100 days...

Today is yet another 31st. The last day of August 2009. Exactly 4 months back, that is the last day of April 2009, was an important day. Yes, it was on 30th of April 2009, that I along with crores of other Indians had soiled our fingers, as our duty towards the nation. As I was cutting my nail today, I realised that the faint and remaining part of that ink which I proudly carried on my nails so long, had to disappear. As I cut the nail, I began wondering how have the last four months been for India as a whole. As the Manmohan Singh Government completes hundred days in office, lots of significant measures have taken place in this period. The only requirement at this stage is sustenance of these measures. Though this should not be taken as a shot at imporvement, the signs are definitely positive. Hoping for a great term governance from Sardar Manmohan Singh and his team!

Group Discussions... Is something actually ‘discussed’?

Group Discussions (GDs) are being increasingly used as a tool to evaluate a candidate’s ability to communicate in a group. GDs are used by corporate looking to recruit candidates from campuses. GDs are also used to check the candidate’s ability by B Schools during their admissions process also. There are still lots of various instances where GDs are conducted. In a GD, members are supposed to discuss on a topic. Sometimes, the panel expects a conclusion from the group, whereas sometimes it’s the discussion that is more important.

But having watched and having been a part of a substantial number of GDs of late, I have an important observation. In most of the GDs, the focus is on talking as much as possible. More than anything, the members want to hog limelight and make sure they have spoken something. Rather than actually discussing anything, people go on adding points, irrespective of that fact whether it is adding any value to the discussion at all. Nobody actually even cares to bother if the discussion is heading somewhere.

Ideally, whenever a point is raised, the group is expected to discuss on that point from various perspectives before going to some other point. But what generally happens is one member raises a point and another member raises a totally different point. Though both may be relevant to the topic being discussed, the discussion as such is not at all happening. And many a times, when the discussion has to be concluded, rather than getting into the gist of the discussion and concluding on it, what happens is every member starts contributing his own ideas to the group.

A big reason for this is most of the GDs are not elimination rounds. In the sense that, immediately after the GD, candidates are not eliminated before the next process. As a result, the expected aggression is not seen to be on top. Also, this gives the candidates a breathing space as to nothing is going to happen even if your performance is not exceptional in the GD. You can always showcase your talent and demonstrate your case in the succeeding rounds of evaluation. An elimination round would require you to be in the top, or rather not be in the bottom. But in a GD which is non-eliminating, you can walk out free even by underperforming. As a result, the required quality in the discussions doesn’t generally exist.

What I fail to understand is the actual motive behind a GD. The GDs are in fact no way close to the discussions that happen in organizations over issues and anything for that matter. These discussions are generally structured and in a way the focus is on adding value to a point raised by others in the team and concluding it logically before moving on to another point. But the GDs, (at least those that I have watched and have been a part of) of late, fail to actually do that. They actually fail to test the group dynamics and how people actually discuss. Partly to be blamed is the time constraint on the discussion, which makes it impossible to discuss as happens in the industry. GDs generally are 30-40 minutes long to the maximum. But discussions in the industry actually go far longer than these and sometimes, run up to late in the nights, when the matter is critical.

So I personally feel that GDs don’t add any value in terms of analyzing how good a candidate is in communicating and team work, because the team work simply doesn’t exist. The discussion doesn’t happen at all.

Back to the battlefield....

I am back to my ‘Karma Bhoomi’. After a good two weeks (almost) at home, I was not in a mood to come back. But the opportunity cost of not coming here, actually pulled me here. And what a welcome it has been! Two tests and a presentation on the next day of arrival! Man, am I really prepared for this?

But there is another reason to put this post up. As all good reasons are celebrated, I wanna celebrate this by dedicating a post for it. This is probably the first time I am coming back from home without forgetting anything at home! Everytime I leave home, I have always forgotten something or the other. Sometimes it has been things of necessity and sometimes, not so important things. Wallet, ID card, Cellphones, bus/train tickets, ATM cards, Chargers, Camera, MP3 Player, Clothes, shaving kit, Important office documents when it was most needed, CD’s and pen drives, laptop charger etc. The list will only get longer if I devote more time. The point I want to convey here is that I have always forgotten something or the other over the past several years whenever I have travelled away from home. Call it absent mindedness or whatever, it just used to happen no matter how much care I take. Something or other will happen in the last moment, and I end up forgetting important things.

