Views from my world

The fight

2012-02-06T16:33:00.001+05:30

It was a fight right from the beginning of my life;
The fight to win;
The fight to prevent from being mooed and booed down;
The fight to get myself being heard in the crowd;
The fight to stand out in the crowd and prove my identity.

The fight continues from the morning till night.
The fight is against people I know;
The fight is against the people I do not know;
The fight is for the people against whom I fight;
The fight is to stand beside what I feel is correct;
The fight is to stand by the cause I feel is true;
The fight is for the belief that I strongly believe in
Despite being called stubborn and arrogant,
Despite getting isolated...desolated and deserted....

The fight sometimes gets ugly
The fight sometimes leaves me badly bruised inside
The fight leaves a scar
The fight brings out the anger, the restlessness from within
The fight takes time out of my precious life
.
I fight with others;
I fight with myself.

The fight with the world inside;
The fight is between morality and temptation;
The fight is between the struggle and short-cut to success;
The fight is between being true to my conscious and giving it a slip;
The fight is between the GOD and evil inside.

I fight for existence
I fight to breathe, to drink, to eat, to love....
To be loved.
I seem to fight every single moment of my life.

Whereas, all I wanted is some peace.

Goodbye 2011

2011-12-16T17:27:00.000+05:30

Anything which has a beginning also has an end. This is an universal law. Creation culminates to destruction and destruction paves way for new creation. The trees shed their leaves in winter only to get the fresh green young leaves in the following spring. A generation dies, passing the baton to fresh young legs. The year that begins on 1st January, ends on 31st December.

This year is almost drawing to an end. Like all previous years, this year has its own share of ups and downs, good and bad things. People celebrate the new year, but I feel more sad of the year that is leaving us.

I don't know whether it is the sadist in me. Its like I had a guest in my house for a year...and today its time for her to leave. She had been with me through thick and thin - my every single moment - 365 days,31536000 seconds - of joy and sorrow! Even if nobody else was around, she was. She knows the reason for every drop of my tear, she knows when I wept silently, she knows when I needed the hug, but could not find anybody around, she knows when I was very elated, but didn't want to share that with anybody, lest the fragrance be lost in the crowd. She was with me through all my emotions. In this one year she has known me like no one else has. Today, she is leaving me forever. Today is 31st Dec. When people are celebrating and partying on the occasion of the arrival of the new guest, I feel sad to part away with my old friend. I look back at the year that has just passed by, whose last rays of the sun has just faded away. Another year in my life. Sadly, I can only think of the bitter moments. And perhaps that has something to do with the setting sun...it always reminds me of the bitter moments and bitter days. The sun, which has set for the last time in 2011 a few hours back. Now everybody is waiting with abated breath for the arrival of the new year. But to me, there is apprehension. I don't know what the New Year has in store for me -- good, bad, ugly. I don't know how the new guest will treat me. When I was a small boy for days I followed the same routine - wake up at 7:00AM, reach school by 8:30, come back at 3:30, play cricket or badminton, then study, then dinner with grandparents, then good night. This was the routine for years, occasionally interrupted by examination, vacation...but they also came at a periodic interval. Life was set and it seemed such routine would last till eternity. That life might have been monotonous, but to some extent certain. But not now, anymore. Now, in a year so many things can change,people can change,relationships can change,dreams can change; life can change.And not all for the better.

And some things don't change. Some things universal facts about hunger, poverty, torture....For some 31st December is just another day in their life. For them everyday is a struggle for existence. Farmers committing suicides, people dying because of cold, children dying of hunger....all these thoughts dampen my spirit of arrival of new year. The loner in me refuses to mingle with the celebration outside. I look out of the window. The dazzling fireworks does not thrill me. The cheer and joy of the guys on bike on the street seems meaningless to me. Will things really change? Can a resolution change one's life? Or is it just another day and we humans have tried to add colour and flavour and found a mean to celebrate an occassion when most parts of the world are shivering in cold and there are people dying in cold?

I take new year as an excuse to remind my friends, even if that is once a year, that I did not forget them. I take new year as an excuse to meet up with old friends and try to get out of my shell. I do not expect anything new from the new year. My lonely shadow will be there with me all the years; my deep-embedded pain will not wither; my tears will not dry. There may be something good for me in the coming days; there may be something not-so-good in the coming days. But they may just be isolate incidents that fall on that year; they have nothing to do with the year, as such.
My thoughts were interrupted by the beep from my phone. From 11:30 itself friends got busy sending the new year wishes. I was ignoring them. Didnt feel the impetus to sms back. But then a phone call from another friend compelled me to pick it up. The loner in me was holding me back. But I had to wear the social mask and respond to the call.

The tug-of-war between the loner inside and the social animal in me will continue for years.

(This article was written on the New Year Eve)

Moments and Relationships

2011-10-30T14:57:00.001+05:30

I sometimes wonder what is it that makes relationships make or break. True, that the initial part of most of the relationships start from the social formality, rule, compulsion...whatever you may choose to call. But surely a relationship can't last if it were only for the social obligations. When we are born and then once we start to know things, we are told that this is our father and this is our mother, this is our uncle, this is our aunt and these are our grandparents and so on. But had they not behaved like father, mother, uncle, aunt, grandparents etc. there would not have been any lasting bonding. And ,sooner or later, both the relationships start to wither away.

Beyond relationship there is something that we tend to overlook. And that is "moments". Precious little moments. Moments that we spend with those relationships. When my daughter was born, we were socially bonded as father-daughter. Two years down the line, we are not only socially bond, but also emotionally bond with each other. And that is because of the precious little moments that we spend with each other everyday. I tried to play the role of a good father and she plays the role of an adorable daughter to perfection.

However hard we try to ignore the fact and look the other way, we all have these few years to live and enjoy these moments. And in these few years we want to squeeze in as many happy moments as possible. Relationships , perhaps, provide us the opportunity. When my grandmother died, I felt very sad. Why? From two years before her death she became an Alzheimer patient - she could not recognise me. So, the last two years, she lived in our house like an old lady, who did not recognise me - but this was a special old lady as there are so many wonderful moments that I spent with her.Whenever I met her (even in those last two years of her life), I was reminded about those moments. The day she died I was sad as I will not be able to see her again and with her was buried tons of beautiful moments.

Apart from the good ones, there are bad or bitter moments in life too...in fact, I feel, we have more bitter moments than the happy ones. Bad moments leave scars and take time to heal. And that's perhaps why we tend to enjoy the good moments to the fullest and lap it as much as we can. Who knows when it will end? Bad moments are not pleasant. When in a relationship the count of bad moments far exceed the count of good moments, we decide to call it a day. By snapping the relationships, we are just trying to get reduce the bad moments in our short lives. Nobody wants to cry, be insulted and be humiliated. We make new relationships in the hope of adding beautiful moments to our life...sometimes we are right, sometimes we are simply disillusioned. We all celebrate the concept of love because that, supposedly, brings with it more good moments than bad ones.

Ultimately all these relationships and these moments will culminate into the inevitable death. Life is nothing but a collection of zillions of moments...and I keep reminding me of it. Nothing is permanent - neither us, nor the moments nor the relationships. Some relationships have pre-mature deaths, some relationships die when we die. Moments, like us, come with an expiry date on its own.
Sometimes good relationships pave way for good moments; sometimes good moments pave way for good relationships.

Or all these relationships and moments of tears or laughter all might just be maya, as the Buddhists would like to call.

Five Days in the Paradise called Kashmir

2011-09-08T17:05:00.000+05:30

31st August, 2011. Wednesday.

6:45 AM, Bangalore International Airport.

I am in the Bangalore International Airport with wife and my two-year old daughter. My daughter is playing around. We woke up at 4 AM in the morning and yet there is no sign of tiredness in her eyes. In a few minutes from now we will catch the flight to Delhi and then from there to Srinagar, Kashmir after a brief halt. By 2:00 PM we hope to be in Kashmir. That is about seven hours from now we should be in the supposedly "Paradise on Earth". There has been reports of some unrest in certain areas of Kashmir.Even a couple of days back there were reports of some unknown mass graves unearthed there. I hope they don't come in the way of our visit.

1:20 PM, Flight from Delhi to Srinagar

We are about to land in Srinagar within half an hour. From the flight I can see the mountains, dotted with pine trees and occasionally silver lines, which might be the rivers. The seat belt sign is on. We are all excited. My daughter has been growing unrest in the last few minutes. This long journey is boring for us, it must be even more boring for her. But now its a matter of minutes that we touch-down.Our agenda for today is the Shikara ride in the famous Dal Lake for a couple of hours.

7:55 PM, Hotel Room, Srinagar.

Today is Eid. And I did not know that. I thought it was tomorrow. So, when we landed, the parking lot of the airport was almost empty. The hotel was supposed to send us private car to pick up to the hotel. There were a few other passengers - each should have got a separate car. But due to paucity of cars, we had to share the cars - two families in each car. They were SUVs. So, it was not a problem. On the way we found the roads almost empty;shops were closed. My wife sighted a few police and CRF personnel on the roads. She was wondering whether everything was fine and whether it is any curfew. As it turned out, it was nothing like that. The lunch on the day of Eid is the most auspicious time as the family has lunch together. In the almost deserted roads, our SUV zoomed to our hotel. We reached hotel at 3 PM. Damn hungry, we ordered some lunch. Served hot, it tasted awesome. Then we went for the Shikara (boat) ride in the Dal Lake. Our hotel is located on the backwaters of the Dal Lake. So, we jumped into the Shikara from the backward of our homely hotel. Shikaras are very comfortable, with sofas and cushions. I stared clicking the photos of the Himalayan beauty. It is truely marvellous. I have no words to describe. The boatman said how this lake gets frozen during the winter and sometimes even doubles up as a good cricket ground! He slowly drove to the Nehru Park located on a side of the Dal Lake. My daughter played around for some time there...The sun was setting behind the gigantic mountain range. The temperature started dropping by a few degrees. We took the ride back through some floating markets. While coming we saw a floating Post Office in the Dal Lake. The Dal Lake truly is the jewel in the Srinagar crown. My daughter was feeling sleepy. She was awake from 4 AM with the exception of a nap during the flight. As soon as we returned to our cosy hotel room, she fell asleep. Before coming I found in the net that that there are amazing dishes available in Srinagar. The hotel will serve us buffet dinner. Nonetheless, I wanted to try some typical Kashmiri dishes from the famous resturants. Now I am going out to bring them.

11:10 PM, Hotel Room, Srinagar.

Had awesome Mutton Rogan Josh and Mutton Sheekh Kabab! I was outside till 9:15 PM. No problem in the city. Very peaceful. I did not, for once, feel unsecured. The people are very friendly and very warm. Its sad outside people are afraid to come to the place. It was difficult to wake my daughter and give her the dinner. She was too tired. Somehow, we managed to feed her. She is again sleeping. Tomorrow we have to wake up by 7:30 AM as we have to leave for Pahalgam at 9:00 AM. It is about 100 km from Srinagar. The first day was a good one. Lets see how it goes tomorrow.

1st September, 2011. Thursday

3:05 PM, Resturant, Pahalgam.

Man has made some things which man admires. For example, the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, the City of Las Vagus, the Roman Amphitheater etc. etc. And then there are certain things that the Almighty has created for man. And it is the latter things that have blown men away for centuries. They have stood the test of time.

We have just ordered some lunch at a restaurant in Pahalgam. My wife is busy making my daughter eat something - showing her the horses and the birds outside. While I wait for the food to be served, I thought of penning down our experience since morning. We had a good sleep yesterday after the long day. I set the clock alarm to 6:15 AM. For the Pahalgam trip we were given a off-white Cheverolet Trevor. The driver is called Gulam Nabi. Aged, around fifty. On the way, he explained how the place had been badly hit by the unrest that continued for more than for about two decades - since 1989. He talked about the plight since then. Soon after we left Srinagar, the road that took us to Pahalgam had another companion with it - the Pahalgam river that went upto the city of Pahalgam. Small brooks emerging from the distant green mountain range joins the wider river. At one place we parked our car by the river side. Cold clear water. Small stones to big boulders are strewn here and there randomly. Time seems to stand still.On the way we found nomads with horses and mules; the animals makes the sweet jingling sound as they walked stealthily on one side of the road.It was cloudy then, it is still cloudy now. The raindrops have started hitting the restaurant window pane now.

We reached Pahalgam at around 12:30 PM. The car left us at a place from where we had to take a horse ride to cover the local sight seeings. Stablemen with long gowns approached us for the horse ride. At first we hesitated to take the ride as we were unsure about the ride. It was drizzling and so the question was "Are we ready to take the 2 hour horse ride in the drizzle?" At last, we decided to go ahead. It was the first time we were riding a horse. A few years back I rode a camel in Rajasthan. When I was small a circus group came to our town. Then I rode on an elephant. But horse - this is the first time. It was a steep landscape with no proper defined road. There was one stableman for the two horses. I was afraid how he will manage two horses. He tried to pacify me saying that the horses know the way and gave me a brief demo of the same. Not having much of a choice, we decided to continue with the ride with butterflies in our stomach. To make matters worse, my daughter started crying. Slowly she became quite and we got adjusted to the ride. We went to some valleys. They are too beautiful to be described. What is there in these mountain ranges, rivers, valleys, sky that makes men for centuries spell-bound, I don't know. Is it that we are part of Nature and so, when we see her at her best we cannot but admire her? Or is it that , because of our ancestral roots, we are more comfortable in the vicinity of nature and hence mountains and seas appeal to us? We covered valleys like Baisaran Valley, Kanomarg valley. Our horses crossed a couple of mountain brooks. We saw a gorgeous waterfall. It was raining, the ground was muddy and soft. My daughter was with my wife. Their horse slipped twice, but the stableman was able to control it and nothing happened. I don't know is it sheer frustration or the beauty around that my daughter started singing in the last 10-15 minutes of the horse journey.The horse ride was worth taking. Without it we would have missed something really beautiful that Nature had for us. I saw some of the greatest creations by the Almighty, I am sure. It reaffirmed the lesson of my life - without efforts and hardships we can't get the good things in life.The food must be ready by now. Let me go and check it...I am so hungry after the rigorous horse ride and its past 3 PM! The 25-km rigorous horse ride must be equivalent to a good two-hour gym give or take a few minutes.

11:25 PM. Hotel Room, Pahalgam.

On the way from Pahalgam we came across rows of apple trees lined on the both sides of the road for miles. We bought apples - plucked from the gardens and as fresh as it can get. It reminded me of the apple tree in Cranfield University and I plucked a few there as well on my first week in the University. On the way we bought Saffron and a few packets of dry fruits. Another awesome dinner (Mutton Dhania) followed by a lonely walk beside the Dal Lake. Tomorrow is to Gulmarg. Its closer than Pahalgam - about 50 km from here, but we tend to cover the Mughal Gardens in Srinagar in the evening. So, we have to start from the hotel same time. Heard there are horse ride there as well. Legs are a bit paining, but mind is too overwhelmed at the sights of the Nature...so the agony of the legs can be conveniently ignored. Two days gone. Three more to go.

2nd September, 2011. Friday.

12:40 PM, Gulmarg.

Today is sunny. And that made the Himalayas completely different from what it was yesterday. It was a bright sunny day. It was the same driver.

We came via a place called Ananth Nag. And he had interesting story to share regarding that area. He said it was also known as Islamabad, synonymous with the capital of Pakistan. When unrest was at its peak if any person replied to the military forces that they were going to "Islamabad", they were beaten - they had to say Ananth Nag.The life of the Kashmiris bring tears to my eyes. They were living like hell in a paradise! They fled away from this beautiful place.They went to other parts of India to sell the famous Kashmiri shawls and other woolen garments.

Our driver said he also did the same about 20 years back. He went to Calcutta to sell shawals for two years. He said there was a good friend of his called "Banerjee", who used to run a Bengali hotel here. When condition became tensed here, the hotel was shut down and Banerjee returned back, perhaps to Bengal. When he went to Bengal to sell shawls, he searched for him. But in the vast city, he could not find him as he did not know any of his whereabouts. A couple of years back the hotel re-opened, but under a different management. Banerjee has not come back since then - to run the hotel or otherwise. And Gulam Nabi does not think he'll come back again. "He must have found something better now"

While they were away trying to earn bread and butter for their family in places like Delhi, Calcutta and Bangalore, their heart and mind were in Kashmir. They were always praying for the safety and well-being of their family members. I remember, as a child, I saw young Kashmiri lads with big bags on their back selling shawls. At that time we could little imagine what drove them away from their homeland and force them to become "shawlwallas", as they we commonly called and what was going inside them. Tough times!! Somewhere the lives of the Kashmris and the beauty of Kashmir seems so much in contrast to each other - they seem to be poles apart. While one is about the unrest, the other is about serenity; while one talks of fear, the other talks about peace.
As predicted, there was the horse ride. The driver brought us to the place where the stablemen were ready with their horses.Taking the help of a guide and a stableman we rode upto the Gondola. The we climbed on top via the Gondola.My daughter seems to have enjoyed the ride. It is cold up here. In winter this place is filled with snow and is ideal for Skiing. Snowfall here is 7-8 feet! We saw some huts on the way up. The guide said these people relocate during the snow and return once they melt. Now we have the greenery to enjoy. My daughter is playing in the cold spring water. I tasted it some time back...its tasty! We will stay here for a few more minutes. It has suddenly become cloudy. We can see the clouds shrouding the mountain tops. There was Phase Two Gondola ride from here to even higher up. But we were advised by the guide not to take the ride.One, there is nothing much to see from there. The view from there is much like what it is from here. Two, there is less oxygen and the child might find it difficult there.
Let me walk around here for a few more minutes, before I get down.

4:30 PM, On the way from Gulmarg to Srinagar.

The car is speeding through sleepy mountain ranges. In about an hour we will reach Srinagar. My wife and daughter are tired. They have dozed off to sleep in the car. Man has not created words that can describe the outside scene. The town of Gulmarg seemed like taken out of some fairyland. It has a touch of mystery. There are cottages, canopy and clouds. And the horses grazing in the distant lush green valleys. Slowly and stealthily our horses found their way through them. We passed through a Golf Course, a children park and a temple. At one place my daughter was swinging round a pole, when one professional photographer approached us whether he can take her pictures. We did not have any problem. My daughter also seemed to have enjoyed the photo session.

The stableman was a young lad. During the journey, he said he was planning to do BEd and then get into a teaching profession. The teachers get decently paid here. He is a stableman now to earn money for his family and his future studies. The guide showed us a big half-built old building. He said this was supposed to be a hotel of a famous hotelier in India. But when unrest began they left the place, never to return again.He said during unrest no tourist came, while 90% of the people depend on tourism for their livelihood. My obvious concern was, how they survived in those years. He said, they had a real tough time. Some left the state, some started farming, some lent money from loan sharks and got into the vicious debt trap. He said that about two lacs kashmiri civilians died during the 1999 Kargil war with Pakistan. Every moment I had the mixed feeling. On one side is this paradise, on the other the plight stories of each and every kashmiri. Their eyes have seen and their hearts have felt a lot more pain than we can possibly imagine. Ten - fifteen or may be even more years of their life have been in darkness. Some have lived through the darkness, some may not have.

We had lunch and then on our way back. Now we plan to go to the Mughal Gardens in Srinagar. We don't have much time. Tomorrow, Saturday, is Sonamarg and then Sunday we take the return flight. When I was small I had heard that the total Kashmir tour takes at least 15 days.Train from Calcutta to Jammu (railway station nearest to Srinagar) takes about 48 hours. Then there is about 500 km by road, which is another whole day. Then some rest. Some casual sight seeings. And then back. Total 15 days. In today's fast-paced world, 5 days is what we have. Both me and my wife cannot get any further leaves from office. But that's fine. When I was planning the trip, I was sure about one thing. I did not want to drag this journey to the extent that we tell, "Enough! We should now return home!" I wanted to finish it in at a time when we still crave for more. I did not want it to stretch endlessly. The car has entered in the city of Srinagar. We will reach the Mughal Gardens any time. As the name suggests, they were built by the Mughal Emperors. There are three such garden - Nishat Bagh, Shalimar Garden and Gardens of Chashma Shahi.

11:35 PM, Hotel Room,Srinagar

The Mughal gardens were very beautiful. The Mughals would have made them centuries back, but kudos to the gardeners and the administration who maintained the gardens. Very clean and very well decorated. There were springs in the gardens. The driver said that the source of the spring is unknown. Water flows like that throughout the year. It is "Qudrat ka karishma" (Grace of the Almighty) that even when the whole of Srinagar is under snow, the spring water never freezes!

From the Nishant garden we saw the sun hid behind the clouds, calling it a day.The sky was filled with birds returning to their nest. Another awesome dinner. Its time to go to bed. Tomorrow Sonamarg, about a 100 km from here. I have set the alarm to 6:15 AM. There we will see glaciers. There is also the horse ride. Slowly getting used to the rides. I have a bit of back pain, but that was obvious, considering the horse ride in the rough terrain. But I'm sure this is something I will miss when I leave this place.

Bangalore and this place may be separated by a few thousand kilometers, but otherwise, they are poles apart. The guide, the stableman, the cook in the resturant, the driver, the waiters lived the simple lives that you find in many parts of India. Their lives revolved around tourism, around the fear that engulfed Kashmir; they talked about about the sensitive areas like Lal Chowk in Srinagar, about Pakistan and the India-Pakistan border, about the police and military, about shattered homes and small dreams, about snow, about horses, and course of the bitter old days and memories associated with it. Their life is so different from that of mine. My life is about EMIs, about malls, about office, about recession, about inflation, about finding play homes and schools for daughter, about investment, about the growing traffic and land prices in Bangalore, about fighting corruption, about Facebook and Google....etc etc. I shall perhaps never ever meet them again in life. Slowly I will forget their faces, too, if I have not taken pictures of them. But they will remain with me in the form of their stories...heart-touching melancholy tales of simple people, who just wanted very simple things in life, like to live in peace, to live without fear. Is it too much to ask for?

3rd September, 2011. Saturday.

4:40 PM, On the way to Srinagar from Sonamarg.

Good that this was the last of the day-long trips that was lined up for us. Things can't get better and more rigorous than this. Sometimes you seem to find the last picture in your album or the last item in your shopping list and do not want to proceed further. Our trip to Sonamarg was something like this. I am on my way to Srinagar. As our car finds finds it way through the mountains, simmering in the golden sun rays, I try to put down on paper today's events.Each day we took the car at around 9:00 AM and each day the road and the scene was different. It may sound very strange. Because, after all, it is the same Himalayan mountain range and how can it change between only a hundred kilometer? Well, it did. While the way to Pahalgam was very scenic and beautifully crafted, the way to Gulmarg was through rows of Walnut trees followed by a steep climb. Today the road to Sonamarg was raw beauty - the uncensored version, if I may call it. With basic things like water in the form of river, rocks in the form of boulders and mountains, flora in the form of big and small, tall and short tress, topped with the golden sun rays piercing through the mountain ranges sheer magic can be weaved and that is exactly what the road to Sonamarg had for us. Sonamarg is higher in altitude and we could feel the chillness of the atmosphere on the way. Every time the car took a bend in the spiraling mountain roads, another facet of the paradise seems to have been revealed. The sheer change in the angle of the sun's rays completely changes the environment. You have to see it to believe it. On the way the driver, Gulam Nabi, said that this roads leads to Leh, about 500 km from Srinanagar, another place where you get nothing but raw beauty at its best.

We reached Sonamarg at around 12 noon. Horse ride again. My daughter has started enjoying the ride now. As usual, steep climb and then some plains where boulders seems to have been carelessly scattered around and brooks founds their course through them. There were a couple of small wooden bridges built across the brooks. There were herds of sheep grazing the green mountain slopes. Shepherds kept a good vigil over them. Mesmerizing! On the way we could see the glaciers on the mountain tops - quite high above. We knew in a matter of time we will be there. But how do we go on top...they are so steep? We got the answers soon. And it was something I feared! The horse started climbing on those steep mountains amidst stones and boulders, no sign of grass. It was a bit terrifying. If the horse slips we will fall over the hard stones and roll down a few metres below. And thats not a good news. In our previous, rides if we had fallen we would have rolled over muddy plains or green valleys. Half way up, the stableman let us know that this is the last point the horses can climb to. The rest is so rough that there is a chance that they might slip and fall. The solution? Walk on foot..!! It was not an easy thing to trek up for several meters carrying my daughter. My wife did most of the hard work. Once we reached there, the world seemed different. It was glacier in the form of cave. Water trickling down the walls of the glacier, that stood there for centuries. Some enthusiastic tourists wanted to go inside the cave, but were strictly warned by the local guys. Last year a chunk fell from the roof of the glaciers and nine people were trapped to death.

