attributes as well for a human being to exist in this world. I intend to point to that good, which lies within you by heritage, by lineage. The good that you’re born with is the magnitude of good your life can become. The only reason we are not able to make most of us, or even identify ourselves is because we are held by shackles of the modern version of pre – specified streams of paths in life. In all these years of people trying to dictate us to make our own path, they ended up creating a completely new set of paths, simply replacing the options in the same system. But the problem with these new set of options is that they lack the holistic approach to complete knowledge. The point of taking a path is to reach a destination, not a stage in the middle of a maze. The “modern” school of thought has left everyone in a situation in which we make our way through the maze only to reach a dead end where we get a stage to project our thoughts, giving us an illusion of achievement. What we don’t realize is that we left our quest to make the way out of the maze.

So what is being “good” got to do with all this? Being good is doing yourself a service of giving a direction to your life and a purpose to your actions. Being good is to identify where you come from, using your complete potential, harness the intellect of your lineage and build up on it. Being good is to do justice to your own capabilities and harnessing the power in your brilliance and perception.

When you start working on your own goodness, you considerably improve your knowledge, perception and holistic development. This automatically projects outside of you in the way you handle people, situations, career or life in general. Communication becomes cerebral and wholesome which would make the world a much more orderly place than it is right now.

Isn’t it better to make your life beautiful by being good than make it good by being beautiful?

I lost it along the way .

I’m here. I’m here. You can’t avoid me! You can’t run away from me!

Whenever a situation of suffering comes up, we aren’t able to bear it. C’mon face it. Even if we put on your adult mind and say let’s look for a solution, at the first instant the child inside you wants to come out crying and say please help me. But then, we suppress the cry and go on to think like an adult.

We may be hurt by something or someone. But what do we do about it at that moment? We constantly entertain ourselves, watch movies, listen to music, socialize or resort to alcohol. We totally block the child within ourselves which wants love and care at that moment, because we do not want to experience that suffering.

We all go through painful times in life. When we come across a similar situation, we want to forget about it and stuff the memory deep down the unconscious mind. We do not ever want to face the child that we are shoving further down inside us by this.

The wounded child is there, always, and we don’t want to feel it. That child is further being wounded and needs our attention, but we turn away from it, afraid we may scrape old wounds and be hurt all over again. Just because we ignore it, doesn’t mean that child isn’t there. Running away this way doesn’t help us get past the suffering. It only prolongs the suffering.

To tackle these situations, we must make use of the awakening that is etched into us genetically. The first thing to do is to express. We see it evidently in children, that at any point, they express themselves very well. They do not hide emotions, they come out and cry if they want to, laugh if they want to, smile if they want to, fear if they want to. All these emotions come out if and when they want to. They do not hesitate from expression.

As adults, we are enforced to a society having fixed set of accepted emotions and situations. A situation is faced with two reactions from the society that surrounds you. It applies to all kinds of situations. If something delightful happens in your life, one section is happy for you, while the other is left grudging. If something uncalled for happens, while one section of your society will feel bad for you, being your well – wishers, the other section of people are only contented about it. Either ways, one section is happy and the other isn’t.

When we know this is going to be the situation anyway, then why don’t we express ourselves and make our views evident about our own life?

The goal must be to make ourselves socially compliant, while maintaining personal happiness. A simple way is to do it as well as maintain it, has been ingrained into us since we were born.

We may have lost it along the way.

The trick is to use the adult mind to think while letting the child inside you, express emotions. Once we get the hold of it, we will be able to control our mind along with letting any kind of feelings, whether resentment and distress, or, contentment and comfort, flow out and not get clogged inside us.

When faced with a situation of suffering, cry your heart out. That is human instinct and it is NOT AT ALL inapt to cry. Once the child in you has come out with the emotion, you know what to tackle in life, whether it is sorrow or regret.

When faced with a painful memory once again, do not run away from it. All painful memories have a good time before them. Live for them and not for remorse.

When you are hurt physically, it is only natural for us to apply some kind of medicine and make it feel better. We do not cover it with clothes and pretend it never happened. Because it hurts to look back it, but then we eventually have to, since we need to be well for our life to continue. Similarly, getting hurt emotionally doesn’t mean resort to other things to take our attention away from it, because eventually you need to go back to tend to it in order for you to life a normal life. So let the child within you come out and talk. Let it talk so that it knows why it isn’t getting the love and care it wants at that moment.

