about life and career

Today when I see people near and around me, I see everybody enjoying their work and sastisfied with the growth opportunities tied with the career path one has chosen for himself. In my view, all of them are happy or at least they seem so to me. The reason, as my hunch goes, might be because some have decided to stay like this forever either because of incompetency or because of overly enjoying their current being or rather ignoring the more fruitful possibilities out of the periphery they are bound in or something else of that sort. Others are happy because they know that the role they are playing is temporary and they have to move on some day to some other role, sooner or later. And Its that feeling that strengthen them to be pleasant and to laugh merrily.

I know a lot of my friends, who, if I am nt exaggerating, are almost mad about getting into a B school and trade their youthful 2 years for another degree, to be proudly named as 'Master of Business Adminsitration'. Strange !!! isn't it? We spend most of our youthful days and our energy in collecting degrees, making career and figuring out more and more avenues of genearting moolah. Which is ulmimately meant to be spend by our better halves, kids or the other family members. I am not against making career or money or future, for that matter. But I would prefer to enjoy the journey rather than being deprived throughout the journey to save some bucks which could be spend after reaching the destination.

To me, life is not a game of cricket where you are either on batting side or on fielding side, either stiker end or at non-stiker end, or finishing 50 odd spells for your team to play opposite team's attacks later. I dont see my present as if I am getting ready for something that might happen tomorrow. I draw more appropriate analogy of my life with the game of football, where other than two goalkeepers everybody else is at, more or less same position. They all, in unison, have one motto, to be alert for the next attack, be attentive toards others' moves, be calm to think of the possible ways to get the ball to its right fate and to be disciplined to keep yourself aligned with the team's startegies.

people and their behavior - Part 1

I always had this notion in me that I score pretty well when it comes to judging people by their behavior and that too in only one or two encounters. To strengthen more to this notion my "gut feeling" has always worked in my favor and I used to be, in fact, always right in my predictions. Well! Almost always. :-) But what I realize now is that there are a few people in this world, to whom you can never understand. I classify them in a special kind of human behavioral categories and name them as mirrored-individuals. The motive behind coining this special term will be more comprehensible after you pass through a few more lines further down.

You can not identify these personalities in one or two encounters. And in some cases it takes real long time span to identify MIs. You meet MIs in a good mood and they are as cheerful as you and participate in your celebrations with full swing. You meet them in your grief or your bad time and as you start narrating your have-beens to them they will become more serious and unhappy than you. And after some time you start thinking of them as the master of over reacting species. They will try to pretend as if they are feeling all the pain and sorrow that you have been through, by themselves and the level of compassion that they show becomes indigestible at times. Their behavior will always be based on what kind of clouds are revolving around you and they always manage to mold themselves in the similar mental state as you have.

Great folks! I must say.

Come Celebrate Enjoy

Celebrations celebrations celebrations, the one word I hate the most these days. No matter what one particular celebration is about, I would always try the bestest of my efforts to avoid it. But the irony is that being so different with others when it comes to celebrate, there is one thing that I find common between myself and others and that is the anxiety for the actual
moment of celebration to come. Other might want to enjoy the good times as soon and as much as possible but I, unlike others want this moment to come and pass by with as much pace as possible like a full speed express train on small platforms. There is a lot more that I find worth attention in this analogy. A fast moving train has the understanding that it will not be worth wasting its 10 seconds in a small platform where it will hardly get any passenger. I also, at times, feel myself inferior to the celebrations that other people enjoy.

I always have this fear of losing inside me through out my life. Losing dear ones, losing elections, failing in exams and a lot more than I can think of now. When I see somebody enjoying and
dacing in joy, I feel like go and dance with him but again the loser self inside me promptly suggests me that this happiness and fun will not last forever and you will not be able to take it positively when you are out of the trance.

To others it might seem being in an state of depression or talking like an out and out loser but I take it as an school of thought made by myself in an long journey of experiences and it tastes to me like the juices of all events and incidents I have been through.

What is life? Part 1

I thot it's fun, I thot it's game
I dont know what's it, and what's the name?
For some it's cool for some it's hard
For me it's a new experience, walking every single yard
I knew what I want, but I dint know how..
so life must move on, with me thinking what now?

First and the furious :-)

Okay, so far so good....a lot of discussions and too many points to oppose this "not-making-any-sense" move from the HRD.

Instead of putting so many points to oppose reservation, could somebody enlighten me on why do we need reservation? and if at all, we need, why should somebody whose name has some "XYZ" as his last name should get the privilege and not somebody who doesn't have it, when both of them belong to the same locality, have the same social and economical status and have the same level of inteligence.

Reservation is undoubtedly a good hammer to make all elements of a society grow with an equal pace. But let me remind you that the criterion to choose the benificiary impacts a lot to make it worthwhile in the longer run.

It is good to see that the government has got the motivation to get all the parts of our society at the same economical level and evreybody appreciates this noble intention but is it the way it should have been implemented ?

If I were a the 5th child of a farmer in some remote village of orissa. My village doesn't have electricity and proper water supply, I would never be able to think of going to a primary school. Needless to say that thinking of getting into IIT or IIMs would be a dream for me. On the other hand somebody who lives in a metro city, comes from a very well settled family and to add more to his fortunes, writes "XYZ" as his last name. He will get all the benifits of this 'helpiing-in-social-uplifting' decision of the government and get into IITs/IIMs and I will never get to know what did I miss in my life either because of unawareness and zero exposure to the outer world in my sweet, beautiful village or because of having a lot of other problems to think of than getting into some 'IIT' which nobody in my family have ever heard of.

Today I feel like sitting in a railway compartment, having an RAC ticket, sharing my berth with an equally helpless old guy, while my other fellow passengers are enjoying their long journey in their comfortable places. And the reason : they have got RESERVATION...
My requests to Mr. Singh..

1) Thanks a lot for giving a thought to the issue but please do it for the right cause.
2) Do not worry about your government and your vote bank SIR!!! , if you do the right thing, I will vote for you :-) and if you allow me I might campaign for you as well :-)

Veeresh Shukla
B.Tech IITK (class of 2003)