The Long Walk

I was thinking about the "quintessential" question, the question about GOD and his existance.
what intreagues me here is that almost everyone believes that this supernatural power exists, and we pray to that existance, pray that we be happy, and that we see no pain and no dificulties.
yet there is pain and difficulty, some have it easy, and some have it very tough.
when some kid dies in the earthquake, it makes me wonder what wrong that child has done to deserve the punishment of death. when Lawers using the flawed laws, by our forefathers, destroy someone's life, have fun doing it, and thank god for alloving them to do it......makes me feel sick.
the argument of "Karma" and "Prarabdham" seem to keep popping up every time i look in this direction. yet i do not see any proof. people get what they strive for, and strive hard enough.

there is an interesting story, which i think will always remember, it goes like this...

Plato's student walks up to plato one day and tells him that he wants to be successful, and wanted to understand success.
This student was callous in his attitude, in other words, very lazy; and was not motivated.
Plato saw this in him, asked the student to follow him to the river. waded into the river with the student following him till they were waist deep.
PLato then asked the student to take a deep breath, go into the water and then hold his breath; the student did so.
just as the student was about to come out of water, Plato pushed him back, submerging him, not alloving him to come up to take a breath of air. The student started trashing around, a minute later he pulled the Student out of the water and asked him... " when you were in the water, what was the only thought in your mind", the student replied "all i could think of was to take a breath".
Plato then told him that, if you want success as badly as you wanted air, then success will be yours"

First Day at Work - feel Like a Rock Star

today after a long time i again felt like updating my blog, its my first day at work, in Cognizant Hyderabad. Really liked the place and the people. my team is awsome, surprisingly where ever i go "SNIST" alumni keep popping up, and surprisingly enough they all know me, my current team of BA for the health care vertical also has one of my juniors from "SNIST". imagine juniors, i m a senior now, makes me feel old in more than one way.

my induction in chennai was quite eventful, with most of my "buddies" up to their usual ways, old habbits die hard huh??? anyway learnt a lot about the company and about the culture of the company.

well, that's that for now...

i-LIFE

This is one of my favourete calvin and hobbes cartoon, its normally calvin that gets picked by hobbes, but in this one its the other way round, maybe bill waterson wanted to give calvin a chance to get the upper hand for once.

i cant help but feel nostalgic about college, its going to get over in the next 19 days, after which each one of us sails of in our own boats to live our life, the one year that i have spent here, the emotions you go through, the amount you mature, the things you see, the people you meet, and then there is the parties, movies, ups and downs, exams and assignments et al.

i actually want to write a book about my experiences in college, but i dont know when that will materialize, i am planning to write at least one page for every month that i spent in college ... for a start.

i got placed in hyderabad Cognizant
so should be heading back home for work, its going to be good fun hopefully....





i dont yet know what vertical i will be assigned to, let's wait and see.

Being Cyrus or Being Nischal

I just saw Being Cyrus, i Liked it, though my cousen Divya who i saw the movie with thought that it was crappy and that Maalamaal weekly would have been a better choice, yet, butthen, it was a good movie, predictable however well made,

its movies like this that that help you see the real world, the world we chose to ignore just because its not in front of us, or that we chose to only see what we like to see, i call it "selective memories", to make sure that you are happy, keep the happy thought of the shahrukh-rani poster in front of you and forget the beggar boy/girl's eyes that are calling out for your attention, where we fail to realize the void that they have in their hearts, it shows through their eyes.



life has been a roler coaster ride the last month or so, its that part of the ride where your going down the huge slope with tremondus speeds, when you suddenly get scared when you imagine the cart shooting off the tracks because its going too fast..... FEAR of the uncertain.... Does that ever Eat you up.

I am starting to sound ominous, so i'll close on a note of HOPE, which is that FAITH is the only thing that keeps us sane, it keeps us in touch with the good lord,

then again, is it FAITH or is it FEAR.............

"DEEP FAITH ELIMINATES FEAR"

HOPE

hope is the greatest gift that god has given us,
hope is what keeps us going, the hope of a better day, the hope of a happier moment, the hope of sorting things that have gone wrong.
HOPE... i think is the greatest gift to mankind.

someone once asked me,
what's the one thing... anything it can be that you would want, and franlkly i did not have an answer, i was looking at something material, but today if i was asked the same question i would say, "Peace of mind".... absoloutely would be the one thing that i would desire more than anything else, peace of mind for me and peace of mind for my family, and for my friends.

