ThoughtStains

The STS class is popularly regarded as the most hated class. You’re taught stuff you already know or could’ve figured out on your own eventually. But no, you must be capable of answering these mind-numbing questions in a matter of seconds, else you may not get the job you’ve worked so hard for over four years in VIT. And of course to get through, you’d need nothing more than common sense and some basic maths. However, these people will convince you that what you truly need is the twisted formulae they came up with. But ehn you think about it, the people who likely didn’t get placed are trying to get us placed. Isn’t that ironic? The class isn’t a sprint, it’s a fifty minute long marathon. Endurance matters, unless your faculty is chill, in which case you’ve already crossed the finish line since the class started. Let’s face the reality, neither do the students nor do the faculties want to be there. But both sides have no choice. One would expect some peaceful resolve to this predicamen...

My sister’s voice quivered as she approached our mother late at night, realizing she had forgotten to mention the necessary school supplies for the next day and that’s when I realized how life was so much simpler back then. As adults, most of us yearn to go back to our childhood days, when everything felt a lot more easier and was much more relaxed. The innocence of the age and the lucid lenses through which we viewed the world made life far more enjoyable. The blurred pieces of the past that flash through your mind when listening to a certain kind of music or as the cold breeze hits your skin, brings a bittersweet pain along with it, almost like an ache in the chest which makes you feel the loss of a time when you were content with your own self. As children, the need to satisfy others or change oneself in order to fit into the boxes was far less. The ability to be insouciant as kids fades away over time as we begin to face the realities of life, forcing ourselves to change for the be...

Life isn’t always the idyllic picture that many people paint it to be. Sometimes, it’s because life is moving too fast and other times, it’s because we must navigate our way through struggle before we can recognize any silver lining. The truth is that life is a collection of experiences, some of which can fill us with happiness, while others may be bittersweet, leaving us feeling conflicted. Whether we are experiencing these moments for the first time or the hundredth, they can teach us about love, loss, and the beauty of life. A little while ago i had the chance to visit the school I studied at and meet the teachers that taught me. We talked about a lot and in that moment a barrage of memories came flooding back. Back then, I thought college was gonna be the most exciting thing ever and I looked forward to all the things that I was actually going to experience. Little did I know that entering college would have been one of those bittersweet experiences in my life. I’m sure 16 year ol...

I was always poor. With every new day, the uncertainty of whether I would have a meal for breakfast, lunch, or dinner weighed heavily upon me yet it never really held me back. Be it the trek I had to do everyday till the Mississippi river to get clean and potable water or be it on my birthday, when my mother would prepare a special “cake” for me, by stacking together two-cent biscuits and how I would patiently wait for the biscuits to become soggy in water before blowing out the candles and making a wish. Then, to share the joy with my family, I would divide the eight biscuit layers stacked in two rows into equal portions for everyone. Every year, the cake remained the same and so did my wish. All I wanted was for my dad to have a good job that he loved and my mother to have enough money to cook whatever she wanted. My father was a compassionate man, who toiled day and night to earn a few cents that he could as a fisherman . He was tall with a top hat that made him look even taller. My...

We were all under the impression that the dreaded day of AI taking over the workforce is well into the future, but then one-day OpenAI introduced Chat GPT, which has taken over industries across domains by storm. Now the question is, what about the future? Now that technology is here to compete with the human brain, will AI replace us in all menial tasks, leaving only the above-average human minds a livelihood to survive on? Or is this all just a doomsday scenario and we are safe from the AI storm? Recently, the BBC reported that 300 million jobs could be replaced by AI in the coming years. This is certainly worrying if it turns out to be true. Automation replacing workers across the globe has always been a cause of concern among industrialists and experts, across fields and around the globe. But again, as with every event, there are two sides to the story. The obvious one being AI taking over some of the jobs that humans currently hold. But we also have to consider the other side, t...

To define the current state of the planet with adjectives such as tough, challenging, and competitive would be quite imprecise, especially given how quickly global trends are changing every day. However, several ongoing shifts have had direct ramifications for the current state of affairs. All of the changes in our everyday lives are brought about or are greatly affected by the “business giants.” To fully grasp the future, we must first understand the ongoing changes in businesses throughout the world. In recent years, we have experienced significant challenges and undergone an unprecedented amount of change, which is expected to persist into the next few years without any indication of slowing down in the foreseeable future. The global pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, economic challenges, and rapid technological advancements have had a profound impact on businesses of all types and sizes. From street vendors in Delhi to the wealthiest corporations, no industry has been immune t...

“This school used to be a graveyard” “A woman buried under that kitchen still haunts that abandoned house” We can all relate to these spooky tales we heard as kids. For centuries, the remains of dead people and their vengeful spirts in living spaces have been the perfect premise for horror stories. But what if there were six million remains instead of just one person? And what if an entire city was built over it? The dead, perfectly preserved, peeking into generations of citizens…waiting. I’m kidding, but what I just described are the Catacombs of Paris. And despite sounding super creepy, there’s nothing supernatural about this ossuary. The millions of bones underground were put there to address a very simple issue: too many dead people. Until the late eighteenth century, due to the expansion of the city, the cemeteries that were once in the outskirts were smacked in the middle of the city. As the centuries passed, the bodies accumulated. There were so many that their long-buried remai...