Biggest learning @ WIMWI!!!! – WimwiLeela

Having had a relatively chilled weekend we were expected to have a tough sunday evening with WAC, Mkting and FRA on monday. As decided we all met at 10 at Robin’s place. 45 min Marketing. 30 min FRA and then was the biggest drama one can ever witness @ WIMWI. It had more thrills than a reality show. Probability concepts losing their lustre. Murphy’s law taking the center stage.

We all had to regroup with following new group conditions:

1) New group should be of 4/5 members and should preferably have a FPM or non-engineer.

2) Atleast one change should be there in the group to accomodate a new coming member.

My group – Group12 comprized of Chinmay (Chinchau the Juicer), Pradeep (the SWOTer), Robin (Koshu, the Kaul boy), myself (Champu, the giveup), Vatan (Cupid the stupid) and Jaya…. We all loved the names we all got. Jaya was the only FPM in our group and hence initially for a change it didn’t make sense to have her out of the group, although she was a free flyer. Pradeep is one of the contributers to the group but couldn’t gel well with the group dynamics. He contributes and shys away. Vatan is an active member of the group who keeps people involved. Robin & Chinmay are the chief contributors to the project, hard to choose between the two.

12AM: We looked at the options that we have of dividing ourselves and we decided that we’ll have one person thrown out. The options we had for doing this were

1) Randomization

2) Do a feedback session for each individual

3) Do a closed voting

Being future managers people (including myself) decided that we are not going to leave everything on fate and will decide ourselves. Hence randomization was eliminated. So was Closed voting as it is an act of cowardice. So the option left was to go for feedback session for each individual to be followed by voting. Each member had to rank other 5 members on basis of motivation, creativity, team-player, quality of work done and (one more that i forgot as usual). I knew i’ll be 3rd after Chinchau and Kaulboy and so were the results. As expected Jaya was last by a huge margin. she too accepted the fact that she is the least contributor to the team. And then was the biggest reality show, the one thing i dreaded about closed poling. We had to choose the name of two members whom we considered

Lohegad Fort – FULL MOON Trek …. 19/20 April 2008

It started with Nidhesh informing me about some trekking trip to some place being planned by his company…. “Full Moon Trek”…. Sounded great…. We don’t have anything more important than sleeping to be done on weekends so going for a nite trekking trip sounded fun and adventure…. We had to report at 4.30PM on saturday (20April) to Mr Saurabh Soni of his company (Ansys Fluent) who lived nearby…. They were expecting 20/25 people to participate in the trek…. Pretty fine figure…. My friend forwarded me the email about the event…. We were expected to get some goodies with us… The important ones of the list were
1) Dinner for himself/herself
2) 2 Liter of water per person
3) Torch
4) Bedsheets etc. (Tents were supposed to be brought by the regular trekkers )
hmmm
me and Nidhesh sat down thinking about what all we have…. i guess torch in my phone was pretty ok so that covers up the torch part…. bedsheets we had…. clothes too…. now 2 liter of water per person was something of exorbitant price…. 20 Rs. to be precise… as we guys are a little too casual to fill water ourselves…. We had gone to Pizza Hut that day for lunch so that atleast if we don’t have a good evening we have a good lunch to bank on …. After lunch we went to More Super Mkt. but unfortunately couldn’t find something that we could take there or rather we were looking upto the senior members to organize dinner for us all we took after 30 minutes of surfing the store was a packet of Haldiram’s Khatta Meetha snacks

We reached Mr. Soni’s place at 4.30…. He had a red Swift which was probably of the highest version… nice leather seats… good stereo… the guy it seemed was a little frugal with petrol so he had the AC off… but nevertheless the climate outside too was pretty pleasant…. our car was the pick-up car for Aundh guys – Soni, Amit, Nidhesh and me we reached the Hinjewadi flyover which was decided earlier as the meeting point for all the cars…. there Mr. Kishore too joined us…. Mr. Kishore was 5’6″ tall i guess….. looked proper tamil…. and had all the elements to be the different one…. he came in and sat in the back seat with Nidhesh sliding in between….

