5 Sept No Theme No Topic, It's only about me

This one is going to get a little personal. I am dying. Every other day I do things which sometimes make me ponder 'What am I doing! What have I become!'. Whether I say I was better seven years back or I give reasons for being disturbed for a long stretch of time, the fact remains that I have been failing myself. There were so many things that I had taken up, call them projects, challenges or targets; there were things which were professional in nature as well as those of personal importance and as I look back I see I have failed almost every single time. I have always wanted to be a man of my word and yet all I have done is just talk, never fulfilled any of those words. Those seven years that I talk about, I have always told myself that I shall do this, try that, achieve this, work on that, but have never been committed to myself, never met a deadline, whether it be a freelance work or a report generation at office.

While I was at institutions, School or College, I don't know if it was fear, or prestige or may be interest in a subject which made me learn. Competing was fun. There was discipline amongst people. Everyone was dedicated, at least on the day before exam, we cared highly for each other at least for finishing assignments. That was a small and beautiful world. I guess I should be grateful to my Mother Father and Teachers for that wonderful life. In the first six years of the seven though I wasn't doing any wonders I sure was doing what I wanted to do. I learnt it is not always about performance but also about experience. I did a whole lot of things ranging from falling in love to failing in love. I tried out things which earned me names other than my given name. I made more friends. Lets stop running behind success for a while and I will say I was satisfied with my life. However it has been different in the last one year. I came out into the bigger world, the world that is not enclosed within a building or campus with a playground and classrooms and labs and hangouts. I faced it and I have, kind of, lost it. This place put me into situations where I had to question myself if what I was doing was right or wrong. It put my heart and mind at fight. It slowed me down. I spent my time pondering about past and future while I should have acted in the present. I realised that I rusted.

Apart from the hiccups that this year gave, it also taught me simple yet important things and moulded my attitude towards life and people. I understood that, what people think is right and wrong and how they treat each other is their personal choice. It isn't so good for me to break my head on such things. I found out what keeps me relaxed, what I am interested in and also I somewhat found out what I want. I realised that I was not being my true self, I was not being what I wanted to be. Like the Linkin Park line goes "I tried so hard and got so far but in the end it doesn't even matter".  It is time for abscission and so it shall happen. What changes the time will bring in me and whether I will cope up or not, ONLY TIME WILL TELL

Cheers
Aditya

11 Aug Cheers

Found this day to be very auspicious to get back to my blog, which I hadn't seen in a while thanks to pre-occupancy of my life with a variety of more or less interesting things. What's special about the day is that someone very close is getting married today. The ceremonial wedding would've probably got over by now. The celebrations would obviously be going on. With a delighted heart, praying to the almighty and wishing the couple a very happy married life, I sat to put something in my blog and now I wonder "what should I write about". 

There are these times when life seems so boring and mind is totally detached from work. Or sometimes there are these times when you know you have to work hard to reach your targets but you can't get enough energy out of yourself. There are these times when mind goes astray. I have got stuck many times. There is this turmoil of thoughts, one thought creates another and that connects to one other, simulations of situations keep going on inside that small head. It is times like these when this close one I mentioned earlier and many others like her have helped me. Motivated me when I went low. Inspired me with their words and acts. I still remember how I understood the meaning of the phrase "being committed to something" after it was attribute to this girl. And then there is guy who, for me, is like the benchmark for sincerity, and many other God-level people. They are nothing different from others. No special PhD has been done by them. They are just like the guy/gal next door. They sit with me, eat with me, laugh with me, and randomly at times they leave me stuck with wonder about how awesome they are; about how my life has been and is so much fun with them; about how lucky I am to have such FRIENDS.

Look around you. There are so many such people who have made your life so much fun, may be inspired you to do great things. Treasure them, never lose them. They'll give you energy to move even when you have hit the bottom. But yeah, unless you have informed them before, they wouldn't know that you have to go to office early the next day, so you are on your own to wake up in the morning and so am I. Until next time...

Cheers 

Aditya
P.S. 1. Signing off as 'Cheers' started as a memory of this close one.
2. Though it was on the previous Sunday, every day with friends is special and so Happy Friendship Day.

27 Feb Benign Nine

A short one for the end of short month. 