Now, after two days of being back in Pune, I can confirm and tell confidently that I have not left anything back at home. Two days because, I wanted to be doubly sure. So I am really hoping that this is an indication of things changing for better in and around me. Hoping for brighter days ahead. Till my next post, keep rocking!

Walking down the memory lane..... roughly after 3 years!!!

I had been to my earlier college today. And man, I could not believe it was indeed the same college I had graduated from barely three years earlier. Loads of changes in the infrastructure have happened. Large buildings have cropped up here and there and at the least expected locations. Certain structures have been demolished and some new ones have mushroomed out. Overall, a trip I had made for some certificates that I required, turned out more of a revelation trip!

As I got down on the highway from the bus, I was greeted with the 4 lane road. And as a special gift to the NITKians, the 4 laning just starts before the college. The road looks a lot wider with 4 lanes and service lanes on either side also. This means that a lot of trees have been cut on either side of the road and also the greenery on the highway is lost. The main sufferers are those who wait for buses in the scorching sun. And yeah, whatever rusted bus shelter was there is also missing.

On the other side of the highway, opposite to the main campus are buildings dedicated to IT and EEE departments coming up (they have rather come up and only the painting work is probably pending). Not this makes 4 departments on the other side of the highway, along with CSE and ECE. The location of the entrance gate to that side of the campus has also changed.
With so many classes on supposed to be held on the other side of the dangerous highway, and this in turn requiring a significant proportion of the students walk over to the other side more than a couple of times a day, there is a flyover constructed for vehicles on the highway. The students now walk under the flyover to reach their respective classrooms on the other side of the road.

‘Krishna’ who used to be the savior of faggers on campus, has moved his location to opposite the main door. So has Reddi moved inside the campus. Not much seems to have happened with the Guesthouse and International Hostel though.

As I walked in through the ‘Main Entrance Dwara’ towards the ‘Main Lobby’ I was greeted by huge flex banners welcoming visitors for the Golden Jubilee Year. Incidentally NITK is celebrating the Golden Jubilee of her existence from 6th August 2009 to 6th August 2010. This made me wonder how many ‘quality’ engineers had she given birth to in these 50 years and how many of them had indeed made her proud.

The main lobby also has been totally revamped. The first floor has been converted into ‘Directorate’, work for which had actually started way back when I was still a student. The main lobby looks a lot brighter and more spacious, unwanted hindrances having been removed. Proper demarcation has been made outside for the vehicles to be parked and the signages too look far more professional. They are planning to have a lift in the main lobby, the reasons I was not able to understand. The classrooms also look a lot cleaner. The ‘Co-operative Society’ which was known as SCOOPS, and was famous for the bastard who existed there (and eventually got kicked by agonized students of our batch on our last day in college), which used to be located at the end of the corridor, seemed to have disappeared (probably for good!). I dint even bother to check out.

I went to the examination section to complete my work and to my surprise found out that the ‘Exam Section’ had been clubbed with the ‘Academic Section’. Overall, there have been a real lot of changes that have happened. I was hoping to meet some students who I knew, but unfortunately no one really came across.

Having done all the formalities, I started walking towards the Mechanical Engineering Department which had been my home for 4 years. The most primitive in size, yet the biggest in impact, this department building was still the same. But for some minor changes, I did not find much of a change there. Only a few professors had switched their cabins. Major work on the department had already happened when I was still studying there. So as it was, there wasn’t much scope of improvement on the existing building. The new building, about which talks were so much in the air during our final year, simply seemed to have disappeared in thin air.

The workshops also have got a major uplift. The CAD lab has become bigger and more computers are now working in there. The AC also seems to be working nicely. Individual cabins are made of aluminum fabrications for individual foremen in the workshops which has given them the most required motivation. The Machine Shop is now gleaming with a few more CNC machines and the required infrastructure for them. The ‘Fitting Shop’ has now become ‘Power Tools Shop’ with Bosch sponsoring the capital expenditure on the tools as well as their maintenance. The Mechanical Laboratories, IC Engine Laboratories also dazzle with new equipments, most of which failed to enter my thoughts.