We started from there around 5PM…. and Picked up the normal highway (not the expressway) towards Mumbai…. to my amazement that highway too has been very well kept and we were driving at an average speed of maybe 80kmph with Mr. Soni experimenting all the stunts of Rally racing done my Peter Solberg It was a zig zag zig drive by him but was fun…. it was after a long time that i was breathing the highway air in daylight…. We reached Malegaon (some 60km from Pune) in one hour and having crossed a desi railway crossing we came to a village which had everything to be qualified as the Indian Village of Imagination…. we guys parked our cars where the pakka road ended and waited for others to come…. not all zoom past bullockcarts at 100kmph there was a grocery store and we took a bottle of water with ur…. we thought lets have atleast one requirement completed…. did’t want to be totally parasitic although we completed the bottle in 5 minutes…. but we got assurance that others were not like us as we had quite a few who had come with loads of stuffs….

We started trekking by 6.30 or so i guess…. by that time it was already sunset and we were walking in twilight along a kachcha road which kept on inclining as we moved ahead…. it was maybe me Nidhesh and Kishore…. i cracked some mundane and tapori jokes along the way as usual taking fun in seeing people getting bored and irritated by the pathetic level of my sense of humour…. along the way i found that Kishore was interested in photography and i was obliging him with some of his snaps…. i also wanted some for me to be put on orkut…. don’t know when i’ll go for Trekking, forget Midnite trek …. it started to get quite dark and we would c Moonlight being shed on the adjoining hill…. actually we were trekking in the valley and the moon was rising behind the hill so from 7.30 onwards it was really dark but we kept on going clinging to our instincts….

We kept on going and going…. Along the way we kept on munching what others had got…. Juice from Amit, Some mouthfreshners from others, water from kishore, etc. etc. it felt good till it kept coming We reached some village by 9 PM where my one of the worst enemies were in big number – dogs…. i tried to be away from them as much as possible…. once the village was crossed it was stairs that we had to climb…. by that time we were really tired…. i was thinking that its a better idea to stay in the village and enjoy the desi khana…. mast khatiya and aish we kept on the stairs’ riser’s height got on increasing and it was becoming quite a bit task in the end…. we kept on and on…. thinking about the target… the goal…. the fort that we had to conquer…. on and on and on…. finally we reached the top to find ________________________________________ (nothing but flat barren land)

The top was completely flat with no structure other than a big mausoleum there…. first reaction – was it a shivaji fort or??? who knew…. chalta hai…. it was really nice place (as u can c in the picture) windy as i like it…. and nicely moonlit… we could c the Pune highway in distance…. the cars running on the zig zag roads as a small point of light trying to make some random figures…. We sat down trying to rest our ___ which had taken a beating…. The guys who brought something to eat got together and started to arrange for dinner…. Kishore i guess brought curd rice or something…. Nag made good corn chat…. and someone else too brought a tiffin full of biryani…. me and the other bhukkads finished all biryani in no time and i was thinking like the person who brought biryani needs special thanks…. he cooked it so well…. brought disposable bowls….. brought it all the way to top…. man nice commitment….

After dinner it was turn for some Dumsharad (or whatever it is called) i was feeling quite tired but with nothing 2 do and tents not prepared i had no choice…. surprisingly there was CellPhone coverage at that height too…. pretty impressive… it doesn’t come in all corners of office but surely does in ‘viraniya’ and ‘khandars’ (reminds of the airtel advertisement where the plane crashes in dense forest and the girl still manages to call her family) So we played it and it was fun as it started…. I did it for two movies – Aabra ka Dabra & Kabuliwala…. luckily i managed to have my team figure out the films… there were some like Aalam Aara and others which brought the hell out of the people It was sheer fun which went till 1 AM i guess…. it was getting chilly but we all enjoyed it…. Then was the time to conquer some tent…. there were 5 tents with around 18 members (including 3 children and 2 ladies) i m not sure how all was organized but we were forced to be 5 huge guys to be in one tent trying hard to sleep without our legs extended (ie. being bent as there was no place we could extend them) no wonder the tent was named ‘Garib Rath’

