A Spark at the End of the Tunnel

I will not call this as a light at the end of the tunnel, I would rather call this a spark considering the complexities surrounding me these days. I had a discussion with the owner of a flat in the same society where I am presently living and it seems that we are almost through the deal and I will end up shifting from the 9th floor to the 4th floor in the same society. This possibility has got a great welcome as this basically allows me to let go of atleast one big tension that I have been in. Although I will have to pay a big amount as rent to keep things cool but then that is a price that we room mates have decided is worth paying for.

When I read my last post it somehow made me feel that I have not done full justice to my dearest friend just by writing that he is moving to Chennai. I appologize mate and I am sure he will understand. So here is the complete story, my dearest friend Yashpal has decided to move on in his life and is joining CSC Chennai as a Senior Software Engineer. I am very happy for him and wish him all the success in his future ventures. But the fact that he will move away from us also instills the fear of loosing him. I did not intend to take any credit away from him. I hope this is the inset of the good things, still my fingers crossed.

Head over Heels

This has been my situation for the last 2 weeks, I have been so occupied with things that I have made a mess out of my life. I have not witnessed sunset for long now, it has been a terrible 10 days of my life. As I sit down now to write this post, I am feeling broken and drenched. I have been exhausted and I badly need a good long break to come back to my normal self but then things don't go the way you wish them to.

To add assault to my injuries, my landlord gave me a visit last Friday evening and asked me to vacate the house within a period of 40 days or so. This made my life more complicated and my mind started another process and that has taken the shape of daemon thread (running in the background) and troubling me continuously. If this was not enough I also got the news that one of my closet friend is moving to Chennai in about a months time. I am not able to take all this and it has shaken my confidence and moral and I do not know what to do.

I have left it all to the almighty with the perception that he will fix all the problems. I also am a firm believer of that fact that whatever happens happens for good. I wish this was a bad dream and would vanish as soon as I wake up but I am afraid that is not how life treats you. To motivate myself I would like to conclude with a little story that my mother told me several times and I have told the same to one of my best friend when she was very depressed. The story is called FOOT PRINTS IN THE SAND and it really helps.

Cricket and Mahabharata

You must be wondering what could be the connection between the Mahabharata and Cricket. But trust me they are very similar to each other and only have a slight difference. You will be convinced by the time you read through this post. There was a time when test cricket was played timelessly and the match would continue till it got over. It was in March 1934 when a match started on the 3rd of March and ended on the 14th of March and it only ended because the English cricketers had to go from Durban to Capetown which was a 2 hours train journey to catch a ship that left on the 17th and there were no ships in a long time. So the match was ended in between and one of the English batsman said, you know what another half an hour and we would have won.

But the incident mentioned above made India fall in love with cricket because we had about the same pace of life. The Mahabharata was like this wasn't it? fought by the day and then it was sunset so every one went home. Then they made few more strategies, came back to fight the next day and went back again. The only difference between Mahabharata and cricket was that in cricket every one was alive to come back and fight the next day whereas this does not hold true for Mahabharata.

Things have changed with time and every thing has gained pace, everyone is running, people have almost forgotten to walk and so the face of cricket has also changed. The advent and popularity of the T20 cricket.

Those Three Hours..

It is about 3 in the morning and I am just back after meeting a very dear friend of mine. I had planned to meet this person from the time he had shifted to Gurgaon but somehow I could find the time to co-ordinate with him and meet him. Just yesterday I got a call from him and he asked me if we can meet tomorrow. I wanted to meet him but the problem is he has office hours from 5 in the evening to 2 in the morning and that makes it difficult for us to meet. But today as I was about to leave my office at around 11 pm, I gave him a call to tell him that I am now moving, to my surprise he was also free and we decided to meet up.

I went to his office in Cyber City Gurgaon and we met, he has not changed a bit and we had a great time. I then also dropped him to his home and then came back home. I am so happy to have met him after such a long time and it was a great feeling. So what I have done tonight is I have actually stretched myself to meet the deadline that I have set for myself which says before the end of this month, I have to catch up with all my close friends. I was not sure if I would be able to achieve this but the start that I have got makes me feel confident about it. Someone please read my fortune and let me know if I will succeed.

