Sea of life....

There are some occasions in life when a person is moving from one phase to another in his life. This happens when we shift base so to say, for example when we leave college, or shift jobs, or change locations. It implies a change. Who said "change is good?", well no doubts it is, but all the subsidiary stuff that goes alongwith that change is in no way good.

Funny how closely life represents a wave on the beach huh? All the crests represent the points in your life when you thing you are on top of the world, no one can touch you and your blissful existence is above all. You have friends you think you will never leave, a lifestyle you think is the best and dont wanna change. That state of existence seems to last forever and you think the way forward can only be things better, oh! how wrong you are! For soon afterwards follows a trough.

This is the part of your life when you are just going through the motions so to say, just 'living life'. There is the last crest that you keep turning back to look at, and there is this next crest in front of you that keeps beckoning. We are caught between the glorious yesterday and the promising tomorrow. What does one do? We are dying to embrace the next crest in life, but are unable to let go of the last one...it is a dilemna of sorts. What we need to do is learn from our yesterday, and work towards making tomorrow even better than it looks to be. Thats easier said than done. Well thats where we are in life right now friends...but the future beckons lads! We will be atop that crest one day, and that's what keeps us going.

The most important thing to remember is not these crests and inadvertant troughs my friends, but it is that - Like all waves, this one too will eventually fizz out on the sea shore. It will leave behind nothing but markings on the sand only to be washed aside by the next wave. The endeavour will always be to wash furthest upshore so that you make a mark so far ahead that only few others will reach.


p.s Just wrote this article out of a 'flow' without thinking much, hope that you can catch the unstated facts that are present as 'strong undercurrents' throughout the article

My Favorite articles....

I was going through my archives and i thought well its been over a year i've been blogging now and i've got some new readers out here, who may have missed some of the earlier stuff i dished out. So here's a list of articles i personally like...and i think are worth 5 mins...if not?...well let me know either way...

http://saurabhsays.blogspot.com/2006/11/i-was-going-through-stack-of-old-books.html--I used to be deeply influenced by this train of thought once.
http://saurabhsays.blogspot.com/2006/11/deservation-for-reservation.html--Probably my only opinionated article...all others are argumentative
http://saurabhsays.blogspot.com/2006/11/atlasplease-dont-shrug.html--Worth wasting a few brain cells...but overall i no longer endorse these views
http://saurabhsays.blogspot.com/2006/11/phir-copy-shopy.html--Tried my hand at a movie review
http://saurabhsays.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-am-grateful.html--Thoda senti article...a tribute to my friends at college
http://saurabhsays.blogspot.com/2007/03/hooked-up.html--Lan was introduced in our college...i took a crack at the virtual world
http://saurabhsays.blogspot.com/2007/04/all-good-things-end.html--Was a placement coordinator in my final year...a wonderful experience
http://saurabhsays.blogspot.com/2007/04/what-matters-is-how-you-travel.html--Trying to address the dilemna of what to do in life after college
http://saurabhsays.blogspot.com/2007/06/great-indian-train-journey.html--Why i went to a college that was 2 days away from my hometown by train
http://saurabhsays.blogspot.com/2006/11/nostalgia.html--Philosophical...

Please dont comment(ary)....

Hey people...now that i am firmly into the corporate culture(yeah right!)...i thought it is time that i updated my blog and report that training has got over and my learning has begun...no no...that last line isnt erronous...its true...so anyway...to keep up with all the cubicle talk and not find myself lost out here...i am following the twenty20 world cup closely...well as closely as i can get to the tv in ccd...whilst standing outside....yeah... i stand outside the cafe on the street and watch the match...and yes i do that so that i dont have to order and i can save money...HOW cheap!! eh?...well if i get better tea at "Lakshmi chai tapri" than the crappy "Darjeeling Tea" which costs 30 odd bucks...and is essentially hot water served with milk and a tea-bag, i see no sense in it.

So as things were i got fed up of listening to shakira feat. beyonce - " beautiful liar" and what not while watching cricket. So for the India - Pak match i hauled my butt to a friends place to watch the match with full commentary and all. So here i am, all pumped up for this gotta-to-be-great match...and to my horror...the match was available on Star Cricket only, and with HINDI COMMENTARY....noooooooo!!....God save my ears from decay!