The next morning i woke up to the pains in my leg… the 3 guys sleeping towards the exit had already woken up…. it was only me and nids inside…. i woke up to my amazement…. this was the pic that i saw

it was awesome sight…. some of the other pics are at

Orkut Album

Having roamed around for 30 minutes we started the climb down…. it was pretty fast initially but i knew that my leg might backfire as it did during Naval’s wedding…. it did…. it was terrible coming down with the guys who were with me had been down near the parking with me some 20/30 minutes behind them…. still i fought on…. and reached down…. it is amazing that when u know that there is only one way out u somehow get that strength to do it and thats what happend with me that day…. i somehow fought on thinking that only way i m gonna go down was by walking down even though it is with the pains…. Nag’s Kneecap surely helped but still there was quite some pain…. finally we managed to come down and i surrendered myself to the plush leather seat of the Swift…. Again a zoom zoom drive back to pune…. Kishore promised to share the pics but unfortunately he deleted the pics that were mine/nids and we got some 40 odd pics out of 150 taken…. didn’t expect that from him… but i guess thats how people r…. i was wondering what prompted him to do it as he had nothing to gain from it but still… chalo its his thinking… his mind…. i regretted not taking some pics via my phone…. chalo anyways good trip…. great fun…. next target Mahabaleshwar (26/27 April 2008) till then cya

Accidents – “Drive carefully na baba” 27 November 2007

When i initially started to go to school on my Kinetic i used to have quite a bit of touches here and there…. I had a major accident once on that kinetic…. but apart from that nothing much…. I used to drive the vehicle to the limit and i think, at that time, i didn’t care my life that much too…. That relieved the pressure and i could follow what i loved to do with 100% freedom…. It was that 1 hr of drive each day that helped me keeping the fire inside alive…. But it was a devil in the making…. Gradually i became a Ghost Rider and was suffering from risk addiction….

Now after 5/6 years I live thousands of km away from my family and I kick myself to have experienced that thrill…. The thing is that now i care a lot about my life…. Its not that i have started to love my life…. no its not it…. but i fear for my parents…. And to put the icing on the cake i bought a Karizma…. The damn bike doesn’t come to terms before 60kmph And it is so smooth one doesn’t realize when one is near the limits…. Luckily the bike has awesome balance and braking system which has saved me a lot of times but not on 26 November evening…. I was returning home after a usual casual day at office…. My team-lead disclosed it to team that i m leaving – that was the only different thing that happened that day…. nothing else…. I took out the bike and was driving carefully upto the Trinity Circle…. It was red but still cars were breaking the signal and taking turns…. I was in a hurry that i too get through and in that i ignored a Maruti Omni coming straight from the lane for turning right….. We both were in wrong lanes…. result…. crash….

I was kicked in the back by the car and i fell on the right side…. For a moment everything stopped and i was lying on the road thinking why the hell did i drive that fast…. Now i think i recalled the starting scene of Fight Club…. When u r in a state of shock, all u think is just shit…. For a sec i knew that the car was behaving weirdly…. I contradicted my own rule…. “Allow others to pass” and hence suffered the fate…. Result…. bruised right knee…. which of late has started to pain and burn…. a bits of cuts on the left one too…. torn jeans…. torn shoes…. and bike getting a blow on the top right side…. luckily nothing much for the bike…. I have done the required first aid and all but I have made my last days here in Qwest a little difficult…. Now i can’t do what i love doing in office the most…. play TT

Today was a tough day at office…. after a weird ride to office ( i stubbornly decided to take by bike) now siting on the chair too is a pain…. whole day i have tried to keep my leg straight and any undue bending causes pain…. i know that its going to be that way but now somehow…. i don’t like pain…. i don’t want to give in to pain…. i want to fight it…. i m therefore against painkillers…. Its a test or a way in which i vaccinate myself…. so today the best i could do was to play carrom and watch others play TT…. this went on till 7 PM when i realized that its time to take control…. i can’t let the injury take away from me the opportunity to play for the last times in Qwest…. I have made really good friends here and its difficult to part from them…. i know life moves on but…. chalo…. anyways I started playing doubles pairing with Ratan opposite Vancie and Reddy…. the first game was taken to deuce when we lost…. the guys were apologizing whenever they pushed the ball far from me but i urged them not to play with a sympathetic heart…. last thing i want is sympathy…. its not that bad a situation where i need some…. i can handle it…. and then the next game onwards we won 3 in succession…. can u believe it Reddy and Vancie beaten by a langda and Ratan thrice and that too convincingly…. consider it a fluke??? have this…. then i played 3 matches with Abhishek and that too i won convincingly…. then i beat Vancie in a match…. r all these flukes???? nope…. they are not…. i m not saying that i play really good TT or m boosting about myself but then when u have the pressure of facing the consequences of loosing gone then u can play, as sachin says, “khulke” (freely) and that was the reason i guess…. these guys have crushed me before ruthlessly…. but today it was something different…. and my leg too was feeling OK….