Nurse that child, don’t push it down because it only yearns for love. Listen to your inner child; it knows what’s wrong. This Children’s day, learn to help the child within you, and see many problems of your life getting solved like child’s play!

Lost is definitely a good place to be in.

A girl… lost in her dreams… wild, beautiful, enigmatic dreams,

With her wide open eyes.

Everything blurred in front of her,

All she is able to see is her dream!

“Slappppppp!!!!!!”

‘What are you into Enigma!? Concentrate on the book that’s in front of you!

This girl can think of everything else than what is needed to think!’ -Mom

‘Mom I am studying…. And trying to go through….’ -Enigma

‘What do you mean by go through?’ -Mom

‘I studied the law of gravitation and was imagining that everything has an antonym.

What if we find an element that repels gravitation?

Just like magnets which attracts and reflects.

We won’t need extra efforts to stay away from gravitation to fly.

What ifff……….’ -Enigma

“Tappp on head!”

‘End these useless imaginations,

Read that is written,

Learn that is written,

Thorough that is written!’ -Mom

‘Mom can’t the written be wrong?’ -Enigma

‘I don’t know dear… We are too poor to think of all this. I just know if you learn that is written, you will get good marks and you will get a good job!’ -Mom

‘But thinking, imagining doesn’t require money! So what’s about poverty? Whatever I am studying is not whole… it is just up to the level we (mankind) have reached… We need to grow from here. Studying can help us understand about other’s research but we need to believe in ourselves and take it forward…’ -Enigma

‘Enigma I don’t get what you are saying but I just know you need to study! If you want to dream you can join the homeless club of madness down the street!’ -Mom

‘Mom… What good will I be, being normal like everyone else? Why not do exceptional and grace the whole world?’ -Enigma

‘Yeah-Yeah… funny! Now you better be studying else you’ll not get your snacks today!’ -Mom

‘Ok Mom!’ -Enigma

It’s the reflection of our society!

Don’t we encapsulate our mind and force over selves to follow the league set by society norms?

Aren’t we stopped from doing what we love, for doing what they think is good in their terms?

Doesn’t our dreams shatter or vanish with high demand of society for our time?

Dreaming is what makes us believe in things that does not exist and makes possibility of them to exist down the line.

Give us hope, Give us happiness and Give us enthusiasm.

Give your dream wings,

Let them fly high,

Much higher than the set parameters.

Nurture them, believe in them,

Don’t be too realistic,

Being realistic just save you from getting hurt,

But dreaming gives you a whole new world!

If you dream…

You believe in possibilities,

You believe in probabilities,

You believe in magic and yeah you may make them happen!

There is always a possibility if you don’t be too stubbornly realistic.

If you cannot dream it! You cannot do it!

Imagine if no one dreamt of flying then no one could have built an airplane.

Nowadays education limit our boundaries and sets us in a box to believe in proven rules and regulations.

But rules are made to break!

Fly out the chamber, Look beyond the parameters.

You can see the world better from high above!

Believe me! It’s way clearer from the top.

Dream is the 1st step…

Implementation is the journey

Created history is a legacy!

Ask your legacy followers to dream beyond your legacy and implement it to create their own.

Whatever we study is a legacy but we need enhancements and

We can only do it if we

D ream! I magine! & I mplement!

Upside Life- Fight through the worst of your times

It's through Challenges I have been living. The struggles have been real, but I never had the thought of give up until today.

"When I was born, I wasn't even breathing , I was put on life support. Soon, I got into coma and my life took a upside turn.
The doctors told my parents that I wouldn't survive , but my parents wanted to fight for me , for them  I was their first child. I fought and braved all the storms to come back home.
At the age of 3 , I did not have the ability to listen , or to speak. Everyone , used to say she will never speak , put her in a special school. She is not a normal girl, unfortunately I had been listening it since a quite few years  . Among all this , my dad had enough courage to get me a transplant , my ears were not capable enough to listen. The surgery became complicated, till they found internal bleeding in my brain. Doctors gave me a 96 percent death rate , they said go home, but my dad looked at my glass being 4 percent full and not 96 percent empty.