So to those of you who missed the torture....dont worry i will reproduce some of the finest moments of Arun Lal, Atul Wassan, Jimmy Amarnath...and group.

1) "aur yeh tez prahar yuvraj singh ka!! pakistan par!!" .... tez prahar!!??....What the...Where's the war raging mate?

2) "Yeh bahut hi karara shot...nishchit taur pe yeh chhakka hain....lekin...kintu...yeh yahan par catch out!!"...man could you eva be more on the wrong side....guffaws!!

moments later....

3) "Yeh dekhiye...bahut hi tez prahar kiya tha yuvraj ne...mujhe to laga tha ki yeh to chhakka jayega hi jayega...lekin ground thoda bada hain....hava bhi chal rahi hain"....blah blah blah....whateva mate...you screwed up!....

4) "ballebaaz theek se ball ke neeche nahi aa paye"....huh?...ball ke neeche?....whats that man?...i guess he was trying a word-to-word translation of 'getting under the ball to hit over the top'...man!!...more guffaws!

5) Now, Salman Butt (thats a joke right there huh?)...gave himself room and smashed it through covers for four...see the reaction of "Jimmy Amarnath" :
" Yeh bahut hi sundar shot....bas balle ko mod karke halke se bas disha si de di ball ko"....dude he literally wacked the cover off that one man!!

6) Now for the clincher....get ready for this guys :
One of the pakistani batsmen swings through the line and top-edges one from pathan...its a skier....our mate in the commentary box gets all excited....the blood flow to his brain increases so much that his skull gets flooded...he cannot think...he just blurts out what comes to his mind first :

"Aur yeh gaind hava mein!!....seedhi upar gayi hain!!....neeche aayegi zaroor." whoa!...that was unexpected!!....HA HA HA!!...(guffaws)....clutch-your-tummy-roll-on-the-floor-and-roar-with-laughter!!...

I thought of adding to the commentatores words as so...:
".....neeche aayegi zaroor.....mujhe Newton pe poora bharosa hain...woh bola hoga to theek hi bola hoga...."

he he he....feel free to add any of your own remembrances of these foolish clowns posing as comentators.....

Mujhe mil to jaye thoda paisa....

After a months hard work...(winks)...i received my first salary...wow what a feeling huh!?...actually speaking though, it wasnt much of a thrill...i was like...whats the difference...i used to draw cash from the ATM before and now i will do the same....difference?...the ATM's have changed....and also ive got to worry about investing, taxes, and controlling expenditure...ugh!...no matter how much you earn, you will always think.."Itna Kam...arey yaar maine to zyada socha tha..."....so ever since i have been thinking(yeah right i do that)...and i realized that I'll have to drum up some kind of a side business to supplement my salary and keep my head above water....so here are a few professions that are profitable (especially in Pune)...and can be taken up part-time...

1) First on the list is Rickshaw driver!....hey!...dont laugh!...am serious here!....see...you need some peersonal transport to take you to the office and back right?....buy an auto!...they come cheap...every day take three office colleagues with you and make them pay...you will save gas money...and may even earn some more!...on weekends...wanna go for a movie!?...go in your auto!...you are sure to find some movie goers in your locality...and think of how much you can charge to go back home at 1 am!....give it a thought!

2)Next best in my view is to become a vendor and start selling stuff that you get for free from your office....fruits, tea bags, styrofoam cups, pens!....everything can be sold! (hope no one from amdocs administration reads this!)...does any other business promise 100% profits!?...

3)The next profession is sheer brilliance!....the initial investment is one matchbox!...what you do is this....in every break rush to the smoking zone of you company...with a matchbox or a lighter(if you smoke you wont have to make the initial investment also!)...and offer to light peoples ciggarettes for 1 Re!...you will be amazed how many smokers come to office without lights!....i bet youll earn between 50-100 Rs a Day!....

4) Other lines of business i thought of include...become a dhobi...buy a washing machine and wash clothes...in pune with laundry charges as high as 15 bucks....you can make a fortune!...

5)Also when you have been searching for flats in a city like pune...you are on first name terms with most of the brokers...you have seen enough flats to become a broker yourself!....all you need to do is hang around the group of new joinees in your company and promise to introduce them to a 'good' broker who has this absolutely awesome place up for rent....for a small commission!....with the kind of people companies are recruiting these days!...it just might work!...he he he...

can you think of anymore!??.....

