"How many of you answered that smoking causes all of the diseases in the options?
Well, the truth is that smoking causes all of those diseases! If any of you think that smoking a cigarette, or doing hookah is "cool", remember that you are only children right now. When you're 25, which is when is the peak of your youth, you won't be cool anymore, and neither will you be young, because you'll be huffing and puffing after climbing up a single floor. Also if you haven't already seen it happen to anyone, your lips and teeth turn dark brown and look pretty disgusting, it'll destroy your pretty and handsome faces. That's not cool. It isn't going to be very cool if you get oral cancer and look like Mukesh. You'll have a huge swollen neck with ulcers in your mouth, with a bad breath and you'll be drooling all the time. How many of u love chocolates? Pizza? You won't be able to taste em anymore if u get oral cancer!
Hookah is no less harmful than a cigarette, in fact, there's proof that it's just as bad, if not worse. If you think you'll do it just for a few years until you grow up, and then you'll stop, so the effects of the tobacco won't hit you, you should know that the damage done to your body is permanent. There's nothing you can do to reverse it. Also, tobacco is addictive, that means that beyond a point, you can't let go of it even if you had planned to. Everyone thinks they can get out of their addictions, but it's hardly ever possible without professional help. So the choice is yours, whether you'd like to keep clean of these habits to begin with, or if you want to put yourself into a big mess which you can't come out of easily.
And here's a surprise for those of you who think it's alright to hang out with your so called "cool" friends who smoke as long as you avoid it yourself- you're doing something called passive smoking, and this is extremely harmful as well. This also means that you should be asking your parents or uncles or older brothers or sisters that smoke around you to stop- they aren't just harming themselves, but you too. They'll listen to you if they can see that you educate them, if you tell them whatever you've heard today and what u can see on the papers we'll be giving u. The sad part is that SO many people don't know what they're doing to their body until it's too late, until they've already developed diseases. We are studying to be doctors and everyday we see patients who have horrible diseases that could have been avoided if they didn't smoke. So educate those around you, tell them what'll happen if they go down the wrong way. Do your part in spreading awareness, and make sure you don't fall prey to such things yourself."
Every time I walked out of a class of Kendriya Vidyalaya after having said this today, it made me feel a little more worthy as a person. It feels good to be doing your part of social service, no matter how small or how invisible it feels. It felt nice last year too, and this year is icing on the cake. I can't comprehend the brains of those who think that research of this kind is a pain or a waste of time and energy. It annoys me a little bit when it's spoken about degradingly.
Not a second of the time that I've spent on this is "waste"; it's counts for much more personality development than all the exams I've written put together. How else would a socially awkward person like me (whose smiles and furious waving of "hi" at people goes unnoticed more often than not) be comfortable with speaking to a class of forty five sets of eyes? I can't say how proud of myself I was when I voluntarily took the mike to address six hundred children. Cheers to the all round education that I was never given a chance to in school or intermediate!
Maybe this is how you're supposed to do it; keep pushing yourself to do things that you believe yourself to suck at, and one fine day, someone will appreciate you for it, and you'll realise that you've acquired a new skill. Never respect your fears, and never respect them enough to give them any weightage; that's the only way to banish them.

Where have I gotten myself?

Where people speak sentences when I don't know the alphabet and then complain that they're so lagging behind. Where I have to fight the urge to nod along and let go of my pride, admit that I don't know, and try to find out, because that's the only way any progress is made? Where I'm never proud of myself for getting through an exam, just grateful to the God-sent soul that had the mercy to let me on to the next semester. Where every page and every part of every book is a huge mountain to conquer, yet looks so simple when done, and more than anything, so, so interesting. Where I'm judged when I've run out of my battery fluid that's made of motivation, yet where I judge those who have none. Where I find some solace in telling myself that I'm just not intelligent enough, but deep inside, I know that's no excuse. Where solace means nothing, only progress does. Where I go on desperately hopping about on one foot while cleaning the other, and then switch legs to repeat, only realise that I'm standing in muck. Where everyone seems so infinitely better than me, yet I know that if I had slipped into a different world, I'd feel most brilliant. Where all emotions that are summoned are vehement, but they're the one thing that'll throw me off track. Where there's no point of writing this post, where it's only a waste of time. Where nothing helps but to just keep swimming; and where I have no other choice but to do exactly that. Where I reassure myself that one day, it'll all be worth it.

Why's it so hard to put my pen down tonight?
Wonder what'd help, if at all anything just might.
Wonder what's the thing that asks for help
The one that's been urging me to yelp.
The familiar feeling of failure
The one I know is to stay here
The guilt from the expectations I never lived up to
Just waited for others to rise, and waited till I was pulled up too
Or is the one kept surreptitiously obscure
The one I've always been reminded of, the thing of which I need more?
Or is it, once again, the age old desire
That still threatens to burn me with it, as does fire
What material purpose would it even serve,
The love I know I don't deserve?

It's so weird that I've landed up here, where I have, with the thoughts and values that I have. I think about people who have had the same friends all through school, teenage and still see them every time they get a chance. And then I think of the people who used to be my friends in school and wonder what happened.
No, actually I don't. I know precisely what happened. They're so different from me now; they're like something I'd have related to seven years ago, maybe, but not now. Not at all now.
I don't know what it is that changed me the most; was it the new set of friends in school itself? Was it the combination of fake and true friends in inter? Is it the college that makes me so much more traditional? I think it's all of them, and more importantly than anything else, it's the extra year that went waste.
They're different; they're a part of the world that I could imagine that I belonged to before, but now, it's so, so far from my small world, where everyone speaks my mother tongue. It's far from my small circle of real friends that I never want to let go of, ones that I know are my constants, who will push me harder when they know I'm about to give up, and whose kids will call me pinni.
It's far from the songs I now enjoy, and the idea that I now have of fun. It's far from all my small innocent controversies that don't involve alcohol or drugs. It's far from the dreams I now have. It's far from where I lie, which is at the the point of balance, of extreme normalcy, where no extreme prevails and all I see is simplicity and humbleness.