The view from top was different this time. The mountains around were more rocky with snow-capped, rather glacier-capped. From the top we could see horses way below near the tent, grazing the grass.After spending a few minutes we climbed down. We had thought that climbing down would have been easier. But we were wrong as chances of slipping down was more. Then back to the horse. While returning my daughter fell asleep on the horseback. I dont know how one can sleep that way when the roads are so bumpy and you are always been shaken. The only time when one can sleep on horseback is when you are too tired. Thats what my daughter was, I guess. It was too much for her tiny body. We thought of getting near the river bank. But did not. One, my daughter was asleep. Two, it was already around 3 PM and we all did not have lunch. Three, it suddenly started drizzling. The horses started walking briskly and that was quite an adventure for new horse-riders like us. It was fun, though. Once we were near the car parking lot, the rain had stopped and the sun appeared. They say here "Weather in Sonamarg and fashion in Mumbai changes in minutes!"

We are now inside the car and are on our way back. Just a few minutes back I saw the roads were wet, testimony to the fact that it had been raining there. But now, as I look out of the window, I see a clear sky , and soft sun rays on the turbulent stream. Evening shadows have already been cast in some areas in the distant mountain. Now we are heading straight home. On the way we will buy some more dry fruits and Kashmiri spices, a "Khan suit" for me, typical dress for the Kashmiris, some fashion jewelleries and dress for my wife, something for my daughter....lots of expenses ahead....

12:00 midnight, Hotel Room, Srinagar.

We did all the shopping. When we passed the Dal Lake, the sun was setting. Another sunset, some more memorable moments that I was able to capture.Since childhood I am obsessed with sunrise and sunset wherever we go. And I must tell, I have not seen any two sunsets or sunrise the same. Its amazing!

We returned to our hotel room at around 8 PM. We thanked the driver for his taking us around and making the three trips to Pahalagam, Gulmarg and Sonamarg memorable.I was too tired to go out and buy dinner from the best resturants in Srinagar. We found, our hotel had cooked delicious Chicken Biriyani...

Tomorrow is our way back. Most of the packing has been done. I am sure I have to shell out some bucks for the extra luggage. Thank God, none can weigh the bountiful of memories that we all carrying on our way back. And this is where the difference between the physical world and the world within becomes so prominent. All that we are carrying physically - the apples, spices, the dress and all that which adds weight to our luggage - will perish in due course, some in a few days, some in weeks, some in years...But the whatever we are carrying within us is not erasable or perishable. I have captured some moments in my camera. But some moments and the feelings and thoughts that has become associated with those moments cannot be captured by any man-made devices or inventions. When there was no camera, men painted moments, men wrote poems to express their innermost thoughts. And yet some thoughts and moments remained within - the inexpressible ones. Today mankind has improved to the world of digital cameras and blogs, but not the words to describe them. I can call the place Paradise. In fact, there is a famous line on Kashmir "Gar firdaus, ruhe zamin ast, hamin asto, hamin asto, hamin asto" by Mughal Emperor Jahangir or some say by the famous poet Poet Firdausi. It means, "If there is a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here !!". But that does not describe the grandeur and splendor around, that does not describe the bubbling water drops and golden sun-rays falling on it, that does not tell about the sheep grazing on the mountain slopes or the horses grazing in the meadows and the thoughts it evokes within us and a million such things. When I say "the horses grazing in the meadows" or "snow-capped mountains", you create a visual image in your mind. But the images that you create in your minds are based on similiar experiences and similiar images that you had seen before. And there lies the limitations to our imagination. What if we had not seen before? As for the photos, the camera captures only one of the aspects of the environment - the visual aspect. And it is not the only aspect that deserves to be captured. What about the sweet murmuring sound of stream during the journey from Srinagar to Pahalgam? What about the feelings of cold drops of rainwater in Sonamarg, accompanied by the brisk walking of the horse? What about the smell of the fresh apples as I entered the apple garden? What about the excitement that we had during the horse-rides? How do I describe the taste of the Kashmiri dishes? How do I write what I felt when I heard the pain-stricken experiences of the local Kashmiris? How do I describe all these?

4th September, 2001. Sunday

7:45 PM, Flight to Bangalore via Delhi

Today, I woke up in the morning and clicked some pictures of the misty Dal Lake in the morning and Shikaras ferrying passenger from the houseboats. After that I took some snaps of my daughter playing in the garden of our hotel.Srinagar has a bit more stringent norms as far as the airport security is concerned. So, we had to start a bit early in comparison to other airports. As far as our safety is taken care of, I don't think we should complain, just because we don't know what else to do! The flight from Delhi to Bangalore is a bit bumpy as it is cloudy on the way.

11:55 PM, Sunday. Sonar Kella, Bangalore

Sonar Kella is the name of our house. The name is inspired from a popular Bengali detective movie by the same name by the famous director, Satyajit Ray. We are safely back. Except for the bumpy flight in the last hour of the Delhi-Srinagar, we had a safe journey. Tomorrow is office. Need to go to bed now.
It was well and truly a memorable trip.

8th September, 2011. Thursday.

7:55 AM, Sonar Kella, Bangalore
I will soon publish my blog after proof-reading it one final time. These days I have been taking special interest about any news about Kashmir.
Two days ago my father called me in the morning saying that there was curfew in Srinagar.
After yesterday's bomb blast in Delhi High Court, today's one newspaper headline read "Delhi blast: NIA gets a few leads, 4 grilled in Jammu and Kashmir".
Some things never change.
But life has to continue and it continues - for the near and dear ones of the dead in Delhi blast, for the local Kashmiris and for the rest of the world.

"We shall overcome, we shall overcome,
We shall overcome someday;
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We shall overcome someday." .

Turmoil

2011-08-22T09:55:00.003+05:30

We have lost some good years of our lives
Fighting,quarelling,insulting,humiliating, protesting et al.
Some years which could have been the best in our lives,
Which we could have spent in better ways.

We could have spent less time on the fire fighting
And more in understanding each other;
We could spent time in building bridges
Instead of drawing the boundary lines and personal spaces;
We could have used the energies in good causes,
Rather than shouting and screaming through the roof;
We could have sat down and resolved the problem,
Given an honest attempt at making things better.
We could have been more true to ourselves.

Instead we chose not to talk about the elephant in the room;
We chose to brush the dust under the carpet.

The London riots,
The Anna Hazare campaign,
The Al-Qaeda terrorism,
The anti-Mubarak uprising...
All are reflection of the restlessness among the people
All are reflections of the unrest inside
The grudge, the anger, the frustrations.
Why is this the world in such turmoil?
Why are we in mental agony and anxiety?

If only we all lived for the cause we were born.
If only there was more peace...
Both inside and the world outside.

At least, I didn't want to live this way -
Every day, every moment, perhaps, till the last day in my life
Fighting for my right, my pride, my place.
Shouting above others, lest my voice be drowned!
Overpowering others, lest I be trampled!

I dream of a better life....a better world...
And I still keep dreaming the same every single morning!

PS: The above painting is created by me. For more paintings, please add me to your FB friends or visit https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150235895019563.327436.719044562&l=46e638be71&type=1

Bitter pills

2011-07-25T23:07:00.004+05:30

With the passing of years I learnt that...

You can bury the tears and the sad moments in time.
Unfortunately, the good times also get lost in time.
You have no control over other's words and actions,
So, its better you watch yours!

Elders are not always correct,
A child can sometimes teach great lessons.
To err is to human, to commit same mistake twice is crime.
Education does not always make one civilised.

Physical proximity does not translate into nearness of the heart.
Heart can beat for the person even if the distance is thousands of miles.
A dozen telecom service providers could not stop the increasing communication gap
That exists between two souls, two generations or two countries.

It doesn't matter if you are dead...people will learn to live without you,anyway!
(Only the foolish think they are indispensable!)

Childhood heroes

2011-07-22T14:21:00.002+05:30

As a child we all had some heroes whom we admired. For me, at least, there was no dearth of such persons. I had a whole lot of them ranging from sportsperson to film personalities and directors to musicians to even fictitious characters! I was fan to so many persons. I grew up admiring their different facets.

For example, I was a big fan of the tennis star Gabriela Sabitini. In almost all cases she lost in the Grand Slam finals or semi-finals and I was highly disappointed. A die-hard fan of Maradona, I was in tears when he was dis-qualified from the World Cup.I admired cricketer Kapil Dev so much that when we went to Chandigarh, I asked my father and made sure I saw his home.
I was a fan of the Oscar-winning Indian film director Satyajit Ray. There are quite a handful of his movies that I watched at least a couple of dozen times! I know the dialogues by heart and yet I will not get tired watching them again and again and again. I admired Charlie Chaplin and The Three Stooges.
As a child, I never thought that Sherlock Holmes was a fictitious character. So, when I visited 221B Baker street during my MBA days in UK, I sort-of met one of my childhood heroes. Its a great feeling.
And then there were some persons whom I saw closely and admired them. One person was Shanti-jethu (Uncle Shanti) , with whom I closely interacted for 2-3 years when I was around 15 years old. He left a deep impression on me. He first introduced me with things like will-power, positive thinking and other spiritual concepts at a very early stage of my life, which , I must acknowledge today, have been one of the strong foundations for what I am today. Thanks to Facebook, I am able to reconnect to him now after quite some years.
Then there was Subrata-kaka (Uncle Subrata). He is solely responsible for introducing me to Western and Indian classical music, again something that has been a good influence on me throughout my life.
And then there is father, one person I was in awe with...perhaps like any other child...

I admired them and many more. Each for different reasons. While for some it may be the skills of a sportsperson, some it were for they introduced me to the vast world outside, while some for their knowledge of the world within.
I am thankful to the Almighty for having come across such wonderful persons in my life during those wonder years.

And then the world opened up for me...I realised that ,after all, all are human beings...they have their own share of virtues and vices.But, nonetheless, childhood heroes are best remembered that way - the larger-than-life figure, people whom you tend to admire to the extent that you almost start worshiping them! And then as you grow, you get to know of the darker side and though you may still admire the person, you may not want to worship them.
A couple of weeks back I saw an interview of Gabriela Sabitini...she seemed very much like a common person. I personally feel sad when I see Maradona getting tangled in unnecessary controversies. I realised my father, like any other person with flesh and blood, has his own share of good things and flaws. For people like Subrata-kaka or Shanti-jethu my interaction with them now is nil or so less that I best remember them as they existed when I was a child.
Sherlock Holmes is an exception.The best thing about him is that he never existed in the real world...he was one personality whom I dreamt of and believed the way I wanted him to be...Sherlock Holmes changed the way I changed over the years. In my eyes he never changed!

Nonetheless, childhood heroes have a special place in our hearts...however old and aged we may become. Yes, it is sad to acknowledge, one day, that they also have their flaws. Like, today, I guess, my two-year old daughter thinks I can perform super-human acts. And, so, for the things that she cant do, she wants me to do. And when I do those simple things, she has all the smiles and ,at times, the awe. I see the sparkle in her eyes that I once had when I looked up to my heroes. And this may continue between me and my daughter for some more years. Until, one day, she will realise that I have a lot of flaws,too. May be she will feel sad that day, just like I confronted reality and had to digest the bitter pill about my childhood heroes. That day, perhaps, I'll also be sad that my daughter has lost one of her childhood heroes...and it happens to be me. I'm sure, I'll also feel happy that day that my daughter has grown up...!

PS: Losing childhood heroes is ,definitely, one of the flip sides of growing up!

They dont make them like that anymore!

2011-06-22T13:03:00.004+05:30

"Gobindo-da" was a person about 10 years older than my father. His uncle was a cook in our house. He was brought to our house by his uncle when he was barely six. By then his mother died and his step-mother did not behave properly with him. He had been brought up by my grand-parents.

Over the years he got married; had kids and bought a house near ours. He was Man Friday of my grand parents. He was a devoted family man, but every evening he used to visit our home. Now I understand that it was his way of showing respect and gratitude towards my grand parents. He also had a good relationship with my parents. As a child I was very fond of him. A bulky man, who had a good sense of humour and one who does not know to say "NO". He was part of our family is all respect. We all loved him.

And that was when I was small and was in school. Then I stayed and commuted from my home. Once I started going to college, I was staying in hostel.I used to come home in weekends and so lost regular contacts with persons like Gobindo-da. And then my professional commitments and Bangalore as work location ensured that I communicate with these people even less.

The day I am talking is one rainy evening when I was spending my vacation in home - relaxed and away from the office deadlines and emails. My grandfather had died and grandmother was bed-ridden. The mango tree that once stood beside our main gate had its branches stretched out beyond our boundary wall and leaned on the roadside. That was a temporary shelter for some passers-by or cyclists who were caught off-guard during occasional evening showers.I was having a chat with parents and brother on the balcony of our first floor. It was overcast. A cold breeze was blowing, which indicated that there was rain in areas near-by. In our place, it just started drizzling. It was not that dark then. But, the street lights have just been switched on. There were all indications that it was only a matter of time for darkness to engulf us.
Suddenly, I realised that Gobindo-da was standing outside our house without any umbrella and under the shady mango leaves.It seemed, he was thinking whether he should wait there for the rain to stop and then proceed towards his home or should he return home,lest the rain starts pouring heavily. The fact was, for all practical purpose, he was considered very much part of our family for the last sixty years. I don't know what was going inside his mind, but sadly,that day, in his mid-sixties, he hesitates to even enter the house! My heart sank. I went out to get him inside. He came to the balcony and we started chatting. I don't remember what the topic was, but what I remember is that after about 15-20 mins I felt quite out of place with the conversation. I excused myself. It was not any uncomfortable topic, but just that I was unable to relate to it. After a few minutes, the rain stopped and he slowly and stealthily left for home.
Sometimes I think of the way I behaved with him my whole life vis-a-vis on that one particular rainy day. There were many rainy days earlier when I played carrom with him and heard stories from him with wrapped attention. But that day something went wrong, something didn't click.

I sometimes feel guilty of asking him to come inside our house and then ,perhaps unknowingly, not giving him the due respect. But there is little I could about it now.
My last memory about Gobindo-da remains that day. After that I did not meet him or have any conversation with him. When I went home I sometimes saw him sitting idle on his balcony. He used to inquire about us from my mother. A couple of years later his wife died of a heart attack. And then one day I heard he died.

Surely he is one person who brought is a lot of smile and laughter during my childhood days. He was known for making up interesting stories, but no one complained as we lapped every bit of them. I still have fond memories about him carrying that brown colour leather bag, playing carrom with us, giving us a ride on his cycle and making strange sounds with his nose. He was a happy-go-lucky person in every respect. He had his own share of miseries, but he made sure they are very well camouflaged beneath his fun and banter.
I am yet to find another person like him.
Perhaps, "they dont make them like that anymore"!

The Other Side of the Story

2011-05-28T09:11:00.004+05:30

On 10th September 2010, we had to catch the train from Bangalore to Calcutta. It was raining heavily. I booked a taxi. But the taxi driver did not behave well from the time I met him. I got really pissed off. In multiple occasions he proved to be arrogant and stubborn during the 25 km journey. I was sure I would complain against him to the taxi company.
While off-loading the luggage, I asked him, "Why do you seem so irritated today? I am not pleased with your behaviour."
"I am sorry", his voice toned down for the first time as he counted the four 100 rupee notes that I gave him, "My two-year old son is admitted to hospital and I am still at work as I need money for that. I am tensed and worried."

During the entire journey, I was looking at the incidents (that is, the rude behavior of the taxi driver) through my glasses. Now I have got to know the other side of the story. Obviously, the result is not the same. Sometimes I wonder how my reactions and attitudes to persons will change if I always had the luxury of looking at the different events from multiple angles.

My cook does a fairly decent job, a rounded fellow in mid-fifties with a very polite and measured behaviour. When I asked him how he landed in Bangalore as a cook, he narrated me a story that drew sympathy from me. To cut the long story short, he was a taxi driver in Calcutta, until one night he ran over a drunkard, an accident for which he had little fault. However, since then his life changed with his driving license being seized, police behind him and his nightmare of landing behind the bars chasing him. At that time he had two kids. He had a real troubled time seeing them through the tough mental and financial conditions. I felt really sorry for him. I thought that we sometimes crib and complain for so small things, but here is one person who has and perhaps will for the rest of his life live with the nightmare of finding himself on the wrong side of the bar.

Now lets take a different perspective of the incident. What if the widow of the deceased had worked in our home and complained how a taxi driver ran over his "occasional drunkard" husband and how that ruined the dreams of her and her then one-year old daughter? What would my reactions be?

Examples are not difficult to site. The other day the cleaner of my car was limping. On inquiring he said that two motorists collided at full speed and one came and hit him, while he was standing for the bus. In the event, however, both the motorists died. Two days later he came and informed me that the persons who died were identified. In fact, one of them was known to him - he was his room-mate when he first came to Bangalore about eight years ago.

In Chandannagore, my ancestors have been living for a couple of hundreds of years. So, by default, my grandfather and all had a good say in the society and everyone respected them. They passed on their regard when they passed our house etc. And that gave me this strange notion that so many people’s lives revolved around ours. But now I have learnt that each person has a life of his own – a unique story to tell. Now, when in news I find 10 people died, I know that is may be a column in the newspaper, but so many people’s life and dreams have changed its course and the loss is not at all limited to 10 or 20 members, but much beyond than we can possibly imagine. How do they interpret and view the incidents? What is their version? What is their story?

Every person has a story to tell. Every person involved in any event or incident will have their own versions of it. The drunkard who lay unconscious on the roadside, the child labour who works in the near-by tea stall, the one-legged beggar at the traffic signal, the old lady who sweeps the road in front of our house, the shopkeeper and the vegetable seller, the motor-mechanic, the cab driver – everybody has a very different and unique story to share from worlds of their own. To us, he is just a drunkard. Some, perhaps, will even call him an evil influence on the society. But what does he think of himself? Where does he come from? Perhaps, he was also a very normal person not too long ago. Perhaps his girl friend left him or he lost everything in some mishaps. Or maybe he was always like that since childhood as he was an orphan, losing his parents in some unfortunate events. Or maybe, he is not a drunkard – someone has drugged him for some motives.

We will never know the answers until we try exploring people and reach out for “the other side of the story”. And once we start exploring those stories, we could easily find some of the most interesting reads of our life, far more interesting than the most gripping novels that any writer has ever penned.

The walk

2011-05-11T23:56:00.000+05:30

The walk is never an easy one,
It was never meant to be easy.
Sometimes you walk under the scorching sun;
And at times there is torrential rain.
Or may be its the spring time,
With colourful flowers all around you!
Sometimes there are companions -
You get a hand to hold,
You get a shoulder to cry upon.
But most of the times the walk is a lonely walk -
When you fall there is none to lift you.

Sometimes you walk through the dense forests,
And at times you walk through the endless deserts,
Where mirages constantly try to distract you.
Sometimes you take rest under the shadows of some leafy trees,
And soon you brush aside the dust and start walking
From dawn to dusk and even beyond.
You stop by the stealthy river and sleepy town.
You halt where the children play.
For once you think that you were also a child in some bygone days,
And you think of those childhood days.
The very next moment, you are brought to today's reality.
You know you have to keep walking...

Until, one day,suddenly, you come to know that there is no more walking.
However big or small you are, time will stand still for you.
You have reached your destination.
All the walking and running that you had been doing over the years,
And all the talking and fighting that you were engaged in so long,
Have,once and for all, come to an end.
Its all over.
The red ball of fire has set.
It is time for the calm and serene moonlight
To pierce through the darkness
That was around you, that is inside you.
It is time for the Almighty Touch to enlighten your soul!

Strangers

2011-04-28T16:50:00.003+05:30

Who is a "stranger"? What makes one a "stranger"?
The mere fact that we don't know and haven't met and talked earlier makes one a stranger?
When can we tell that we 'know' a person and hence is no more a stranger to us?
And...how long do you take to 'know' a person?

Sometimes we get into a conversation with the co-passengers in trains or flights, with the shop keeper and the taxi driver. The apparent strangers seem like friends of bygone days. We really have so much to share and talk about!
And sometimes we bump into friends of bygone days and don't know what to talk next. The friends seem like strangers.

What if the co-passenger (the stranger) in the flight I was talking with turns out,at the end of the journey, to be my primary school friend ?

Divorced couple behave like strangers to each other, though they have shared many a memorable moments of their life together.

Yesterday's strangers can be today's neighbours and friends.

So, the words "strangers", "friends" and "neighbours" are very relative terms to me.
In a way, everybody is a stranger as we dont really understand any other person.

At the same time, quite contradictorily, perhaps, none is a stranger. When we talk with any other person, however apparent stranger he or she may be, we realise that there are some common things we both can relate to - there is a bit of me in the stranger and a bit of the stranger in me! Irrespective of caste, creed and colour, there lies some underlying truths and facts in life that prevents us from being a complete stranger to any other person. On the way from Moscow to St. Petersburg, when my friend from Cranfield University, Adrian narrated to me his childhood days spent in a certain town in New Zealand, I could relate that with mine.

Every person - every so-called stranger - has a world of his or her own. The life and world of an Indian taxi driver in Melbourne is so different from the room-boy who works in a certain hotel in Hardwar, India, which is again different from the old man in the wheel chair in the aisles in WalMart...the list of strangers I met and interacted with is endless. When I talked to them and got a glimpse of their life, I was enriched. Each had a fascinating tale to tell.

This is what makes me take a different angel to "strangers". Each has a different perception about the world, each sees the world in his or her own way and each has so engrossing experiences to share. If only we could have biographies of everyone in this universe!

I am a stranger to so many people, and that includes the readers of this blog. But, that they read (and sometimes even appreciate my blogs) is a proof of the fact that we somehow connect to each other.We are not as much strangers as we think we are.

Our immediate friends, relatives and neighbours have the world that are more or less similiar to ours. It is the strangers from whom we can get the flavour of familiar and yet unknown worlds, universal and yet very much personal world.

Leave alone everybody else, do we understand ourselves fully? Do we know what we want and what we dont?
Are we not strangers to ourselves at times?

The final goodbye

2011-03-27T07:31:00.002+05:30

In our life there comes innumerable such moments when we have to say the final adieu - "sionara", not necessary to any person (close or we met casually) but also place and sometimes even phases of life. And its difficult to say that one - "GOODBYE".

The first time I felt, in a small way, that saying goodbye can be really painful is when my favourite teacher in Standard 1, Sister Marcellina, left St. Joseph's Convent, my school. Then leaving the school in Standard 4 was also heart breaking for me. I realised that I have just concluded one phase of my life. After that I left my secondary and higher secondary schools and then was ultimately relieved to "run away from the clutches of the professors of my engineering college". With every goodbye, to these institutions, there was the eagerness to look forward to the life ahead. After my higher secondary, I was excited to explore college life. After college life, it was the excitement of the professional life - the feeling of being financially independent and less accountable to parents. But the underlying emotion and sadness of leaving the institutions can never be ignored.

When I joined my first company, TATA Consultancy Services or commonly known as TCS, an IT firm in India, we were taken for training in GOD's own country - Trivandrum, Kerala. After three months training and enjoying the newly-found friends and freedom in the picturesque region, we were dispersed to different offices of the organisation in different cities. It was sad to bid adieu to the entire atmosphere. But, at the same time, it was difficult to suppress the sheer joy of joining the TCS office in Bangaore, the Silicon Valley of India.

Thanks to TCS, I have been able to visit quite a few places abroad. The first time I went abroad was in 2002 in Santa Clara, California for a very short stint and then soon to Salt Lake City, Utah, USA and then in South Korea and USA again. Every time my tenure in those places ended and I took the return flight, I was excited to meet my near and dear ones back home with the gifts that I so meticulously shopped for them. At the same time saying the final adieu to the place was difficult. There were friends I made, which were not necessarily the colleagues.
In Santa Clara,for example, I met a Mexican driver, with whom I started interacting and getting some wonderful insights into his life. And so was the receptionist of my hotel who made some hilarious facial expressions and mimicries.
In South Korea , the old maid who cleaned my hotel room was an immigrant from Indonesia. She didnt know English and I didnt know any other language that I could communicate with her. And still we spoke! In sign languages and tit-bit English words. I remember her face when I said to her that I am leaving...it said all.
Long after I again went to Washington DC. I took the tube and then walked for 10 minutes to reach my office. On the way, every morning, I passed by a violin player, playing some melancholy tune. Sometimes when I had a few cents jingling in my pocket, I placed on the mat laid in front of him. The last time I walked past him, I felt sad. I would, in all probability, never see him again.

