Life or something like that !!

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truth. It is a great truth because once we know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. -- M. Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled.  There are only so much one can influence when it comes to things that affects one's life and its future course of action. Some one rightly said that there is future of desire and then there is future of fate. To some extent life is sum of the choices one makes, but even then not every thing can be planned and turned out to be as much as planned. But one thing among all this, that is very important is ability and strength to accept the current situation. Sure plan ahead and take steps to make planning a reality but then be aware that things may not turn out the way you have planned. Have strength to accept the outcome. Be happy if it turns out t...

" Amit? " called out professor one, P1. " That's me " I replied. " Lets go ". And I followed P1 to the interview room, where another professor, P2, was going through my profile file. After exchanging pleasantries P1 asked about my job profile and responsibilities. I told them that I take care of all aspect of project management. P1 - "How would you explain project management to a lay man?" I started to explain taking example of going to a movie and building a building. While doing so I must have used couple of project management jargon. P2 interrupted and asked if I am a PMP? I answered in affirmative. He went on to ask couple of questions from project management , like that of Gantt chart, PERT etc.. He then asked me to draw a network diagram. I managed to answer them satisfactorily. P2 then said he was done and asked if P1 had any question. P1 - "In your essays you have mentioned that you read books. Which book have you read rec...

We? Nah. In face we are the transition generation. As teenagers we stood in the queues to pay electricity bill, to get cash from the bank, to get reservation in the train, to buy ticket for movie and what not. By the way in those days not many houses used to have a telephone connection. At the turn of new century things changed drastically for us. As adults, with the advents of credit cards and internet, we hardly needed to stand in queues for things, especially things mentioned as above. Along with these there have been influx of quite a many private service providers for things affecting our daily lives. You just give a call to customer care and someone comes down to collect cheque for the payment. Businesses now have facility to remind consumer of their due payments or car servicing and things like that.  So far so good. We are now used to fast and efficient services and rightly so. But looks like things need further improvement if I go by my experience today. With financi...

Sometimes you wanna run away, But you never know what might be coming round your way, 'coz on a day like today, the whole world could change.... There are dreams. And then there are childhood (teenage?) dreams. I have been pretty good at studies and like many other capable students in India I wanted to be the part of selected few at Indian Institute of Technology for my graduation. By the time I reached into class 11th, my goals were clear. First, get into IIT and then go for management studies from Indian Institute of Management. In India for an intelligent science student the combination of IIT-IIM education is zenith of academic qualification. And that became my dream. Slogging 10-12 hours daily during 11th & 12th and then for another year after that, I could not made it to IIT and settled for second best in line for technical education in India, REC. At that point of time there is only so much one can do and instead of further (especially in Bihar and UP guys keep tryin...

February-March is the time when almost all salaried person makes last minute hurry to plan for tax savings. Various investment options are explored and invested in, so one can have tax saving. So far so good. " Hey, do you know some travel agent? And medical shop? " Another usual conversation around this time. Remember, usually this is the time when you have to claim leave travel allowance and medical allowance. Which is reimbursed on actuals. Well, how many of us need to utilise entire amount of medical allowance and lta? Not many. But hey, both are part of my salary, my hard earned salary. Why should I give tax to govt. on these. So, I'll find a travel agent and medical shop , who can give me bills for the entire amount which I am entitled to in return to a few percentage of the amount. That way I retain the tax money which was in fact suppose to go to the govt. Its my money after all. But when Mr. A. Raja and Mr. Suresh Kalmadi does the same, then it is corruption !!...

Year was 2001-02 and time was not really good for we guys in the final year of engineering. Recession had hit the usual buoyant mood in the campus. There were few and far between companies coming for the campus recruitment. One such company was X, which came calling for us. They conducted a written test, mostly on business awareness, as part of their recruitment process. Those days I used to regularly follow a business magazine, BW,  and this magazine used to have a regular quiz on business awareness. After the written test of X, I was  totally confident of getting through to next round as this test had almost all the question referred from the magazine BW. But to my utter surprise I was not called for the interview, the next round. A test which was to test you on business awareness and where you have answered almost all the questions correctly was not enough to get you the interview call. I was shocked. But that was it. Later I mailed the guy, who came to our college...

