Adieus 2017 !!

It's been a good year , I spent this year in the US, the land of opportunities.  I've always wanted to break the barriers of self doubt and I'm so proud of choosing to publish few of my writings. Self love is what is most important.

Link to my book

I also discovered about the "pursuit of happyness" which is made by accomplishing small happiness, What I felt, when I gave undivided attention to my 3 year old niece, dropped/picked her to the school,attended her sports day and went to the park, to push the swing for her. It was nothing but true bliss.

Also, a very dear colleague passed away in an accident . Avinash was only 26 and had gone to the southernmost part of the world (a city called Ushuaia) during the thanksgiving weekend. He was extremely hardworking and knowledgeable, and his sudden demise, hit all of us like a bolt, reminding us that how vulnerable we are, and that our time is limited. We interacted almost daily , and shared a special camaraderie. I shall miss him. RIP Avinash.

Amidst , the love-hate relationship that we share with unknown dimensions of life, time and destiny, the year 2017, made me an optimist and a believer led by hope..

The Hitchhiker’s guide to drinking Wine

 It’s been 2 months for me in the US and have come across some great beer which we do not get back home in India , like Bud Lite Platinum and Samuel Adams. I wanted to graduate to Wine drinking and didn’t have much idea about it. Hence writing this blog to capture to what I would call the Hitchhiker’s guide to drinking Wine. Hope it helps :)
Basically, I had heard about the White and Red version of the wines. I came across few other categories during my search, that would be as follows:
1.       The Red Wine – Yes that’s what we have grown up seeing, actors playing Dracula ;). Some of the categories of Red Wines are as follows:

       a.       Red Blend - Winemakers will combine different red wines in order to make a new, more complete or complex flavor to enjoy.

       b.     Malbec – Originated in Argentina and popular in France, it is made out of purple grapes which give it a red colour

       c.       Pinot Noir – It is a variety of grapes , One of the first red wines

       d.     Cabernet Sauvignon – Pronounced as (Ka-ber-ne Sau-vin-yon) is a premium red grape used to make dry wines of the same name.Dry wine means there is no residual sugar after wine formation i.e. the wine is NOT sweet.

2.     The White Wine -  is a wine whose color can be straw-yellow, yellow-green, or yellow-gold coloured
       a.     Riesling - Riesling is a white grape variety which originated in the Rhine region of Germany. Riesling is an aromatic grape variety displaying flowery, almost perfumed, aromas as well as high acidity. It is used to make dry, semi-sweet, sweet, and sparkling white wines.
       b.     Pinot Grigio – One of the more popular Italian wines. The flavors can range from ripe tropical fruit notes of melon and mango to some botrytis-influenced flavors
       c.     Chardonnay - Beautifully integrated tropical flavors such as pineapple, mango, and papaya with citrus notes that explode in your mouth. These flavors delicately intertwine with aromas of vanilla and honey to create depth and balance throughout. A hint of toasted oak and butter rounds out the long, lingering finish.
      d.       Sauvignon Blanc – Green Grape French Wine

3.       Blush and Rose – One of the more blended, semi dry (less sweetened) wines
4.       Champagne - Champagne is a sparkling wine produced from grapes grown in the Champagne region of France.
5.       Sparkling Wine
6.       Sake – Yes it’s the same Japanese wine that Tom Cruise craves for in the Last Samurai.

Some of the most popular Wine Brands here were as follows
1.       Veuve Clicquot – Best Selling Champagnes
2.       Bota Box
3.       Oyester Bay
4.       Kim Crawford
5.       Josh Cellars

The House of Faith

The house of faith has many rooms.

The kitchen, where Mother Nature feeds and nourishes us.

The drawing room, where we invite family and friends to our lives.

The wash-room, where we dump all the negativity and despair to keep our faith alive.

But most importantly, the house of faith has a silent corner. A dark room, a room filled with darkness and hopelessness.

Why would such a room be allowed? I often ask.

Darkness, broods over happiness and hope and brutally murders our faith, which we had nourished all this while, with utmost care.

Is Faith that delicate? Does it need to be protected or reconciled with? I often ask.

Accepting the house of faith with the dark room is what is having true faith. God works in mysterious ways. One of his ways is to destroy what we love the most. Life is all about continuous evolution to the next level. As when the counting reaches from 0 to 9 the next number is 10 i.e. the next level.

The dark silent corner in reality is a passage to the next level for everyone who lives in the house of faith.