I had the opportunity to meet quite a lot of the lecturers and professors who had made me the proud ‘Engineer’ that I am! And I was more than happy that most of the actually recalled either my first name or last name or both! Though they were not able to recollect the exact batch I graduated, they were able to associate me with my batch mates and the major events that had happened during our time.

Lots of events had unfolded in the Department ever since the current Director had taken over. A few of the great professors had left the institute and some new faces had joined at various levels in the hierarchy. Also the batch strength has been steadily increasing with the progressive implementation of the OBC quota. So the entire batch which used to comprise of around 440 students, now comprises nearly 900. The mechanical engineering class which used to have 90 students now has 140. Other departments with are handling batches with strengths of more than 100 in single classes. I really do not know where all these is headed, because with the increase in the strength of students, the infrastructure and faculty strength has not increased correspondingly. So quality on a whole is bound to suffer. So is the big question of what is going to happen to the placements at the end of 4 years. The addition of more courses like management makes things even difficult.

A great moment for me came when a Professor asked me to address the final year students. I was definitely not prepared for this one. I politely told him that it would not make sense for me to speak to the students at this point of time when I myself am a student. I also promised to come back when I become something and achieve something substantial.

I walked around the campus for a while. The hockey ground had made way for a grand hostel. So has the empty space between fifth and eighth block. I also heard that first year students in 1st and 2nd hostel blocks are made to stay 4 in a room, which is meant for three. There cannot be a bigger atrocity for someone who has probably come to stay away from home for the first time in his life. The Nescafe parlour which had refreshed thousands over the years with hot coffee and ‘half maggi’ over the years still existed physically as a structure. But I am not sure if it still operates the same way. The STD booth outside the parlour which used to host long queues in the evenings, also existed in structure, but I am not sure if it functioned. With mobile phones becoming an essential commodity rather than a luxury, STD booth operators have gone for a six. Though there was news of certain facilities for sports being constructed behind the boys’ hostel blocks, I am not sure if that has actually happened. A1 prints behind the college, is still making huge business there. Probably he is still a monopoly. The SBI ATM in campus is still probably the nearest source of students for instant cash. The ‘SNP Canteen’ as it used to be known back then, is taken over by a different management. It is now called ‘Food Court’. But insiders say they still find cockroaches and flies in the food as used to be before. So other than the name, nothing significant has changed there either.

On the other direction, towards the girls block, more barricades and higher fences are found. Seems like someone actually tried to break into. The ‘Coffee Dabba’ outside the GB is also there, and I heard that it’s still active. The Applied Mechanics and Hydraulics department and all its associated labs have got a brilliant facelift. The ‘Down Corps’ or ‘DC’ still hosts the co-operative store, but the bakery in the basement, which was a popular hangout and a temporary solution for hunger, has closed down. Sad news for the students though. I assume that nothing much would have happened in the staff quarters on that side of the campus. The swimming pool still seems the same. Don’t know if it attracts people. The SAC and the football ground brought back some pleasant memories.

Of the hangouts for students outside the campus, there has been one significant restaurant Suraj International on the way to Surathkal, a few meters before the Surathkal bus stand. Other than this, there isn’t any significant change that I have seen. The small roadside dhabas keep cropping up and down as mushrooms during rainy seasons.

The beach is probably the only place which I did not visit. My favorite hangout for the 4 years of my life where I used to stroll with my friends many a times in the evenings, the early morning jogs along the shore in final year, the temple on the beach, the loads of things technical and non technical I have discussed with my friends sitting on the beach are all things which I miss even today. To this day, when I discuss about my UG college with anybody, I derive pride in saying that ours was the only college in the country which had a private beach.

As I was walking back, memories of the four years I had spent there started coming back. I started remembering the fun we had had, the pranks we had played, the mischief we had been involved in, the hard work we had put in, the long hours we had spent in the library, the PJ’s we used to pass outside the classes, the visit to the ‘SD’ canteen every 5 minute break, the classes we mass bunked, the blunders we had made. I told one of my professors that I feel like coming back to the college at least once a year and spending one full day there reliving those four years again. I wished that I had my friends and my partners in crime so that connecting back to those days and relishing those memories becomes more fun and an enjoyable experience.