The Worlds a scary place

The world is a scary place,
for we don't know the future,
how i wish we all knew what was comming and were tiold that it was inavitable,
and then we would make sure that we live in that time that we have to the fullest.

The Worlds a scary place

The world is a scary place,
for we don't know the future,
how i wish we all knew what was comming and were tiold that it was inavitable,
and then we would make sure that we live in that tieme that we have to the fullest.

Please Please Please

the world goes around the sun, the sun's a spot in the milkey way, and the milkey way's a spot in the universe.
in contrast we are nothing, yet, our peoblems seem to bring our world to a halt in front of us.
selfish, Yes, but its still what one calls their world, its everything we stand for, and everything we hope to have.
i had attended a speech by swami Sukhbodhananda in hyderabad, where he spoke about each and every individual having a colored glass in front of them, through which they see the world.
Does the glass keep changing, or are there more and more layers added, emotional layers, layers that affect what way we think and also change our perspective of the world around us.
how simple it would have been if we could choose the glass through which we can see the world, and if the world changed just because the of the colored glass that's changed, in the name of humanity.

reflecting back on the "ET in the Classroom" Quiz, i guess we just got lucky and were able to answer the crucial questions to win the quiz. but its going to take lot's of hardwork here on to be able to actually keep the winning streak going.

Life's Playing a game, i don't know if its just mental or emotional toughness that counts, Mind games through and through. The way out as i see it, LOGIC.
the more the stress, the cooler your head has to become, that i think is the only way out.

A lot like "Don" Corleone in the movie " Godfather", cool as hell, and dangerously strategic, i actually love that charecter.

I Won the" ET in the Classroom for 2006" quiz

i won the ET in the classroom quiz, pretty exhilerating!
am on top of the world right now.
coming out on top of all the other B-shools in chennai does feel good, sadly this year ET does not have a national Round, i would have loved to compete against some of the other B-school Quizzing teams out there.
NO CASH, sad, but here's what i won,
an I-pod,
7 days&nights all paid trip to GOA,
SWATCH
and some coupons from Lifestyle, Mysicworld, etc etc.

what i'm happiest about is the branding this is going to give my College , Great Lakes Institute of Management.

And for the finalle - i met some of the top cognizant folks there, and have got some awsome visibility there, they were all happy to see me win, and also see that i was to joing cogni soon.
here's what's better, my Project Guide from Times of India, was in the audience, he was probably more exited about my win than i was at that time. "cherry on the pie"

the win is good, but i m going through some pretty stressful time here, hopefully it should all dissapear, and normality to life should be restored.

What's the Motive of Rang De Basanti

Rang De Basanti if probably the most dangerous movie i have ever seen,
the motive of the movie as i see it was to bring to the spotlight the crap the defence ministry is buying from the Russians and Eastern Europe just to fill some swiss bank account somewhere.

But think about it like this: politician does wrong -> someone gets killed->mistake not analyzed-> people get paranoid->kill politician->his people kill more people-> the government starts panicking-> the police are brought in-> the army is brought in-> money is spent-> media has a hay day->net net->root of the problem not solved->one more politician is doing the same mistake somewhere, and is innocent till brought to light...

ok i'm was speaking about what could happen, but the thought that solving a problem by killing someone is wrong, who ever it may be.

I appreciate Aamir Khan to have the courage to come out with a movie like this;

i really hope and pray that the audience interprets the movie the way it was intended to be, and not in a skewed up barbaric way.

Yeah, and today is probably the most jobless day in college, no classes scheduled, no assignments to be submitted. so i think i'l go and play some cricket today.

i had gone to the Brand Equity quiz in Chennai; yesterday, by Derek o'Brian, this time his charecter was a bad mouthing Gen.Rumdi, one of his dialogues to his female assistants and i quote it " dont turn your ass to the audience" apalling... hell yeah.

The quiz content was not all that great, the questions were way too eazy for a quiz of that level, and i won an audience prize, a t-shirt, with the Times Now LOGO. Next year i plan to win the quiz.