It was a summer evening when my little bro came home after his play hours. And along he brought a little , bruised and almost dying , sparrow. He had found it near his play ground and out of child like curiosity he got it home to see if we can save , at least try to save, its life. There wasn't much chances of survival of the sparrow, which had not even properly grown wings and looked like attacked by some animal, but being children for us nothing was not possible unless tried. So we started operation save the sparrow. We put dettol on the bruises and applied ointments. With cotton we poured drops of milk to its mouth. Which the sparrow seemed to be taking in. Then we let it rest. We had a discarded mechanical mouse catcher , which was made as its nest. The sparrow started responding to the care taken by us and gradually its bruises started healing. In an week or so it had fully recovered and in the process all of my family members developed a liking, an attachment towards it. ...

jo chaahega mil jaayega Tere bhi din aayenge chhote, achcha khaasa hil jaanyeg a And so goes lyrics of one popular Hindi number, which Ganja and I used to sing along around 8 years back. Year was late 2001 and we were in final year of engineering at REC Warangal. IT slump of 2001-02 saw fewer and fewer companies visiting us for campus recruitment and most of my batch mate, including me, were left high and dry. Cut to 2009, things have changed for all of us, settling in life now. Christmas holiday of this year resulted in a long weekend and gave me an opportunity to have a short trip to my alma-matter, now NIT Warangal. Early morning on Christmas day I, along with my wife and a close friend, started for Warangal. Once we reached there and were inside the campus I was like wow, all old memories of college days became live in front of my eyes. I felt like I am reading stories from an old book. College was being given a face lift after becoming NIT 7 years back, but the underlying essen...

The other day I was at the eye clinic , waiting for my turn to see the doctor. There was this old lady sitting beside me and we striked converstaion. She asked where am I from? Ummmm , lets see. I was born in Gaya , brought up in Motihari (Both in Bihar). Then in Narsinghragh , a remote village in south Jharkhand. Then next 8 years I was in Jamshedpur , where currently my parents are settled. Then I moved out to Warangal, in Andhra Pradesh , for my graduation. After which I have been working in Hyderabad close to 8 years now. So where do I belong to? Bihar . where I was born. Or Jharakhand , where I was brought up. Or Andhra Pradesh , where I studied and then currently working? Am I a Jamshedpurian , where my parents are settled now and where I frequently visit. Or am I a Hyderabadi , where I stay to earn my living? Or am I an Indian?

Who is the Murphy anyway? Who ever he is, he makes his presence felt when you are least likely expecting him. Sometime he acts as spanner in the wheel and other just a deflated tyre. But for sure you , me and others are affected by him day-in , day-out. Him affecting us can be minimized but the thought of altogether removing his presence would be a foolhardy one. However we can be better prepared to tackle anything and everything which may, potentially, go wrong. By paying attention to detail . Even before you start executing, a well thought out plan should be in place. This is the " well thought out " part of the planning I am stressing at. Proper care should be taken in initial planning so as to capture all necessary activities needed to complete the task. While listing down activities you would know what could possibly go wrong while executing the task. And that's where you need to have your contingency management in place. Which can be arrived at by "what i...

When was the last time you saw a movie almost entirely shoot on sets? And foreign locations for songs? That is very 80s man. Add to that childish situational comedy and sub standard acting by the male protagonist. You have Gazab Kahani of Ajab Prem. How many Indian Christian you know who speaks Hindi with forced English accent, the female protagonist and her family does so in the movie.And oh, add to that Atif Asalam’s voice for Ranbir Kapoor.A full two and half hours of atyachar. Not even a month back RK gave appreciable performance in Wake Up Sid and in APGK he was almost pathetic. A director’s actor?

No, I can’t. And wait a minute there is no language as Bihari. It is the way we speak Hindi out there sounds like altogether different language, aka Bihari or perhaps a new dialect. Well it is not a dialect either. It is Hindi with regional flavor and some accent to it. You find many dialects of Hindi being spoken in Bihar, one such dialect Magahi (Magahi paan, beetle, is famous all over India) is what my folks speak. And I don’t know Magahi as well. In fact hardly many in my generation speak Magahi. That is sad. Essentially languages are very integral part of any culture and with most of us confining ourselves to English lately its matter of merely a decade when not many languages would be around. In face I read somewhere that every year 400 languages are getting extinct every year (?). Can something be done about it?