Lesson : “Do what u love, no matter what the consequences are”

My First Marriage Proposal :) 11-11-2007

Finally after loads of thought as to what i should do and what i shouldn’t i decided to go home and enjoy diwali with family…. My family needed me and the festival would have been a lack-luster event had i not been there…. Returning today and brooding over the events that happened… brings a smile on my face….

Went there for 4.5 days…. Diwali day went in usual diwali rituals and stuffs…. The next day (new Year day) too went as a normal new year day – meeting relatives and relishing sweets …. But the show stealer was sunday evening (11th Nov 2007)…. after lunch around 3 PM pops told me that he’s scheduled a “chhokri jovano” occasion (for Marriage seeing a girl) at one of the places…. I was expecting it of late but not like this…. it was like…. everything muted for a couple of seconds after he said so….. I was like…. “khudko to sambhal nahi sakte ladki kya sambhalenge”…. Seriously…. Everyone is frustrated in the world and think that one should get settled asap…. but for me…. my future is still undecided…. i don’t know where i m going….. don’t know what to do…. and getting married and all is a bit too much to remove my solitude… mom gave me an option that if i like a girl i can be engaged to her and can extend it for a year or so…. at first it sounded cool…. Also it wasn’t required from my side to commit this early No point thinking much this early…. But the only reason i agreed was because pops had given commitment and so i went to keep his word……

So around 4.30PM we left our home…. Her home’s in chandkheda (which is some 15/20 km from our place) all along the way i was thinking what’s gonna happen and how things are gonna shape up…. in the background i also recalled about Priya but now its past…. no point thinking much about it…. Dad knew that they lived somewhere along the new CG Road.. So once we entered the road dad called Dr Madhubhai (her father) and he led us to his place… We parked the car outside the society and carried on…. We were received by the girl’s mom, supposedly girl’s brother and supposedly girl’s sister all comforted each other and greeted happy diwali in a way that everyone knew all since birth but i guess thats the drama that happens everytime when meets like these happen…. One more thing…. Dad told me that Dr Madhubhai is a very cool calm guy and likes to talk it out…. So i went in with a preparation that I too am no less and considered it a battle to be won tooth and nail…. No hard feelings though, its just one of those usual personal tests i do on myself….

Before going to their place i asked mom what all things need to be considered…. she said :
1) Girl’s Family – What dad does, bro/sis do and how well they are placed
2) Girl’s House – How sound they are financially (We don’t have dowry funda back in Gujarat)
3) Girl’s Education and looks
4) (Added by me) Her maturity and attitude towards life