And then there are friends. In different walks of life, you meet them; your lines cross and you spend some wonderful moments with them. Something happens - you change workplace, you change city and soon you realise that its time to say GOODBYE. (Thanks to Facebook, you can always stay connected, though!)

Quite often, its difficult to say adieu to inanimate objects, as well. I remember, when one of our old ancestral buildings was being demolished, how sad my grand-parents were as they spent their childhood there. Sometimes, we fall in love with some our of wardrobe collection or even our vehicles. The other day my carpenter said how he adores his 15-year-old motorcycle and is not willing to replace it, though he is fully aware of its aging symptoms.
I remember the last time I left Fedden Flats, my flat during my study in Cranfield University. From the car park, with moist eyes, I looked back at the large window in the first floor, the forth from the right - it was the window that brought all the fresh air and sunshine for the last one year for me.

And then there are the final final adieu to the near and dear ones, perhaps the most painful of all the adieus. My grandfather was bed-ridden for 2-3 years. During that time, everytime I came back from home to bangalore, I didnt know whether I will meet him again, until one day, while in Bangalore, I heard he is no more. It was a similiar experience with my grandmother after a few years. My maternal grand-father was so hale and hearty, that I could not still believe that that was the last time I saw him. Then were were not-so-close relatives and neighbours, but nonetheless, its not always easy to say the final goodbye. One day my mother called me to say that the rickshaw puller, who took us to school for 7 years died. I had lost contact with him. But, the news brought with it some sweet memories and a heavy atmosphere.

I have learnt that this is how life goes on. Expect the unexpected. There will be final adieus, and there will also be new beginnings. A phase will end, another phase in life will take on. A mortal relation may end, but the relationship can stay with us forever. All said and done, the heart still aches to say that final adieu.

Life and its moments

2011-03-17T23:16:00.002+05:30

Last week, I went to my home town in Chandannagore on the occassion of my brother's marriage. As mentioned in my earlier blogs, this small sleepy town near Calcutta is where I spent the initial days of my life and had been there until I relocated to Bangalore for professional reasons.

On my way home from airport, the driver took a short-cut road through some village-like areas. The roads were narrow, mostly peppered with pot holes. There were bushes and hedges on both sides of the road. There were ponds that nurtured green water, thanks to the water-hyacinth and other phyto-planktons. There were some brick house with stains on the wall. Some huts were of mud. People either walked or were on cycle. When the car passed, they were almost pushed to the edge or out of the road. There were some ladies carrying vegetables in baskets on their head. Some workers who toiled under the scorching sun took some break in between to quench their thirst. The driver honked its way through the village. I watched some children play cricket, with bat made out of wooden planks and the wicket with bricks stacked one on top of the other.There was fresh oxygen in the air.Both sides of the road had abundance of green, be it in the form of the mangrove, the bamboo shoots or some unknown wild plants.

Few years back, I might have cycled though these roads and hardly noticed these activities. Then, I didnt find any reason to stop by the pond just to take glimpse of children swimming and playing in the "green" ponds. It was my daily sight. And I took all of these for granted. But today, I do. Today, things have changed; time has changed. In Bangalore I do not get to see these. I started appreciating the beauty of the raw nature here, the beauty of the green trees and the hedge-surrounded ponds, the unsophisticated life of the people here...

All these taught me a lesson. It is about expectations and taking things for granted or not. I realised that we lose most of the fun in life by taking good things for granted (thinking they are how things should be) and cribbing for the bad ones. As long as I stayed here and took my home-town and all that it had for granted, I failed to appreciate the good things that were lying here for decades. When we start taking things for granted, we fail to realise that every moment of our life is a gift of GOD and consequently stop enjoying life.

When I left India to study in UK, I realised some of the great things that India can offer. Before that I took all the good things of my country for granted and blamed her for all the bad ones.
We take independence and freedom for granted. Ask the Egyptians and the Libyans and people of such countries. Then we will realise how privileged we are.
We take relationships for granted, most of all perhaps our parents. Once they have reared us, we leave them onto themselves and get busy with our lives. Ask those orphans who are deprived of them and their unconditional love.
We ,sometimes, take our partners for granted. Ask the widow and the widower how they miss their good old days, when they were together.
The water that gushes into the commode every time I press the flush button in my toilet may be the water that some families in some parts of the world use for 4-5 days.

Commuting by flight, logging onto my laptop and then hooking onto the wi-fi in my own home in Bangalore and then writing another blog may be something that I would hardly have paid attention to, something for which I would have hardly thought of thanking GOD. But that twenty minutes of short-cut that my driver took made a world of difference to my world.

The voice of a confused engineer!

2011-02-17T14:14:00.008+05:30

1997. I don't remember the dates. But it was the season of results. My engineering results were out.That time engineering colleges were few and far between, espcially the good ones. I shocked myself and perhaps everyone who knew me by performing way beyond my expectation. I thought, "This is it! I will be an engineer." I never knew I was destined to be an engineer and that too from one of the best engineering colleges in India. Now I can relate to the feeling of Leonardo de Caprio (cast as Jack Dawson) in the Titanic movie, when he suddenly gets the ticket to take the maiden Titanic trip. Same was with me. The Engineering colleges were due to start their session from August and somebody gave me a ticket, that would supposedly change my life.
In fact, it did. Then and now.

Within weeks into the course, I realised that I was a square peg in a round hole. Among some heavy-weights as far as ranking in board exams and general academic record is concerned, I was at sea - trying hard to keep afloat when others were swimming comfortably.
And then I met these wonderful professors. Some were bald headed. Some wore thick glasses and tried to give an impression that they were very knowledgable. One professor spoke so softly that it seemed he is in his courtship days and whispering to his wife. Some shouted so much that it seemed they were football coaches training players on field. These and many more such talented teachers made sure that the sea I landed on is turbulent. This might help them can identify the great swimmers. If one or two gulp a few gallons of saline water or even drown, it doesn't matter to them. So, what, if, as student, they were not great, either. When you are at the other side of the table, you view the world completely differently.

The pain grew with passing day. I can't jump off, can't run away. The ship left the shore...if I jump off, I'll land nowhere. Till now, never in my life have I felt so out-of-place - even in the lucky trip in business class or in the Cranfield environment.
Things grew from bad to worse with the progress of the course (semesters). Is it co-incidence that the pregnancy is counted in a similar format (trimesters)? With each passing trimester, the pain increases, but the hope that the end of the tunnel is near and the result is sweet, keeps the would-be mom smiling. Same was with me. The only motivation that kept me alive was the degree at the end of the course.
My specialisation was in Electrical Engineering. Though electric circuits did not give me shocks, the course made a habit of giving me shocks in the form of the assignments and obviously the marksheets.
Sometimes all things happening around us seem to be a big prank and a royal joke, however painful and torturing they may be. These moments have occurred to me innumerable times while in college. The otherwise large college campus, with tall green trees and the heritage building with an even heritage electrical machines lab (more of a electrical machines museum than a machines lab!) seemed like prison to me. I was just looking forward to the last day in college. The semesters and mid-semesters began to haunt me every 3 months or rather, each quarter, in today's terms. Sales people have a target to achieve each quarter. In college days, it seemed, I was targeted each quarter!

Weeks passed, so did months and semesters. There were fun and banter. But then there were also exams and mark sheets. Now when I look at those marksheets, I feel pity that so much toil and tears resulted in 1 sheet of paper. Such a shit!

After 10 years of passing my engineering college, the names of subjects in the marksheets ring no bell in me, leave alone excite me. My engineering learning skills come handy only when I draw a road map or ask my carpenter to make some furniture for our home and may be while making some connection between TV-DVD, TV-Home theatre etc.The world and people may think I am an engineer. I may think otherwise. There is a point upto which one can pretend to be someone, who he/she is not. I have stopped pretending. But the confusion remains - "am I or am I not an engineer?" Shall I believe the marksheets and what people say or shall I believe my inner conscious?

The voice of a confused engineer refuses to die!

The serpentine lane!

2011-02-09T23:17:00.004+05:30

The view from my bedroom is very soothing during the day. There is this serpentine lane which sort-of bumps into my house before taking a sharp 90-degree right turn.

From morning the road becomes busy - people go to office, horns of school buses to pick up children, the garbage-van blowing his horn, some pet-lovers taking their dogs out for a morning walk, the maids, the milkman with the jingling sound of the aluminium cans, the newspaper man distributing newspapers - throwing newspapers upto the second and third floor from the road with spot-on accuracy...the road is so full of activity!

At night, my beautiful lane becomes so grim and sombre. From evening itself the lane begins to show changes in its activity and complexion. Right in front of my bedroom window a halogen light glows brightly. A few metres away, another one. And then another. The lanes is bathed in golden light from evening to the wee hours of the night. When its midnight, there is hardly any passer-by. Couple of stray dogs bark either for no reason or by the occassional sight of some passer-by. Sometimes the typical sound of auto-rickshaws or some two or four wheelers from some far-away distances can be heard. The world is asleep. I look behind. My daughter is in deep sleep after playing and running around the whole day. She is one and a half years old. My wife is also asleep, tired from her hectic office schedule.

But there is something inexplicable that is keeping me awake. It may be the yearning to talk to myself and be alone with myself. It may be the constant flow of bitter-sweet memories of the past that keeps flowing in, especially when I see this silent lane. It may be the thoughts of a loner, thoughts of a confused soul, thoughts that are too close to my heart, which I cant share with anyone on this planet, because no one will understand them. It may be my tears that come out when everybody around is asleep. It may be renewing my friendship with the stars and the moon, that we all hardly pay attention to in the era of sky-scrappers and neon lights.It may be my endevour to dive deep into myself and try to discover more of myself.

The clock ticks past midnight. I say to myself that I have to go to bed now. Tomorrow I have to go to office. Another day awaits for me. That will be followed by another night. Same like that of tonight. Let me keep some thoughts for tomorrow night as well. My eye lids become heavy. Though I would much rather sit by the window and stare almost aimlessly outside, I ultimately had to call it a day.

I shut down my laptop.

I dream of a day ...

2011-01-31T13:17:00.009+05:30

I dream of a day ...
When there is no fighting, revolts or uprisings,
When bombs and guns are things of the past,
When people don't suspect or kill fellow-human beings,
People don't live in fear; people don't die in shame!

I dream of a day...
When human bodies are not scanned by metal-detectors,
When we don't have to fear about terrorist attacks,
When our identities are not in our religions or skin-colours,
And our thoughts and views are not guided and biased by fanatics!

I dream of a day...
When there is no curfew around or police barricades,
No fire in protest, no fire in the minds of the people,
No tear sheds
No stone pelting, burning effigies - burning humanity!

I dream of a day...
When the first rays of the sun bring messages from the Almighty,
The rain washes away our inner evil and filth,
The moonlight fills us with calmness and serenity
And the entire world sleeps in peace.

Passport

2010-12-10T15:40:00.010+05:30

Yesterday I applied for my passport renewal. It would expire on the 7th of January, 2011...just a couple of weeks from now. It was issued to me exactly 10 years back. It was the year that I passed my engineering. It was as-if passport to a new life.
So, I thought of taking stock of how life (the new life post college life) has shaped and changed for us. "Us" meaning some of my friends, some whom I have contact with and some whose news keeps flowing into me through the friends I have contact with. Before I proceed furher, let me clarify some things. I will not take any names; if any friend gets hurt because he/she feels it is referring him/her and I shouldn't have written about him/her, my sincere apologies. Please mail me at amitava.b.chatterjee@gmail.com and I will remove that part immediately. The sole purpose of this blog is to have a look at how the lives and the world has changed for some of us.

When we were in college, my close friend, Sandipan and I used to often say, "We are waiting for the day when we can run out of the college and never return". We had reasons to say so. Precisely, we hated college and I have no qualms in thanking the "teachers" of my college for that.I dont understand what fun teachers get by giving less marks to students and thus find the cynical way to show their power and position. Finally, we did manage to come out of the college and the best part is, with the "Bachelor of Engineering" degree.

I called one friend the other day.
"Hey, what's up?"
"I'm attending the second marriages of friends now!"
"What???"
"Yes, You remember, XXX married in 2004?"
"Yes.."
"Well, he got divorced in 2006 and married again! Even YYY has remarried. And, Amitava, I must say second marriages are much more organised and grand than the first ones. Actually, they already have experience and have learnt from the mistakes of the first ones"
Marriage. Divorce. And marriage again.
For some it is marriage and a rocking married life.
For some it is marriage and a rocked married life.
For some it is marriage and divorce. No re-marriage, yet. Once bitten, twice shy.

For the married, some have kid or kids.
Some are yet to start the process - hesitant about starting it.
Some are in the process.
Some started the process and got rude shocks on the way - medical problem or the trauma of mis-carriage.

For one, it was marriage, kids and then death. A habitual drug-addict, he met a tragic end, leaving his family in shatters.

Some were outstanding in the academic life (unlike me). But then could not make it as they had thought they would. So now they are into hibernation. Several mails and phone calls failed to bring them back. They have chosen to live in isolation. I have stopped disturbing them.
Among the good students, some went ahead and continued studying for the love of it. On the way they picked us some good degrees and then got what they wanted in life.
Some went ahead to study because they did not know what else to do.
Some continued studying perhaps not just for the love of studying but because of somebody else or because they wanted to prove something to the world. Dont know whether they have enjoyed the process.
And some confused souls like me went to work from college, then back to college and back to work again!

We have lost contact with many. Orkut and facebook occasionally brings out some old vaguely-remembered faces. But not all believe in networking sites. For some, I do not like to contact even if they may be in the same city. And thats because we never got along nicely.

Some have decided not to leave their hometown, their comfort zone.
Some have decided to look out for better opportunities in some green pastures away from their hometown, but within the country.
Some have decided to leave the country and settle abroad.
For some friends working in the IT industry, it is all about taking "onsite" assignments and clicking photos with family with the statue of liberty or the Eiffel tower in the background.Then posting on the networking sites and getting "wow!" from friends.

Most of us have put on weights. Some a few pounds more, some a few pounds less.
Most of us are on diet with the occasional pizzas,Pepsis, and Mac-Ds and french fries.

There are once-not-so-close friends, with whom now I share warm relationships and who have become part of my close friend circle. And there are once-so-close friends with whom I have hardly shared a thought for the last few years.
In college we all seemed united. Now, each has a world of his/her own. Its a much lonely life now.
Within the boundaries of the college wall, there were few things we really needed to worry about. Mainly, academics and a job post academics. Now the list is almost endless.

Schools have uniforms. It signifies that all students, irrespective of their social background and economic condition are same in school. Colleges don't have uniform. But, the spirit of the uniformity remains. Ten years on, it is too much to ask for uniformity of any sort.

In 2001, my mind and the leaflets of the passport had one thing in common. Both had no stamps, no seals. Pretty-much blank and didnt know what to expect from future. Ten years on, 40% of my passport has been stamped with visas of different countries and sealed and signed here and there by the different emigration officers around the world. Records that cannot be deleted or wiped off. Even I had quite a few good, bad and ugly experiences in these last ten years of my life, never to be forgotten and cannot be erased.
The new passport I am applying for with 60 more blank pages is for another ten years. It is perhaps life's own way of telling me to take a fresh look at the next ten years of my life with the same zeal and enthusiasm that I had ten years ago, when I got my first passport.

Acknowledging the limits

2010-12-06T11:53:00.008+05:30

When I was a small boy, my father used to bring wall papers, We pasted some of them on the walls of our room. One such wall paper had a beautiful picture of a boat sailing and the background was that of a setting sun on the distant horizon.The caption read "Lord! Your ocean is so vast and our boat is so small." Somehow I still remember that picture and those lines. And as days go by, I feel that perhaps there is no truth more universal than those lines.

The intent of the blog is not to demean any human being or his achievement; it is to highlight the fact that our achievement is almost insignificant to that of the Almighty. We scaled the sky-kissing mountain peaks, we went to the Moon, people swam across oceans , travelers walked across continents and went to the poles. We hail all these achievements as outstanding. No doubt they are commendable.But they are commendable within the boundaries and limitations of the capabilities of human beings.
In the first place, the achievements that need to be hailed are the creation of those mountain peaks, the Moon, the oceans and the continents. We hardly acknowledge the fact that most of our outstanding achievements are those where we came face-to-face with Nature and were able to leave a very small mark over it, where we added a drop of water to the ocean. Our problem lies in the fact of taking the ocean for granted and adding all the significance to that tiny drop.

We have created robots, computers and super-computers and think that they are highly
sophisticated gadgets. We hail them as proof of the fact that we are almost there when it comes to creating something close to the human being. Firstly, the fact that we acknowledge that we intend to create something close to human beings is testimony to the fact that we think creation of human beings is the be-all and end-all creation in this field. Secondly, the truth is, we are nowhere near to creating something as complex and as compact as human beings. The simple fact that to decode the human body functions there are millions of doctors and lacs of super-speciality hospitals is a testimony to the fact. And yet there are many mysteries in the body of the human beings that doctors and scientists are yet to crack. If any body parts goes wrong and stops functioning then we get to realise more how limited our knowledge is. Each part of the body is created with surgical precision.

Even if we take other animals in the animal kingdom, we are inferior to many in many aspects. We dont have the smelling power as strong as dogs; we cant fly or track our distance and direction like the migratory birds and other animals, we cant see in the dark like cats, we cant leap and jump like monkeys, we cant swim like fish, we cant sense infra-red rays like the bats do in the dark...the list is endless. Overall, we are a better package than these animals, but not in each and every aspect. When we went out to invent airplanes, we designed it like birds; when we went to create something that can swim in water, we created submarines that are designed like fishes. Aren't we actually imitating the Ultimate Creator - the Almighty? And yet, both airplanes and submarines need so many radars and satellites to guide and control them, unlike the migratory birds and fishes. This proves, our inventions, however sophisticated we think they are, fall way sort of those created by the Almighty.

Let me take another example. The fastest man in the world runs 100m in a shade below 10 seconds. It is a great achievement. But, a great achievement within the limitation of human muscles and speed.If we take the figure to a leopard, then its way below norm in the leopard kingdom. Their average speed is something like 75kmph. Doing a bit a maths, it comes out that they run 100m in approx 5 seconds! So, in their kingdom perhaps only a very old leopard will take the time that the fastest man in the world takes!
So, what I am trying to say is, we are achieving and striving to achieve the best within our limits and capabilities. In some cases, we are trying to duplicate some things. While these may be a huge commendable thing in itself, we should not lose sight of the bigger picture. We should not confuse the drop of water with the ocean.And this should make us humble for all the achievements that we think we have done in our life or as a human being.

The duplicate of Monalisa is,at the end of the day, the duplicate of Monalisa. The painter might have given his best and feel content with his achievement; his friends might applaud him for the same, but that does not make him Leonardo Da Vinci and he must never think him so. There is,but only one Leonardo da Vinci.

Life is about solving those maths problems

2010-10-03T07:12:00.000+05:30

In fact, my vacation did not end in my home town. I decided to visit the holy city of Puri just before coming back to Bangalore. It was here that I came before I went on to do my MBA in 2007. I have come back here after 3 years to thank the God and Goddess for all that has happened in my life since then. On my one-night train journey from Calcutta to Puri, I was trying to recollect all the good and not-so-good things that took place in my life particularly in the last 3 years. The good ones that surfaced first – my days in Cranfield, our visit to Benaras, my job in Oracle, the birth of our little angel, the satisfaction of owning a house and a car, the trip to Melbourne and many others scattered here and there. Then I thought of the bad and evil days, when things did not go the way I wanted it to be – the last days of Cranfield when I had to struggle to find a job, the days in Calcutta and the sacrifice my wife made to quit her stable job in Hyderabad to join me in Calcutta, some relationships going bitter and the bitterness lingering...

It was in the last week of my stay in UK, when the MBA course was almost over, saving a couple of submissions. By that time, I had already made up my mind to return to India for good. I was not able to find good job in UK and was already in talks with some companies in India. Suddenly by turn of some events in a short span of time, I found that I “almost” landed myself in a job in Arcelor Mittal in Luxembourgh. Arcellor Mittal – the largest steel manufacturer in the world and whose CEO, Mr. LN Mittal is one of my heroes. I got an email confirmation from them about the job. I was very excited. But, then due to the global meltdown during that time, they decided to freeze the position and my offer went “on hold”.. My heart sank. No doubt, had I made it then, my life would have been totally different. I can’t say whether it would have been any better. All I can say is, today I don’t repent it at all.
It was the 7th Semester in my Engineering college days. Things were at an all-time low for me. This particular semester was notorious for the toughness of the subjects. One, I was not a good student in the engineering days. Two, to top it I had been preparing for different MBA entrance exams. I always thought I was living on the edge. My dear friend, Sandipan, now Dr. Sandipan Pramanik, a professor in the University of Alberta, Canada, a brilliant student in his own right, was beside me, providing me the required support and guidance. Sandipan was a good performer in the class, but not an outstanding one, which he should have been, if any justice had to be done to his academic credentials and past records. We both toiled a lot, especially in the 7th Semester, but was hardly rewarded (with marks). Things just didn’t seem to go right our way. We agreed that it was by far the toughest time we faced till then. We used to say “the darkest hour is just before the dawn” to boost our morale.

Its almost 10 years ago that we had this infamous 7th Semester. I forgot all that was taught then. (Well, I forgot everything that was taught in engineering). But what I learned during those apparently bad days is the never-say-die attitude. A lesson that good days never taught me. Even today when I go through some lean patch, I remind myself of the 7th Semester and how I successfully came out of it.
And this brings me to my thought that perhaps every evil day, every not-so-sunny day has some good effects in future. When things are going hunky dory, we don’t tend to go to any sort of self-analysis mode. Only during evil days we may find it necessary to analyse the situation and deep-dive into oneself, into one’s inner self to improve. It also matures a person. Evil days are not as evil as they seem apparently. Perhaps they are not evil at all. Perhaps they are the like “difficult problems” in the Mathematics books of our school days. They are tough, but they are better for the brains. They stain the good ones from the rest of the crowd. A difficult problem does not necessarily bring a pleasant smile. But once it is solved, it makes the student a shade better in that field. Life is all about solving those maths problems – arithmatics, algebra, calculus, trigonometry…
As a student we don’t initially understand and appreciate the reason for the presence of such “difficult problems”. The author knows, the parents know, the teachers know the reason for their existence. Likewise, as a student in the curriculum known as “life” the author, the Almighty, knows the reason for the “difficult problems” albeit difficult or bad days. So, the best way is to, just like we did in our school days, concentrate on solving them, rather than question and crib their presence. One day we will get the reward and be a better student in life.

My prayer to the Almighty was all about thanking HIM for the easier and difficult problems and giving me the power to tackle such problems in future with the right mix of values and virtues.

End of my vacation

2010-10-01T12:47:00.005+05:30

I am now sitting by the window of the train which is running through the lush-green paddy fields as it races towards its destination, Bangalore. My vacation in my home town has come to an end. It was short and sweet. Vacations should be like this. In fact, everything in life should be like this -- precise. It should be like the delicacies which fills the stomach, doesn’t over-stuff it and at the same time the tongue longs for some more of it. So, you don’t get to eat more, but you always feel if only you could have more – you crave for it! The taste-buds enjoy it, the mind enjoys it, the stomach enjoys it and its healthy – the health enjoys it.
Had my vacation been a month-long program, then surely I would have been so bored that I would not look forward to any other vacation. In life those who live life till their eighties and nineties, often crippled and bed-ridden at the end of their life, perhaps lose the sweetness of their life. They forget their interesting part of their life when they had fun and frolic. They only look up to the Almighty to call it a day for them Dragging is never interesting, stretching anything unnecessarily beyond a certain point becomes more of a liability Be it stretching a vacation, stretching a relationship, stretching life, stretching a movie or stretching a journey.
So, when I planned my vacation, I made sure that I don’t stretch it so long that it becomes a bore and at the same time it is not so short that it will fly in a jiffy. My vacation should be optimum.
My stay in my home town went on pretty well. There was fun and enjoyment. The first birthday celebration of my daughter was a memorable day. It reminded me again how fast time flies and how each and every moment of our life is precious and hence should be enjoyed to the fullest. It was also an occasion to meet quite a few relatives, whom I had not met for years due to my stay in bangalore and hence the inability to attend other social gatherings. The thing I realized during my stay in Chandannagore is my five senses, and also perhaps my sixth sense, do not have to be as alert as they are when in Bangalore. The calm and serene surroundings and the pace of the life there, which may be like the slow motion of the life in Bangalore, provided a much-needed soothing effect on me.
It’s a small town with warm people having small dreams. They take life as it comes. They are content with the small things in life. All may not know the huge world outside. To many over there, Bangalore is a far-off place, Durga Puja (the main festival of the Bengalis, the residents of that place) is celebrated in most parts of India, earning a square meal a day and saving something for the future are all that they look forward to.
The sun is setting in the western horizon. It has drenched the sky and the floating clouds in crimson orange. Tomorrow I will wake up and find the sun rise in Bangalore as the train will enter the station at around 6 in the morning. It seems that the setting sun has taken with it a handful of memories – memories of fun, enjoyment, merry-making, laughter...all with a tinge of sadness.