55 more days to go

Its now been ten and a half months at Great Lakes Institute of Management,
another 55 days to go,
i have decided to try and update my blog as much as possible today on.
which brings me to the primary question:
why blog?
This got me thinking, psychologists say that the best way to get sane is to speak/write or type your mind out. i believe that blogging in a large way is a portal to vent out thoughts, making a lot of people more and more normal everyday.
enough of my venting my thoughts out, people of planet earth, i am very pleased to tell you that as i mentioned i attempted moving to redhat linix a few days back, well, i have moved to linux but the flavor is UBUNTU. and now i m completely on linux, wifi, e-mail, and chat. i still have to get those damn Mp3's to work of course. but otherwise, i am converted. not that i hate windows or anything, but its just that working on linux is kind of exhilerating.

i m going to go to the Brand Equity quiz today, as a participant, hopeful of winning a audience prize.
that's about it from me.
beam me up scotty!!!!

Just a Pretty Face

there was a survey in MIT recently, which said that when there is a picture of a pretty women on your advertisement or sheet, people seem to recognise or respond to it more. here i have tried the exact same thing. its for your eyes , so you can see a few pretty faces, will make you feel better and nicer, and make the world a smaller place. " one image for my blog, one thought to make the world a better place"

This is ME

This is ME, this picture was taken during the placement season of college (Great Lakes Institute of Management Chennai) , between september 2005 to january 2006. i actually like this pic, i m not normally photogenic and don't like to look at myself on film or camera, however this is one of my nicer pictures which i would like the world to see. you see.

RedHat Fedora Core 2 Linux

I have now partially moved to Linux, its an acheivement of sorts for me since i have not had too much exposure to this universe.

Installed the Linux onto my IBM R51 ThinkPad, i am currently using both windowsXP and Linux FC2, dual booting it.

I really like the interface, and the way it works, the awsome power that the operating system provides, and what's most amazing is the online support that the LINUX community provides.

The only issue i have had is that i have not been able to configure my laptop to use the WiFi card. I have a inbulit Intel 2100 2B pro/Wireless card, though i have downloaded the drivers, i m finding it tough to install it, but i think i should be able to do it soon thanks to the awsome community out there.

baba and baby 

Datta's Adventure

How the hospitals of inda saved a good man’s life…

Here is the story of Datta, a man who has been through the fleecing sessions of the corporate hospitals of Chennai., he was locked in the ICCU … intensive cardiac care unit…for eating a pastry… stripped naked in public, given paper to wear, punctured with needles, put though an MRI, ECG, CT Scan, and every conceieveble type of medical test….now, the question to ask is..why did this happen,  just because his face was a little puffed up… my first thought was c’mon….. an avil can do what all this has done at one thousandth the rate.

It was another night in chennai, when datta, Samhita and Pooja went on a mega food date ,  to hot breads, not really the most romantical place… but has a lot of bread,

The mystery is still what did they eat… bread was definitelyon my mind when I heard where they went. But the fact is he ended  up in mallar hospitals, and was pushed into the ICCU..

When Varun, Girish, and Me went there the next day… and waltzed into the hospital.. we found adi flirting with the nurse at the reception, not realy pretty but maby it is the mallu link I think.. so we grabbed adi before he made any more cassanova moves at the nurse who was as perplexed as a caged giant panda in  a Chinese zoo.

We went up to the ICCU on the third floor…. In that rickety lift…  which I think was the most stressful part of being in the hospital, not knowing when the damn thing will just snap off the ropes and fall….

Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity, nurses waking up and down, attenders running helter scelter,  and the huge doors of the ICCU opend, and there emerged Datta,
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Like a tortured man from a natzi concentration camp… but still strong,
like a reed in the nile  river…surviving, and trying to smile through the pain….

But it was not over, they were not done with him yet, they still wanted to observe him, try and figure out where they could fleece more out of…

Then he was taken to a room, and was put on a bed, it then dawned on us there what to tell datta about the bill… we were all scared about him getting a heart attack when he found out the bill…. Which was a hefty sum considering he was there only for a face swelling….
And it was all there to see.. we decided to come up with a way to tell it to him…

Varun, came up with the psychological strategy of putting it across to him…. In this picture you can see varun deep in thought .










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Adi and Sam, contemplating on datta’s reaction to the bill…

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Girish waiting to see his reaction …..

But, it did not turn out all that bad, they did fleece him, but not as much as was thought. He did not get a heart attack, but a heart burn from the crappy hospital food. He is now in Bangalore, eating bisibelebath and tomato curd.. hoping to full facial recovery.