Deduction of logic, drawing meaning out of the most bizarre things seem interesting to me at times. If you let your mind free, and allow it to think all random possible or impossible reasons for anything that you can think about, then you could come across a couple of amusing things. I am going to share something which I found this way. It is about the number 9. You might have already noticed it before, but in case you haven't, there is this very interesting property of this number. It is about the summation of digits of any given number after adding or multiplying with 9. Notice it yourself right away. Take any number . Add all the digits of that number. Now add the digits in the sum. Keep doing this till you get a single digit as the sum. Now add 9 to the original number and repeat the same process of summing up the digits. You'll find that the final digit is the same. Now take any number and multiply it with 9. The final digit after summation will be 9. 

There is this strange thought which then occurred to my mind. If you can think of Addition '+' or 'plus' as making friends with some one and Multiplication 'x' or 'cross' as fighting or something like war (if I may exaggerate a little). Then you can see 9 has a character of a legend who makes friends with whichever number he is added to (lets the sum remain the same digit as before) and it wins the battle with whichever number it is multiplied (the sum of digits in the product becomes 9). Well this is all just random thinking, someone else could think that 9 multiplied with any number maximises the strength (as the sum of digits in the product will become maximum possible). There is no moral of the story here... But for now there are two things I can say... one. be like a nine be it in making friends or winning battles and two. let your mind go wild !!! ***

Cheers 

Aditya

*** lots of conditions apply  

P.S. Wonder what happens in case of a zero :P !!!

22 Feb 2013 E=mc^2

And I was thinking that I would put up at least one blog entry per month. I did resume with that idea in October but then New Year came with a lot of new things and somehow, call it laziness or improper time management, January '13 passed without a blog entry. But then there is nothing so interesting for you in how exactly there was a power surge in the house and my laptop battery charger was damaged or how the internet connection at our house was playing something like hide n seek with us. So I won't bore you with the details of how the month went by. Nor am I going to tell tales about my times with Batch-2 during induction training or about my work in NVH testing group in Manual Transmissions Department at MSIL R&D.

Today I am gonna tell you something which I had thought about long time ago. My wandering mind had once hit a thought about analogy between Physics and Psychology. Just like how in Physics formulas in Gravitation and Electromagnetism seem similar I wondered if there could be parameters for Human Psyche which could be interconnected with a formula similar to something in Physics. Crazy you think?! Tell me about it later. For now read on and lemme present to you the "E = m c square of Psychology"

We have been told right from our childhood that one needs to work hard for success, we should have hope, we should have determination, we should have confidence and so on. Well... I thought these could be the ingredients for Success and so I started connecting them with the parameters in Physics. When we succeed in doing something we get happiness or satisfaction. This I called Energy of Success. To succeed we need to put in Mass of hard work. We work hard only when there is hope. The volume of Hope affects Determination. Determination, I felt is somehow analogous to Density. With zero there is no division, with zero volume of hope there is no density of determination. High hope and high determination will make you work harder to achieve your goals. The final but the highly influencing ingredient... Confidence. Just like how the mass energy conversion is applicable only when the body is moving with 'c', the velocity of light, the energy of success will be realised only when the hard work is put in with confidence. So there you go, the final equation

:-D That's it folks!!!

Cheers

Aditya

8 Dec From 10-11-12

I didn't feel good staying alone in the silence of the room. It was a little while after 7 in the morning. I knocked on the door of Srikanth's room. Good for me he got up. I started talking to him, which eased me out a little. After a while I left his room, took bath and came out to see off few people before I left. Krishnakanth left the night before, with his cousin. I got to know that only in the morning when I met other gults. Missed meeting the apache boy before I left. Mech wing people left to Mangalore. They were taking a bus to Bangalore from there. I bid them a farewell at the blocks and then went and met members of the Baja team. There after I met few people individually and before I returned back to block I met Varshini to say good bye as she was leaving with Kavya to Mangalore and by the time they would come back I would have left. My bus was in the afternoon. When I left the wing with luggage my juniors also came with my batch Gults to give a send off. Madaka dropped VT at the Surathkal station and reached my bus stop in time. I had met almost everyone amongst Gults, Raaj, Anthill, Basava, Yoyo, Bams, G1, DarkKnight, Babu, Chicha, Rummy, Dady, Kadiam, Mastaru. We all missed Naag, Sagar, Shyam and Deeps who couldn't make it to the convocation. There were others also who couldn't make it due to various reasons. I couldn't meet Achyuth or Mahesh with whom I had spent some of the best times of my college life, playing Carroms in 5D wing. I wanted to meet Mandi (Deeps) later before taking my return flight from Hyderabad but it didn't happen as it was a weekday and so he was in office. Most of the Gult gang came to the bus stop. It is at times like these when we feel good even when the bus gets delayed due to some passenger who comes late. But ultimately the passenger came and the bus started. It felt like I was leaving one home to go to another. Nothing in the journey bothered me. There were thoughts running in my mind all the time. Random thoughts... about our lives... our pasts... how we all came together... possibilities of coming together in future... and I fell asleep. I at Buns Sambar, which I couldn't eat while in campus, when the bus halted in the evening for a snack. After that I only got down in Hyderabad. During this bus travel I probably covered up for all my sleep lost in the last three days. From Hyd I accidentally took a bus which travels a longer route. I somehow reached home by afternoon. As expected Mom was surprised; Dad had gone back to office after lunch. Mom made me call him and inform about my coming. Dad came back home for a while and I told them briefly about all random things. I also gave them the watches I had bought for them. Dad was excited. Mom was happy. The next two days went by very smoothly. I kept talking about things from job and convocation, and they gave me updates of family and functions. I started sometime around 11 in the morning from home on Wednesday and reached home in Gurgaon at about 11 in the night.