Country roads take me home …

2010-09-17T11:35:00.003+05:30

I was born in a small town near Calcutta, called Chandannagore and spent the first twenty or so odd years there. Thereafter due to professional requirements I moved to Bangalore. That was way back in 2001.

Today after a gap of 1.5 years I am going back to Chandannagore for a vacation. I have got this excitement of visiting my home town. Due to whatever reasons, I decided to go by train, which takes an average 36 hours to reach Chandannagore from Bangalore, unlike the flight, which takes only 3 hours. The journey by train has increased my excitement. It has sort-of prolonged it.The joy in me today is the joy to revisit and cherish some old memories and the thought of the calm and serene lazy life in Chandannagore, the taste of the Bengali sweets and “rasogollas”, the sight of ponds, the sound of the Ganges flowing through the small town, the smell of the fresh oxygen.

As my idle mind in the almost endless train journey wandered in the distant green fields that kiss the horizon, I realized that it has a lot to do with my roots. The roots, which we all have, but take for granted. And those who don’t have repent for it. The roots -- a place where we were born or may-be spent most of the childhood days, a place where in the initial days of our life we got nutrition and water in the form of the rich virtues and values from these roots. A place for which we all have a soft corner. However much we ignore or try to look the other way, this root will never leave us.

Obviously, we all move on in life in search of a better life. The herd of buffalos in the Serengeti forest does, the migratory birds do, the nomads of early days did. Streams flow into rivers and rivers surrender themselves onto the seas and oceans. Its just a part of life. We all move. And for that we may have to leave the place where we used to once upon a time be a part of. But, we can’t leave the roots. We can’t ignore them, however much we try. Roots are the sources of our identity in this vast world. It is an identity that we all inherit during birth. And every type of roots has its own merits and demerits.

My roots is in the small sleepy town is very much in contrast to the always-active Bangalore. In my town, the streets are mostly illuminated by 100W bulbs, the shops shut down by 10 and the town falls asleep by 10:30, only to be woken up the next day morning at 6 am by the mild sunrays and twittering of the birds. After a long time I hope to enjoy the setting sun and spend days without having to worry about the project deliverables or check emails. Its like being in this world, without staying connected to it, which is not bad at times. These are the times when you discover more about yourselves, more about the human values - the relationships, the bondings, the world beyond the material world.

Truly, the greatest journeys are the ones that bring you home...

Why do I write blogs?

2010-08-16T14:43:00.004+05:30

This is a question that I have been trying to answer for the last couple of weeks -"Why do I write blogs?" I think there are some who read my blogs. Some may like them; some may feel they are some mindless articles. I am writing something "hoping" someone reads them. And the question remains "Why do I write blogs?". I am not a film star or a celebrity that people will like to hear every word I speak or write. In fact, I am thankful to all my readers who take time out of their busy schedule and read my blogs.

The answer to my own question in one sentence is, perhaps, I enjoy doing it -- just like I enjoy cooking. In our life we do most things that we may not enjoy 100%. Yet, we spend most of the time doing such things. Some of us spend the whole life trying to find out what we enjoy doing most in our life. For example, we may not like our office job 100% - some may like 70%, some 20%. Nonetheless, every day in the morning we get ready for office and spend most of the time of the day in the office to ensure constant flow of the fuel for our life. And then some may be so lazy that they hate doing any household work, but they do so nonetheless, as otherwise the family will not run. Some may be pursuing higher education, but not willingly. The list is endless. Given a choice, all these people would rather do other things that they enjoy more.

For me, writing blogs is not a compulsion. Its a thing that I enjoy doing. So, even if it just before the exams during my MBA days, or when I was down and out in Calcutta or staying up late night after office hours, I don't fret about it. After writing a good blog, I feel a sense of satisfaction and joy.

It is not about fame or trying to show-off something. Before blogs, I used to write diaries. In blogs I share my emotions and experience with so many; in diaries I knew that those feelings would be confined within the pages of the diaries. So, surely it is not for any sort of acknowledgement that I write blogs.

I have been writing poetries since the age of five. And since then, needless to say, many things have changed. But my inclination towards writing has not.

Through my blogs I express myself. I vent out my emotions and feelings. I share my experiences through my blogs. In our life we spend time for others -children, spouse, parents, brothers, sisters, relatives, friends, colleagues and so many. So, why not some time on ourselves, as well? Through my blogs, I start interacting more with myself. In the course of writing blogs, I spend time with myself. Through my blogs I explore myself and get to know myself and my world a little more each and every time.

My blogs are the windows to my world – not only for the readers, but also for me.

The name...

2010-08-04T10:58:00.002+05:30

Before I write any blog, I think over the topic for some days or weeks...even months. There are topics which I thought for weeks and then discarded as I did not find enough substance in it. There are topics, which I started writing and then didn't publish as the end result was not what I had expected.

In November, 2009, I wrote a blog "For GOD's sake, we all are different". I have been thinking on this topic for quite some weeks. It was also during this time - October/November - that we had to choose a name for our lovely daughter, who was born weeks before on 19th September. Indian names generally are Sanskrit words and they have meaning behind them. For example, the meaning of my name is "rays of the sun". Amit means Sun and ava means rays. So, Amitava means "Rays of the Sun")

Call it coincidence or call it the work of sub-conscious mind, the name that I suggested (which was finally accepted and remains my daughter's name) is Adwitiya, which means "no comparison", which sort of sums my thoughts on how I feel everyone is different and hence comparisons are unwanted and uncalled for.

Let us all live the way we want to live and be happy with how we live.

Melbourne Memoirs

2010-06-16T20:12:00.024+05:30

I went to Melbourne for 2 weeks in June, 2010. The following blog is about my experience of the entire journey.

14th June (Monday) early morning (4:15 am to be precise)

I had to catch a flight from Bangalore to Melbourne, Australia. I got in the cab and it was a 40 km drive from my home to the Bangalore Airport, which I have serious doubt

in calling "bangalore airport", since it is far far away from the city. Or shall we say just an airport, which the people of Bangalore use to catch flights. There is this NH7 highway that the cab drive zoomed through, having total disregard for any traffic signal at 2:30 am in the morning. when I said to him to obey the signals he said, obeying may cause more problem...In fact he gave me an example of how a car stopped in the signal the other night and the bus behind it did not. The result: the bus rammed into the car. Both the driver and the passenger dies on the spot. When I asked him whether such type of accidents is common in this route, he assured me 110% that there is at least 1 accident every 24 hours and its most frequent in the late night - early morning...around three -

four-ish in the morning. Now you don't want to hear those stories when your car in running at 100 kmph on the same highway in the accident-prone zone at around the accident-prone hour. Its like showing a house to a potential owner and saying how haunted the house has been! But that's how my journey was destined to begin!

GOD took the sweet revenge!
My wife hates many things about me, like all wives do about their husbands! So its not anything new. And like many I know what is the thing that she hates the most. Its my sense of direction when I am driving. When I drive, all roads seem the same to me and I completely rely on her for the direction. I know I have been on that road a dozen times before, but that does not mean I will not confuse it. As a student I read some chapter a hundred times before the exam and yet failed to

answer the question or had the wrong answer ticked that came from it. Like many inexplicable things in the universe, I don't know why that happened. Same thing when I drive. I would like to believe that while I am driving one side of the brain is so focused on the traffic and the signals and all, that the other side of the brain, which is supposed to guide me the directions is suppressed. I don't know whether its scientifically correct, but that's what I tell my wife. I cant tell , however, whether she is convinced by my logic. And because of my sense of direction every weekend when we go for a drive we end up driving some extra "free miles".

Just the other day we went to a friend's house. While returning I decided to try out a new route on our way back. And guess what? After a few turns here and there we realised that we are heading back to my friend's house at 9 pm, thanks to my experiment with new routes! I tried to squarely put the blame on the song that was being played in the music system of the car, by saying that the song actually distracted my attention and even turned it off. Needless to say, that didn't stop the few extra sound bites that came from my better half. Some things never change!

And for all these GOD took a sweet revenge on me while I was coming from Bangalore to Melbourne. For all those extra free miles that I have been gifting my wife in the weekends, HE decided to reward me with some free miles , albeit free air miles! For all you know, its no one but the Almighty! So, whatever HE does, HE does it in a mighty way. So, my flight to Melbourne was something like this: Bangalore to Dubai , Dubai to Singapore and then Singapore to Melbourne. What it means is, I had to fly around 4.5 hours west to Dubai. Then the flight from Dubai to Singapore is another 9 hours. Now, the catch is, I actually flew over Bangalore when I flew from

Dubai to Singapore (Bangalore is half-way between Dubai and Singapore) . And then the normal Singapore-Melbourne route. Precisely. I flew some extra around 9000 kilometres (Bangalore-Dubai-Bangalore)...total about 10 hours. What was actually some 14 hours journey, took 24 hours for me. I don't think I deserved such a harsh revenge!

The Darjeeling Tea

Darjeeling is very near to my home town, about 600 to 700 kilometers. It is a place I went when I was small.The small and beautiful hill town is situated in the lap of the Himalayas. When I was small and heard about the Darjeeling tea I knew it was famous. But then I went to many places abroad and found Tea labelled as "Darjeeling Tea" then I realised that all it not lost. I saw the labels in Walmart, Tesco and more recently in Australia. The flavour of the tea had something which reminded me of my roots. It is the aroma of the tea that took me to a different world momentarily.

My obsession with new food

Fish, chicken, lamb, pork, ham, beef, duck. I don't think I missed any. This was the list of non-veg things that I ate before my trip to Seoul in 2005. While in Seoul, I added two more, Sushi and raw fish. Raw fish is pretty tasteless, at least the one that I had. Its cold, and not cooked, not fried, not boiled, just plain raw. Well, doesn't the name also suggest so? Anyway, I was proud to quote that in my list of non-vegetarian items.

Today, the 15th of June, I tried another animal - a dish on the kangaroo saddle. You know, its Australia..and you have kangaroos. I was damn hungry and decided to try the new dish. Like my experiment with roads, my experiment with dish has been 50-50 in terms of hits and misses (though my wife claims its more misses than hits). To cut the long story short, the kangaroo must be really small -- something like a teenager in the kangaroo world. Because, its saddle was so small (may be just a shade bigger than that of rabbit). And what that means is, I had this big plate with some tiny meat in the middle, which they called kangaroo saddle. Even it was not among the most delicious dishes I have ever had in my life. I sometimes say, if chickens and hens knew how delicious they are and how amazingly they can be cooked, then perhaps they might have tried out themselves! Anyway, as for the kangaroo that sat in front of me, I finished the entire stuff in no time . By the time I reached home, I grew hungry again. I ate some biscuits that I had bought yesterday.

Its 2 o'clock in the morning now. I need to catch some hours of sleep now. I am sure that kangaroo saddle has long been taken care of by my efficient digestive system and the digestive juice.Otherwise, why on earth I am feeling hungry again?

18th June, Friday

On Friday evening I went to see a ballad in the State Theatre over here. It is not that I am a particular big fan of ballads, but its just that I wanted to have this experience. It was a nice and memorable experience.

19th June, Saturday

The next day I went on a day tour to the Great Ocean Road - the 12 Apostles being the last destination. It is a journey worth taking. On the way I saw Kangaroos in the distant green valleys, fed some parrots , saw a Kuala. There were also some spectacular beaches like the Bells Beach. Bluish green and greenish blue water and the mountain chains losing themselves into that clear water. We had lunch on a park - sandwich.
The Great Ocean Road, in particular, was marked by green mountains on one side and steep cliff plunging into the turbulent ocean on the other - the clear azure above. Every moment is different from the other and each moment I feel capturing the moment in my camera. And then during sunset I reached the 12 Apostles.
There is something with Nature that it pulls off some stunning features every now and then. It is a rock formation on the seashore, amidst turbulent and violent ocean and sea waves. It has a name "12 Apostles". But words cannot describe what it actually is, just like a passport does not give any identity of a person - good, bad, evil.
I have put some pictures of the 12 Apostles..that's all I can do. It was again another moment in my life that I felt we are all so insignificant and inconsequential when it comes to mother Nature. And also, we are so much into our own world that we don't know much about the huge world outside ours.
In short, the 12 Apostles is a piece of work that only Nature can do, both in the sheer size and splendour.

The journey continues...

The following week was not that eventful. It was office and hotel. In one of the days, I got a chance to see the Melbourne downtown. I thought of clicking pictures of the city, but then felt that it would be the same type of pictures with sky scrappers and roads. So, I tried to experiment a bit. I also clicked pictures of the local people - different people in different moods. Its one thing to pose for a camera and have that typical smile on your face. And another to catch people in their natural self. In the ones I clicked, the "photographeds"were unaware of the fact that I was actually capturing moments of their life. hence the photographs come out very natural. To this day, those photo collections of mine remain one of the best I have clicked.
I have attached the link of that below:

A day in Melbourne

Some Conversations:

Initially Nature used to awe me. The ocean and seas, hills and mountains, waterfall, sea waves, sky...gradually I realised that humans can be equally interesting to watch and interact with, especially the strangers whom you meet once and then perhaps will never meet again. You get a slice of their life and peep into their world, which may be so different from yours.

Karen: I don't know much details of the lady other than her first name and that she lives in New Jersey. Aged around 35. I did not want to, either and wanted to leave the identity to that level. When I was going on the tour to the Great Ocean Road, I met her. I had a tough time clicking my own photos with the picturesque background and so requested her to do the favour for me. She was also travelling alone and I reciprocated her favour soon after. What was interesting in our subsequent conversations is that she also had two small kids, the younger one being around 2 years. And her child also loved playing with her iPhone and her laptop, very similar to what my daughter does. And when I heard her speak of her kids, I realised how all parents think and speak the same way and how all babies more or less do the same things...and how we all are so similar fundamentally.

The Taxi Driver (from Melbourne Hotel to Airport): I have this uncanny habit of sitting on the front seat of a taxi. My flight from Melbourne was on Friday late night - Saturday early morning. The hotel promised to book a taxi for me, but ditched in the last moment. It was drizzling outside and I went out on the road to help myself. I got a taxi.
"Airport?"
" Yes!"
I jumped into it with the luggage.
The driver, as it turned out, like many others in Melbourne, was an Indian. And we immediately struck into a good 30 - 40 minutes conversation. I love these conversations, where I get to know the other persons world. He was in Melbourne for the last 6 years and went home only once since then and that too for 3 months, returning in last month. He told me how home sick he was and how he misses India, his parents, his brother, his friends and relatives. But he still prefers Melbourne as he can still save some and send money back to his family. In him, I found someone who seems to juggle between two contrast lives, one that is of the soul (that deals with love, relation) and the other that is so materialistic and real (money, poverty).And then I popped up a question for him
" When did you first decide that you will come to Australia and drive a taxi. And more importantly, WHY did you decide so?"
"Since childhood, I have seen my neighbours living in Canada, UK, USA and then coming home and flashing money. They had huge parties, grand get-togethers. Then I decided that I will go and earn money from abroad - whatever I have to do for that, I am fine - cooking, driving, cleaning toilets, anything! Its a childhood dream. And today that I have achieved it, there was no scope of regret."

The Bad luck and the Good luck:

My return flight was equally horrible, in fact more. My route was Melbourne - Kuala Lampur (KL) - Dubai - Bangalore. The flight that I took from Melbourne dropped me to KL, where I was struck for 10 hours, even though the flight went to Dubai after a mere 2 hour halt. The reason? It was full and there was no way I can reschedule my flight. The good thing was, apart from visiting KL on that day, I was upgraded to business class from Melbourne to KL. Nice luxury experience. Perhaps the ones who have got used to Business and higher classes of travel, this is the norm. But to me, it was luxury for 8-9 hours.

All's well that ends well!

How I fell in love with my second girlfriend

2010-04-24T07:52:00.007+05:30

My first girlfriend is now my wife. This blog is not about her. It is about my second girlfriend. At the onset I wish to clarify that I do not want to draw any comparison between my first and second girlfriend. Comparisons are unwanted and uncalled for.

It might be a bit silly blog, narrating my second girldfriend. But when you are in love, you sometimes feel like telling the whole world that you are in love.

I have known my second girlfriend for a shade over seven months. And it would be an under-statement to say that I have cherished each and every moment with her. I first met her last year on the 19th of September.6:10 pm. I still remember that, that night it rained very heavily, as if to make the day even more memorable. I dont know whether it is love at first sight, but definitely by her first look I realised that our chemistry is going to work! And indeed it has.
It took time for her to acknowledge me as her first boyfriend. But now I am sure, she has accepted it. She is much younger to me. So, when we meet her I shred away my world of a thirty-year-old-man and step in her world that is so refreshing and fun. She is very sweet, jovial and always smiles when we meet. She does not demand anything from me. Neither do I. Its just the sheer company of each other that we long for and enjoy. She doesn't want me to take her out to a resturant or buy her an expensive gift. If she wants anything then perhaps its a ride in my car on every weekend, which I am more than happy to do for her.
It is a nice bonding that I have started sharing with my new girlfriend, something I wish to write about in-between my serious blogs, in future.

The best part is, my wife knows everything. She knows about my girlfriend and my relationship with her. And she doesn't mind. In fact, she shares a very good relationship with her, too. After all, its our sweet little daughter! :)

And all thats gone with time...gone with the wind

2010-03-24T14:36:00.008+05:30

I have lost the innocence that I see in the eyes of my six month old daughter. The effortless smile when you see someone - acquaintance or stranger. Now when I meet a person there are some mental calculations that take place automatically between my two ears, which tells me how I should react.

I do not have to sit for periodic examinations, which brought butterflies in my stomach. The thing that gets closest to this is the yearly and half-yearly appraisals with your manager. But everybody knows what you are going to hear from him and what you have to say.

These days I do not get the luxury of two months of summer holiday or a month of Christmas and New Year holidays anymore. Weekend is what I look forward to. If there is a long weekend, what more do I want?

I used to look forward to the summer afternoons during the holidays to play chess with my brother. These days I am too tired and exhausted after office hours to play a decent game of chess with anyone. The idiot box is what I switch on once I return home from office; sometimes I watch "Discovery", "National Geographic Channel" or "Fox History Channel" if I want my grey and white matter to do a bit of activities.

I do not get the excitement of having a pair of new shoes or a new t-shirt. I can walk into any shop or mall and purchase one for myself. If I have money in my bank account,its good. If I don't, I swipe my credit card.

I do not have to look forward to the examination results date.

I no longer look forward to the smell of new books and new uniform at the beginning of each academic year. Honestly, I stay away from books these days. You Tube, TED Talks, Discovery and National Geographic Channels are where I gain knowledge from.

I no longer look forward to spend time with my grandparents. They are no more.

I do not look forward to the evening when my friends from the locality used to gather and we used to play badminton or cricket. These days, evenings are spent to earn money, more money and even more money...in offices, like couched potatoes. From air-conditioned (read: closed) offices, I could not even to catch a glimpse of the setting orange sun or get the fresh natural air.

I no longer look forward to visit the yummy Chinese Restaurants. There are around 50 Chinese restaurants in 5 km radius from my house...but do not recollect the last time I had lunch or dinner there.

Before joining Cranfield, I was looking forward to attending it...live a dream. Now that I have lived it, I can only look back and re-live it.

When I was small I used to wonder, when I will grow up, start earning and not have to ask my parents for everything I need. Today, I earn, but not sure whether I buy all the things that I want to.

In the loving memory of...

2010-03-12T14:06:00.001+05:30

There was this thought of fine doing rounds in my head for quite some time. This thought about networking sites. After 30-40 years when this generation of orkut and facebook users will be either be dead or in the twilight zone of their life, what happens to these networking sites?
Lets say, if I am alive at 80, I will have 400 "friends" in my friend list and among them 380 are dead. I open my Facebook account...there will be pictures previously uploaded, there will be scraps that we shared for the past few years or decades. There will be every proof about the person in flesh and blood. What the networking sites will not tell is that the person is no more. I shudder to think that day.

Networking sites for this generation will then become more of an obituary site rather than a networking site...it will become the "soft-copy of the grave-yard".

One of my dear cousins died yesterday...she is there in my orkut friend list...she is no more in this world. She exists in the virtual world, but ceases to exist in the physical one.

1 down from my friend list.

May her soul rest in peace. GOD bless her!

The city of Benaras

2010-01-24T07:47:00.005+05:30

It has been exactly a year since I had visited the amazing city of Benaras or Varanasi, depends on the way you call it. And still the memories of it seems as fresh as if it were yesterday. Today I feel the urge to write about my trip to Benaras and my thoughts about the city.

The city is among the oldest in the world. While walking down some of the really narrow lanes of the city, I felt the inexplicable excitement of the very thought that people have used the lanes for thousands of years! The crowd that came was as diverse as it can get - from the VIPs to the poorest of the poor. People queued up to worship the GOD, took bath in the river Ganges that flows through it, flocked the already busy streets bordered by road-side fast food vendors...its something that you have to live to believe in. Its one place where so many different types of people and culture meet! The mornings were foggy - visibility was hardly 50 metres or so. The temperature was low. And yet people thronged in thousands to take a holy dip.

Benaras is one place where religion and faith have left little space for science and reason. And, though it that may sound controversial, I'm ,at least,not complaining. Living in a world so full of reasons and rationalities, it does make sense to sometimes break the shackles and live in a world that defies all these. It feels good to break the law and let the mind and soul ward as they wish, without causing any civic nuisance. In the olden days when the industry and sewage water did not flow into the Ganges, the river was famous for its medicinal values brought due to the presence of minerals from the Himalayas. Hence people took bath and drank the water to keep them hale and hearty. Today, scientifically speaking, the water of the Ganges is too polluted to even take a sip. And so many are up in arms to show people the rationality of not drinking the water or taking bath. But in the world of analysis and judgement, what we often miss out is the soul. There are at least two components to our existence - the physical body and the soul within. Just like with any other physical objects, we are so much heads and ears over the existence of the physical body, that we almost seem to forget the soul that exists within us. And yet, surprisingly, we all more-or-less tend to believe that the physical body in mortal and the soul is immortal!
So, while the polluted water can be injurious to health, it might be good for the soul. It is the faith and devotion with which the dip is taken that brings the inner bliss to the pilgrims. I am not saying that we all should start believing in superstitions and blind-faiths. What I am saying is, if something makes a man or woman feel closer to GOD, make the person realise the inner self, then whats wrong with it? If some faith has brought people from different parts of India (at least), where the rich and the poor take the dip together side-by-side, where the concept of untouchables has been put to shame, where people realise that we all are one under one sun, then I am for that faith. Because this faith causes the unity and the bonding us. If people come to Benaras to acknowledge and repent for the sin and mistakes they have committed and promise not to repeat them, and for that they take the holy dip, then so be it. Even if causes skin infection, it will make the world, at large, a purer and cleaner place.
It is the way you look at it. Every morning in Benaras to me was a special morning. It was refreshing. It was connecting and communicating with the old Indian civilisation. The narrow lanes, the deserted huge palacial houses on the river bank, the line of beggars along the streets, burning of dead bodies in the many burial ghats along the bank and the smoke from them that swirled up in the air, the aarti or worship of the river during the evening -- all seem to have a deeper meaning than their mere physical appearance and presence. Quite like the statue of a GOD, which has very little to do with its physical existence and much more with what we attach its significance to.

In our day-to-day life we trust our sense organs - our windows to the outside world - eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin to connect with the outside world. In Benaras these physical sense organs are not enough...you need to have a third eye to get a deeper feeling and understanding of the city and the life in the city! The more you start getting deeper into it, the more you fall in love with it and the more you fall for it. After all, its not for nothing that the popularly-believed-world's-oldest-city has stood the test of time and successfully survived for thousands of years when almost all of the contemporary cities built during that time have disappeared into oblivion.