Natasha's story

Girls....what you they make you do..and what you'l do for them..just like that

Natasha was sick, i mean really sick, cold like she came skinny dipping from

alaska, and all the snow was comming in through her nose..sneezing and

snorting....
well being a nice guy and all, i offered to take her out to dinner, probably have her

take some hot chiken soup, so i'l sooth her soul and her battered lungs.. at least i

hoped it would.
well.. this is what happened, i took her out on my stupendously superb pulsar...and

as usual i was not carrying any cash in paper.. its all plastic money, imagine what i

could do with the Plastic card when i'm stuck in the sahara dessert, maby i can

scratch my back if i really needed to..anyway, i went to the freaking ATM, god

only knows why OBC has one ATM for all of chennai, and eventhough i thought i

was their only customer. i was surprised to see that. when i got there... there was

some uncle looking at the ATM like he was looking at some steven spielberg

move...i had to wait there for at least 10 mins while he was counting the single 100

rupee note that he had drawn from the ATM...anyway, after this she got this

wired idea of going some 1000 kms out of chennai to ECR to have a burger....a

burger...please how desperate can someone get for a burger, i was like the natzi in

a concentration camp who was to dig my own grave, well the idea of taking here

there was mine,

finally i did end up taking her there, only to find that i was not as hungry as my

ansistral neandrathals were when they went your to the malls to eat their dinosaurs

burgers, so i opted to have a green salad, sounded apealing since chennai has been

lashed by rains the last few weeks .... there's plenty of greenary on the trees...

unfortunately that's exactly what i was given in the salad... made sure she had her

chicken soup for the soul... i hoped she would get better with that, at least i came

out a realized soul.. like buddha after he meditated under the bhodi tree, realized

the truth about life.. my take here was not to loose your head for any girls girlish

charms....

Swim initiative by Great Lakes

When you see the eagle soar in the sky, you don’t wonder how it does that, but you do know that it has strong wings to take it to soaring heights.

Here at Great Lakes, under the aegis of uncle Bala the institute has started an initiative called the SWIM (Successful Women in Management) initiative, concurring to my analogy in Management as in Life, men and women have to be given their rightful space to grow and do as they should.

Seminars and talks are conducted by successful women in the industry such as Mallika Srinivasan for the women in this institute, to help them break the barriers and mindset that has come down through the echelons of management over the years. Women have the chance here to be the best that they can, and the SWIM initiative seeks to provide them that opportunity. I remember the quote by Mallika Srinivasan during her speech on our inaugural function, and it is my favorite one and an inspiring one; “Know the way, Go the way, Show the way”. The Institute let’s the women know the way, gives them the opportunity of going the way, and then eventually showing a way to the future generation of women in management.

Management thinking and practice has matured in India over the last 10 years with the advent of the ‘knowledge era” and thanks to the IT industry. Women have moved out of the generic job types that were prevalent to giving women a high post only in the government to today being able to lead companies as CEO’s. Great Lakes has taken the first step towards achieving the goal of helping the future of management soar, taking men to be one wing and the women to be the other. Creating equal opportunity for the eagle called Management to SOAR.

Group: 4th dimension . . .

Philosophy: been there, done that, what next!!!

It was the first time we were assigned groups, after we were assigned groups the first time, well technically at least, the day was 10^th of may, I remember having a watery yet hot pongal at ram’s shimla canteen on the Great Lakes “roof garden”,

I heard someone shout “the new groups lists are out…the new group lists are out”, there was a wired buzz around, like the results of CAT being announced. I quit eating rest of the liquidy stuff in my plate and rushed to the lobby (waiting room- but it sounds like a hospital, so I like lobby better) on the first floor.

As I got down to the lobby, the junta were “ooh and aah” ing about who their group mates were, while I was trying hard not to get crushed trying to read the names of my groupies…. I got a sms… me.. A sms ….. Here…who. Why…how, while trying to figure out these extremely complicated questions, I checked my phone only to see a message from some babe whose number I had taken just yesterday, it said “ wre n th sme grp” .

I was walking away from the fighting mob, trying to figure out who this person I had met, who was my groupie and yet whose face I could not remember… anyway I looked up and saw this tall, lanky brunette standing near the stairs and smiling at me, my boyish instincts got to me, wanting to strike a conversation with her before some other clown with the same instincts got there first, in the process almost knocking down Prof. Rakesh Singh, who was passing by.

i…..sorry sir.