I was totally thrilled and walked out with Goosebumps. At one point of time, I had tears in my eyes also. Thank you NITK for being largely responsible in grooming me to what I am today. I owe a deep sense of gratitude to you!!

Hurdles!!!

“Life is like a 110m hurdles dash at the Olympics. You need to be fast, you need to be accurate and you do not have the time to sit and celebrate every hurdle that you have crossed. By the time you have crossed one hurdle, another one is already in front of you”. That’s the example I constantly keep giving my young cousin to motivate him continuously and remind him not to stop after tasting success but to keep moving ahead. The days of the hare and the tortoise are long gone.

A few days back, we in college were discussing among various other issues, whether people at my college, deserved to be in the IIMs. A very vast majority agreed that they in fact were as good as any other person who has actually entered the IIMs and it was one factor called LUCK which was not with them on the 16th of November 2008. And it is because of this that they could not really make it into the esteemed institutes in the country. But a few of them had actually not yet come to terms with the fact. One of our professors at that time told us this, “CAT was the deciding parameter a few months back. But now CAT is over and the deciding parameter has moved to something else. The decision will be made based on how you perform from now on based on some different parameter and not CAT. The parameter may be how you perform in your summer project, how you utilize your time here to gain the maximum, how you innovate and come up with new ideas or how well you are able to prove that you are indeed better than your peers elsewhere. There are people already in the IIMs and they will now have lots of advantages and facilities at their disposal, which you people may not have. And your competition is not the people who are in your class, but those in the IIMs, the people who were as good as you all were only till a couple of months back. So don’t dwell upon the past now. CAT is over, forget it. Think about how you are going to tackle them in the future. Evaluate the deciding parameters for the future and devise strategies on how to prove yourself in those”

What struck me bluntly in my face was the naked truth in the statement. A classic demonstration of the case ‘Do not worry about the past, its already gone’. Even if things in the past have been to your benefit or otherwise, you just have to move on. Though I have been telling this to my cousin for the past so many years, I found a bigger meaning in the discussion that day.

Another beautiful concept given by one other professor goes something like this. It is called ‘handicapped race’. In this, cars of all types (from the vintage era to the latest sports demons) are raced. But the slowest car is given a head start and the fastest cars start last. Thus everybody is on a level playing field. We also need to ensure that we take a head start in case we know that we are not the best or that someone else is better than us. Here better and best are all relative terms. However capable we are, we need to realize that at the given moment, people in the IIMs are definitely in a better position than us, be it due to the brand name or be it due to the exposure that they get. And we do not have an option but to race against them. We only have a choice of starting the race earlier, so as to ensure that we are on par with them. And this requires us to sacrifice something else. So it is all a tradeoff between what we have and what we want to achieve over a period of time.

I am really enjoying some classes and some professors we have are too good. It is these minute points which we need to pick up and build further. Hats off to those professors who actually help us unleash the potential in us and show us the path, and are yet not spoon feeding us. The age old saying, “When the disciple is ready, the master appears” is indeed true.

H1N1 & precautionary vacations and life thereafter....

I am having the time of my life. Am I really?

Vacations as all educational institutions are one of the lots of places shut down as a measure to prevent the spread of H1N1 virus or Influenza A, better known as Swine Flu. Pune where I am currently studying, is the worst hit by the pandemic in the country and having no better choice, I felt it best to come down to Udupi, my hometown. The past one odd month has been really great for me. I had the opportunity to attend the ‘Bhajana Saptaha’, a weeklong extravaganza at Udupi, late last month. This was something I had missed for the last 3 years. And no sooner had I reached Pune and was just settling into academic mode, came this bigger news.