For GOD's sake - we all are different!

2009-11-26T11:06:00.006+05:30

I read in some oneliner "Like anybody else in this world you are unique". It was supposed to be taken on a humorous note. Or is it? When I see around I do not find any two persons same in all respects, not even twins. All have different thoughts and ways of living, to get back to my commonly-used phrase, everybody has a different world of his or her own.
Here's a simple story of what happened in our office this week. We were working seriously last Monday. Somebody came and told in the afternoon, "Its raining". This is nothing new in bangalore...nowadays its cloudy for weeks here. What came to my mind is "This is like the London weather". When I told one of my collegues, " Its raining", she said "Gosh! There are clothes lined up in the terrace and they'll get wet again!" When she told ("Its raining") to another friend of her, she said, "Today I brought an umbrella!", another replied "How can I attend today's party?" Phew! Two words and no two emotions are the same. So, how can we really expect people to share same point of view or opinions on so many other different things, which are more complex than "Its raining!" ?

We all know we cannot compare apples with oranges. I am not sure whether we can even compare two apples. What I know for sure, taking reference from the different apples available in India are Kashmiri apples and different from apples from Shimla, which are different from the Washington apples...the list is endless. I bet, even in Kashmir the experts will tell you that this garden's (or may be this tree's) apples are sweeter than the apples of that one. It is to be noted that we can differentiate them though we have a very limited interaction with them, albeit eating. Ask the owner of two similiar breed of dogs and you can hear a list of things which differentiates one from the other, starting from their sound of barking to eating to playing. Then why do we compare any two human beings when we are so different from each other?

In the kinder garden when you hardly know whats going on around, in the same class, some fare really well and others not that much. Even in universities when the lecturer delivers a lecture, each one interprets the lecture in his or her own way. When asked to write a synopsis of the lecture no two writing will be the same, word to word. If we all were same then how can this happen?
This is the root of all the problem - comparison: my home vs your home, my wealth vs your wealth, my kids vs your kids. How long shall we continue with the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses syndrome? Perhaps, much without our knowledge, this syndrome creeps within us - from our parents, teachers, neighbours, relatives, friends. I was annoyed with some people when my daughter was born as they started comparing her weight with those of others. Now that is ridiculous as you put that innocent baby in a rat race from day one! Give her a break! This disease called comparison results in a lot of fall-out between siblings, commonly known as sibling rivalary, relatives, friends etc. Just because he or she is my brother or sister, does not mean our parameters should be compared in all fields - be it in in the playground or academics. I had a very good neighbour-cum-friend. Today I realise that we had lots of things in common and we could have had a much healthier friendship. Just because he was my next-door neighbour and we studied in the same class and same school, people around started comparing us. I would like to point out, that till standard four we studied in different schools and thats when the friendship blossomed. But from Class Five, we were in the same school. People around got another topic to gossip. Whenever the results were out, there was comparison between our marks. How foolish! From good friends we started drifting away. You cant ignore the cacophony around and that too when you are that small. Now we both have become matured and have admitted and realised the mistake. Really, comparisons can ruin good relationships.

I sometimes wonder, is there any need to compare in the first place? If I am compared to X, then my achievements are limited to that of X. After a certain age, we all choose our own path...live our own life. So, today, the childhood rivalary is of no significance now, perhaps were not even then. Likewise, today's comparison regarding my car vs your car or my bangalore vs your london seems utterly foolish. After all, we all live the life that we choose to or are happy to live. Ideally, my 32 inches LCD TV should not make me proud because my neighbour has a 24 inches flat screen normal TV, but only because I love my TV's sound and picture quality.

Its like running a marathon race, which is our life. We all our running. While running some only look forward, towards the destination, dreams about how to get to a better place in a better way. Some keep on looking on the left, on the right, behind to see who is closer. If somebody is closer, then they foul the person, the fall of the person brings that temporary wicked sense of amusement to them. Then somebody else fouls them and they fall and cry, vowing to take revenge. The leg-pulling continues - starting from the kinder garden (or may be from the first day of the life!) to the last day. And in the process of rise and fall, they constantly think about how to score one against the relatives and neighbour; they very often get diverted from their destination, which is very different from the person who enjoys running, irrespective of whether somebody is breathing down his neck or not. He knows what he wants and where he wants to go...surely, he is enjoying every moments of the journey!

Connecting with the inner soul

2009-10-27T23:29:00.010+05:30

Sometimes you want to be alone...not because you had a fight or something or because you got fed-up with yourself...but just that you want to be with yourself. You want peace in the surroundings, you want peace inside. When with yourself, you discover yourself, you talk to yourself. It a matter of connecting the physical body with the inner soul. Most of us, most of the time, take the inner soul for granted. And thus ignore it...but when there is a chance to connect and re-connect with it, it gives that heavenly feeling. Its like you always would not like to play in front of spectators. Sometimes, you enjoy playing in the backyard of your home. You hit a shot and you enjoy...it does not matter whether people are watching it or not; you write a blog and are satisfied with it...not bothering whether others read it or not; you make a movie and then sit back and say to yourself "Well done!". Its a matter of talking to yourself and connecting with yourself.
However, being alone does not mean going into isolation. I can be alone even when I am in the middle of a crowded place. In life there has been at least four occasions that I recount where I was so much with myself that I did not want to disturb me!

The first in Kanyakumari, the southernmost point of the Indian peninsular. I was standing on the shore - was facing the Indian Ocean, to the left was the Bay of Bengal and to the right was Arabian Sea. It was evening, the sun was about to set. There was a cool breeze that blew all over, the sound of the ocean waves that broke on the rocky shores, the mumbling of the people around. It was simply magical. That was 2001, just after I stepped out of my college to join my first company, TCS. That phase of my life was also important.I didn't know what all to expect from the professional life...I had heard a lot of stories about it...it was time for me to test the waters. There were dreams, and a thousand thoughts. There were mixed emotions.And then there was the calmness and the vastness in front of me, both literally and spiritually. That was first time I felt very close to my inner soul, I felt that if I had the power I would pause the time and live the moment to eternity...

The second time I was on the banks of the river Ganges, sitting under the Lakshman Jhula bridge in Hrishikesh, near Hardwar, when I felt that peace again. It is inexplicable. There were these gigantic green mountain ranges of the Himalayas in front of me. The cloudless clear blue sky up above. The clear shallow waters of the Ganges lost its way in the distant mountain chains. Not far above is the Lakshman Jhula bridge, from where I could occasionally hear the bells that were tied around the neck of some mules, the common transport for carrying local goods. It was a picture-perfect moment in my life. I wish I had frozen that time. That was February, 2007. I was just offered a seat in Cranfield University...I had this feeling of joy as well as that of uncertainty. Leaving my known shores and stepping into an unknown future. Enjoying the calmness around, I thought about my childhood days, my school days, my college days, the time I spent with my wife, brother, parents, grandparents, relatives, friends....

In my third encounter with the inner self was when I was in Cranfield University. I had written my feelings during that time:
"Sometimes silence speaks more than words, darkness has more light than the sunny days and eventless moments become more memorable than eventful ones. Tonight, the night of 21st June, the power went off in the campus. Initially it was annoying as it meant I could not do anything – even not surf the net. But as I looked around, I realised, it was dead silence outside. The almost complete darkness out of the window and lack of any artificial light made the atmosphere absolutely spectacular. I decided to play a soft music in my laptop. While the gentle sound of the soothing and melodious sitar filled my room and my ears, my eyes wandered around the silhouette created by the distant tress, with the very faint light in its background. My mind and soul were filled with the heavenly peace. It was the peace that I was searching for long, but never really knew how to get to it. I hope and pray that the power does not return tonight.
So as the battery of my laptop dwindles down, I decide to pen the memorable eventless, dead silent and pitch dark night before my feelings get lost in tomorrow’s morning sunlight. Suddenly I can smell the rain and hear the faint raindrops pattering on my window panes. It gives me goose bumps! Its so plainly simple a night and yet so out of the world!
Let me now write not a sentence more and enjoy the mysterious night and discover the peace within!"
It was June, 2008, when I was contemplating on whether I should return to India or struggle in UK for some more days, looking for a decent job in the already shrunk economy during the recession time. Somehow, after that day I felt it was more important that I should have the inner peace.

And then there was Benaras or Varansi. Completely different from the other three places mentioned. It was, put in a word, crowded to the core. Everywhere you look, there's people around you. In the first place, it was difficult to find a hotel room, then it was difficult to walk in the narrow and crowded streets, it was difficult to find a place to sit. There was an ocean of people. People of all sects of life. There were people who were so poor, that they hardly can afford to have a square meal a day and yet they came to the holy city (one of the oldest cities in the world) to offer their prayer to the GOD. They took the holy dip in the Ganges, which is very polluted, to say the least. It was one such foggy morning in the "ghats" of Benaras, where all I could see around was people, people and people. They were shivering in cold, busy drying their body, offering prayer to the GOD...there were activities all around. It was noisy and not-clean. And I felt those goose-bumps again...amidst the hustling and bustling crowd. And again, it was ignoring the world around your, being oblivion to the world around you, and connecting to the power inside you...suddenly seeing the light inside you, which words cant express.
It was end-January, 2009. May I mention, during that time I was quite frustrated with my job in IBM then and just the day before I started my journey for Benaras, I was informed that after waiting for four long months, I got the approval from the Oracle Management team to join Oracle in my favourite city, Bangalore within a month. I was elated and had only GOD to thank for the break. It was like breaking away from the shackles and filling my lungs with pure fresh air!

Its not that these are the only four times I felt that heavenly peace...but these are times that stood so different from the rest. These are the times that awakened me - kept me reminding that true mankind is above the petty fights and quarrels, that what clothes we wear, lifestyle we lead, the inner soul of all people are the same. And it is the connection with the inner soul that that matters - connections with the body and the inner soul and connection between different inner souls. Its a matter of understanding people, beyond what they look like or how they are related to you. Its the light that guides us and takes us forward, that gives us the supreme peace. In each of these times, I was not in the best frame of minds. I was in dilemma or may I put it in this way, somewhat confused state of mind. And after these respective incidents I seemed to know which way to choose, which path to follow. And thats why perhaps, I remember these incidents and those moments so vividly.
Let the light within keep glowing, guiding and enlightening!

Lets enjoy the time...the world will change, anyway!

2009-10-09T20:13:00.007+05:30

Just a few days after writing my previous blog, knowingly or unknowingly I have stepped into another world. A completely different world. However, what I forgot to mention in my previous blog is that we all exist in many worlds simultaneously. So, the world I entered did not dethrone my existing worlds, which my home, my office, my parents, my brother; its just that another world was added to it. A world where you are able to sleep only a couple of hours at night; where you get up in the morning and without even getting up from the bed you know your first job is to replace the diaper of your baby; where you are clueless on why your baby is crying; and still you seem to enjoy every bit of it! Yes, my wife, Debreena, and I are now proud parents of a lovely little daughter. We have entered a new world on 19th September.
I am not sure how to express my feelings and emotions. Perhaps, its so mixed that I do not have the words to describe them. I do not think I am able to single out any emotion and react to it. There is anxiety, happiness, apprehension, that oh-no-not-again feeling...and a thousand more.
So the only thing that I am doing is enjoying the time: making sure I live every moment of the beautiful days.
Lets enjoy the time...The time will change and so will the world, anyway!

One life, many worlds!

2009-09-13T15:41:00.006+05:30

When I searched the word "world" in oxford dictionary, then I found that the word has a number of meanings. One meaning that we are all so familiar goes something like this "(the world) the earth with all its countries and peoples". Another meaning says " (one’s world) a person’s life and activities". It is the latter usage of the word "world" that inspired me to give the name of my blog "world of amitava".

We all live in a world of our own. We sleep, we eat, we drink, we work, we have fun -- all in our own world. We share part of the world with our friends, relatives and neighbours. Its a cosy world we all live in - knowingly or unknowingly - quite like the atmosphere that surrounds the earth. We move with the world around us, with its set of views, principles, knowledge. We accept other people's world when we find something common or interesting in their worlds. We have fun and make merry when the worlds match each other. That is why sometimes even two complete strangers can be seen talking for hours in a park or in an airport lounge. Their worlds have something in common. They have something they can talk about. But if the worlds are different, then even the closest of the blood-relationships cease to talk to each other. Its just that the cats and the dogs can’t dine from the same plate and even if you force them to, you don’t expect any conversation on the dinning table as they don’t understand each other's language - each lives in a different world of its own.

The most interesting part is, these worlds keep changing! Thats why, even after five-six or more years of successful marriage, people file for divorce. Their worlds have changed. Once their worlds shared lots of common things between them. Alas! Today they don’t speak each others languages.
I first got a feel of my world getting changed when I had to leave my first school, St. Joseph's Convent in standard four (the school allowed boys and girls to study together till standard four, from standard five only girls were allowed to study). I remember the last day in that memorable school, when I felt really sad that I had to leave the school, some of my best friends and teachers in the school, the environment. It was also the first realisation that life moves on. Since then I had stepped into many new worlds with butterflies in the stomach and stepped out with a heavy heart. There was my life in my next school. My world in my engineering college; my world when I joined the Indian IT firm TCS and was in Trivandrum for some months; my world when I stayed alone in Bangalore in the initial days of my job; my world when I was deputed to USA from TCS; my Cranfield world and the world I live now. Each world is different from the other. Each world had its own taste and flavour. Most importantly, in each of these new worlds, I have lived a new life.
A very good way of revisiting those "lost worlds" is to read the mails that were exchanged during those periods. The mails that I had written when I was about to join Cranfield is different from what I was writing when I was studying in Cranfield or the post-Cranfield period. The mails are the proofs that my views, thoughts, dreams have changed its shape and form. In short, I call, my world has changed. Like the transition from day to night, I slowly stepped out of the world I was living and entered a new one. About a year and a half back, when I was in Cranfield my world was class lectures, team meetings, assignments, job search, Fedden Flats; today my world is completely different. I do not live in the Cranfield world anymore. I am equally sure that today's world of mine will eventually fade into oblivion and I will step onto a new one some day.
My age is thirty one now. And within such a short time I have explored so many worlds and lived so many lives. As I have mentioned a couple of times in other blogs, the journey of my life gets more and more interesting, especially, when every couple of years I discover new worlds, meet new friends, have new ideas, learn new things!

Its the same for all of us. We hear of explorers discovering new worlds and how Columbus discovered India and the adventures and stories about it. But we fail to take note of the fact that each of us is explorer in his or her own right. We discover so many things in the world we live in and then one day we leave that world and start exploring some other worlds. We also go through the storms, the rough weather, the high waves, the uncertainty as we set out for the new exploration. Whether we like it or not, this journey of life will eventually come to an end one day for all of us. But in this one journey we can have so many small journeys, in one life we can live so many lives and in this one world ("the earth with all its countries and peoples") we can have so many worlds(of our own)!

What's there in a song?

2009-09-06T16:44:00.007+05:30

There are quite a few times I have come across a thought; but am not sure whether those thoughts are so universal that I should write about them and share them with others. However personal they might be, at some point the readers should relate to them. If my thoughts are weird and meaningless then its really no point trying to share those with others. But then I find echoes of many of my thoughts among different people. In one of the blogs, I wrote about the feeling of loneliness in a crowded football stadium. The other day I was watching a documentary in Youtube about Mecca. There one person said how he felt lonely even when he was in a crowd of millions in Mecca. In another writing, I vented my opinion on Indian universities and the newspaper reporting; some of my friends wrote to me how they shared the same view as mine. All these give me the confidence to nurture my thoughts and develop them to a well-composed piece. Today's thought is something that has been doing rounds in my head for quite a few months; its only when my younger brother said something similar last week that I felt the thought is universal. And I decided to pen down that thought - a difficult thing, but let me give it a try!

Orange candy! Ah! Thats what my favourite ice-cream is. And I think its the best ice-cream in the world. I know its a bit too much, but thats the way I like it to be. But why do I think so? Because when I am down and stressed, an ice-candy sort-of relaxes my nerves, wipes off my tension and anxiety and I feel so relaxed. Perhaps, nobody else feels so having the same orange candy! Even the most rigorous scientific tests would reveal that there is no such chemical in an orange candy that can act as a stress reliever. Actually, to me, an orange candy is more than an ice-cream. When I have it, it reminds me of my childhood days - the days when there was no tension and anxiety in my life, everything was so jolly and happy-go-lucky. The taste of ice-candies reminds me of those days, of those times...and I am happy again!

Similarly, a particular smell. That smell may bring to you certain memories, certain times - good or bad. Certain food or certain movie clippings.

One of my bad times in the recent past is the time in Calcutta, working for IBM and I have no qualms saying so. Perhaps thats the reason I have developed a hatred for the city. Whenever I think of Calcutta, the life there, whenever I see any Bengali (language spoken by the people of Calcutta) TV channels, they remind me of those days. I no longer see the Bengali TV channel, but visualise my life during that time, instead. And I dont want to see them.

And then there are songs. It just amazes me how a song can have so many different meanings to so many people. When we (brother and I) were school boys, we used to listen to songs of a Bengali singer, called Anjan Dutta. We were die-hard fan of his. I thought, "Yes! Now I have got somebody who speaks my language, understands me." After more than a decade, his songs no more appeal to me. And yet once a month I just play his songs when I want to re-live those younger days of mine. When I listen to his songs, actually I dont listen to his songs, but take myself to those days. And I still remember, when I went to USA the first time in 2002, I used to listen to at least two Bollywood movie songs - one from "Kaante" and the other from "Devdas".
During my last days in Cranfield things became a bit confusing. I was dilly-dallying with the idea of whether I should go back to India, or should I stretch myself for some more months to find a job in the already-squeezed job market of UK. At that time I listened to songs from some other Bollywood movies called "Race" and "Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na". When I listen to those songs I cant help but get those feelings inside me again. What appears in front of my eyes is the Fedden Flat studio apartment of mine; the yellow bulb at the centre of the room, the big windows, the community centre view from my room, the car-parking lot...I get goose-bumps. And these same songs have different meaning to different people. Some may remember these songs as it was played when he/she was going on a certain journey or may be it was being constantly played by the local club at a function or simply his/her better half gifted a collection which had those songs!

So, even though I dont find any good sense to the songs of Anjan Dutta today, which at one time I simply loved, I still listen to them when I want to re-visit my adolescent days. My wife did not find any meaning to his songs at any point in her life. So, today, even though we both share the same opinion that those songs are too childish, she fails to understand why I listen to them, anyway!
Isn't it strange how we live in the present and then occassionally some incidents take us back to our past? For a moment or two we go back and live in a different world, which may be good, which may not be so good. But, nevertheless, it is a world we once lived. It is a phase of life that we passed.
One day in my newly-bought home in Bangalore I was relaxing on the terrace, when a parrot's twitter suddenly caught my attention and what immediately flashed in front of my eyes is the gorgeous mango tree that we had in our house. When the mango used to ripe, parrots used to come in flocks and nibble at them. I was too familiar with that twitter then, as a child. Alas! Today that mango tree is not there. Needless to say, those sweet childhood days have also quietly sailed to some distant fairytale land!

You are just a phone call away!

2009-08-14T17:36:00.005+05:30

The number of contacts in my mobile phone run well above two hundred; when I open my gtalk or yahoo messenger I see more than a dozen friends always online; my orkut account has more than 150 friends and so is my facebook account. Many of you will have much more than that. Am I not lucky to have so many friends at the click of a button? And yet sometimes the world seems so lonely! Hardly the phone rings apart from the very familiar ones; hardly someone scraps and yet I like to think I am in the middle of everything! At the end of the day before going to sleep I can hardly count the number of people I can count on. Is there really anyone to whom I can pour my heart out?

This world is strange - you come alone in this world, you leave alone and yet like to think that you are not alone. You hate to be alone, though its a fact that we all are alone! Alone in our own world, where we silently laugh, smile, cry and shed tears. Our world is a very personal one. On one hand we like to share part of our world with very few people, on the other hand we want this world to be as private as possible.
Its a dilemma.

Do I really want to let others know who am I and what I think? We always try to don some type of the mask - in office we are different(quite professional), in home we are on our own (as close as it can get), in playgrounds we are competitive, with a bunch of strangers in a flight or train we are reserved. Are we not trying to camouflage our identity depending on the environment? And in the midst of all these sometime we perhaps fail to identify who we actually are. As for me, sometimes I can remain so cool, while at other times I may lose my cool, sometimes silent and hardly participating in any conversation and sometimes so full of energy. My dilemma with myself continues. Exactly who am I and how am I? What do I want in life? Is there any boundary line or does the milestone keep on shifting? How much happiness is happiness? Why do I feel lonely even when I am inside a crowded football stadium? Why did I feel that eternal bliss when I alone sat for hours under the Lakshman Jhula bridge beside the shallow Ganges in the Himalayas? Why do I feel at one moment that I have all that I need in life and the very next moment I feel I have nothing that I can call my own?

I dont think I'll be able to find answers to any of these. Or perhaps I will at the end of my life. Perhaps all the answers lie in the destination, may be like a pot of gold, and this journey is just the road to the destination. Its like you climb up the mountain without really knowing whats there on the top. The day when I reach the top , perhaps, the meaning of the journey will be as clear as a whistle. Perhaps, that day all the jigsaws in the puzzle will exactly fit onto each other and I will find answers to all my questions. That day I need not call anybody to relieve me of my loneliness. I need not login to my facebook or orkut to find out if anyone left a scrap for me. I will be my own complement. The world would not need me anymore; I would not need the world either! Everybody who thought their life dependent on mine will soon find that I am not indespensable. Everybody's life will be back to normal -it will be business as usual. Like the beautiful rose in the garden which thought that it brought that extra glow in the garden and when one day it faded it realised that the no one notices it after a day or two, same thing is applicable to all of us.
So, there will come a time when I wont be blogging any more,when people will scrap me in the networking sites, mail me or ring me, they will not get any reply. Because, by that time I would have got answers to all my questions and would have already started my next journey.
Ah! What a feeling!

Shrinking world or shrinking mind?

2009-08-04T20:24:00.007+05:30

In today's world of mobiles and wi-fi internet we claim that the world is in our hand. You know, the "Global Village" concept. But more often than not I wonder how many people have really been able to rise above their small narrow world and have got a taste of the actual "world". Or is it that we know what the world outside is, but pretend that our one, even if its inferior a thousand times, is a better one. Its like the story of the rabbits that I heard when I was small. My grandfather used to tell me that when anyone chases a rabbit, it puts its head inside the burrow or hole on the ground. Since it cant see the world outside, it thinks that the world cannot see it to, though its little tail keeps signalling like a flag to the hunter! Let me give some examples:

The first one is when I just got a chance into my good old Cranfield University. And someone commented that there is not much difference between an UK - obtained degree and an Indian degree. Now it needs to be clarified here that the Indian degree in question is one of the lacs of B-grade Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degrees doled out by thousands of B and C-grade Engineering Colleges across India. I was going to ask the person, are you sure what you are saying? Was it really ignorance or was it shutting the window and claiming my house is the best, because I have not seen any other's house? May be, jealously. Or may be plainly foolish.

But then what do I conclude when the "Economic Times" on 4th August, 2009, claims in an article that "Students have left LBS, Cornell, Stern to join the great Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta"! Nothing but pathetic reporting! When IIMs (as the Indian Institute of Managements are commonly known as) never ever figure in the top 300-400 world MBA schools in the world, how can they think of competing with the market leaders? And may I know who these students were? What are their credentials? Quoting one (insane) student does not prove the world thinks so! Feeding the Indian public with IIM news has become a sort of pastimes for the media, which IIMs dont regret, because they get good publicity, nonetheless. Yes, we know we live in a "Global Village", but what about the feel-good factor that "we're almost there!". We became second in the race. Then a footnote: There were only two comptitors.

We all have our own world - our comfort zone, where we eat, drink, sleep, dream, work; where we live. Good, bad, ugly - we love the world. We know there is a better world outside and there are others who are living in the better world. Most people like to handle such situation in two ways . Either they dont want to see, which the rabbit-like attitude. Or they start comparing, be jealous...start those back-bitting. Modifying one small joke that I heard some months back, I can say fighting with the second category people is like fighting with a pig in the mud, soon you realise that since they dont have any other work, they are enjoying, only you are getting dirty. Best way to treat these creatures of the society: IGNORE.