People always say that one is the most beautiful when they're speaking passionately about something. I've seen people speak that way, about dance, football and music. I always wondered if I would ever love anything as much as to make my heart lurch towards it and my eyes sparkle when I spoke about it. Of course I'd figured that it would never happen. I'd already had twenty one years of no strong passion for anything. Twenty one is too old! How could I develop something new now?
But maybe, just maybe. If something was that big, so as to sweep me off my feet and make me fall in love like how men describe their feelings for a lady, or much better than even that. Maybe if something was so interesting so as to be new everyday, like diversity in monotony. Maybe if there was something intriguing enough to make me physically push ahead of others to get a chance; something that would make me jealous if others are better at it than me. Something that would have me out of bed in the morning in eager anticipation to be at it again. Maybe if something like that was uncovered after twenty one years of nothing, I still had a chance at being as beautiful as any of those who felt passionately about something.
And then maybe I've found it.
Medicine. I was never an amazing student, and MBBS makes me feel like it's okay not to be, because no one ever can be. You can't get on top of such a subject and call yourself the master; it's too magnificent. It conquers us all, and that's why it's beautiful.
It's my perfect love story. A kid's dream come true, a teenager's castles in the air slowly gaining ground.
It makes me hold my breath, when I meet someone new, hoping to hear the question, "what are you doing?" It makes me swell with hardly concealed pride when their eyes widen in awe. My grandfather's eyes still well up when he catches me in my apron. I don't need to be most pretty or the most popular person, because I know that nothing gives me more dignity than that white coat.
You can never grow tired of it. First you learn the boring rules, and then you spend the rest of your life figuring out mysteries while playing by those rules. It's a puzzle with a human, sometimes even a very personal touch.
Every patient is a new story, of the exact genre that I like to read or write. Not adventure, mystery or fantasy, but just a story of a person with his own quirks despite being one of the crowd. Yet again, it's the story of how even when he stands out, he is just one of us.
The hopelessness of our country makes me think how much I can do for it, and even after I do, it'll just be a drop of chlorine added in attempt to clean the entire ocean. But just the satisfaction of adding my own drop instead of a spoon of dirt like all the rest, I think that's enough. I've never imagined being able to love a person in all his aspects or thinking he might be worth all the effort despite his flaws, but I can see myself doing that for this subject.
I don't know if i feel "passion" when I think of it, because I've never been passionate about anything. But if there ever is anything I'm going to feel that way for, I hope it's for being a doctor.

Growing up, I often felt like a chameleon. I always changed with my surroundings, true to the saying "When in Rome, be a Roman." I thought that was a necessity, and I was proud of myself for trying to conceal my irregularities in a new place, rather than holding them up with pride and using them to shine out from the crowd. My pride lay in the fact that I wasn't a show-off, that I didn't stick to things that made me noticeable and popular. Or maybe this was the excuse I gave myself for desperately trying to fit in, being so uncomfortable when noticed too much. I was never strikingly different from the others, and I found peace in the privacy that that gave me.
This camouflage led to a mid-teenage crisis though; one that lasted quite a while. I had no idea of who I was. I wondered who I'd be if all the influencing factors were taken away from me. I was always so flexible, so open-minded. Ready to be anything to be one of the crowd. I had my nationality, religion, mother tongue and family, but all these things never served as big enough a barrier to stop me from being anything. A bit further into my life, as a young lady, I've got a few answers. I have my morals, my ideals that set me apart from the rest. There's a certain kind of annoying I'll never be, and a certain kind of strong I'll always be. Of late, when I'm placed in diversity, my heart lurches to a particular end of it; something that I haven't felt as strongly, ever before. Maybe I was nothing to begin with, but words and acts of inspiration made me who I am today. All my dreams and plans; the idea to dream and to plan-  they are based on things that have all hit me deeply, making me realise how much I feel for something. Of all the times I've changed, anything that was profound enough left an everlasting piece of me that would stay changed forever, unchanged for anything. And I'm going to live the rest of my life collecting the rest of such pieces, yet to fall in my path. And if not before, in the end, I'll know who I was always meant to be.

Train

This new lifestyle's really beginning to grow on me. There's a certain amount of satisfaction you derive from monotony; the ability to tick things off your list in time. It makes you feel like you're doing something useful, even if all you're doing are menial jobs. The exercise has been great, and more than anything at all, the gift of not having to drive is the best I could ever get.
Local trains give the feel of travelling, unlike cars, which only feel like a means of "transportation". Sitting next to a train window, looking out at the trees and rocks makes you think about life. Of course, I really don't need a trigger to make me do that (lol). Somehow, it's calming; the wind in your hair, knowing there's no need to stress over other vehicles on the road, and looking at the scenery behind your city. One would be surprised to see it; in fact there are some bushes that lie just behind a horribly familiar main road, so high and deceiving that if you were drugged and left there, you would imagine you were somewhere near a forest on the outskirts of the city. It's surprising to find such a calm piece of land and such underdeveloped huts right behind a wall separating it from one of the most well known streets around. It's almost like a break; a step towards a relaxing holiday. But of course, that's only half an hour of my day. The best half an hour, I'd say.