You..have…to…be..more..careful…

i..was…in a hurry …..excuse me…. sir

heyyyyyyy, long time, what’s up, how u doing? –> cheesy dialogue

she gave me a steely smile, yes all I could see were the steely braces.. and said “wre n th sme grp”, must be speaking Chinese I thought.

to continue the small talk I said “that’s neat isi’nt it.. who else is part of the group?”

She said” Sathish- that tall boy who’s super brainy, latha-she was sitting next to me yesterday, adithya-don’t know who he is, but his name sounds cool, Girish- don’t know who, but everybody says he smart, Gopal- that boy brain from NASA and you” poetic I thought yet, I still did not know her name and did not want to embarrass myself asking her what it was, especially after she knew mine. Sheesh…..how do these CEO’s remember names, is there some trick in the book I was missing?

We called our group the 4^th dimension, no one except Satish knows why, he suggested the name, but it sounded cool so we kept it. All the super high aspirations I had with my group were washed away in the first few weeks, as I wipe my tears and say that the other groups did much better than we did…. As it happened all the pep talks Satish and Girish used to give us benefited the other groups more than it benefited us... sob..sniff..sniff

The first assignment as I remember had a deadline of a month….yet we all started work only the night before…. Devon street- a road where a bunch of Indians have set up shop in Chicago, my kid brother can do this I thought…..confidently went to Google and typed Devon Street, there were more hits there than the sand particles in the Sahara dessert, I was starting to blame myself for having such a heavy dinner at sangeethas , I was feeling a little drowsy.... mummy, this is going to be a loooooong night…..

Just as I was googling myself to sleep Gopal waltzed in, from his usual disappearing act, (we all felt he was up to something, later on only did we find out that he was trying to get the ITC’s annual turnover up, at least 10 times a day)

It was 2:00 AM Sathish was head banging on his laptop, trying a new yogasana called sit sleeping, somewhere in the twilight between consciousness and sleep, Girish was lying in a coma in the corner, latha and prarthana were starting to look like aliens from another planet, adi was looking at his computer….his face was lifeless. Suddenly Gopal walks in and asked me

“saale.. kuch kiya?” ,

it woke everyone up from the trance, but I was looking for a something sharp to stab in his stomach.

Finally our PPT man … had just chosen after hours of intense deliberation a very sexy loud background for our slides...this has always been 4^th dimensions strategy, visually bombard the lecturer with highly colorful backgrounds and images so that hopefully the data in the slides is ignored…it’s our core competency…

8:00 in the morning, the only company I had was the cleaner, everyone else had left, for a short nap I thought, I got out of there lest I fall asleep in the chair,

After a long night out, there is nothing more alluring than hitting the pillow, but we all had to be there for the presentation, along with submitting a 5 page report.

By the time I got back to class…..

The girls were still in utter shock and disbelief looking at what we had achieved during the night ……

5 guys X 12 hours = 60 man hours = 5 pages of report…

there seems to be something inherently wrong with the equation….

Latha who also was the group captain, was looking to us …shaking her head in disbelief…like one of those trauma patients whose lost the ability to speak after witnessing a shocking, gruesome occurrence…in this case our shoddy report.

Sathish was hyper …… simultaneously working on the ppt and shouting loudly

“Arre bachao...bachao koi meri madat karoo”...

Aditya I believe was in an irreversible coma somewhere… no sign of him.

After skipping our turn as many times as possible we gave the presentation, during my time of the presentation in front of the rowdy mob of Superior,

I shook like a reed in a desert storm, My legs wobbled like an untrained belly dancer, my voice was pitched like a soprano, my memory stabbed me like a deceitful friend...due to my sheer nervousness I collapsed, I had to be carried out in a stretcher (and that’s the last time, I did ever present), but hey we are the 4^th dimension.

Its strange how the human psyche works when there is numbing demands, true we were not on time, but the fact is we did present considering the overwhelming odds against us…and that’s the saga of our group ……We were like six brave sailors in a terrible storm left to tide the mighty dark ocean... …we nearly capsized, but who cares once the boat kisses the shore…and we stand victorious. All in all the work we had put in was never boo’d at, it was a damn freaking good job if I must say.

Interesting!!!!
a paradox, an irony, a compliment, or a cacaphony of gibberish slang...only time will tell.
smart, intelligent , potential to be the best, and am sure will become one.