My first corporate award- League of Outstanding HCLites

Today I received the first corporate award in 6 years of my IT career. I’m really grateful to god, for giving me the strength to hold on to HCL either by choice or by chance, and help me not to quit at extremely crucial junctures. Today is a special day, good to see the trophy in my kitty after 2 years of extremely challenging conditions in the office. I have turned into a believer and have found a code to my work ethic, just work as if you are facing the mighty Australian attack in a test match, take the hits, ignore the sledges, score on the loose deliveries and forget your ego while you work, surrounded by co-workers who are so very ready to pull you down. Just work, quietly most of the times, with your head down , with the exception of the rare spark(if the sledging goes out of the way). Do not miss out on the opportunity to show that you are putting in extra effort but once in a while.Also, I heard Mary Kom today, she said “Give your best, but if you loose, tell yourself , you will come harder the next time. “ Extremely inspiring Magnificient Mary J

The Year 2013: Memoirs

Well, I will consider myself lucky to be in the right mood to write down the memoirs 2013 post. It’s been quite a while I have blogged. May be, because I got married this year. Though a lot has been said about the institution of marriage, I guess I have had a smooth sailing (minus the occasional fights and feuds, whereby it seems like a topsy turvy land).

I have always been very superstitious about the number 13.It all started with class 8^th when I was 13 years old, My performance improved from a top ten student to a Top 5 one. Since then I have always looked for and received luck in some form or the other in Number 13. The year 2013, thankfully lived upto it’s expectations.

I met Deepika on the 16^th of December last year. By December end, we found ourselves hung on the telephone calls that lasted for 8 hours in the chilly North Indian winter. Boy!!Never had I imagined that I’ll be hooked up with a girl for such long hours.

In 2013, I happened to celebrate my first valentine’s day and that too in style. I got engaged!!Marriage, Honeymoon followed and finally I find myself getting modeled in the typical after marriage lifecycle.

“Isme action hai,drama hai,romance hai,comedy hai, emotional atyachar hai….lekin boss I’m loving it”

As a desperate single, I had once promised myself that I’ll watch a movie in a hall only with the woman in my life. Thankfully, I managed to fulfill this promise. “Yeh Jawani hai Dewani” was our first movie.This was followed by Satyagrah,Fukre,Chennai Express,Madras Café and Ramleela. Bollywood seems to have lost it completely. I felt like yelling in the hall while watching Ramleela.What kind of movies are they making, and ironically such movies  are breaking all box office records.The movie will have everything except a good story, right from a flashy starcast to Priyanka Chopra doing an item number,whereby she prides her seductive looks in a role of a bar dancer or tabayaf.Not to forget the holi song….Yar acchi movie banao..tohri story to chahiye…Indian public ko chutiya samajh ke rakha hai literally.

Things at the job front have never been better. I’ll remember this year for conquering the fear of technology I had. I now aspire to make a career in IT, something which I was reluctant about.Many people spend lakhs to pursue an MBA, having attained enlightment  on that front,an MBA is not in my list for the near future.

THE YEAR 2011: MEMOIRS

“  Let this be the hour, which comes once a while.

Whereby one looks back and sighs…

A year is about to pass. ..

The child within still laughs….

it never grows old……it shines like 24 karate gold.”

….but something has changed, or rather grown. Ego it is. I feel that, ego in people follows an inverse bell curve, during the course of life.

Lot many things happened this year.

Cricket World Cup 2011 triumph(Feb 2011):  Hard to believe at times that our boys did it. They played like real champions beating Australia and Sri Lanka. Hats Off!! For me Suresh Raina’s knock against the Aussies, Gambhir,Yuvi and MSD’s ironic  patience ,were some of the innings I’ll never forget. It taught me a great deal. If we want something badly, this is how we achieve it, this is how we walk the path, with patience and grit. No matter how hard the water splashes on ,we need to be as steady as a rock….and keep moving forward, inch by inch, step by step. MSD and co. showed it to everyone.

Campus Visit - IIM Calcutta (April 2011)  :  Yes we were there for a week. IIM-Cal Campus it was. A week that changed my life and gave direction to it, that changed the way I thought about myself.  A week that helped me understand a part of myself. The experience is too voluble to be expressed in words. All I can say, from the bottom of my heart “thank you IIM Calcutta for everything ”.

Bought my first bike(July 2011): I’ll always be proud of this deed of mine. I bought my first bike “Hero Honda Glamour 125cc” with my own savings and learnt to ride a bike on the same. Initial days were quite scary, I overcame my fear of driving on the busy Bangalore roads, taking the critical U-turns and driving through the gallis. It was one way I explored the hidden fire within. If you really want to do something, you will find the way and the courage to walk the path.

Trip to KanyaKumari and the Kovlam Beach : An experience of a lifetime. The Sea and the beach, it made a poet out of me.The best moment of the trip was standing on the shores of kanyakumari and being hit by waves from three different directions. Who says there are no miracles? It was the first time , since time in memory that I saw the ocean.A trip I'll always remember for the days to come.

