An Ode to a dear friend

It's not often that we get this amazing feeling of meeting someone and knowing that its going to last forever. By God's grace this happened to me when I came to India in 2001 and met this wonderful personality. He always came across as someone who knew what he wanted in Life. A rare gift to possess but he used it with great care. There was always this calmness and surety about him that you couldn't overlook. His face carried the same composure when he finally left us.

He was born to be an achiever but the "bad" fate had made other plans. It tore him apart like the careless wind that cuts away a flower in its prime. There were surely other more deserving targets which were of a greater burden to this earth. Good People die young is an oft quoted statement. He was surely better than the best.

The NFS duel's or the campaigns in AOE will forever be etched in my memory. I always knew there was a home for me half a kilometre from mine where I could go whenever I felt lonely or needed to talk to someone. He was forever welcoming in nature, helpful by design and a passionate friend. His love for Metallica and Rock Music was eternal and he could talk about it for hours. Those wonderful debates we used to have on the latest technologies. I will miss playing cricket at his home after college and then fighting over the result. I will miss going to movies with him and then knowing that he would be the one to drop me back home. I will miss his teasings about my kiddish attitude and he behaving as an elder brother to someone who is older than him.

Who will now teach me about Rock Music, Who will I talk and debate with and most importantly Who will now bring me back home. O God thou art most heartless and most merciless that you don't take good care of your children. RIP, My Friend, wherever you maybe, I am sure you are bringing countless joy to everyone like you gave us for 10 years.

Trip To Bishnupur

Tucked away in a corner of West Bengal is the quaint and charming town of Bishnupur. It's well known in the world for its Terracota Temples dedicated to various Gods and Goddesses. Indian Railways makes it an easily accessible place for tourists and history lovers with daily connections between Kolkata and Bishnupur.

The tour kicked of with a visit to Rasmancha. Unique in its architecture and said to be one of a kind in India, this pyramidal structure consists of concentric galleries which used to be full of images of Gods during olden times.



Here are more pictures of the Terracota temples at Bishnupur.





The picture below is one of my favorite. Have a look at the detailing of the images and engravings which have gone into the sculpting. Scenes from Indian Mythology have been depicted in a vivid fashion. A special thanks is in order to our friends at the Archaelogical Survey of India (ASI) who have done an incredible job in helping us relive our glorious heritage.



Dalmadal Cannon (as shown below) was used by the Malla Kings of Bishnupur on the Maratha Invaders. It's 3.8 Metres long and has a muzzle of 29.2 cm. Imagine a Wrought Iron ball of 30 cm in diameter coming at you. Deadly !!



The most endearing part of the trip was the visit to a Baluchari Sari making centre. Baluchari is the most well known Bengali Silk Sari and along with its more Illustrious cousin, Swarnachari (made using golden threads) are the two important weaving techniques of Bengal.
The effort which goes into the design and production of a Baluchari can be well understood by the fact that it takes close to 112 hours to produce one Sari.



The final output turns out something like this, simply exquisite.



A nice piece of history to end this post. We Indians love romanticizing things :)

India More Than Just a Country !

A first attempt at a poem by my brother.

from Kashmir to Kanyakumari
from the bungalows of Juhu to the slums in Dharavi
from BMW to a cycle rickshaw
from a billionaire to a commoner
the place for everyone,
India,more than just a country!

from Gandhi to Lalu Prasad
from Jinnah to Nehru
from Tendulkar to Amitabh
we've had them all,
India,more than just a country!

from Tirupathi to Jama Masjid
from Ganges to Godavari
from floods to drought
from the snowy himalayas to the dry Thar Desert
My country has it all,
India,more than just a country!

from partition to kargil
from Kandahar to 26/11
from 2G to tehelka
from hawala to Underworld
The country has experienced and dealt with it all,
India,more than just a country.

Let me bask in her glory
let me experience life as it is nowhere
let me live the real life
God !,thank you for my Country,
India,more than just a country, A way of Life !

From a father to a son with love....

"You have always been an underachiever"

"You enjoy other people's success more than they do"

"I cannot believe you are born to me"

"Don't know why God gives so much talent to people who don't know how to make use of them"

"The people who are your true friends are those who criticize you"

"I have sacrificed my life for you in vain"

"People who are inferior to you have gone ahead and you are sitting and laughing. Shameless fellow"

Stupid MBA

I rarely regret about what I have done in life but MBA at VGSOM is something which will always haunt me. People usually like to go for a better brand in their PG to remove the stains of Engineering but I have done the reverse. After graduating from probably the best Engineering College in the country, I chose to come to VGSOM, IIT Kharagpur. It has been a downhill ride ever since and a few mistakes from me have cost me a lot. No mistake is too small to ruin your life, beautifully suggested by the M Seal Advertisement. Life had been kind to me after my Engineering, by getting me a job with Nokia Siemens Networks, one of the top Telecom Equipment Providers. I chose not to take it up because of my fear of Programming and Software. Even my stint with Oracle did nothing to alleviate those fears. I thought I had done a pretty good job at Oracle, they were even ready to offer me a job but I thought IIT Kharagpur was not something I should let go. People tell me everything happens for your own good but I fail to see any. Maybe the wait is longer and more painful than what I have endured till now but the only thing I can do is to live in hope that one day I would see the shore and that the tides would turn in my favour. Oh God, give me something here that I can look back to and feel proud of else I wouldn't be doing justice to this great Institute.