My induction training has got over. After considering my choice, I have been put in Manual Transmission Department of Engineering Business Vertical (R&D) where I am undergoing on-job training now. The time is about half past two in the night of 7 Dec. Exactly one month before now I was in a train sleeping happily, probably with a broad smile on my face. I had met my friends and I was going to college with them.

Cheers
Aditya

30 Nov 10-11-12

I was not the first one to get up. Shanthi's mother and Kavya were already awake. I freshened up and sat on the side lower berth looking outside the window. I watched with amusement as familiar scenes went by. First came Mangalore Junction and then came Mangalore Central. We got know that the train would go even to Surathkal station. But then it would have started from Central only after half an hour so we decided to go by road. I saw Meenal's bargaining abilities when we booked a taxi to college. I got down at the junction near GB and walked towards boys hostels, passing in front of Main Building. I started getting calls from juniors and batch-mates. The excitement rushed in again. I went to my juniors'  wing which was the wing opposite to one in which I was staying in my final year. They were staying in the same rooms. Unlike us they were allowed to continue in the same rooms.They came out yelling hellos. The greetings, the slang, the lingo. I was loving it. Gult batch-mates called up and asked me to come to Food Court. We met up there, hugs and high fives. Mechwing gang from the train had left to Ocean Pearl (in Mangalore) for breakfast from the railway station itself where few others from the Mechwing were joining. They came to campus later. Meanwhile Supreeth got down from Pune. We met before he left to Mangalore to buy a formal shirt for the function. The remainder of the day was mostly spent partying. I went to Suraj for lunch with gults - few batch-mates, few juniors - and found that most, if not the whole, of Suraj International was occupied  by NITKians. Meenal Varshini and Kavya were also there. I promised them a treat which couldn't happen then because everyone was busy with everyone else :P . There were lot of other people I met while I was in Suraj and after that we came back to campus. We registered that we had arrived and would be receiving our degrees the next day on stage. Sometime after that, me and Supreeth went and met Gangadharan Sir in SOLVE Lab, and from there while walking back to the hostel I met Shruthi. As always we walked while we talked and after about two rounds in front of the main building she left with others and I came back to the hostels. Most of the gults had gone to beach and they probably had dinner at GNPD after Vidyun came (I'll leave his adventurous bike ride for him ;) to write in his blog ) I went to Sadanand for dinner with Supreeth and Vaishali where I also found Yaswanth and Saketh with their fathers. By the time they all left I was joined by my juniors. We all came back, I don't remember when, I had no track of time, and after a long talk about a lot of things, where mostly only I was talking, I went to sleep.
The next morning as I got up and got ready, the familiar running around for paste, bucket, slippers etc brought back a little nostalgia. I left with Supreeth, went to Amul, took a snack and came to SJA where others were having the so called Hi-Tea.We joined them. Exchanged greetings, asked each other about jobs and job locations.Then when moved into the auditorium. Shanthi managed to continue her legacy, though this was totally unintentional, actually it is never intentional :P . The arrangement and everything else for the occasion seemed just perfect. Everything went on smoothly. We had our moments of fun with random applause. Our chief guest was a Dean from Kumamoto University, Japan. There must be something between me and Japan, I will probably figure out someday. DBZ, Naruto, FairyTail, MarutiSuzuki and now the Chief Guest for convocation :-) . Anyways. After the National Anthem, we all moved out and clicked photographs with our degrees and then people dispersed. Few went out. I came to our very Mega Mess to have lunch with many other graduands. Convocation was over. Things slowed down. My evening had more of thought than excitement. I got a little emotional after getting a lovely graduation gift along with a sweet letter from this sweet sister Vaishali. Later I spent some time at the NITK Beach. I had my dinner with Shanthi's and Saketh's families at Sadanand and I came back to college where people had started leaving. Supreeth, Vishwas, Shruthi and Meenal left that night. I felt bad for not giving a send off to Shruthi; while in college I always used to stay at the pick up point till her bus left. I could meet Shanthi and Varshini for a few minutes before they went back to GB. Thereafter I went to Red Rock where there was a gult party going on and finally came back to hostels with Saketh and few others, and after a sensible yet random chat over phone with Madhu the day came to a close. I slept off very soon probably because I was tired due to all that running around during the day. Next morning I was woken up by Saketh. We went to Surathkal where Shanthi was going with her family to Sringeri. I was going to leave that afternoon and so wanted to meet her once. After they left me and Saketh came back to hostel. Then Saketh left with his father to the hotel room. I got out of the lift on the fourth floor and while I walked towards the wing I felt a chill. I felt all alone. It dawned on me that everyone would be getting separated again, that I would be back to Gurgaon. I realised how much I missed my college days. I started wondering about the possibilities of us being together again and I got lost in the flow of emotions and the thoughts about our future.