So TED was here, here in India for three days. TED talks going for three whole days in Mysore. But I could not attend those sessions. Reason: money honey!! It was too costly for me to attend. Well never mind, there is always next time. But there is addition to the To Do list and someday I don’t only want to be in the audience at one of those TED sessions but I want to speak at one. Hopefully on the topic related to technology and design.

Not really -- they have to motivate themselves. You can't motivate people anymore than you can empower them. Employees have to motivate and empower themselves.I can motivate only myself. If I have to motivate my people to deliver result then perhaps they are in wrong job. Having said that, an environment, however, can be set up where they best motivate and empower themselves. The key is knowing how to set up the environment for your people. Essentially you can be enablers for others to be motivated[self]. I am exploring the ways to do so for my team. Obviously organizational level parameters like money, career growth and skill development , recognition etc are already in place. What I am looking for is team level local enablers.

We had recently joined the college and were under the process of “getting introduced to seniors”. For R Basu, my classmate who was from West Bengal, the usual question asked was if he and Jyoti Basu, the then chief minister of West Bengal, were related in some way? Obviously that was not the case. And that’s what R Basu used to tell. But you know seniors; they were never giving up on the question. Fed up one day R Basu said yes there was a very strange relationship between him and Jyoti Basu. Strange relationship? As in? He replied “ We are strangers!!”

That's about the red Panda you find in the Himalayan mountains. And sure enough they don't go around shooting as the title suggests. Its about red Panda's food habit and I intend to say that they eats shoots (mostly bamboo) and tree leaves. An unintended comma distorts whole intended meaning of the sentence. Which could have been avoided had attention to detail been paid. Paying attention to detail does help. Be it professional front or personal life. You put clothes in the washing machine , put required detergent , let in the water and switch on the machine. But did you put the water outlet at proper place? Missing to pay attention to detail on the process of getting your cloths clean using washing machine can flood your entire house. I did that twice :-O. Shipping application/delivering product/concluding project on the deadline promised looks to be a wishful thinking. But I know this is very much possible had attention to detail is paid at various stages of developme...

Watch Kenya sing for India :)

....to attend this meeting!! Well one of the most common trait of being Indian in India is not being punctual (Incidentally same Indian when in other countries on business becomes very punctual, huh!!). We, at office, have this daily status update meeting. And sure enough apart from usual issues like not sticking to the agenda of the meeting, late start and hence later finish of the meeting was norm . We tried many things (like some games, yes games!! and monetary fines etc.) but in vain. Then some time back we hit upon this idea of a ball with " I am too busy too attend this meeting" written on it. And anybody coming late will be made to hold this ball for entire duration of the meeting. And guess what? It worked. Now within the grace period of two minutes everybody is in :). Not a nice way to make respect time but effective nevertheless!!

A candlelight vigil , as described by Wikipedia, is an outdoor assembly of people carrying candles, held after sunlight. And this is in vogue . There was this unfortunate terror attack in Mumbai and we all saw public outcry and their angst against political establishment. Every citizen of this country started wanting to do something for his country. But what can an individual do? Oh wait; there is this novel idea of a candlelight vigil. A symbolic solidarity for victims - of Mumbai terror attack or Jessica Lal . So we lit a candle, join people in-mass and that’s it. Our part is done. We feel content. At least we joined the peace march. We did our bit. Then we, The people of India , go to hibernation till something else happens. All this is good. At least we still have some feelings left of our country and countrymen. But this is not it. We need to go beyond just lighting a candle. Otherwise that is just hypocrisy. Or what else you say when you see people not bothering to even stop whe...

In paying tribute to those who sacrificed their lives in fighting the Mumbai terror. We all deeply mourn the loss their families we as nation have suffered. This is heartening though to know there are still few who don't care for their lives even when they are at the line of fire when they are doing their duty. The India salutes you all. May your soul rest in peace. Amen!!