Just a blog......

Its been more than a month since my last post....usually i think out my article and ponder over what to write for atleast a week or so before subjecting my so loyal (dont know why!) readers to yet another worthless compilation of my thoughts...this time though i will just sit and type away while my instructor keeps blabbering away some crap about unit testing or something....

I just finished reading a compilation of Ayn Rands's early works...mainly short stories and plays written by her...that woman must've been something really...she came to the US from the Soviet at the age of 21 and she was unable to even speak english...12 years later she wrote The Fountainhead....i wouldnt the best ever book....but its right up there....so this compilation consists of the stories and plays she wrote as 'practice' before embarking on her self-chosen task of putting forth the philosophy of Objectivism....there is this most unique and amazing play titled "Think Twice"...unique because this is the only murder mystery ever written by Ayn Rand...amazing because...well just read it...please do...you'll find it in the The Early Ayn Rand by Piekhoff...

Sometimes i wonder if there are any John Galts and Howard Roark amongst us today...of course those two can exist only in theory...but is there someone who even comes close?....lets see...
Steve Jobs....but he stole from xerox....then maybe the xerox employee who actually made the first personal computer....
Bill Gates...he bought DOS....then maybe the programmer who wrote the first OS....
Lakshmi Mittal....hmm maybe...
Alex Ferguson....yep...pretty close i would say....except that the choice of work wouldnt agree with an objectivist....
any more you can think of?

The great indian train journey.....

For four years, (and atleast four times each year) i used to travel by train for two days to go from my hometown Margao in the emerald state of Goa, to Ranchi in the equally enchanting Jharkhand. Everyone used to gasp in horror at the thought of me making such a long journey by train, but it never weighed on my mind. For me, the journey was always an ideal way of collecting my thoughts, having some time on my own to ponder. An equal incentive was also to observe people of different parts of india, and spend my time by trying to work out mannerisms and habits that classified the great indian diaspora into the places of their origin. I must say, by the end of these four years, i have become quite proficient at guessing the origins of fellow travellers.

If your travelling with a family in which the head of the family is a large, rotund and jolly man, and the wife is fat if old and equally svelte if young...laden with enough jewelry to buy the indian railway itself...., then you have the first indicators of a marwari family. But the clincher comes when these people get down at every station....and i mean EVERY station...to meet their relatives and give and take presents from them. At each station they receive food stuff from these noisy relatives and at each station it is the same...mithai, bhujia, khakra...ROTFL.

Maharashtrians are a tricky lot...well for one if the family has been traveling for over a day than it cannot be a maharashtrian family...it is mortally impossible for a maharashtrian family to engage in a journey that will span for more than a day...they will melt i think....they are the most grumpy travelers who cannot adjust one bit with their fellows...always complaining, bickering and ah!...the clincher....throughout the journey the wife will be badgering the husband with complaints and gossips about her in-laws and the poor hen-pecked husband will have a morose look on his face.

If you ever travel with a family that loads on to the train with enough luggage for you to think that they are actually shifting their entire ghar-grihasti to a new abode then you should safely assume that they are a bengali family. And furthermore if they ask you to shift out your one and only bag to make place for their luggage...it is a sure shot bengali family from Calcutta.

Have you ever travelled alongside a bunch of people wearing lungi's, sporting the same moustaches and partaking of some weird, "un-pronouncable", oily food being sold in the train?...this food stuff is called (hope i spell it right)..."pezhambhari"...something of that sort...it is a preparation of fried bananas...and comes with as much oil as the state of kerala can produce in a day!...it drips with oil...these are my friends, keralites. A very amiable lot, they chat and enjoy their journey, but one's desire to befriend them and get cozy diminishes radically when all of a sudden they pull out of their luggage those mushy, squishy bananas -which have long lost their shape and colour as well- and offer you one....omigosh!...NO! NO! you say...and quietly shrink into a corner of your berth!...

There are many more such communities that bring out their qualities with gay abandon on train journeys...all are distinct...no doubt though that they all have one common characteristic in them....they are all INDIAN!

Here i come!!