In the back of our minds, most of us were actually making pretexts and finding reasons to convince the college administration to give us a break from the hectic (?? Read on...) routine. Swine Flu was the most preferred excuse. As luck would have had it, even before any of our attempts, the Govt. of Maharashtra came as our Genie and granted us exactly what we wanted. A week long holiday, and we were in fact encouraged by the college to go to our respective hometowns. 95% of the people actually vacated the place in awesome speed. What was more appreciable was the efforts by the university to provide more frequent transportation to the city from the campus to enable people take flights / trains / buses to their respective places. Everyone actually went home and was actually having a great time. I too came home and this time, I got to be a part of the Sri Krishna Janmashtami celebrations after 3 years.

But some of us were greedy. We again started finding excuses that Pune was not safe and the holidays be extended. We even made ‘logical’ reasoning and came to conclusions that classes would “anyway not commence” till the coming Monday and that visiting faculty will also “not want to come” to the campus and so on. We also started calculating probabilities that the Govt. itself “may extend the holidays” beyond Ganesh Chaturthi which is a very big festival in Pune and draws huge crowds. We started praying for the holidays to be extended beyond the festival, and yes our prayers were answered once again. Again, I will be celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi with my family after 3 years.

But somewhere in some parts of India, some intelligent people silently saw this as the silence before a storm to come. When I too started thinking of it, I realized what type of a hurricane we are heading into. We will not have holidays for Deepavali; we may not have holidays after our semester is over. What’s more worrying is that there won’t be any holidays for studying before the exams. As if to rub more salt on the wounds, we may have classes from 9 to 9 everyday, Saturdays and Sundays included. Daily assignments, submissions, presentations, evaluations and tests will anyway continue.(If that was hectic, what will you call this??) We may have to forget our social and personal life for the next few months and adapt to a fully ‘Gurukul’ style of learning where we are totally isolated from the outside world. Few friends have already started making analogies of what we will be going through come 24th August 2009. One of them said, we will be the ball, college admin will be Sehwag on a juicy wicket with a fast outfield and the outcome will be ‘zabardast dhulai’! Another said that we will all be put in a pressure cooker for the next 3 months and the lid will be opened only after it is totally ensured that we are all ‘fully cooked’. The crux of the matter is that we better be prepared for the tough days ahead.

So, my dear reader friends, I am pretty sure that I will not have time to write these posts as often in the near future and that is the reason I am writing it now!

ALTOPHOBIC?? HOPEFULLY NOT ANYMORE...

I am altophobic! Yes, I have a fear of heights. It has to be ironical that a tall person like me has a fear of heights.

Though I do not remember distinctly, how long I have been carrying this fear with me, I can vividly recollect memories from my childhood where there have been instances where I have had terror wreaked in my mind only because of heights. I can still remember instances where I have simply closed my eyes and let things around me happen by itself. There have been instances where I have run for shelter in the safest place – my mother’s lap. There also have been instances where I have prayed religiously for it to get over as soon as possible.

Whenever I see down directly from the terrace of a normal building, I feel odd. Giddiness takes over my senses and I feel that something is going to happen. By normal building, I mean a double or a triple storey apartment building. Giant wheels in those yearly fairs (which have literally become history now) were another thing I hated and avoided sitting in. When I see straight from the top of the building, even if it’s taller than a normal building, there isn’t a problem. When it comes to seeing vertically down, comes the trouble. And to add to the misery is the fact that I am tall and I always feel that the containing railings are too short for my height and may not contain me in case I lose control and something happens. Dying doesn’t bother me as much as the feeling of living handicapped for the rest of my life does.

I have tried to get over it at times. I had the privilege of studying my engineering from probably the only college in India which had a private beach and a lighthouse. We had the opportunity to go to the top of the lighthouse which was something like a 12 storey building. I have climbed to the top a couple of times. But whenever I have done that, I have closely held the railings while climbing up as well as down and also always ensured that my back is always in contact with the wall of the lighthouse. Even on reaching the top, I made sure that I did not look down at the base of the lighthouse directly; my hands were firmly on the railings and my back comfortably against the wall. I recently tried the same on another lighthouse nearby, but the fear still existed.