Below are some random feelings in no specific order which I feel about an MBA.

(1) Don't think about specializations in an MBA. Everyone wants the best job and money is all that matters.

(2) Don't join MBA in a hurry. Think of all possibilities and don't regret later.

(3) Knowing too much about something won't help, know a little about everything and fill the rest with crap. It always works.

(4) Enjoy as much as you can, cause you will regret later.

(5) Helping people once in a while is fine. Be as selfish as you can.

(6) Don't make any new friends, just network. You would only be an option to many people and not a priority. Never trust people on face value.

(7) Don't Study too much for an exam. It doesn't help. Only copying does. Invigilators only come to have coffee and biscuits.

(8) MBA teaches you only one thing, the only people you should care about are your family members and a few close friends. To Hell with everyone else.

(9) Never take any compliment seriously. It is just to use you for their selfish purposes.

(10) You enter a B-School with more knowledge than you leave with. The gap is filled with crap and attitude.

(11) The only thing which will take you places is Dishonesty supported by Lies but portrayed by a straight face. Confidence, Knowledge, Skills, Tools are all just big words to throw in the interview.

(12) You pay high fees to learn how to present crap in a dignified way in order to fool people. You don't learn anything in an MBA, its just a medium to take you to a place where you always wanted to go.

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Life goes on...

The title of the post are lines from the famous Beatles song from the White Album. Beautiful lines which describe life.

Never take decisions which are influenced by others or those taken in haste. A lesson learnt from the past week. You wait so long for something to happen and then that thing happens but you are not prepared for it. In such situations, the role of friends is important. If they can support you in your endeavour, however foolish it may be, then your confidence increases and chances of success rise. Anyways everything happens for your own good.

Have you ever been in a situation where two of your good friends just don't want to be around each other and you are stuck right in the middle? I am passing through one of these phases now, thinking where things are going wrong. It pains you more when you don't even know who is right and who is wrong; A person who you have thought was good has changed his colours. I guess both are working on the same premise; "Don't make someone a priority in your life, when you are just an option for them."

P != NP

The most awaited season is underway at VGSOM. It's one of those seasons which happens a few times in everyone's life and decides the way life flows. It's also the season of backstabbers and surprises. Things are off to a great start and people are getting what they want or atleast what others want. It's surprising in life how you have to struggle the most for something which you want so badly but you would get easily those things which you never really cared. It's one of those inequalities in life, easily verifiable but difficult to prove.

One thing which every placement season has taught me is that knowledge doesn't matter, as long as you can say anything confidently people believe you. Gone are the days when "Knowledge is Power". You just start thinking as to why you study those few years preceding to this moment if all you needed was to open your mouth and say anything. Then there are always those who think that they are perfectly suitable for a particular job but it so happens that the last person on the list takes it away. It's cruel on the person who imagined this situation, this moment, this time and this place long before others even cared to think about it. Nature has decided better plans for him but hasn't bothered telling him about those. It's always the good people who nature frisks away, worried that this bad bad world is not suitable for them and they might fall prey to the flesh eaters.

"Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear"; you would find this written on the mirrors of a car. A play of words would give you "All friends are not as close as they appear", something which holds true in an MBA college. It pains you to see people being betrayed by their own friends and hurts you even more when you can't do anything about it. I don't think GOD makes humans they way he used to anymore. It amazes me at the way someone can use somebody so badly and not feel a thing about it. I guess we can add selfishness to the 7 cardinal sins; after all 8 is a powerful number. Everybody wants everything done and given at their feet. All I can say is "Kalki, where are thou". I only wish everyone can see through other people's motives and make the right choice and I sincerely hope that a dear friend of mine has got this message today. As Tennesse Williams has rightly remarked “Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose”. The second part has assumed unimaginable proportions in my life today as I find it extremely difficult to say who is a friend and who isn't. One thing I have learnt is people who gratify you all the time are the ones you should stay the furthest from. Good people may finish last but they are definitely the ones who are the most satisfied.

Another thing which amazes me the most is the way company chooses the candidates. HR rounds and more HR rounds, thats all you hear. You interview for any role however niche or core it may be, all you need to do or rather see is, where you are in 5,10,15,20,25... years. It's an Arithmetic Progression running out of bounds and no six sigma process can control it. It's only a matter of time before HR's start asking you where you see yourself in your afterlife!!! The Judgement Day would be precided over by an HR who would look at you and say "Is this where you saw yourself 40/50/60 years ago" Ludicrous how a process to hire the best candidate becomes a process of checking vision. As long as things are working, why change it and therefore the vision process continues.

I am delighted to be back blogging although the circumstances could have been better. I hope this season brings me more joys and takes everyone to his rightful destination. "Sarvejana Sukhino Bhavantu"