Ricky’s Engagement (Nov 2011) : Happy for you J

Sad demise of Steve Jobs/Dennis Ritchie/Jagjeet Singh/Bhupeen Hazarika and Dev Anand (Oct to Dec 2011)

A sad ending to an eventful year. It was tragic really tragic and the pain was felt deep down in the roots of all emotions across the human society(s).

THE YEAR 2009: MEMOIRS

It’s been another eventful year, looking back I could see myself as an engineering graduate, passing out of college with two job offers, a healthy percentage,bunch of friends and memories to be cherished for a life time.The future seemed promising and like any normal person I had started savouring on the days to come.I had my planning done, I was all set to join “accenture” by sep 2008,which had been my dream company as an engineering student.I was young and I had plans of working for a big name,seeking status among friends and acting humble.It’s easy to befool your self at times (in fact it’s the easiest thing in the world).I thought i’d seen a lot in life and had become wise and somehow had lost respect for people around in my sub concious mind as I’d started judging them.These things are subtle.You might think yourself as a an idealist or “A good person” but human beings are so much into self obsession that they often land up overlooking the the devil in them,creating a self image which when breaks leaves them shattered for a while making them into newbie philatropists and bloggers :)
So I had my moment of truth some where around Sep’08 when “Lehmann Brothers” filed for bankaruptcy.This news assured everyone with a little common sense that there were troubled waters ahead.But I was somewhat happy that I had offer from a “big company” like accenture who pretended to be sailing smooth in these times as well.So I waited for my joining date confidently, which gradually changed into hope by dewali and to despair post dewali.2009 was approaching and we were almost told that we might not receive our joining till June 2009.
Meanwhile some unfortunate incidents happened with our batch. One of our friends “Neha Jain” passed away in a tragic Bus accident. She was walking on the correct side but still was run over by a lunatic driver of a local bus. Her elder sister was getting married in a week. She fought for her life for 15 days in the ICU, the photographs shook my soul.A shiver still runs down through my spine when I remember seeing those.I felt like a pigheaded, selfish asshole who was cribbing for something so base(joining date).After many years I hated myself.
I had earlier got a call from iGATE for a support job for the time being but I had told them to call me only for a s/w engg.The gods were kind with me and HRs from iGATE responded positively by calling me on 08-Jan-09 as a s/w engg.Ironically the next batch called @iGATE was in June’09.I realised I had been lucky but wasn’t grateful enough.I still wanted to be in accenture. It is human weakness to believe the grass to be greener in distant lands.
Igate has been my lucky charm since time in memory. It was my first company which I cracked as a student and life took a positive turn after that. In such peak recession time as well it was iGATE which came to my rescue. After three months of training which was an unforgettable experience in it’s own. On May 10th 2009 I, along with four other batch mates were selected for the GE-Commercial Finance project and a new journey began :)


Corp Apps:No it’s not coporate Apes, it’s the name of my team, though we prefer being called by the latter.
Corp Apps could best be defined as a bunch of intellectal lunatics,who are graded for not how good they are at work but how good they are at pulling each others leg (Of course thats the humorous side).
Work and fun blended beautifully at this place. I’d heard about s/w engineers being cool and happening. It was the first time I realised the same.People around were educated,humble,had exquisite manners and also had a tremendous sense of humour, which characterized them distinctly in the team. It was the first time I saw what exactly is being a part of a team is, helping the newbies, not getting irritated, sharing mistakes though it might sound like a “Eutopian state” but I did have my share of politics. But again all these faces were part of what Group dynamics says:”Forming,Storming,Norming”.
“Happiness is like humility,the moment you realize you are humble,you are not”
-Jedda Krishnamurthy
I was happy working at iGATE and I didn’t realise it until the day I got my joining for Accenture as 31st of Aug ‘09. It was a tough decision to make, as I’d got my joining for Gurgaon which was closer to home.I was in a fix, it was a catch22 situation. I consulted friends but it was me who had to make a decision.I had decided to join Accenture. On the way home that day I looked around and realized that I was happy here, and going to an unknown place among unknown people is not what I want.
I was not ambitious but I was a status seeker, being ambitious is healthy, being a status seeker, pathetic. I introspected and decided not to run after accenture which had ditched me at the time of need.I decided to stick to iGATE at the very last moment. A decision which brought about immense degree of satisfaction and pride with it. :)

So it’s been one year now at Igate,with every passing day I learn new things, there are good times which I cherish and bad times which help me realise the importance of the former.I make mistakes, curse my self make them again,and finally learn. Day after day I see my self grooming up for the future,which is uncertain.I feel nervous,feeling of doubt,hopelessness and fear at times broods over me. But I’m learning to walk through them as it is the best way out.