But then came my day. It was just the first week of our induction module at college. The entire batch was out on an ‘Outbound Training’ program on the foothills of Sinhgad fort (one of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s numerous forts across Maharashtra). The program was handled by ex service men and was a great experience of learning and team building. One of the exercises involved was what is known as wrappling or abseiling. Each and every one of us was supposed to come down from the terrace of a three storey building, along the walls with the help of ropes. People who had done it earlier did it with ease. Some of them who were doing it for the first time did a really good job and some others faltered badly. And the sight of this group of people made me look for reasons to abscond!

Escape routes were hard to find. Even girls were not spared. Eventually I thought this might as well be my opportunity to fame (at least in my own eyes). I thought this is the time when I should actually get over my fears and weaknesses under the supervision of trained and qualified people. I somehow made up my mind and reached the top of the building. As one of them was tying the ropes on my waist, I tried to remain cool and composed. I tried not to look at the base of the building as much as possible. And when the big moment arrived and I stood on the wall, I was surprisingly calm. This was really commendable considering the fact that there were people who have literally shivered while on the wall. For a brief moment, as I was standing backwards on the wall (me facing the building), I badly felt like asking for a bottle and get myself photographed in the ‘Lose Control’ style from RDB. Then an inner voice told me, “Zyaada herogiri dikhaane ki koshish mat kar beta, tu ab tak neeche nahi pahuncha”. The instructor casually repeated the set of instructions, dos and don’ts for the umpteenth time in the day. I listened to him and started my journey downwards.

I was at the base in roughly under 5 seconds. I simply could not believe that I had done it so comfortably. And people who actually saw me coming down and were cheering me said that it was a very ‘professional’ attempt for a beginner. By ‘professional’, they meant it was closest to the one as demonstrated by the instructors. I was indeed proud of myself. Unable to contain my happiness, I called up mom immediately. As expected she too wasn’t able to believe it.

But yes, it had indeed happened. I was not daydreaming. I had actually got over one of my worst fears. Someone had actually clicked everyone doing the heroic feat, and I am still looking for the snap.

So the big question is whether I have really got over it? Well, I don’t know and can’t say anything as of now. I haven’t tried anything like that ever since, nor have I even tried looking down directly from a high rise building. So it may be too early to claim something now, but I’ll definitely have it at the back of the mind that I have done it once in my life. This feeling is definitely very gratifying and I am sure that it will give me a lot of confidence the next time I decide to look down from the balcony of my hostel room which is equivalently on the fourth floor!

Technology and its ........

I wanted to write about this topic for a long time now. I have thought about it very often but somehow or the other it has not succeeded in completing the journey till here. This time though, I am very optimistic about that.

A lot has been said about the positive effects that technology has had. It’s actually hard to imagine life without technology today. And rightly so, it has made life so simple, so comfortable and so very convenient for people today. So much so that off shoots of technological advancements has become more of a necessity than a facility. I will not dwell too much into the positive aspects of technology here. There is no doubt that technology has indeed been a boon. Let me try to explore the other side of the coin.

I was travelling by train a couple of months back from Hyderabad to Mumbai. The journey takes around 16 hours and I was travelling on train for such a distance after a long time. I was looking forward to meeting new people and getting to interact with them. But my expectations turned out to be damp, not because the compartment was empty. But because of technology. 10 years ago, something like this could not have been imagined. One chap in my coupe was busy watching movies on his laptop. Another was busy talking to someone on his mobile. I really don’t know what was he doing throughout the journey. And there was another girl who had a book in her hand and a pair of earphones continuously plugged into her ears. She was continuously banging her head in the air, proving that she was actually listening to some sort of music. Few travelers have always been eternal sleepers, and their proportion has always remained the same. So considering this fact, I can only say that technology has separated people. If I had taken a similar journey 10 years back, all these people could have been seen interacting with each other as if they were long lost friends who just met by chance. But with technology improving every day, it has even increased the distance between people.