It is so strange that when you meet a person after a long time gap, you have so many things on your mind that you want to talk about but when you actually meet the person all that goes off the window and whatever you wanted to talk does not even get a mention in the entire meeting. Same thing has happened to me, I had to ask him certain things which I forgot when I met him and I remember them now. I guess it the excitement that makes you do funny things. But these 3 hours or so have been a great 3 hours in my life.

Achievers of Excellence

Achievers of Excellence was the title of a seminar held at the IIM Ahmedabad and Harsha Bhogle who has also been a student of this institute was invited to address the students of IIM-A on how to achieve success in life and what is the best way to do it. Harsha presented a 70 minutes long presentation and I must say that I agree to every word he said and I enjoyed the entire 70 mins. It gave me my life a new dimension and really has inspired me.

I have always admired Harsha Bhogle but this presentation made me his follower. I recommend you all to please watch this video and try to absorb what he is saying and what is it that he is trying to communicate. This is the best motivational presentation I have ever heard. It is a long video but you will never even feel that you have spent over and hour watching a video as it will keep you attached to it.

The Video is available here..

Note: if your net connection is slow, I would recommend you to buffer it completely before you play it because you will get frustrated when you get involved with his words and anxiously wait his next word when the video starts to buffer.

... but I Love You

"I have so many reasons to fight with you and to hate you ..... but I love you". Yes you read it correctly this the most beautiful and romantic line that has ever been said to me. It just happened that I was talking to a very dear friend of mine and as usual I was at my humorous best when I heard these lines. These lines sparked me and really made me happy. It is good to note that people still love you specially when I do not give them anything in return. But then this is what true love and friendship is all about.

Trust me I am the most lazy person in this world when it comes to typing and sending out text messages and I hardly text people. Nobody even bothers to send me messages and I can see two basic reason for this. One that I don't reply so people get frustrated and stop messaging and secondly I believe that this is the price that you have to pay when you don't have a girl friend and not many girls as friend.

But the words that I mentioned above may sound filmy but they just ran deep down my heart and literally tickled each romantic bone of mine. It has been ages since I have met some of my old friends, every now and then we plan a re-union and then the plans just get deflated. So I am also bad at maintaining relationships. By the way it is not me who thinks this way but it is the other way round. People believe that I am non social. So here is the news guys, I am very social but I am a bit conservative when it comes to making close friends and relations. But I promise you one thing before this month ends, I will give you the chance to tell me all the reasons that you have to fight with me and hate me. In the end I know that you guys still love me and that is very important for me. I do not want to part away with the selected few that I have left. Love you too.

ये बात वही समझेगा जिसके लिए लिख रहा हूँ। हमे तो अपनों ने लूटा गैरों में कहा दम था, हमारी कश्ती वहां डूबी जहा पानी कम था.

Love Your Work

I read this very interesting quote somewhere and found it very real and true. The quote was "Love your job but never love your company you never know when your company stops loving you". After reading this I gave it a good thought and felt proud that I am actually satisfied with the job in hand and I am enjoying my work. It has been hardly a fortnight to this incidence and today I find myself so occupied with official work that I hardly get time for myself.

It is strange how things change with time, but then I always wanted it to be this way and now when I have achieved it I feel proud but also tired. I really love it when things are complicated to the worst level and I am left alone to fight against time and situations to pull it off. Sometimes I get buried under the excessive load but some times I come out of it. It has become a part of my life and now I feel isolated without such things.

I would like to share a thought that has inspired me and gives me the push to go ahead. The job of an engineer is to face challenges, you should have a different type of work to do almost everyday so that when you enter the office you come prepared for a challenge. If you accomplish the task that day it would give you immense satisfaction and will do your confidence a world of good but if somehow you cannot taste success, the next day you will come more prepared and that will make you competent enough to face such situations and would certainly make you mentally strong. In any case it is you who benefits. With this thought in mind I spend each day in office and believe me I learn atleast one new thing daily.

Don't Judge Too Quickly

I have been witness to situations where a person has jumped to a conclusion even before understanding the entire scenario. I would like to quote something before I proceed with this post.