The doctors tried everything but nothing worked- once a doctor said "Just pray that she passes away soon". He even said there is no chance of survival, take your girl home and allow her to live with family for next few months, because there is nothing that we can do. But we do have choices in life , and the choices we make can redefine and re-mould our future. My dad asked one question, I don't know what are the chances of my daughter dying is , I just want to know what are chances my daughter surviving is? They even said if she would be a miracle baby , she would survive. I truly believe that outside of love , HOPE is the most powerful word in English dictionary. I survived , fortunately. I am among the lucky ones, but I am not the lucky ones because that I am still alive , I am the lucky ones becuase I wasn't my dad. My dad had it tough , how can he see his daughter dying in front of him. Doctors said to my dad, she will never go to school, she would never play games, she would be a housebound baby, and even if she reaches her teenage years , it would be a miracle.

But I made it & that day , my dad got a second life. However, life wasn't easy for me - my parents would be pitied when they would walk with m e on street , "Aapki beti toh kabhi bolegi hi nhi". I started going to school, but I had no friends, because I couldn't speak that well. I still listen , that my Hindi isn't that god, but who knows, I have came out of mouth of death two times.

My dad worked on my speaking skills, taught me how to walk, play games and make me grew like a normal,healthy baby .There were a lot of hiccups along the way. I had my first glandular fever when I was 12,  and people kept on telling me that I wouldn't do it. So maybe , I made sure I could really do it. I had my first bacterial meningitis when I was 15 , but I was lucky enough to get a whooping 9.6/10 in my standard 10th along with the best young artist at state level competition . I wasn't that special child, but I was something extraordinary. But you know Life is like a roller coaster , you can get to pinnacle point in your life and it could be taken away in a heart beat. I survived brain fever when I was 17 , and still managed to get 93% in my 12th exams. I couldn't manage to make to most of prestigious engineering colleges , and everyone start blaming me for my brain fever., I was a depressed girl, I thought life wasn't fair and I would pray every night that I wouldn't wake up in morning. I just wanted God to take me. But for every time I was knocked, I always remember what my dad told me, it doesn't matter how many times you get knocked down, how many times you get up truely determines the quality of life.

Until, then I have been fighting all through which came to my path till today when the thought of death arrived today.  But not to forget ,  my dad being my constant motivation. He has been always saying , I am proud of you , you braved enough storms to see where you stand , you are not my ordinary girl, you are one extra-ordinary girl.

Shoot for the moon, even you fall you will land among the stars.

Sorry I am booked.

Sorry I am booked.

They say intoxication is dangerous , because of the addiction. Experience the high one , lose yourself to euphoria and you will come back for more. You will return again and again and keep on coming back because it is never enough.How could it be ? How could you ever get enough of that reality , an escape from reality? How could you get enough of freedom, power and magic?

Eden. Inferno. Salvation.Damnation. All rolled inside me.

Now , before you get any ideas , I do not support alcoholism and drug abuse. This is intoxication of different kind.

This is an undeniable allure; one for which I am powerless against. The scent of paper and ink and the crackle of pages turned for first time. The softness of leather bound spines, and the richness of glossy jackets give me the key to library and leave me in peace. Let me make new friends and fall in love too. Let me reacquaint with my old long lost friends and old lovers. Let me mourn the departed friends and lost loves. But most of all, let me discover the hidden me.

Books have been an escape from myself, as well as mirrors into my soul. I find peace in their pages and acceptance within their words, movies don't attract me at all. My imagination has unfurled within them , and wonders come to my life by the magic of words. I have seen, heard, smelt tasted, sensed and touched ; all through their intricate spell woven by them.

I am a girl. I am a boy. I am a man. I am a woman. I am alive and I have been dead too. I have possed bodies and taken over senses. I have traveled the world, hopped dimensions  and walked through time. I have world's at my fingertips and dimensions within my arm's reach. I have lived through aeons and seen myths unfold. I am a dreamer, a thinker, a alchemist , a wizard, a witch ,a spy , an elf, a scientist , a detective , a GOD , a titan, a sorcerer and so much more.

I have lived so many lifetimes within mine own that they have melded together to create one harmonious melody that thrums my veins . I have seen through the eyes of those I read and the spoken words fallen from their lips. I have lived with them and learned with them. I have imbibed their  experience and learned their knowledge . For all those who say books are fictional couldn't be more wrong. The words may be fictional, the magic may not exist , the apocalypse may not be upon us , but the characters are real. They are as human as any of us and their thoughts and ideas are reflection of them.