Cheers
Aditya

28 Nov To 10-11-12

I started with the thought that the Beginning and the End of this post are probably gonna be one of the toughest ones for me to write, as it is difficult to express extreme emotions especially by me who does not have a good pool of words to chose from. But then it is also very difficult for an expressive like me to describe few of the most memorable days of my life in such small posts. So I decided to do this in parts. Since I have to begin somewhere, I'll start with my ticket booking for convocation. The whole excitement began when the dates for convocation were announced. It was scheduled for the first Saturday of November and I started counting the number of days left to meet my buddies and juniors, gults and mechwing, pclub and baja. Slowly began the discussions with friends about how they are going to travel and who all are going to travel together. Finally my travel plan was set. I was going to take a flight from Delhi on Thursday to Bangalore, train from there to Mangalore with friends, attend convocation on Saturday, and Sunday was return flight from Mangalore to Delhi, with a change point at Mumbai. Few people probably wished that the convocation be held the next week so that Diwali holidays could be used well and God heard them. The convocation got postponed by a week, rumored reasons were the unavailability of the chief guest, about whom, I am sure, no one was bothered. 3 flight tickets cancelled 3.6k cancellation charges. Planning started again. I checked my training schedule and my intuition told me that the Sunday after my convocation would be declared working and the following Monday would be declared a holiday as there were three holidays following, on the occasion of Diwali. There were discussions again but my plan didn't change much. I was still taking the flight to Bangalore and then train to college. But I wasn't coming back to Delhi from college.I decided to give a surprise at home and so got a ticket booked for a bus to Hyderabad.

I wanted to buy something for mom n dad from my salary. After considering lot of options and taking a lot of suggestions I finally went on with the standard "mummy pappa ke liye Ghadi" and bought watches for both of them. I bought sweets for pals whom I was going to meet at college, finished up work at the office, informed that I would be on leave for next four days and packed everything on Wednesday night. The flight departure on Thursday morning was delayed by about 40 minutes for reasons I didn't know. I reached Bangalore at about 2, met Shanthi and along with her parents and elder sister we went to her office. We had lunch at the colorful cafeteria on the ground floor of her office building. We kept talking about all different things, from IT buildings in Bangalore to the malls here in Gurgaon. From there we went to the magnificent ISKCON temple. We spent some time there, then came back to hotel, vacated their room and headed to the railway station where Saketh's father was waiting for us. It seems Shanthi had a record of reaching at the nick of time. We let the legacy continue. For me it was fun to go out of the station with her to get something packed for dinner, all the while teasing her that I will make her miss the train. Her phone kept ringing. People were calling to find out what she was doing when the train was about to come. We did come back in time. I met Varshini, Meenal, Aparna and Santosh. I found Das and Rao were in the same train. Abhinav Kartikeya and a lot of other tricalites were also in the same train. It was only after I got into the train that I realised that the train was full of NITKians. Sarvesh Gabbar Kamath Vijay SrikanthNayak and so many others. I had no control over my voice box. My excitement was at peaks. Only I know how much I enjoyed the journey that night. The Idli Dosa Sambar CurdRice. Moving between S10 and S4. Frustrated TTs. Mysore railway station. Conversations about new times with old friends and old times with new friends. I dozed off, cherishing the memories of those times and thinking about the times to come, at some unknown time after 2 in the night.

Cheers

Aditya