A girl wanted a ring but his boyfriend gave her a teddy bear instead. In anger the girl threw the teddy bear on the road. The boy went to take the teddy back and was hit by a speeding car and died. At his funeral, the girl took the teddy bear as the last sign of his boyfriend and hugged it tightly. On being pressed the machine within the teddy bear spoke : Will you marry me ? the ring is in my pocket.

I quoted this little story just to emphasize the point that I was making. It so happened that I recieved a call from this person and due to some network problem, the line got disconnected and then due to some unavoidable circumstances I could not answer the phone. The person who was trying to call me immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was trying to avoid the call and messaged me some strong words. I was really shocked upon recieving such a message. It is my request to all to please analyze the situation before jumping to any conclusion. Sometimes we jump to a conclusion hastly and then we are left with nothing else but regrets.

Gucchu Pani Dehradun

In a recent trip to Dehradun and Massoorie I visited a very unique and a bit isolated place by the name of 'Gucchu Pani' just around Dehradun. It is a place which is not very popular and is known only to the people living near by. The roads leading to the place are also not proper and you have to travel through several bad turns and roads to reach the place. When we reached the place we noticed that there was a person who was in charge of the parking, on enquiry we found that from that day itself the parking has been placed and an entry fee of Rs 10 has also been charged.

When we entered the place it was awesome, it was totally worth the efforts that we had put in to actually reach that place. The place is a sort of a cave which has water flowing through it and you have to walk and at times crawl through it. The water is absolutely chilly at some parts and surprisingly warm at other places. There is no specific route defined within the cave and you have to find/make your own way. It is a great experience to keep on jumping over rocks and crawling through flowing water. The rocks at some places are very slippery and it takes a lot of courage to climb on them. There is a point where the water falls from a height of around 10 feet but the flow and current is very fast, also the water is close to freezing cold. We had a shower there and it was a once in lifetime experience.

The fact that the place is yet to be explored has left it clean so it feels that much good. The water is clean and so is the area surrounding it. There are a few shops just at the entry to the caves which serves tea, coffee and some snacks. Fried Maggi is a hit snack in that part of the country and almost every shops sells it. We also had tea and a bit of snacks at one of these shops and that was also a great experience. We had our feet under cold water and sipping hot tea. Overall it was a great experience and a great place to be in. I highly recommend it to any one who is planning a outing to Dehradun, Massoorie or around.

Height Of Confidence

I have been receiving a good number of messages emphasising the statement 'Height of Confidence' and I was amused at the level of innovations these messages convey. Some messages were awfully bad but at the first reading they brought smile to my face. Let me share a few you here.

1. Once ten boys decided to propose to a girl. Nine of them came with a rose and one came with honeymoon tickets
2. A teacher asks a student what is the Height of Confidence ?. The student answers: A 99 years old woman buying a mobile Sim card with life time validity.

These are the selected few that I can post in here but I salute the brilliance of people who originate such messages. I know these are old Internet jokes but then they must have been written by someone and that is sheer brilliance. If you go and search the net you will find several more messasges of the same type. I am a fan of such writers, I literally worship some of the guys that screened in the Laughter Challenge: Sunil Pal, Rauf Lala and the evergreen Raju Shrivastava are example of such brilliant writers.

Memories Relived

Just yesterday I hit upon a few old pictures of mine and that took me down the memory lane, they were pictures of my school functions and I spent a good hour and half strolling down the beautiful memories. It feels so good to relive such memories. It re-emphasises the fact the school days are the best and we miss them the entire life.

I wish we could have understood the importance of the age that we were running through and had more pictures and videos to capture so that today we had more memories to cherish. I guess that at that point of time we were too casual to care about such things, it was more about living freely not thinking much and living moments as they came. Today as we are matured and we have a plan in place for the things to come.

Having said that I would love to re-live those beautiful days once more as they were the best days of my life. It has been over a decade since I have passed out from St. Joseph's College but the memories are as fresh as new. I remember each and every activity that I was involved in and all the lovely friends whom I now have no contact with. It is unbelievable how a look at a few pictures take you back a decade in your life and make you feel good again. I really miss those days.