With all this said , whenever I have blown someone off for a book, saying that I was busy or I had another appointment , it was no lie. I told you truth , you just couldn't perceive it. After all, it can't be more obvious than " I am Book-ed".

As for all those who belong to the section of e-books and electronic readers , "I am sorry". "I am sorry that you will never know the sensuous pleasure of reading a true book, and how it assails four out of five senses.

"Books have soul". "Pieces of metals do not".

Lost Within Myself

What does it feel like to be lost, battling demons within your own head? What does it feel like to no longer know yourself, and hate who you have become? How do you push yourself on? If you are someone going through it, I hope you find a voice in my words. If you know someone going through it, I hope my words help you see through their eyes.

This is not a journal , not a book. This might not even be a story. 

This is merely an expression.
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And this may not make the least bit of sense , bit it doesn't have to. 
I am not ill . I may not be completely healthy either , but that does not mean I am unfit to do anything.Although there are many things that are beyond my capability ( Mathematics in Photonics is one such thing!) . I know , I am not at that full efficiency ( I do make silly calculation mistakes , and I get lost often , my directions aren't that good either!) , but I don't have any delusions for that. 

But then who am I ? What am I ? How am I? 
I do not know how to explain any of it. I don't understand it myself and yet I must. 
It's a fine conundrum indeed !

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I don't know from where to begin, so I'll write whatever comes to my mind, and when it comes on my mind. 
People keep on assuming that I am sad, I'm not. I'm not just happy.There were many things I wanted to do ( learn canvas , learn publishing , learn abacus, win spell bee competition ) , but what I am doing ? Learning silly mathematics, which doesn't even makes sense in life. People tell to make life simple, but maths start with complex analysis , why do complex things when things can be simple enough. 

I used to think that only pink and red , wrong or right , Sad or Happy , True or False. Then I grew up and I was introduces to something whose acquaintance I made for a while , but became intimately acquainted with only now. 

The fine line of gray which runs between everything.

Computers, electrical circuits , digital circuits and mathematics have very strict rules. There is no vagueness and no ambiguity. I am going to get slightly technical now , but I'll try to explain it in simpler terms. A boolean variable is one which assumes only two values- TRUE or FALSE. Each of these values is a negation of the other. ( Negation is denoted using ! and it denotes "not equal to"). 
TRUE!=FALSE
!TRUE=FALSE
!FALSE=TRUE

Either here or there , I wish this could be applied in reality too! What computers, Mathematics and even people fail to understand is that SAD!=NOT SAD and SAD!=HAPPY . does not imply that NOT SAD=HAPPY
Conversely, "!HAPPY!=!(NOT SAD) which implies HAPPY!=SAD

I am not happy , I am not sad either. 
I'll agree that I have more negative emotions than positive ones. That is not the problem. The problem is general case-when I don't have any emotions and I feel nothing. For a lack of better word, I am numb. 

The world seemed dulled since a quite few months. Colours seems bleached. Time moves differently . Sometimes, it races by and sometimes it competes with a snail , and snail always wins. I have to attend all those silly Lectures in Photonics , where time crawls even slower than snails. Those lectures are like seeing through a tracing paper and listening through a cotton wool. Everything is there, but it's not . It's just a myth. I was living a dream few days back in home, but here I am living a nightmare. Appetite suddenly drops. Sleep alternates between being a closest companion during the day and an elusive enemy during the night. And head always threatens to implode. Constant, dull pain at center of forehead , utter exhaustion throughout the body . Relaxation feels like a myth , or sleep maybe. 

Life becomes one big contradiction. You want something at one time, at another time, it feels useless. You crave something, and then you detest it. You want to get better, but then people ask you , what if it won't get better. At the end, it's all you. It's all in your head.Therefore, the only one who can make you better is you. 

How do you fix something , when you don't even know where the damage is? What do you do , when you no longer know who you are? 

It sounds ridiculous , but it's the truth. It feels like you have been separated into two - "am" and "was" . I don't even know which is real. Who I was few years back seems a dream now. What I have becomes today is a complete mess. Who, then are you? You are an amalgamation of all your selves. There is fact and then there is fiction. Union and Intersection or maybe even conflict. But certainly there is contradiction. In the midst of all this, is you. 

Or is that me.?