Loong layoff....but i am back. Have been struggling to deal with a transition in my life. My college life has come to an end and its time to face the big bad world now!...ha ha...am i making it sound more dramatic than it is?...hey...it is a big deal guys. For the last four years i have been living life on my own terms, no one to answer to and no one to question me, now i will have a boss to answer to, and landlord who'll question me...aaaargh!!....i am not ready!!!....

Right now as much as i am terrified at the prospect of moving on, it took me ages to get over the fact that i wont be going to college again. Those were the days...my dad rightly had said to me once..."Son, these are the golden days of your life...make the most of them because you will never live like this again"...well, i went about making sure that i wont be able to live like that again!!...not if i live by the law!!...seriously guys...the things that we did, those parties, those night-outs, they were unbelievable. I have made friends in college that i will have for my lifetime and will never have more friends like those in my life. Words do not do justice to kind off relationships we have shared in college. Seriously, the bar for friendships and friends has been set so far high that i doubt it will be matched in the future.

The last few days of college were really memorable for us. We could see the emotion in the eyes as everyone realised that the time for the final goodbye is near, i personally made an effort to register all the moments all the little occasions that came along and tried to spend as much time as possible with my friends. I am sure everyone made that effort...really, bryan adams' line "Those were the best days of my life...." never sounded more meaningful.

The hurt and pain of parting with close friends is now slowly evolving into a realisation that this is the end of a phase in life and the transition has to be made and we have to move on to a new one. The new life beckons now and i eagerly await the start of this new phase, i am not ready i said earlier...but then who is!!??...before we realise it we are tossed headlong into an ocean of uncertaintiess...we are supposed to fend for ourselves with no weapons at our disposal!!...i think to rightly sum up this transition period i remeber something that one of my friends said just after we had given our final B.E. project viva.... "Abey, ab tak college ke prof log ko bevakoof banate rahe, kuch nahi aata tha fir bhi fatta dekar paar ho gaye, now its time to fool the world!!"

What matters is how you travel....

Standing at a fork in the journey of my life, i wonder which path i should choose. This isnt the first time that i have had to make such a decision, a decision of choosing between two or more options that now seem to hold equivalent promise. Each one carries upsides and downturns of its own. All seem equally good decisions to make. The decision i make now will define the course and nature of the journey ahead. It isnt even a case of taking the "path less traversed" or the path where everyone is going. On previous such occasions i was immature and let others take such decisions for me and bindly proceeded in the direction they pointed. Some of those decisions i regret having followed, others i celebrate. All i know is i am here now and i cannot let anyone else make the choice...because no one knows me better than me myself. Then where should i go?

A great voice once murmured in my ear, " Ask for information not advice". I did that and still all the options hold their own. Each path offers breathtaking views, endless oppurtunities, and each path has a distinct charm of its own. Should i take the path that is easier now?...but then it may get difficult later...where will each one lead me?...What lies ahead in each?...Which direction will lead to more gains?...Which path will make me what i aspire to be? These questions haunt me and i am only putting them off till the last minute...waiting for some divine intervention to point me in the right direction.

As i give this dilemna more thought, i realise that the best way to tackling a fork in the journey of life is to listen to yourself. Your inner voice, listen hard, it will speak up...follow your gut instinct...because what should really matter to you is not where each path leads and which is more difficult....what matters is, how you travel, that you take in the beauty of journey, enjoy every moment of it, meet people, take inspiration from the slightest of things, give joy to fellow travellers...what matters is how you travel.

All Good Things End....

I am often asked by my juniors, as to why i joined the students placement committee and why should they join it when its their turn. I too was faced with these questions once and the most unanimous response i got was that placements are the best thing going on in our college, and one of the biggest factors for that was the functioning of our Training and Placement division. Being in the students placement committee would let me absorb the work culture in that great place and learn from the man responsible for that...Mr. B. B. Pant.

Ofcourse there were several other reasons provided to me for joining the team. Here, we can learn and interact with officials high up in the hierarchy of various companies, we can work for the good of the larger student community and gather some memories that will last with us for a lifetime in the process. Another reason, (suggested by my elder brother), in any case you will have nothing to do during the final year, there is nothing better to keep you busy!

I remember the first task we were given was to organise the farewell party for our outgoing placement committee. I still cant beleive how wonderful that party was. We all chipped in and coordinated so beautifully that it was hard to beleive that this was the first time this team was doing something collectively. All the right chords were hit and all the notes blended perfectly, to create a smooth symphony.