I thought in the open world today, people would have realised that there are as many ways of living as many people are there on earth. If I have got a B-grade engineering degree and failed to obtain better degrees, then I should look how I can obtain that. Rather than , foolishly, comparing that B-grade degree with a B-degree (Business Degree) from A-grade worldwide renowned college.

And that brings me to my question - how much global are we? Do we pretend to be global (when we are just plainly narrow-minded) or we know what the world outside is but fail to accept that better and bigger world.

Surely not many have availed the facility of obtaining knowledge at the click of a button. And thats why even reputed publishers get away with such cheap articles. And thats why people still swear by the IIMs. The approach of IIMs and foreign universities towards the course are different. IIMs rely on the high placement (and thats more because of the growing Indian market), foreign universities on the quality and state-of-the-art knowledge, universal exposure. Yes, we all go to B-schools because we want to earn money - more money, perhaps, some days down the line. But not only because of money do we all go for MBA. There are illerate real-estate brokers, fish merchants, smugglers and lot more where you really dont have to be too much educated, but mint a lot of money. If money was the only parameter, people would not have gone for PHDs and thus spent the first 35 or so years of their life learning new things. How much is monetary gain? Very little compared to the intellectual one. Since monetary gain is simple to measure, IIMs use this parameter to create the hype and hooplah. And so, when the JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi) or the ISI (Indian Statistical Institute) or the IISC (Indian Institute of Science) and such other renowned educational institutes develop thousands of intellectual mind, their parameter is hard to measure. It does not make spicy news articles. So sad! I may categorically want to mention that my aim is never to demean IIM, but to say, it should not be compared with the other foreign school names mentioned in the article. Its a fact...come on, lets face it. Every education, every degree has its own position. Even the B-grades and C-grade ones. But comparing them with the creme de la creme only provides a laughing stock.

I would say our forefathers were more global as without having access to radios, TVs, let alone, phones,internet and all, they were so much better informed of the outside world. And that was through classical novels, books, un-biased newspapers. Above all, they were not narrow-minded. They appreciated others and learned to live with many under a common shelter.

Today, is it too difficult to accept the world as it is? To accept the reality? To accept that "Yes, he is a better person" ? To stand up and applause when somebody hits an ace? Can we,for once, shut up and clap for appreciation? As the world shrinks, I am afraid, so does most our minds.

I cannot conclude without writing a note of thanks to none other than my alma mater Cranfield School of Management for introducing me to the real and beautiful outside world.

As life goes on...

2009-07-02T16:10:00.007+05:30

Life has been going at a fast pace for me for the last couple of months. Time flies here. Different emotions, different feelings, partly organised, some decisions taken with a cool head, some just happened before I could react to it. In short, life in Bangalore has been eventful. There is the urge to write another blog and yet I don't know what to write on...perhaps will be wandering here and there. Different very small incidents sometimes change the way you perceive things.

Things did not go too well after the MBA, especially with the type of job I landed in IBM and another idiotic and a****** boss that I had to report to. I mean some people just have so little knowledge about professionalism and they bring their personal 'I' so much into the office that they forget that they should actually abide by the organisation policies ; after all its not their home! But who will make them understand? But like this recession taught almost all that nothing in work can be taken for granted, hopefully, some day these managers will realise that its not enough to hang around in the name of (mis) managing the team. Since it was immediately after the MBA, the shock was just too much. It was a moment of shock and despair.

Thank GOD I do not have to deal with him and new manager is absolutely amazing.

Immediately after that manager, I came across my manager in Oracle. A completely different person. Jovial, hard-working, dedicated and loves the team! In fact the best boss I had in my whole career. The whole team has lunch together, we play pranks together..its absolute fun. In fact, last month there was a possibility that my manager would be transfered to another business unit. The whole day we prayed that it does not happen. Ultimately it did not! And the whole team was so relieved - BOSS stays as BOSS! A moment of celebration.

And then there are relationships and the over-heads that come with it. Mainiting the links, striking the right chord, understanding what opinions others have about you, its all so complex! In this small life of ours I wonder how people have the time to brood over small things, have time to peep into other persons' life, analyse it and then prepare the perfect recipe to set the house on fire. Perhaps those who have lost the direction of their own life try to distract others. Its sometimes so difficult to control your temper. But at the end of the day I realised the importance of something that my dear grandmother taught me long back when I was small - BE COOL. When as a child, I was very hot-tempered she used to constantly calm me down and compare anger with fire. It was a moment of realisation - an old lesson revised.

Compare this with what happened just in the last two days. Our maid (we call her "Aunty") yesterday told me about her past life and how her husband left her 23 years ago to marry another women and how tough her life has been. I was moved by what she said and was amazed to hear that she actually knows driving and carnatic vocal music (I know none of them!). Today morning she said she had a problem and had to be admitted to the hospital today evening. She cannot continue our job. I learned from her relative that she had breast cancer of advanced stage and was going to be under the knife soon. She bought our used old washing machine and with this month's salary it was supposed to be adjusted. However I don't know why, but I did not adjust and gave her the full salary. While time of leaving, she said "Sir, I will pay you the amount. Don't worry" I only said to her "Don't worry, aunty...you take care of yourself." I wanted to say "Let that be a farewell gift to you!"...But perhaps my throat choked and I was unable to speak. It was a moment of sadness.

My dear old friend of college days, Sandipan (to be precise, Dr. Sandipan Pramanik, Lecturer of Nano-Technology at the University of Alberta, Canada) one day mailed me about some project plan that he was going to submit in approximately 10 days time. He wanted me to proof-read it. When I opened, I was elated to find that its a business plan. Having just completed my MBA and raring to go, I jumped into it. We worked day and night - round the clock towards it. That was in May. Last week I came to know that our business plan won the first prize. I was on cloud nine. If there was even the slightest hesitation in me about the value of my MBA and the time and money I spent on it, this incident rubbished all of them. I am happy and proud for every moment that I spent in the MBA. Once I thought that I'll tell to all who even now doubt the credentials of my MBA, but then recalled my grandma's advise to be cool under all circumstances. I don't have to prove any point to the world. If I am clear in my conscience, I know I am in the right. It was a moment of great joy, satisfaction and peace of mind.

My life goes on...small incidents, big impacts,some old lessons revised, some new lessons learned. My life goes on...learning new things everyday, improving myself, changing the way I look at life, paying attention to some, ignoring others.
All in my endeavour to become a better human being -- better than the previous day.
Amen!

The graduation and beyond!

2009-06-02T06:30:00.003+05:30

This Friday...the 6th of June is the graduation for the Cranfield University batch of 2007-2008. Being a student of the MBA cohort of that academic year, I was invited for the graduation. But, unfortunately, due to several factors I would not be able to make it. My office work and some other personal obligations are the key reasons behind my absence from the prestigious graduation ceremony. Am I feeling bad? Yes a bit. A bit, because this is my third degree (after a Bachelor of Engineering and another Master of Science) and I have made a hatrick-of-sorts by not attending any of the three graduation ceremonies. Each time something or the other came up which prevented me from attending the ceremonies.

To all those who thought that Cranfield was the ultimate destination, nothing can be further from truth. It is the train to the destination! It is the stepping stone to beginning of a long and interesting journey. I have got world-class education from the university; I have attended lectures from some of the stalwarts in the world of academics; but they are things of the past. From now on there should be no looking back. I was in Cranfield for a reason...the days and purpose are over. Today my world ahead is different...I am out to live my new-found life. There is no point in revisiting the past and unnecessarily feeling nostalgic about it. In life you lose some, you gain some. So, while my heart will like to revisit the past and will miss the graduation, my brain will be busy working for a better tomorrow. My life post-Cranfield gets more and more exciting as I will reveal them in the coming blogs.

Somebody is controlling!

2009-05-08T06:42:00.004+05:30

Many times we think that we can do a lot...there are a lot of things that are under our control. But, at least for me, I have seen that except putting the best effort nothing is in my hand, least of all is the result. And this observation is not based on a single incident or two, but on a series of incidents. And so many things would have changed in my life had not a particular event taken place.There are so many turning points in one's life that sometimes one really wonders how much is really under our control.

It would make a long story to narrate the different "defining moments" of my life. I am sure, we all have numerous such instances. My making into the engineering way back in 1997, getting admission to the Cranfield MBA, my landing with a job with Oracle Corp. in Bangalore again...its just that I have done my best and the rest is controlled by an invisible pair of hands. And that makes me believe in a power, often refered to as the Almighty. Sometimes you are at the end of the tunnel and you have absolutely no clue how to get out of it, you are getting suffocated and its then that you see the light...and you swim to the safe shores!

When you do good things, you are rewarded; evil begets evil. These are some old adage. But evertime I think I can do this and that, I realise that I am a tiny entity in a vast universe and I am almost entirely guided and dependent on the environment around me. Its not I have surrendered myself to my fate. But its just that sometimes it gives me a solace of sorts to let things drift and take its own course and hope and pray that the stream will automaticall find the ocean! It so happens that you fight and toil the whole year, you dont get the desired result. And then you gave a dedicated effort for a month and there is a miracle. None can explain these phenomenon, which keeps on occuring in our life.

Everytime we think WE are in total control, we are subtly made aware of the fact that we are just the means. Having said that, there is no substitute to the dedication, hard work and the zeal to succeed. Day dreaming might not lead us to great hights. Sincere effort, hard work and a dice of luck, guided by the invisible power of the universe, might just be the perfect recipe!

And while we strive to become a better human being and raise our level, the journey of life gets even for interesting and exciting.

Bon Voyage!

31st March...

2009-04-09T00:50:00.004+05:30

I am now in Bangalore. My good old Bangalore! I have been here from 2001 to 2007 and left it only to join my MBA. Both I and my wife had an intuition that some day we would return to the lovely city; but I didn't know I would return here so soon! But, nonetheless, I am enjoying my life in Bangalore - every bit of it!

Today is 31st March...Its a memorable day in my life. Not exactly today, but 31st march, in general. No its not my birthday, nor is it my wife's or brother's...even not my parents'. So what makes it so special? Well, we all get obsessed by dates. And to top the list are birthdays (one's own birthday, birthday of loved ones, near and dear ones, friends), marriage anniversaries, New Year, Christmas. We celebrate those days and more often than not plan for a couple of weeks on how to spend that special day. But have any of you taken any particular date of a calendar and seen how you have spent that day for last few years. Lets take an arbitrary 14 October, for example. How did you spend that day once when you were a child...and then once in high school, and then for the last few years? Facing a day without the least preparation. Or, lets put it in this way, you prepare something for a day..and it happens to be the 14th of October...Thus it will turn out that one 14th October you spent in some movies, one 14th October you spent your time with your grandparents, one 14th you were stuck in the office, and lets say in the last one you just didnt do anything special at all! The interesting thing about this arbitrary date compared to birthdays and marriage anniversaries is that on this arbitrary date you are free to do almost any thing and every thing; unlike on the birthdays (and all) when you are pre-occupied with some special thoughts almost the whole day and some things like wishes, phone calls and cards are almost an integral part of those days.

31st March is one such date in my calendar. Some eventful things happened quite a few times on this date and yet those things could have taken place on any other day in the Gregorian calendar!

As a small boy, that day was 'eventful' in the sense it was the last day of the financial year. My father, being a bank manager, often came late in midnight on that day. Generally he came at 7-8 pm in the evening...that day he often returned home at 1-2 am in the morning. To me, that sounded a hell lot of work then.

31st march is also the day before the April Fool day. When we (my brother and I) were small, on one such April Fool eve, we played some harmless pranks on our grandparents with coins and rubber-band wrapped in a piece of paper that makes strange sound once the paper is unfolded. I still remember that our grandfather expressed utter surprise and fear during the time of unfolding the paper when the crackling sound was heard. We believed him them. Today, I realise that fine piece of acting was to ensure that the tender hearts were not broken. Today my grandparents are no more.

31st March 1997. Yes, I remember the year too! It was the day my Higher Secondary Mathematics examination was held. Since my humbleness will do no good to the article, I admit that I pretty good at Mathematics. I was even better at Physics! Ah Physics...my favourite subject! The physics exam was held on 29th March. It was disaster for me. I don't know why, but things did not go well for me on that day. I failed to answer simple questions. I forgot to answer a set of questions worth 8 marks and I still remember on what it was (What is anomalous expansion of water and how it helps the aquatic animals and plants). I returned home completely shattered. 30th march was a holiday. On the morning of 31st march, I had a sort of semi-nervous breakdown. I seemed to have forgotten all the mathematical formulae and another disaster on the examination day seemed looming large.My father anticipating my panic and tension decided to accompany me to the gate of the examination hall. It was his D-Day - Bank closing day. But he chose to take a leave and go with me that day. For me that was a really BIG sacrifice that my father did on that day. Needless to say, before that and after that he did innumerable such sacrifices, but that somehow stands a bit away from the crowd. It also perhaps showed how he chose personal life over the professional life. Fortunately, my Mathematics exams was not that bad.

31st March 2004. Why is it that each time my dad features in some form or the other on this day? Believe me, even this one involves him...in fact the whole of 31st March, there was just one person who grabbed all our attention, focus and prayer: it was my father! Debreena and I got in November 2003. My parents came to visit us (in Bangalore from our native place near Calcutta) in February, 2004. To cut the long story short, during the visit, he was detected of stomach cancer. It was a total shock to all of us - a bolt from the blue. He was just doing his routine check-up when this got diagnosed. He had to go under the knife on 31st March. After a five hour long and critical operation, he was back to normal...he is leaving a healthy life, by the grace of the Almighty. When I went to the hospital medical store to get his medicines, at night 9 pm, they said. "Sorry sir, generally we are open 24 hours a day, but today being the financial year end, we closed all our transactions by 8 pm and are busy in the accounting process." I went to a medical store outside to get those long list of syrups and tablets and capsules and injections.

31st March 2008. One of the best days of my life. I was all alone in cold England during my MBA. My wife was working in India. In the Easter break, she joined me for 15 days. It was not planned, but the day we chose to visit London was 31st March. Though I had been in Cranfield from September, I kept the day-long trip to London postponed till my wife came. Actually I always thought I should write about that day...and then kept on postponing as I took time for my thoughts to get organised. But before my thoughts got organised, the economy got dis-organised and with it so many plans, thoughts and dreams got hay-wire. I did not have the mentality to sit down and write and that's why there is a considerable gap in my blogs in that period. Perhaps, some day soon I will write about them. But one thing I must say, seeing 221B Baker street was living my childhood dream. I had goose bumps then and am even having so now at the very thought of the moment. So, it was a bright sunny day in London - the London eye, Big Ben, Traffelgaur Square, The Westminster Abbey, the London Bridge, the Piccadilly Circus, the cruise down the river Thames, the Greenwich Meridian (read about in school books), the Buckingham Palace...you name it. I still remember that we were in the Buckingham Palace in the evening time. The sun had gone mild. I told my wife "Life is so unpredictable. On 31st March 2004, we were in front of the operation theatre, now are in front of the Buckingham Palace. GOD know how we will spend the next 31st March.

31st March 2009. I am in Bangalore. Writing this blog. Had a normal day at home and in office. The only event is, though fairy tale ending it might sound, today my father went for a routine check-up. The doctor did not find any carcinogenic cell (cancer cells) in his body. In 2004 the doctors told if they are not found in the next five years, my father can well assume that he is in safe shores. Today he was relieved to find himself in safe shores!

The speciality about this date (31st March) is that it is uniquely special (I don't know what it means!) in my life. But on second thought, I firmly believe that all such days are unique in each of our lives. In the busy daily life, we fail to take notice of it and ,thus, in most cases lose the joy of living every moment!

Cultural shock in my home town!

2009-03-11T18:49:00.006+05:30

Its not that one year of an MBA in UK has made me a British; its not that I feel a sense of pride by disassociating myself from my roots; its not that I think that I will be considered a superior human being if I give the impression that I am more of a developed-nation 'resident'. And yet my home town Calcutta left me utterly disappointed and shell-shocked in the few months that I was working there. It was a cultural shock, more precisely, "work-cultural" shock!

They say that the best journeys are the journeys that bring you home. And then there is 'home sweet home'. And yet the work environment in Calcutta left a bad taste in my mouth.

I am proud to be a Bengali (the residents of Calcutta). After all, despite the poverty and untidiness and many other problem, in India the noble laurates, oscar winners (until the recent Rahman spectacular) and several intellectual men and women were/are from the city. But , sadly, now the state of the state of West Bengal is abysmal. We (Bengalis) crib about the state and still like to think that we are better than the rest of India. But, sadly enough, the reality is something different. The world has moved on...Calcutta has not. I am not trying to bash the city, which formed my basic foundation. The fact remains, whatever the city does, it makes a huge publicity stunt of the work or acheivements. The number of IT (Information Technology) offices and campus are a small fraction of those in Bangalore or Mumbai. The mere prospect of the establishment of the Nano motor (more famously known as the world's cheapest car) raised such a celebration that it seemed that the world can't get bigger and better. All these point to one thing: we love making a mountain of a mole (Empty vessels sound more?).

I had been wondering what it is that makes Calcutta not so industry-friendly. From being the capital of India till the early decades of the 20th century to being reduced a shadow of its glory days, there really has to be something wrong somewhere. Well, I did not have to scratch my head for long. It is the unions, the strikes (bandhs), the laziness of the people which top the list. The cultural shock that I faced is people's attitude towards work. I wonder how people can be so ignorant about their work. When I go to repair my DVD player, the mechanic charges me money, without even repairing it. And on top of it, he creates more problems in it. One Sunday the taxi unions call a strike the following day; the reason being that the drop in the global petrol price should be reflected in the price of the petrol in the local market (in India petrol prices are regulated by the government). Have they ever thought that so many thousands of people will have to suffer and so many crores of business will be lost. Not a word, I bet. The list is endless. And I wonder how a community or state can ever think of progressing if this is the attitude that its residents. have.

There is an absolute collapse of the work culture. They say that as long as you dont feel feel the heat, you can sleep well. When during the Durga Puja (the main festival of the Bengalis that continues for four days) I saw the employee turn out in offices in big IT MNCs (like IBM, TATA Consultancy Services, Wipro, Cognizant Technologies etc) barely reaching 10% for entire 1 week -- F-I-V-E working days -- I was left spell-bound. At least in the MNCs I expected some discipline and punctuality. And , believe me, no one had the least thought for the business going going haywire. People just did not work in that week. Be it bank, offices...you name it. The scenario was no different during the last week of the year. Amazing place!! It really leaves me in a work-cultural shock.

But, perhaps, I should have reliased that such a thing was coming. Morning shows the day. I will end my piece with the morning which showed me the day or the months that was to follow during my stay in the city of calcutta. After my MBA, I landed Calcutta in the first week of September. I landed in the Howrah railway station (which is the main railway station to enter calcutta). It was morning 4 am. Typical to the other Indian cities, the newspapermen were busy suffling and arranging the daily newspapers to distribute them to houses, shops and stalls. And the big headline that was displayed 'majestically' on the front page of all the newspapers was something like this ' NANO CAR MANUFACTURING UNIT WORTH 1700 CRORE (INDIAN RUPEES) CALLED OFF FROM WEST BENGAL'. The reason was a land dispute between the company, the state governemnt and the opposition. I would not like to go into a debate or adda, another very dear time-pass entertainment of the Bengalis. Be it sacking of the Indian cricket team team, the decision taken by George Bush in a certain X country, the impact of the recession, almost every bengali person has an opinion on it, which he is ready to defend in some of the most heated discussions for hours together. Needless to say, at the end of the hours of discussion and exchange of views people hardly move from where they were when the discussion began.

The withdrawl of the car was , undoubtedly, a major blow to the state's industrial prospect. But,it re-assured the fact that for whatever reason, the city of Calcutta and industries/work-culture can never go hand in hand. More than the project, it reflected the attitude of the people towards work.

Calcutta is not serious about business and hence, rightly, business is not serious about Calcutta either.

I did not enJOY working a moment in The City of Joy (as Calcutta is commonly known as).

And the MBA ends...

2009-02-10T17:46:00.002+05:30

I realised that I have not written anything about the end of the MBA. The Cranfield Experience, as we all love to call. Undoubtedly, it was one of the memorable years of my life. I discovered things about me that I did not know. I made friends with people from so many different nationalities. I had a blast like all other students. It was a life worth living! And all came to an end for me on 6th August. I packed my bags and headed off to my country, India. The decision may not have been something that I had wished when the MBA began. I was , honestly, attracted by the glamour and sheen that the Western world carries with it. But time and GOD had something different in store for me. But I am proud that I took the decision. I had a whole lot of different experiences in the last few months after returning to my hometown. I worked in my hometown Calcutta (where I got a cultural shock!), visited the holy city of Benaras (which has people from all sects of life with so much emtions), discovered another dimension in my relationship with my parents and went through such a variety of emotional and mental phases - the roller coaster rides , the highs and the lows. I believe I will gather enough thoughts on each of these to be able to write and make interesting reading.

But even now whenever I close my eyes I can see the school, my 1.18 room of Fedden Flats, the tree in front of it, our classes, professors delivering lectures and speechless students listening to them in awe, the fun, the cold winters when we wrapped ourselves in the best of warm clothes and go for team meetings. Alls over now. On 6th August I left the campus. One last time looked back at my room in tearful eyes. My friend dropped me to the bus stop. Took a bus to the airport. And then the flight back home. A very mixed feeling. I returned home 7th August and celebrated my birthday (8th August) with my wife.
My MBA dream might have concluded on a pleasant note...but my dreams haven't. I just can't stop dreaming. May be some day in future I'll write about them, as well.

The business of a business is business

2008-12-24T13:11:00.003+05:30

For once at least the ruthless and brutal side of the mushy mushy corporate world is shamelessly lying naked in front of the world. All the good old words like "employee friendliness", " work life balance", " duty towards society" have been been conviniently thrown out of the window. Its time for "cost cutting", "right sizing" and what not! I am not blaming the companies...if they dont have the cash how can they pay the employees. And thats why I say that the business of a business (organisation) is business (trading, making money et al)...the social responsibilty is something they like to believe that they practice in. When one's house is on fire, one does not go out for charity. One saves one's a**. And thats exactly whats happening. Thats why some of the Wall Street companies who received the bail out packages, distributed a good sum among themselves; who knows kal ho na ho (what will happen tomorrow).

Its a good lesson for everyone who thinks comapny really really care for you. There is nothing personal between an individual and the organisation he or she belongs to. The relationship is strictly professional and thats the way it should be. You bring business, you contribute, you are paid. As soon as the employees feel too much personal, there is a tendancy to get complacent and getting into the 'comfort zone'. The employees thinks he or she can enjoy certain priviledges - its the birth right. Its disaster for everyone.

However there should be an ethics in everything. Even wars abide by certain code of conduct.
Only the jobless understands the pain of losing the job -- the nagging worry of feeding the family, paying the telehone bills, mortgages and a thousand other things. One day as soon as you walk into "your" organisation, you are called in a conference room, given logic on why the company does not need you after so long dedicated years of service and then you are escorted out by the security guard. Surely better treatments can be meted out. But these things are more common now than ever before. These are realities, which we cannot escape from. Heads will roll and we just keep our fingers crossed and hope that its not ours!!
Welcome to the corporate world!!

When elders want gifts from Santa Claus

2008-12-24T12:48:00.003+05:30

Its good to be a child again...and hope that in Christmas time Santa Claus brings goodies for us, like he did when we were kids.
Its good to think that when one wakes up in the morning one will see gifts wrapped in glossy papers beside one's pillow. The cricket bat or the soft toy or the magic pencil that one wanted so desparately from dad, who never got!

Time has changed...from being young boys and gils, we have matured to responsible adults.

But in these changing times I have a feeling that millions of elders will want Santa Claus to shower them with goodies. After all, gifts are not only for kids. Surprise gifts are a joy for everybody. But in hard times such as these, when the world is reeling under the economic slowdown, we pray that the gifts that Santa Claus give need not necessarily be surprising. The gifts are humble requests - an urge, a plea, you may say. Geeting back the job that one lost few weeks ago, bringing the smile to the family when the happy days were around, buying the gifts for wife and family which was so affordable not-so-long ago are all we hope to get.

O Santa...please bring us back the old smile and the laughter that we seemed to have forgotten ages ago...We may not be a children now, but we still expect gifts from you...something to cheer about!

Wishing all the readers a Merry Christmas!
Tough times don't last, tough people do. We shall overcome!

From Russia with love…

2008-06-16T02:22:00.003+05:30

As a part of our Cranfield MBA program, different students went to different parts of the world –

Brazil

Cuba

China

Japan

, Saudi Arabia etc in the second week of June. I chose to go to

Russia

. The

Russia

trip included visit to two cities – Moscow and St. Petersburg.