Technology has also reduced the personal touch which used to exist between people. Consider a formal communication which used to happen a couple of decades ago by the way of handwritten letters. People used to preserve these letters and read them leisurely. They used to get emotionally attached to them. It is debatable whether such emotions are good or not. But the point I am trying to make is that the personal touch is missing. Now a day when it is the case of e mails and letters through e mails, it has become instant, but with this it has also brought a whole lot of questions. Similar is the case will telephones. A couple of decades back it was hard to talk to people who are abroad and for that matter even those in different cities. Now it has become some cheap and affordable that it has no value. Cheating has become so easy, and again the personal touch is missing. Imagine what we all are missing. The anxiety with which people a generation ago used to wait for the postman to come, the host of reactions which used to come when some loved sprang as a surprise, the great deal of euphoria surrounding a family get together, are all nowhere to be seen these days. Credit cards have made purchases easier, but what has happened after that? People have started spending excessively and a part of the subprime crisis which has led to global recession is also because of this!!

Technology has no doubt given lots of benefits for us. But if we see that in the real sense, it has only given alternate solutions to needs for which solutions already existed. It has not come up with things out of the box and it has not come up with any new solutions. It has merely made existing things simpler, comfortable and convenient and nothing else. People may call me a traitor or a fanatic or I dont know what, but this is really a debatable point. As much as I acknowledge the merits of technology, I also at times start thinking too much about the other side of it which is also factually true!!

I am confused!!!????##^&%*%^

“I am back after a long time”. I am actually fed up writing that statement again and again. Every time there is some discontinuity in my blogging, my first statement after comeback will be that!! I really want to do away with that and hope I will be successful with it in the future. After a brief surge in my blogging frequency just after I started the second innings of my student life, it was almost a month of silence. Now owing to the precautionary holidays declared by the college in the wake of the spreading havoc of the H1N1 in Pune, I have again found time to write something. I will not write on any topic specifically, but will try to dwell on whatever crosses my mind at this point of time.

The period of silence for my blog in between has been really a topsy turvy journey for me personally. There have been lots of ups and downs for me. Especially a week in between which went real bad. And I am forced to believe that it was all the result of a well planned divine intervention. I cannot but help the Almighty for having pulled me up from this mess that I was in. I feel that it has made me emerge stronger mentally and emotionally. I really do not want to go into the details of it all and relive the agony. So don’t bother asking me either. If you already know it, you know it. And if you don’t know it as of now, don’t really bother to think about it either.

The last couple of months have been a real different experience. Having come to studies after a brief stint working, it feels like heaven to be back among the books. Having seen the way corporate work for a great part of the 33 months I have worked, I realize what it takes to be back in the student’s shoes. The exposure I have got in my working career has helped me in clearly defining what I want from the two years of this MBA course. I know how exactly I should approach the education and what exactly to take out of this. A very close friend of mine said to me just before I commenced this course of mine, “Don’t take your grades seriously. But make sure that you take your learning’s seriously”. The statement is very true considering the fact that having good grades all through my academic programme so far has not helped me a great deal. I was a topper in my UG days, but that put me in place with lots of other common grade holders in my job. Not offending any of them, I realized that grades are not of any importance. So it won’t really hurt concentrating on things other than academics alone.

Now this change has been more evident from outside. Friends and relatives close to me, who know everything about me, have acknowledged a clear change in my attitude. I have become more carefree and do not worry unnecessarily. I am much more relaxed and easy going now. However much you try to not be so evident about it, you cannot really be so. It eventually shows out. And for people who are so close to you, it’s not so difficult to realize that change either.

A couple of years back when I was working; I was a part of a management workshop. There was this consultant trying to stressing on the importance of not worrying and thinking of the worst which can happen if something we were worried about did not happen. And he was asking us to compare it with the troubles and complications created by worrying and reflect on whether worrying on it was really worth it. I initially took it as just another gyaan but slowly when I started practicing it and found it to be really helpful. I do it even today. I believe that at the end of the day, life is not permanent. So there is no point living it worrying over small and petty issues. After all, issues are temporary. Things will change in due course of time and things will be forgotten eventually. Nothing in life may be serious enough to waste time worrying on it.

I know this sounds very weird and without knowing the facts, it’s actually difficult to make sense of what I am trying to write. But I desperately wanted to come back. So what if its not with a bang?? Every comeback in cricket does not mean a century; every movie by Amitabh Bachhan was not a hit. So I do not expect this post to be great either. Hope to come back soon with a more sensible post soon.