The first company on campus was TCS, and i would be lying if i said that i was'nt scared stiff at the prospect of co-ordinating a process involving almost 400 people (all curious and worried) sitting for an exam that could decide the course of their lives. I am also sure that the rest of the team felt the same. But that morning when we all got down to our job, we drew confidence from each other and with a few minor hitches, the job was done. After handling the TCS campus visit, we knew we were ready for any situation. Bring on the heavy artillery!!

Other companies were a breeze mostly. One incident stands out though. Tata Motors was on campus, and the interviews were on when Maruti arrived for selecting its candidates. Now the Tata Motors interviews got prolonged and before Maruti started its G.D. phase the results werent announced yet. Now this was a sticky situation because the same set of people were sitting for both companies and we couldnt allow guys selected for Tata Motors to sit again for Maruti! To make it worse, Maruti had brought a long an HR guy who was so touchy, he got twitchy and started screaming even if there was no rough paper in the interview room! Amazingly, somehow we managed to whisper into in the ears of the selected candidates and stealthily pull them out of the line for the Maruti G.D.!

It was incidents like this and other occurences that leave me amazed as to how we managed to survive the placement season. Also, astonishlingly this turned out to be the most hectic placement season in terms of the number of candidates appearing, number of final offers, and also number of companies on campus! I speak for the team and the placement office when i say that we never felt stretched for a bit throughout the gruelling period.

All of us were so different yet we almost always were thinking along the same lines. Ofcourse there are differences in every team, but thats the beauty of it all, differences were ironed out in such a way as to arrive at the best solution, and this solution was always better than that we would have arrived at had there been a single train of thought. Everyone shared a common goal and worked to achieve it, it was never an issue as to who worked more or who did the better job, the end result mattered.

The 2k3 Students placement coordinators' committee consisted of:

1. Aditya Devurkar : The brains of the team. Any technical problem was almost always deflected to this guy, and he was more than happy to tackle it.

2. Dhruv Bhardwaj : He should be christened Dhruv 'creativity' Bhardwaj, not only for his talent of designing but also for coming up with the most innovative solutions for any situation.

3. Mohit : The life of the team, he was the heart that pumped energy and freshness into us whatever the occasion.

4.Narayan : He was literally the big brother in our team. He has such a big heart that he gave emotional support to atleast half the batch as they waited for their interview.

5.Pritpal : The jolly sardar, always cool, always calm, always bearing a smile. I call him Sunshine Singh.

6.Rahul sharma : Sharma as we all call him, brought a great sense of humour to the team, nobody else can take a joke as well as him.....hats off. It was his personal agenda to ensure that EEE core companies come to the campus.

7.Rajiv : Our Man Friday, he was the go-to guy whatever the task at hand. Hardworking and the epitome of a perfect gentleman.

8.Saloni : The soft-spoken, miss charming, whenever at the tnp, things seemed just so much easier for everyone!

9.Sohini : Bubbly, she is not just endowed with the soothing voice of a nightingale, but her presence is soothing, just like her voice.

10.Swapnil : Mr. Perfect. His demeanour and his attitude rubbed off on all of us, the confidence he exudes is just so contagious.

11.Tanya : Good things come in small packages. She is a bundle of energy, enthusiasm and joy. Capable of sindle handedly controlling an entire horde of students, we are still amazed at how she did it.

12.Vani : She is always in command of a situation. Whenever something used to go wrong, we instinctively knew that it was because vani was'nt around to stop it from happening. It is people like vani that make a team work. I dont know where she gets the drive from to work this hard.

13.Varun : Have you heard this guy speak? He can rattle of one-liners at speed that would put Najot Singh Sidhu to shame! A gentleman to the core, and one of the coolest guys i have ever met.

14. Vineet : He can mimick anyone on the face of this earth to perfection, but he himself is inimitable. Extremely friendly, it is hard to cross him or be cross with him.

15. Saurabh : A guy who is too humble to praise himself.

Priyank Sir, Prabhat Sir, Pratyush Sir were all our bosses, our friends, our support structures.


A word for our mentor, guide, and driving force.
Many times when you are working, you stop and wonder at the usefullness of it all and wonder wether you should chuck it all and have a good rest. At such times when you see a man twice your age, up till 2 a.m. for a cause that should'nt really concern him as much as does to you, the meaning of the words inspiration becomes evident. All good things come to an end, and the only things you can take with you as you leave, are the memories and the things you've learnt. I will have a handfull of these things to take with me and a majority of both of these i owe to Mr. B. B. Pant.