We started from the University at about 4 am on Saturday, the 7^th of June, and reached Moscow Airport at 4 pm…there was a half an hour of delay of the flight. Then we took about three hours more to reach our hotel, pulling our heavy suitcases all the way while changing trains of the Moscow underground.

Instead of going on an hour-by-hour or day-by-day description, I thought it would be a better to make the blog more reflective.

The Moscow memories!

Most of us prefer our home town to stay and visit the outside world once in a year or so. Now with the growth of technology and communication, many people may shift to the nearby big cities; but the fact remains that they want to be closer to their homes; the closer the better. What many people do not want is to relocate to a different country altogether. It is the comfort zone that we all subconsciously like to remain within. Stepping outside the comfort zone can be quite a challenge at times.

When I was asked to select a location to visit, as a part of my MBA International Business Experience, I chose Russia above others. With the shades of darkness that’s behind the country Russia, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and try this completely new world.

The experience has been varied. I am not sure if ‘pleasant’ is the right word. Because there were so many highs and lows during the week-long tour. It is a part of the world that is so different. Today, the 12^th of June, 2008, I am in St. Petersburg, having arrived here today morning. I was in Moscow for the last four days. They say you form majority of your opinion about a person in the first few minutes of the interaction. Same may be said of a city – may be it is the first few hours in this case. When you step into a host’s house, within a few minutes you realise whether the host is cold to your presence. With its history of once-a-vast-empire, I never expected Moscow to open up its arms towards visitors like us. I was aware that like the old emperors, who once owned a large empire, Russia will have its own pride and to some extent the snobbish behaviour, unwilling and unable to take to come to terms any more that time and world has changed.

When we stepped in the hotel, our passport was taken, kept overnight with the hotel management and then returned the next day with a stamp on the immigration paper inside. Checking of passport in foreign land is never uncommon – it is just a way of verifying the identity. (Though sometimes I feel that it’s an irony that one small booklet, commonly known as the passport, seems to convey my identity in such a spectacular way!). But what is particularly notable is the way that the process is handled here. When we checked in St. Petersburg, the same phenomenon was followed. It is as if my every move is being monitored. As if a pair of invisible eyes follow me all around! And that’s when you feel that the host is suspecting you. They don’t trust you or your presence. The last thing you want your host to do is monitor each and every move of yours. I heard it existed rigidly during the KGB-era…but was unable to understand why such processes are religiously followed even today. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

The next point is the nightmare of being illiterate. In the last few days I realised that after food, drink and shelter, education and communication is so important. Perhaps because of the logic of the good-old-empire, Russia did not care the use of English, or may be deliberately avoided its use as a mark of independence and the attitude that “we can live by our own”. When the main mode of transport around the city is the underground (or tube train or the metro as is known in different parts of the world), it would have done a world of good to the visitors had the stations been spelt in English alphabets. But alas! There were only the Russian alphabets all around. And added to that are the Russian names and their pronunciations which are not so easy to remember. There is always the subtle thought that you may lose your way and never be able to find one out! The underground stations are very deep under the ground level and , believe me, seems like it takes ages to reach down and get out of it. There are beautiful sculptures and paintings, chandeliers and statues inside. People have every right to confuse it with a normal railway station. They are huge; they are gorgeous. And all these add to the mysterious Russia! It is intimidating! Every moment you know you cannot afford to get lost from the group. If you ask people, you may not be able to understand them. The feeling that one needs to fight every odds to survive everyday that is only in the subconscious mind, surfaces. And it’s not a good feeling, either! It has uncertainty; it has fear. It has the feeling of getting lost in concrete jungle among the human beings. A place where even in a normal eat-out each meal costs approximately £10, it can soon get worse than you have ever thought!

These were my broad experiences of the four days in Moscow. I have heard the name Russia or USSR so many times in my life from childhood. But never have I been the least hint of the picture of the world that exists behind those names; how exactly it is like in the cities of Russia and underground of Moscow? And same thing applies for a person and the often-used passport. The passport says the name of the person, date of birth, but does not say anything about the person. And yet, we think we know persons from his or her passport. Russia will never be the same for me. The six-lettered word has much more life and soul for me today.

I am not trying to paint any negative picture of one of the most historical cities of the world, a city where I saw the Kremlin and The Red Square, the KGB headquarters. I am sharing my thoughts on how it feels to not receive a warm welcome at any new place or how it feels to be fully alert all the time. And this takes me back to where I started. In our own home or country, we never feel these. They never surface. I am glad that I was able to realise the advantages of staying in the comfort zone and, at the same time, realise, again, that there is a vast world beyond the comfort zone and beyond our thoughts, imaginations and names.

And, though stepping into that world may be challenging, yet it is what makes a man different from the others. I am glad that I saw this part of the world. And now this world – the world of a fallen empire, an ideology that stands no more, the huge Red Square and Kremlin, the deep and gorgeous underground and some of my subconscious feelings that surfaced and made me aware that they exist within me, within us – has become part of my world.

I am glad that my world is expanding!

Murder on the Orient Express on the White night!

When we take pictures, we take pictures of people smiling. We make sure that we smile in the pictures, which gives a feeling to everyone seeing the pictures that everything was so beautiful. But, life has a different story to tell. Things go wrong, some experiences are not so pleasant and sometimes you find diamond in heaps of coal! So, I decided to write about something that went horribly wrong in the journey. The reason being, like our life, I wanted this blog to have a mix of good days and bad days.

Our so-called Orient Express was the train that we boarded from Moscow to St. Petersburg. It is not called so. But I thought that the name was quite befitting. Everything went wrong from the word ‘GO’! The expectations were high; we all expected some heritage-type train – the Orient Express- type. But it turned out to be a dampener. The coups were small, the blankets and the carpets had a damp smell, and the toilets were dirty. Things just did not go well on the ‘Orient Express’ and our expectations and hopes were brutally murdered and there was blood all over! It was a journey of eight hours – from 8 pm to 4 am. But time seemed to stand still. There was no restaurant in the train. I still could not make out whether the air condition actually worked or whether the few windows that were kept open had kept the ventilation going and the temperature cool.

What could have been a nightmare (may be it is still for some!), became a dream come true for me, as I watched the spectacular phenomenon of white night. Difficult to explain this magic that nature offers. There was bright light all throughout the night, whether it is 1:30 am at night or 3 am in the morning. The light is fairly bright, may be like that of a cloudy day. You can see everything around – the vast green fields or the distant houses – very clearly. It’s what fairy tales are made up of. Twenty years ago I read about some lands are called ‘The land of the midnight sun’. Last night added more meaning to those words for me. Here they call it the white night. Being so close to the North Pole, during this time, the region gets plenty of sunlight – even in the dead of night.

This train journey will always be a special one for me. It started off as a nightmare, but soon a dream took over. And like the smiling photos which seem to give the impression that there are more happy moments in life, when I think of this journey, I visualise it more in terms of the white night and the amazing creation of nature, while the soggy train atmosphere gets eclipsed behind them. Perhaps it is the human nature that we always try to think of the good moments in life and treasure them.

A small incident and a big realisation!

Sometimes a very small event or incident in your life leaves a lasting impression. It tells you lots of things. One such incident took place last Monday, when I was in Moscow. Andy, my friend from the Cranfield Executive MBA, and I were trying to find some decent evening snacks in one of the market places in Moscow. As mentioned earlier, Russians hardly speak or understand English, though I heard that the current generation is learning to speak English.

We found a road-side food stall, which seemed to offer good snacks and at reasonable rates. It was a type of pan cake, with stuffed meat inside. They were of two varieties. We initially had a hard time finding out the price of the snacks. This might sound strange to some readers who might think how much can a pan cake-type snacks cost. To give a rough idea, in a road-side stall close to this one and having very similar look and feel, one such pan cake and a piece of chicken with a bit of chopped onion and cucumber cost 370 roubles, which is about £9. You may have to pay a really heavy price if you are a bit unmindful in the streets of Russia. They will rip off tourists in the slightest opportunity they get. Yesterday one of my friends ordered a glass of pomegranate juice, not having seen the price, in a normal restaurant. After she drank, when she was told to pay 350 roubles or more than £8 (£1 = 40/45 roubles); no wonder she was shell-shocked!

We ate the pan cake of one variety. Then we roamed around for some time. Since the snack was different and quite delicious, we thought of eating the second type. However, it was quite difficult to get two pieces of information from the shop owner. Firstly, that we wanted the second type and not the first type, when both the types were closely kept and wanted to know the difference between the two. Secondly, the price of the second type. Our futile conversation with the shop owner only resulted in the queue behind us getting longer. So, we decided to eat the first type itself.

Then we wanted to drink something. This time Andy spoke a language that was universal, easily understood by the shop keeper – ‘PEPSI!’ She was quick to grab one from the shelf and hand it over to Andy with a smile. Same pack, same taste. This is what globalisation ought to be.

Today I tried the same in the Mac Donald’s shop. Walked up to the counter and said ‘Big Mac!’ The job was done. Prompt and neat. Same word all over the world, same taste, and same caption: “I’m loving it!”…Yes we all are!!!

The Beautiful city of Saint Petersburg

As the British Airways flight BA 879 take off from Saint Petersburg at 5 pm on 15^th June, I had the last opportunity to see the city from above. There well-planned stood the city on the shore of the Baltic Sea. The flight is headed west towards London. This is been the last lap of our Russia trip. The last three days in Saint Petersburg has been a wonderful experience.

After the horrifying train journey to the city, things have been improving for us. To start with, Saint Petersburg is a beautiful city. There are lots of statues, small green parks, couple of narrow rivers and river cruises on them, churches that give the city a romantic flavour. To add to that was the chilled climate, perfect when you have a coat, and bright sunshine. Even the five hours walk around the city with friends was never tiring in the picturesque city. Then we had almost a day-long visit to the exotic Hermitage, a palace-cum-museum that has amazing work of art on the walls, floors and ceilings, gorgeous chandeliers and paintings all over. In fact, everything in the Hermitage is so elegant that it’s really hard to describe it unless one sees for himself or herself. What followed was an exquisite dinner last night with the entire group and then typical songs sung by some Russian ladies; I tried to discover some of my foot-tapping skills there. A memorable night indeed, that marked an end to the overall wonderful Russia trip.

All’s well that ends well. The week-long trip to Russia is almost end. There have been highs and lows. Perhaps Moscow, like any other big cities in the world, is more business and commercial orientated. Whereas, Saint Petersburg, a much smaller city, is one of the most poetic cities I have ever seen. During the tour there have been gossips and fun, moments of laughter and anxiety, uncertainty and friendship. It was indeed a different experience. The school calls it the IBE – International Business Experience. I am not sure how much business knowledge have we gathered from the Russian trip. Nonetheless, it has been a truly memorable week in the strange and mysterious land of Russia, when Moscow, on one hand, seemed intimidating, Saint Petersburg, on the other, was so fresh and beautiful.

I like to end this Russia diary with the only word that I learnt in Russia. It is ‘Spasiba’, meaning, ‘Thank You!’. Thank you for those moments and memories, Russia. Spasiba!

From Russia,

With Love…

Amitava

PS: Please visit this blog from time to time to see the wonderful pictures taken during the tour. I shall be, hopefully, able to compile and upload then from 20th-21st june onwards.

A thought about my MBA

2008-05-05T22:15:00.003+05:30

I have realised that it has been ages that I have written something about my MBA and the Cranfield University. Its not that I have forgotten that I need to write about it, but its just that there is nothing spectacular happening that inspires me to write. Sometime eating food cooked by the best chefs in the world day-in-and-day-out makes you take the good food for granted. Perhaps that's the syndrome that has caught up with all of us. The good lectures, the great presentations everything seems so normal and obvious that often I feel sad that I am unable to appreciate them to the core. Its only when some external speakers (senior executives from multinational companies) come and deliver their speeches that you realise the difference. Perhaps when we go and interact with the 'outside world' (that is the world outside the campus) would we realise how superior the environment here is.

Its spring time here...The trees are covered with green leaves and colourful flowers, the grass is green dotted with white flowers - nature's own carpet. The days are getting longer - there is daylight till 9 pm and keeps on extending each day. The silence of the surroundings is often broken by the humming of the bees that get into my room and chirping of the birds or the children playing outside. Isn't this spring that the great immortals like William Wordsworth and John Keats has so often mentioned in their poems?

Its closing time, as well. My MBA is coming to an end. I can see the writing on the wall. Just few more months to go. There are no more team meetings. Once we hated team meetings and thought that they take up most of our time; today there are no regular team meetings. But honestly, I would actually like to go for a team meeting, because its a place where you interact with others and get out of your silos.
A few more months and then its all over.We all will pack up and bid farewell to the university that has changed all of us. The university will wait for the new batch of students - new enthusiasm, new smile, new faces...and not to forget, new DREAMS!

Feelings

2008-04-25T23:14:00.004+05:30

What is the feelings

Of the person standing on top of Mt. Everest...
Of the athlete who has just won gold in Olympics...

Of the warrior who looks at his wife the last time before leaving for the battlefield...
Of the victorious soldier returning home...

Of the widow whose husband has died after 50 years of marriage...
Of the bride and the bridegroom about to get married...

Of the passengers of AA11 before crashing into the twin towers...
Of the astronauts of Spaceship Columbia before it burst in space...

Of the old farmer who lost his family in the tsunami...
Of the mother whose son is an infamous militant...

Of the prisoner of war who was once ruler of a country...
Of the convict about to be hanged...

Of the old man on his death bed as he reminisces his life...
Of everyone of us as we grow from childhood to youth to adulthood to the aged!

What's there in a name?

2008-04-20T04:30:00.014+05:30

Many people have interpreted the sentence 'What's there in a name?' in many ways and in different situations. I think, this adage has been misused more often than not. I am not going to argue about the line in this piece. I took this line as I thought it is an appropriate title for this piece.

I am Amitava Chatterjee (I shouldn't have said such as obvious thing!).
I am 29 years old (Could have stayed without disclosing my age!)

25 years ago I was Amitava Chatterjee (So what???Isn't it obvious?)
25 years ago I was in my kindergartens in my dear old St. Joseph's Convent,Chandannagore,my hometown, a small town in India.

What am I driving at with the statements above?
I am trying to say that today's 'Amitava Chatterjee' is not the same as the one that existed 25 years ago.
Have I gone mad??
No, is the precise answer.

25 years ago the world was different to that 'Amitava Chatterjee'. It was about the small boy and his small town. the lush green fields of the school. The dream to get taller and look forward to the new class, the new books and the new uniform. The fear of something unknown, commonly called exams. The desperate wish to grow faster and study in senior classes. If I extend it to some higher classes in the primary classes, it was the friendship with the classmates, the returning to home and play in the evening, dinner with grandparents. I don't want to continue writing, as all of us have the same sort of experience. So, I leave it on the readers to relate when they were kids.

And now...only 25 years passed by. Grandparents are no more. This 'Amitava Chatterjee' is some 1000s of miles from 'his' hometown. Laptop and mobile are his windows to the outside world. Feels lost in the world when the internet connection is down. (Feels lost in the world, anyway!) Thoughts have become complex. The relationships and friendships have a different meaning today. There are business case studies; there are report submissions. His thoughts and imaginations knows no boundaries. He has grown up.

Are these two the same person? Or is it the name has remained the same, the person inside has changed. We all change. Everyday we change, as we are influenced by new actions and thoughts. We change and we evolve. I am not the same person today as I was yesterday. Likewise, I will not be the same person tomorrow or some years later. But the change is so small, that nobody understands and wakes up in the morning and says 'God! I have changed!'. But, believe me, you have changed!
Scientifically speaking, each day thousands of old cells die and thousands of new ones are born. It has been seen that every seven years the entire body cells get replaced. So, in any way, over a period of years, we all the change. We are different human being today than we were some years back!

What was dear to you some years back, may not be so dear now. Why? If you were the same person, this should not have happened. If I had an affinity towards something, say chicken fried rice twenty five years back, I should have had the same affinity today, too. Lets put it in a different way. If sodium and chlorine reacted under certain temperature, pressure and other external factors to produce sodium chloride or salt twenty five years ago, then it will do so now...it will do so twenty-five years later and forever, for that matter. Then why is my affinity towards fried rice changed? I liked it so much then, but can't tolerate its smell today! The fried rice did not change (considering it was cooked under same conditions all the time). I say, because I have changed. Our taste for something changes, because we change. We all do. For some the change occurs in five years, for some it may be twenty-five year. But we all change.Whether we admit it or not.

I think when people say 'You've changed!', (one a lighter note, this is one thing wives often say to their husbands!) then they refer to the relative change. When the change between people is different, then the gap of the relative changes widens. You find it hard to get a conversation going with a friend who was your best friend some years back. The reason is, you both have changed differently. Your views don't match anymore. Those two best friends have long been buried. These two persons have different opinions and views. Ironically, those two best friends and these two persons have the same name.

Over the years we all live lives of different people under a common name! Those who live them simultaneously are called split personalities; those who live one after another are called normal human beings - WE!

Coping or Copying?

2008-04-05T21:19:00.004+05:30

Thanks to the IT and BPO industries in India, lacs of persons, like me, are exposed to the foreign countries of Europe and Uncle SAm! And, almost everyone who is part of these industries dreams of making (official) trips to some foreign countries or the other. And then take pictures of themselves with the sexy cars and glamorous buildings in the backdrop, and post them on the networking sites. For a change, these dreams are fulfilled more often than not. So, its not a wonder that people aged 30 years, who worked abroad for even 90 days will have 90% of the photos posted taken abroad. Perhaps they associate more with the 'culture' of the foreign land, or perhaps they think that those are the best part of their life. Everyone is happy and no one's complaining.

I do not have, and should not have, any qualms in saying that the countries talked about in the above paragraphs have a lot of good things to offer to the rest of the world, obviously including India and the Indians. So when we try to understand more of their culture and imbibe the better ones in us, it should be a matter of joy and pride to all of us. There is no shame in adapting the virtues from even your enemies! But what I am particularly skeptical about is are we really taking the best from their culture? We generally start with the easiest thing and those things which draw the eyeballs, not the ones that the hygienic - good for the mind,body and soul. One of the foremost things that we imitate (not imbibe) is the English ascent. And we make such fools out of us in the process! Sadly, we do not realise it. Most Indians have a fair amount of heavy regional ascent. So when we pepper the regional ascent with the British or American ascent it feels like having an Indian curry and tandoor chicken with muffins! However,over the years many Indian have developed a more neutral ascent, which is more pleasing to the ear.

To comeback to my point, I am not against using the foreign ascent or getting rid of the regional ascent. The British came to India and ruled for 200 years and for that they even learned a new language - Hindi. They knew that to sustain in the foreign land and make trade they had to adapt to their situation - learn the foreign language. We don't have to learn any new language, as English in one of the subjects taught from our school days. We just , at the most, have to learn to roll the tongue in a different way to make ourselves being understood better by the foreign clients. But my problem is, many people mistake the ascent as the culture. My problem is when parents talk to their kids in India in English. Because in all such parents-kids english conversation,which I, by chance, overheard there is nothing expect a whole lot of grammatical errors and sentences or phrases directly translated to english from the vernacular, with the least botheration of whether they actually exist in the enriched english language. It is one thing to learn something to cope with the situation or adapt the virtues and a completely different thing to copy. We are disillusioned in our thoughts that speaking English will enrich us. We have failed to adapt the virtues that make the Britishers the Brit - their sense of punctuality, their well-behaved and well-mannered culture, respect for individuals, care for life,cleanliness and the list goes on. If the timetable says the bus will arrive at 8:55 am, rest assure, it will come on-dot until something really unavoidable things take place on the way. And if it is late, the driver will apologise. No one can think that the food served - whether it is a big restaurant or a small roadside corner shop - is adulterated. No one's seen spitting on the road or throwing litters anywhere except the dustbins. These are difficult to follow and adapt, by any standard. These are the qualities that make a nation and its citizens superior to others. Alas, we only take the superficial ones and pride our aping, not adapting, certain acts.

It would be unfair on my part if I paint a picture which gives the impression that 'all's great on the western front'. But it is also true that we should look at the brighter and better aspects of all that is there in the universe - from the moon to the rose. That's the way we all can be a better human being with each passing day. After all, the Almighty has created us as a human being so that we move and improve from where we are born. Otherwise, HE would have made us trees, who are more controlled by the outside nature, than by the one inside!

I wish we hadn't unearthed the past!

2008-03-23T01:59:00.004+05:30

Its perhaps a human psychology that we always think that the past was good - how green was my valley! And from this thought comes the urge to unearth and re-discover the past. We think, how nice it would have been had we been able to rewind ourselves, go back and make merry again as we did in the past, when the days were more sunny and brighter! But an incident that took place just before I came here made me sit back and think...'ummmm...is it worth trying to unearth the past or is it better to leave them as they were?'
Sometimes its better that some things remain as dreams...if they are turned to reality then you feel you have lost something.You have nurtured a dream for so many years that you can't think of anything other than it being a dream - a sort of fantasy.My long cherished dream of studying in a typical English university has come true and I am so happy for that; but at the same time I have lost the dream forever. What I mean to say is that sometimes things make us happier when they exist only within our thoughts and fantasies; perhaps not so much when they are real and worldly.

This special incident that I am talking about is our visit to Bhubaneshwar, a city where my father worked more than 20 years back, just before I came to study here. My parents had contemplated the idea of visiting the place, the city, the house that we lived (as a tenant) back then. My father wondered how when everything else around changed, our 'world' - that place - in Bhubaneshwar changed. He was really excited when we were driving down to the city. I had faint memories of the place - our house, the road in front, the shops around. I could see the excitement and at the same time the nervousness in my father's eyes. On the way, perhaps, he was thinking of the sweet memories that had been associated with the place - when my brother and I were small kids; when the distance between the two places - my hometown, Chandannagore and Bhubaneswar which was barely 400 kilometers - seemed much more than the distance between London and my hometown today in that age of no-mobiles and no-internet; when my grandparents lived and my father would desperately try to visit our hometown at least once a month. My mother was perhaps thinking of the hardships she took during those days when my father was in office for the entire week and she had to raise us and wait for the Saturday and Sunday when we would walk into one of our favourite restaurants, called 'venasin' or the 'nehru children park', not too far away. She is more relaxed today with both her sons (me and my brother) well settled in life. I was kind of trying hard to relate the roads and landmarks with the very faint memories that I had as I was barely six or seven years old then.

As we drove down the different roads my parents kept noticing the different changes that the city underwent. 'These shops are new...they were not here then'....'This place was a barren land...things have changed', they noticed as we drove closer to our old residence. That the things really changed became more and more prominent as we arrived at the lane. 'Was this lane so narrow?' I was telling to myself. In my mind, it was a broad one...but here it seemed so narrow then. 'Where is the stretch of land that we had so often gone passed by?' We walked to our house...
The house changed. Its colour; it was two-storey then, now its three storey. The name plates in front of the house however said that the house owners did not change. Or is it?...Is it that their names did not change and like all other things they have changed, as well. The city's name did not change, but the city changed. The same can be said of the people as well. Perhaps apprehending this, my father decided not to meet them. He perhaps did not want to risk all his memories.
Time has changed and so does everything else.
I realised my father, especially, was quite disheartened with the all that was around. We then went to eat in another restaurant, which two decades back was the best in the town. Somehow the luncheon was equally a dampener. It was not at all up to the mark, especially when you compare it with the bill that we had to foot at the end.
On the way back few words were exchanged. Perhaps we all were trying to cope with the dreams that were lost some minutes back.

I, at least, later thought that we would have better not ventured on this journey. It would have been much better had we left the past as it were and not gone to have a peep into it.
And while I write this I think whether it will be prudent to visit 221 B baker Street in London. The last thing I would want is my well-crafted castle that I have so long built within me regarding that place of Sherlock Holmes vanish into thin air. Yet I am curious to find what that place looks like.
And the dilemma continues...

What a time to do an MBA!

2008-03-20T14:00:00.010+05:30

The stock market around the world is crashing; the air is heavy with the words like liquidity crunch,sub-prime mortgage crises, the rising oil and gold prices, the falling interest rates by the federal government. And guess what? I can understand at least bits and pieces of it.
Today our second term got over. Theoretically its a clear boundary line where I can safely say I am half-way through. But practically, the course is more than 50% complete. the third and forth terms are more of choosing and studying your electives; even duration wise we are more than 50% complete.