Hooked Up....!!!!

I was one of the unlucky ones in hostel 3 who got access to the BIT LAN quite some time after the rest had. Almost two months later. All this while i was cursing the administration and the various departments involved for denying me this facility. My joy obviosly knew no bounds when they finally got it working. So what if it was bang in the middle of the mid-sems?...who cares?....i've given 7 mid sems and it wont matter if i screw up the 8th one. I remember i footed it all the way to techno-point from the inners to get a piece of lan wire crimped (hope thats the right spelling) and 'Hook' my comp onto the LAN.

Little did i know what effect this would have on my life....i would be 'Hooked' onto something i cant give up easily. Sleeping hours would shorten from a lazy 9 hours to merely 4 hours. I would be chatting for hours with people i just barely knew. Share some of my deepest emotions with closer ones. I would barely have time to see my best friends who lived in the nearby hostel. I would talk to another who lived in the next room through dc++. I would browse this forum for hours on end until my eyes hurt. I would play games on the LAN and sulk the entire day if i lost one, and paste a smile on my face if i won.

In short, this LAN thingy now determines my interactions with friends, oher people, it uses up all my time, it controls my moods, hell, it controls
my life. Other colleges have had LAN since ages, and we can see our future if we look at these colleges. People don't go home in the holidays to visit their parents coz there's no LAN there...they miss classes... flunk... they don't even know the name of the person who lives two rooms away from them. I mean people calling me by my nick is cool...but after a while it starts to bug me. It's not like there are no good points about having a LAN...we can network....share ideas...get to know new people (virtually ofcourse)...and other stuff. But at the cost of becoming socially defunct?...is this worth it?

I dont like what this LAN is doing to my life...but you know what? I cant
live without it...!! Seriously i am HOOKED !!

I am grateful....

That day is vividly etched in my memory. I remember clearly the ride in the auto that brought us (me and my parents) to BIT. It was a bright sunny afternoon, and after a two day train journey I should have been exhausted but somehow I wasn’t. I was too excited for trifles like that. I watched amazed as we passed the long hostels. The perfect facade of the BIT institute building emerged out of nowhere and offered a sudden breath-taking view. I hadn’t experienced anything so imposing before. Whoever says that he wasn’t awestruck when he first entered BIT is lying. I was astounded too, and though I acted cool about it all, I saw being here as a culmination of my efforts of the last few years.

Somewhere in between the pride in their glances to me, my parents must have harbored a deep concern for me. As such, amid the sense of achievement there was a silent under-current of apprehension. It was then that I decided, I will belittle all the sorrows this place gives me and herald all the joy I am afforded. "That should be easy", I said to myself. I couldn’t have imagined how hard it would be.

The first rude shock was that I was to share a small, nay, tiny room with my roommate. (Looking back it wasn’t that bad). The ordeal of the admission process, complicated further by the gutkha eating, incompetent babus and peons in the offices. One of the first things to strike me about this place was that security guards were all over the place, and were getting things done...they were more helpful then the officials. “There goes meritocracy out of the window”, I thought. I reconciled myself by saying that this is probably the case with most colleges...chalta hain...little did I realize now how often I have to say that in my stay here. It was the same with the food, the way classes were conducted, the labs, the curriculum...hey wait a minute...I couldn’t name one thing that this college offered that was better than the others...everything was either as bad or worse.

I hate to look back and say “If only…”, but sometimes we have to and learn to admit our mistakes. So I think sometimes, was it a mistake to come here? Had my dreams been shattered mercilessly? I got the answer eventually. Education is not only the gain of knowledge and a tool to win a livelihood...no, it is much more than that...this place gave me amazing friends, I came in contact with great seniors and juniors, I learnt from them, I learnt from great men like Mr. B.B. Pant, this was what this college had given me. It has taught me how to live, amid chaos and confusion, how to carve a niche for myself; it showed me who I really was. These things people say, are achievable in other institutions too, but I don’t know and I don’t want to find out. All I know is that I wouldn’t be the same had I been elsewhere. I am what I am today because of these years in college and I am grateful for that.