I believe its human nature that when you understand things that you did not understood earlier, you feel a strange feeling of joy and satisfaction. You feel you have improved as a person, the days spent were worth it. I felt the same feelings many times in the past. These days this feeling enthrals me.
I am not saying you need to do an MBA to know these term, what I am saying is, I have realised that the MBA has injected something in me which makes the world clearer to me. I can relate to what's happening around. I know what the finance minsters said in the budget...they make sense to me now...a year ago, most did not (let me be honest)!

When I look back six months earlier when I first walked in, then I truly see an improved and matured person in me. Two more terms to go...I am sure the transformation will continue for the better.
It is the eagerness to learn new things everyday that makes me wake in the morning and never grin and grumble at the hectic schedule; it is the opportunity to explore the inexpressible inner peace of gaining knowledge that makes this life so special!
This MBA has enlightened me;had I not done this I would have not understood many things that keep on happening around me.But now that I am in the process of doing it, it feels like having those extra pair of binoculars which make things around look bigger, brighter and better - the distant things are not so distant anymore!

Its exam time!

2008-03-12T06:05:00.005+05:30

Yes, now the days are becoming longer...the sun is less dominated by the clouds...so things are better and brighter. The tress have not yet borne new leaves....but soon they will.

But that's what the world outside in UK is. The atmosphere in the Full Time MBA Course of Cranfield University is pretty different. Its exam time! Its submission, assignments, review sessions, late night group studies and what not!

Somehow even after giving exams umpteen times, one would expect that the exams becomes more of a habit. Even if one drinks so many glasses of quinine for the last 25 years, one would no longer feel its bitterness and should be in a position to love and enjoy quinine. But the 'beauty' of exams is that it still remains a nightmare ending in a bright sunny day, otherwise called vacation or a thorn with roses in the form of the vacation that follows it.
Surely, its one thing that I , at least, have never looked forward to with excitement and eagerness. The world seems so cruel and unjust before an exam!

How can you do that?...Thank God you did that!

2008-02-25T02:07:00.011+05:30

My MBA is almost half-way through. Its exciting, its fun, its informative and its hectic as well! The subjects and topics of discussion vary from one end of the spectrum to another. There's the trick in the balance sheet in Accountancy, the infinite graphs in the Economics, the 'lean approach' in the Supply Chain, the 'it depends' answer in the Strategy, the presence of innumerable 'four quadrants' in almost all the subjects and the ways to handle and manage people in people management and organisational behaviour , to name a few. Good! Interesting!

Today, there were so many things that I can relate to the daily activities and the way my previous organisations functions. There were so many interesting things there that became clear to me as I sat in the classes hearing the lectures. Below I would point like to point to a particular case from my old organisation.
There was one senior person who is supposed to have an MBA degree from the best IIM (Indian Institute of Management) in India. Those of us from India know that those set of elite students are highly respected and admired in our society. And , going by the Indian ways and norms, he displayed it with a certain pride, when in his CV the qualification had the words 'IIMA' (IIM Ahmedabad), nothing else. That spoke a lot about him. Or did it??

Its not a question of critiquing someone or the very common practice of criticising your boss. (I have learnt many things from him, I must admit.) Its a question of asking 'How can you do that?' as I saw the way he functioned many times, the irrational way in which he handled and dealt with people. I wondered how can people make such a royal mess and be blind to what was going around. But there is something called a small fish in a big pond. That's what I was. I realised it was none of my business to rectify or correct a senior person. I tried to turn a blind eye to what was going on , as long as it did not interfere my way of functioning.

Unfortunately, within months I realised, quite ironically, I happened to get the wrong treatment from him. Initially I ignored and neglected, but soon it came to stage where things got messier.
I thought of asking the same question again: ''How can you do that (to me) ?' . But from my previous experience I felt some things never change. There is a small story from the famous Indian saint, Vivekananda, which says that however hard you try to straighten a dog's tail, it soon curls - its a waste of your time to try to do so. So I did not want to change the way he behaved. I knew he never will!
So I decided to do something that will take me out of the mess. I decided to do it in a more interesting and elegant way, rather than changing the job. I decided to do the MBA.

Today when I look back and think of the person and the incidents I don't ask that old question any more. In fact, I am glad they happened! So, I just say 'Thank God you did that! Otherwise I would never have been here!'

The English Weather!

2008-02-25T01:37:00.005+05:30

"Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy...
If there is a day I can give, I will give sunshine all the time"
these are lines from the famous singer John Denver.

When I was in India I was used to the sun and its scorching heat. Waiting in the bus stop or walking to the market in a hot summer noon were not the things I looked forward to. Many times getting out in the sun seemed more of a punishment. So in Wimbledon when the spectators clapped when the sun shone on the Centre Court, I wondered why they did so. I never realised how the sun is unmindfully linked in our day-to-day life.

In UK things are quite different. Here when you stand in the bus stop you dont have to bother about the sun, because hardy you find it shinning! You have to bother about the rain, the clouds. Whether the meteorologists say or not, there is always the chances of rain - anywhere, anytime. The drizzle; the cloudy days; the cool breeze; I have slowly become so used to the English weather. Its not the kind of weather where you will feel the adrenaline pumping and want to go out to work. It is the kind of weather you like to stay indoors and spend lazily. You feel sleepy and want to take as much sleep as you can! And in the afternoon if the sun comes out you want to take out the cricket kit and get yourself warm in the field.
I cannot say whether people will agree with me, but its a kind of poetic and romantic weather. I felt I came more close to nature. I began to appreciate nature even when there are no mountains or oceans around. Another thing, which may sound contradictory to some extent is that the night sky is sometimes very clear here. I have not seen so many stars in the smoky sky of Bangalore, India.
The nature expresses herself so differently here. It brings a thought in my mind that its the same sun, the same moon, the same sky and the same stars...yet they are so distinctly different in different parts of the world. And what makes them special and eternal beauty is their ability to display the different forms that seems so familiar, yet so mysterious, so common and yet so mystic!

As the year ends...

2007-12-31T03:04:00.000+05:30

One of the memorable quotes that I read goes something like this: 'The safest place for a ship is the shores, but that is not where it is supposed to be'. True. Very true.

Every time during this period of the year - this end-December time - I try to sit back and think of what the year offered me. Every year some new things happen - some good, some bad.
In the beginning of the year I lost my dear grandmother. The year took her away from me.In the first month I went to Haridwar (of which I attached a self-made documentary in my blog) and thanked GOD for everything and seeked his blessings for the life ahead.
This year I worked in the headquarters of prestigious International Monetary Fund in Washington DC. I made some good friends during my last working days in the company. Then of course this study, something I don't want to write in this piece and bore you all.

If this year had something really special to offer me, it was to re-discover myself. The motivation to take the ship out in the ocean. The pleasure in rejecting the safety that the four walls of our room provide. The joy in the sorrow of missing your near and dear ones. Rediscovering the student in me after so many years. The list goes on...
My ship is still sailing in the ocean. The problem is as you come to know new things, you realise how much you don't know. The more you discover, you realise that there are more to be discovered. There seems to be no end to it. There is a saying that says, once a man eater tastes the blood of human beings the tiger falls in love with the taste. The problem with the ship in the sea is more than that. You know that there are so many lands that you can potentially go to, so many opportunities awaiting for you. So even when you reach that shore, you are never complacent. You stay there for some time and then start a new journey again. Once you realise the vastness of the world, you are no longer content with the small piece of land that you owned so long. Your journey never ends. You have tasted human blood and nothing sort of it will do. And each time you want to outperform yourself. The game is interesting. But the game is equally dangerous!
So my getting into the course is in no way an end; it is the beginning of a journey. And that's the most valuable thing 2007 offered me. It started a journey for me. The study is not the end of a dream; it is a platform from where I can see many other dreams. It is a stepping stone. And this is what I remind myself of each day - stepping stone.

Last year this time my ship was chained to the shores. Today my ship is out into the vast unknown ocean. I can see, for the last time in 2007, the sun set on the western horizon. Soon, from the east new rays of the sun with new hopes in a new year will bathe the world - my world, your world, everybody's world. And in the new dawn my journey will continue. And so will yours.
This is a small world, my friend. So someday in some shores we will meet and talk about our journeys. Till then, 'Adieu et bon voyage!'

The journey so far...

2007-12-25T02:15:00.000+05:30

The actual MBA started on the 1st of October. On 20th of December Term 1 ended with the last examination of Strategic Decision Science .The next Term starts from the 7th of Jan.New set of case packs have been collected.
I thought its time I reflect what went on in the last few months. Is there really a change that took place in me? I don't want to get into any type of debate...but a thought, that, is the MBA really doing good to me. Is it worth doing, in the first place? It is very easy to say 'YES'. Because that's what you would like to believe. Because that's what the world will like to hear. But I am not doing an MBA for the world. I am doing it for myself. Its time that I look back and 'take a stock' of what went over me. The question is 'Why I want to 'take a stock' in a blog , publicly, when I could have done it in my diary?' My answer is, I might just give others an sight of what happens in an MBA school - sort of an inside story. I am not promising the moon! I am not saying this is an exhaustive piece; it may be just a glimpse; a view of how I see it. And this may differ entirely from what others think or view. And if this piece, by any chances , makes any reader at least think once that 'Shall I go for it?' , then I would consider my blog a truly successful one. Because, I have also realised in the last three months there is as much joy in getting education as much it is in inspiring others to go for it. Though out of context, yet I want to mention that I will more be more than happy to answer any question that follows the 'Shall I go for it?' one (my answer to the 'Shall I go for it?' is a big YES for everybody!).

The term had a number of subjects, none of which I studied before. Economics, accountancy, operations management, marketing and organisational behaviour. On 1st october, I knew nothing of them. Today I know something of them. I know what return on investment means and what is opportunity cost; I know how cheap airlines operate and how coke was introduced in China.Things are never the same as before. I have definitely developed a broader view of the business. I have learnt to see a holistic picture, while keeping focus on certain areas. I have learnt why GOD has given us two ears and one mouth - so that we hear much more than we speak. The learning experience goes on. What is most fascinating is that everyday, yes everyday, here I learn new things; something that has never occurred in my life before. Imbibing virtues from the professors, classmates - the learning curve never seems to dip. Sometimes there were days which were tough to pull through. Tough assignments, strict deadlines. But I made it. Today it gives me the strength to think that I was able to pull myself off from such situations. The road surely was not a smooth one. Nobody promised smooth ride! It was bumpy. But is it not the boulders and rocks that make the mountain brooks to gorgeous to look at? Is it not the test of fire that makes fine steel? Perhaps this is what an MBA is. It teaches us to cross the hurdles; it teaches us to brave the fire. It brings out the best in us. It unleashes the potential in us. In our words, its a 'risk-free zone', where we can try whatever we always wanted to do, without the fear of losing.

I have become much more matured in the last three months. Not only do I look into any business in a different point of view, but also the way I look at the world, in general. I have become a better human being.
And then I think that if in 3 months I changed, what will happen by the end the course gets over? I am myself eager and excited to find it.
While the course concerned is MBA, there are certain things that rise above the MBA. The education in a world-class university , the philosophy of the knowledgeable professors, the maturity of your friends - all rub you in the right way, day in and day out. And they all have an effect on you. The effect is clearly visible. I would say, the entire effect is called education. Its just not what you take inside you what was printed in the books. Its not about attending lectures and replicating them in the examination hall. Its about the realisation of who you are and where do you belong to. I am not saying MBA taught me this, or this was the reason that I am into an MBA. I am saying what a good education has done for me. It made me think those thoughts that I so long never felt the need to have a look into. It made me think! It made me think about the business world; it made me think about me and my strengths and weakness. And all these in only three months!
When the school reopens things will be tougher, with the the number of subjects increasing. The pressure becoming even more, with the obvious thought of hunting for a job added to the tension. Things will not be easy. And I know that. And yet, I know for sure, that I can't wait for the school to re-open and plunge myself into the 'melting pot'!

In the land of Sherlock Holmes...

2007-12-22T15:55:00.001+05:30

Wishing all the readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
May all your dreams come true.

There was another prolonged gap in my writing. The reason being exams. We just completed the exams last week and the body is crying out for a much-needed rest.I have to oblige its demand as its revolt is no good to me. We have vacation till the 7th Jan.The university reopens on the 7th of Jan. Till then I have virtually nothing to do. That's good and that's bad. Good, because I have after a long time got a break from the hectic running-here-to-there schedule. Bad because I dont know what to do. I do have some plans, but I have a feeling that like New Year resolutions the paper on which I wrote all my plans will remain on the board - never to get turned into reality.
I will write about the university life in the last few days sometime later. Because, I feel, just a plain writing of events will make it a report, not a diary. I don't want to write reports here...I have had enough of them for the last 3 months and more to follow!
By the look of some pictures you might have already guessed the campus has a lot of greenery. In the morning, I can't say that the sun rises. because its so foggy. I can say that the day breaks at about 8 am. Pretty late. At 7:30- 7:45 am its still dark outside. You might just want to curl in your bed for some more time. When the dawn eventually breaks, you just see a thick blanket of fog surrounding all around.The distant trees , with no leaves, are hazy. The grass below have a thin layer of frost. The cars in the parking lot has also got a white shroud. The sun is yet to show up. The picture is lazy and hazy! Its whitish and greyish . There is no golden touch, otherwise provided by the sun. There is not much green as the trees are all bare. Everywhere around is quiet.

If a day starts this way surely the rest of the day will not have something dramatic to offer. The cold wind outside is the least tempting factor to inspire one to step outside the comfortable and cosy rooms.In exam time I studied, now I become bored.
In the evening, things ends in a similar way as it started. But I feel its something taken out of the leaf of some fairy tale.At 4:30 pm its dark. And then misty. A thick fog descends as the sun goes down.When I return from the university or the examination hall, I always felt that I am walking in the area which was so often described as the English countryside by Sir Aurther Conan Doyle. Yes I am talking of the stories of Sherlock Holmes. As if I can feel that I would see the man with the typical cap,pipe and coat appearing in front of me from nowhere. You may think its childishly foolish and laugh at my thought. But perhaps in my situation many would have felt that way, perhaps not.
So when the examination ended the first thing I did was to log on to youtube and see 'Sherlock Holmes and the Speckled Band'. This particular story of Sherlock Holmes was the first I read when my father bought it for me and my brother on the day my Standard 2 exams ended. After reading the story, I almost instantaneously became an admirer of the character. Two days back when I watched the Sherlock Holmes, my thrill was no less though there was a gap of about 2 decades - 20 years!
While the time changed, the place changed, some feelings never seems to change.
Like that day, today also, one of my dreams is to go to 221 B Baker Street in London(the residence of Mr. Holmes), which, today,however, does not seem as distant as it were then!

One city many moods

2007-11-11T04:52:00.000+05:30

It is a small documentary on Haridwar that I made during my leisure time some months back. I thought of sharing this attempted creative effort with you all...
Though Haridwar is supposed to be holy place of the Hindus, this documentary has nothing to do with the religion. I have made an attempt to capture many moods of GOD's most wonderful creation - human beings or may be the moods of the people when they have faith is some power and seek blessings from it.
I hope you will like it...Its about 5 minutes and should not bore you.

Please note that there may be a buffering problem, so you would ideally want to pause and buffer the entire video and then see it at a stretch than view it in fits and starts.

Now relax, sit back and enjoy!

As things move on...

2007-11-11T01:46:00.000+05:30

First, my apologies for not writing for a long time, when I had promised that I will write every fortnight. Well, there are some things in life that you don’t expect and when it comes you take time to get adjusted to it. One such thing is the ‘Cranfield Experience’. I don’t want to bore you all by saying how busy I was, because, wherever we are and whatever we do, we all are busy in our own world. And we all have to fit all our work in the 24 hours of a day, 30 days in a month (though there were times when I thought a couple of extra hours a day would not be a bad idea :) )

Cranfield Experience has so far been a very enriching experience for me. Back to school was never easy after more than six years in work. But, now I have slowly got used to it. Morning lectures, evening team meetings or the other way round seems easy to handle than it was in the initial days. Though I am not very fond of parties, sometimes cooling me heels off in some light ‘get together’ is not a bad idea. When everyone around has a glass of beer or whisky, I seem to be the odd one out with a glass of coke. But I have learnt to be in the crowd and yet not imitate them.

I have tried to regain my old touch in badminton and found I enjoy just as much as I did 15 years back.

Today we had a ‘mega submission’ or in Cranfield’s lingo, WAC (Written Analysis of a Case study). We were given a case study yesterday 1 pm…we had to discuss it within our learning teams (group of six students mainly) and then with the entire class and had to individually write a report of about 1500 words before handing it over. It is not as innocent as it seems, since reading, understanding and then reproducing within the word count may be quite challenging especially within the limited hours. Working till wee hours of the night and then catching some 'power nap' before getting back to work again the following morning was the tricky part. The atmosphere was charged all the time…the irony is here it was charged with the WAC, while India was charged with the celebrations of the Diwali or festivals of lights.

The indications that winter is coming are pretty much loud and clear. People have begun wrapping themselves with more winter clothes. Thick sweaters, gloves, mufflers have come out of the wardrobes. The areas below the trees are carpeted with brown dry leaves, blown here and there by a chilled breeze. The murmuring sound of the leaves and the whistle of the breeze seem to play nature’s orchestra welcoming the winter. The days have become shorter. By five it is completely dark and cold. The tree in front of my window has started shedding off its leaves. When I first came here it was covered with green leaves. Now it has a mixture of green and brown leaves and ,at places, no leaves at all – only the bare brown branches.

Season is changing, time is changing…and, perhaps, so is my life…

A 'worldly' thought...

2007-10-16T03:54:00.000+05:30

It has been more than week that we are safely seated in the MBA-flight. Seat belts are fastened, but there is no guarantee that there would be a smooth ride ahead. In fact, indications are many that more often than not we will face turbulent weather.The seat belt sign is implicitely on!
Many times I felt tired and thought I would go to bed early, that is, by 10:30 - 11:00 at night. But everyday I end up going to bed pretty late. Some thing or the other comes in the last moment and I end up staying awake till quite late at night. Everyday is so eventful. Everyday I learn lot of new things; learn a lot about myself. Already the marketing-accounting-economics jargons make some sense (however little they may be!) to me. It has ,undoubtedly, been a steep learning curve.Today there were some personality developement test. It was fun; it was interesting. You realize that you are either introvert or extrovert, go by the heart or by the brain, whether you judge or you perceive things and ,last but not the least, whether you are more practical or you go by intution.
At the end of the session I realized that all I do and feel are guided by some very basic features and characters that is otherwise deep-rooted inside. Personalities tests such as these bring those characteristics out in the surface. I became more conscious about myself. I realize the way I see the world and interpret things are different than those of others.The same pictures/images and sounds have different meaning to different people. We all have our own thoughts, views, principles and ,of course, our own world!
Though we all have so much common among ourselves, yet are so different from each other.

The beginning of a journey

2007-10-07T02:39:00.000+05:30

The Pre-MBA which started from the 17th of September and continued till the end of the month was a sort-of warm-up to the actual MBA program. So it is not surprising that about 48 of the total 138 students attended the course.
There is a long gap between a certain date in May,2001 and 17th September, 2007. Huh! A gap of more than 6 years. And for all those who are wondering what that gap in the calendar has to do with the blog, it is the gap between when I last sat in a classroom attending lectures for my Bachelor's Degree and when I sit for the first class in my MBA (or may-be the Pre-MBA).
The thing I feared most is, I would fall asleep in the class during the lectures. But ,to my pleasant surprise, I did not! And not a single time. The credit in no way goes to me. It goes to the wonderful professors of the university who ,it will be an understatement to say, knows the art of teaching. Many times I was left in awe by their presentation and views.
Beside studying their were get together, socialising (It was a bit of hiccup for a not-so-social person like me!),sports (I almost thought that in my age of late twenties I would hardly get a chance to enjoy sport so much!), quizzes and what not?
I developed a liking for the place, the university and all that is associated with it.
In a very short span of time, I developed friendship with so many classmates from so many nationalities. Did i say there are students from 38 countries this time in the SOM in the Full Time course?
By the time the pre-MBA was over, I realized I had made a very correct decision in my life.
I realized, my journey has begun. I am in a train, which is about to leave the station.The guard has blown the whistle.The signal has turned green...the train is on its way to a new destination...
there is no looking back...

In Search of Thee...

2007-10-07T01:48:00.000+05:30

I searched you in crowded trains,
I searched you in packed auditoriums,
I searched you in lonely highways,
...In temples,churches and mosques.

I searched you in the garden,
I searched you in the morning sunlight,
I searched you in spring-time flowers,
...In old albums.

I searched you in my memories,
I searched you in the blue sky,
I searched you in the deep oceans,
...In books and music.

I searched you in the twittering of birds,
I searched you in my dreams,
I searched you in the sunset,
...In the green mountains......

Until I heard your voice from within -
All along you were within me...
In my heart and soul!

A dream-come-true and a note of thanks!

2007-10-07T01:19:00.000+05:30

1^st October, 2007.

When dreams become reality, we are thrilled and overjoyed. But if the reality is something you haven’t dreamt of? Well, this is just what I am into right now. When I was small, or may be a year or two back, I heard of people who studied abroad and how they are looked up and admired in the society. Especially, people who went to UK or England to study. There were a couple of friends of mine who went to US to pursue higher education – MS and then Phd. But studying in UK always meant something different and special, I think, for the Indians, or may be more specifically Bengalis (sorry for getting too regional). But perhaps it’s the close association with Great Britain for a long two hundred years that has somewhat moulded our thinking.

In the photos I used to see the typical universities – narrow roads lost its way into the distant trees. Small houses, two or maximum three storeyed high. Windows that seem fairly large and less in number. Green lawns, lush green fields, the blue sky, with white clouds floating, bright sunshine, but nevertheless a bone-chilling breeze. Or may be sometimes dark clouds overhead and incessant rain – sometimes drizzling, sometimes pretty heavy. And you find people/students under umbrellas hurrying back to their hostel or may be running towards the university. All these seem so out of a movie or a book or may be a dream to a person like me who have started the journey of life from a small city in India. But when this is what you see around, you pinch yourself and wonder ‘Hope this is not a dream!’ And when you realize that its not a dream, you look up and say ‘GOD! I thank you for all these.’ And you thank all the people that GOD sent around you without whom this dream would never ever have been possible.

Its too late today for me to write about what happened in the last fortnight in our pre-MBA. Its 12:17 am, so theoretically its 2^nd October. The class starts in about 8 hours…seems long but I have to squeeze in a night’s sleep after a busy and hectic day in the office. Then there is a bit of preparation for tomorrow. Seems like I have to start planning, get organized and improve upon my time management to make the most in the coming year. One more thing , last but not the least, that I plan is to write a diary. Surely, not possible to write everyday, but may be when inner voice wants to say something and my body permits.

Today is just the foundation stone laid for it, primarily with the sole objective of thanking all the people around for helping me live a dream that I never dreamt of a year back! Thank you LORD for sending so many wonderful persons around me. I am really grateful to you and them. May I say my ‘Cranfield Diary’ is dedicated to you all.

Beginning of a new chapter in my life

2007-10-07T00:46:00.000+05:30

As if it were yesterday....15th january,2007. How can I forget that day? On that day I was informed by one of the best MBA schools in the world (The Cranfield School of Management or SOM) that it has selected me as one of their students for their Full-Time MBA 2007-08 classes. My joy knew no bounds...the starting date (16th September) seemed a long long time then.
After a long wait of 8 long months, the day did arrive.
At 6:55 am sharp the British Airways flight BA 0146 took off from the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport,Calcutta.
Destination: Hearthrow Airport,London.
One of the passengers in the flight was Amitava Chatterjee.
Destination:Cranfield SOM
A cab was sent by the University to receive us (there were some more student for the
SOM in that flight).
At about 4:30 pm,16th September, I was in room no 1.18 in Fedden Flats; some thousand kilometers away from my hometown. My room is west facing. When I unpacked a couple of essential items, I looked out of my window. The sun was setting. It was as if, a symbolic representation of the end of my comfortable IT job. I know tomorrow, the 17th of september, the sun will rise again. But this time it will rise , for me, in the horizon of the land of the Queen!
A new day will bring for me a new life....a life that I have not even dreamt some years back.
I pinch myself and ,to my pleasant surprise, realize, its not a dream anymore today.
It is real...it is very much real.
My associtation with one of the world's best universities has just begun.
Its the beginning of a new day...a new journey and ,of course, a new chapter in my life.........