We settled ourselves on the comfortable sofa-set they had and started admiring their place…. It was a nice home…. It was one of those rare occasions when i found a home to be as good as ours…. with well placed furniture and nicely contrasted varnish…. all in all house was pretty good…. Requirement #2 meted out fine…. Her pops was a doc and her bro as well as sis were doing their medical…. All in all a pretty well educated and well placed family…. Requirement #1 also fulfilled…. for around 30 minutes odd we discussed about them and us and their home and all…. Her brother was pretty quiet…. No issues…. the other girl who sat near the dining table was much into her TV…. surprisingly for most of the part she was watching the ‘Detailed Analysis’ of the Indo-Pak cricket match that India won…. We went around to have a look at their home…. had similar configuration as that of ours…. one hall/dining/bedroom/kitchen on the ground floor and on the second floor it had 2/3 rooms with very bright colours…. in a way it looked pretty cool in a way a little flashy too…. in one of the rooms i guess was the girl whom we had come to see…. I didn’t look much at her just had a glimpse…. It looked like she was studying something…. I tried to be a ‘dahyo damro chhokro’ and just walked down the stairs back to the place i was seated…. I guess we had loads of this superficial talks and came back on track…. After another brief chat and then there was a pause…. I felt awkward and broke the ice by admiring the painting in front of me…. I was kicking myself for raising such an idiotic topic but in the anxiety and tension i just couldn’t think much Again some few sentences spoken and then a pause…. i was gesturing with my sis and then her dad asked her mom – “Bolo?” (i.e. say wat to do)…. She said “Jamine jao” (have dinner) i was like…. all here are doing this for the first time…. Then her dad started introducing each other one by one – first his wife then the son and then he said that the girl sitting there is his daughter who completed the 7th sem of EC at DDIT till now i was thinking that the girl studying upstairs was the one…. All the equations broke…. All calculations were rendered inconsequential…. I was so ashamed or felt shy that i didn’t even look at her… I was lost by that time…. again some pause and then mom told “chalo jaiye”…. I thought isn’t the guy asked to sit and talk with the girl…. we went out wished each other a very happy new year…. We went out and started to wear the footwear…. i was tied my shoelace when my dad whispered – if u wana have a chat u can have it…. I too thought lets have a brief chat…. Atleast i’ll come to know what a girl thinks and all….

I went inside and sat down on the sofa where i sat before…. The girl came and sat at the other end of the sofa…. It was the first time i had a good look at the girl…. She is beautiful…. No doubt… Also in her eyes i could c the confidence which i admire …. i could c that she had the courage to stand up and face the ‘tough’ situation (It was tough for me)…. It eased out the pressure i was under….. I thought a girl at 21 would be too shy to talk rather at that particular moment i thought that its ok as she looked pretty cool and composed with what all was going on…. I sat there and exchanged a smile and was left speechless as to what to say…. for some 2/3 seconds i guess both of us were getting settled…. I don’t exactly recall how all started…. I think the talk started by me saying that I thought that the girl whom i came to c was the one on the first floor Both of us smiled and she told that everyone mistakes her to be the elder one…..or Maybe i told her that her home is pretty nice and about her room…. She said that the purple one on the first floor was hers…. I then i guess apologized for the torn informal clothes i was wearing…. She said with a smile its ok…. I asked about her college…. Chat went on pretty Ok…. we discussed about our respective lives, hobbies, choices, likes-dislikes…. movies…. etc.. etc… I think i was the main contibutor but she too was pretty open to talk and i liked that in her…. she didn’t do that well in her examinations but she stood by it and took responsibility of it honestly…. I liked that quality of her very much…. Study and marks are superficial things…. Most imp thing is whether the other person likes to face the storm or look for cover…. She stood firm….. Lucky me….. Till that time i wasn’t considering it sincerely but then i realized she’s a lot matured for her age and I should start thinking it with a lot more seriousness…..

We talked about movies – she likes action and thrill movies so we shared some of our best ones…. Discussed about college life and even bf/gfs…. Anyways it rounded up well and we left…. No comments on what i felt after it…. or what i thought of her afterwards…. But after giving a lot of thought to the events that occured I will say that the meet was pretty immature…. the events that followed were pretty much the same…. lets c how all go further…. I need time…. I need time to forget the past and focus on present….

Kal ho na ho!!!!

Title: We all behaved like it was Kal ho na ho

Occasion: PK’s party. 27 June 07

Characters: Me, Avinash, Pk, Baba, Bihari, Akhil & Amita

Events: I was playing TT when bihari informed me about PK’s party being scheduled today. I was expecting it to be in near future but as Bihari was planning to party on his b’day on the next day partying that day was not called for. As always we wasted a lot of time in deciding the venue and it got a bit late. Finally ‘Paparazzi’ – which was at walkable distance from office was decided. The view from that place was awesome but unfortunately all the tables along the glass wall were booked and we too wanted an open terrace. But the place was cool and worth giving it one more try…. next time….Akhilbhai too reached Paparazzi and luckily on time no akhilbhai…. only akhil….. ya akhil too joined us outside paparazzi and it brought a big smile on baba’s face…. finally he had a sutta partner as well as sutta which he desperately missed after avinash quit it….

Bihari got a table booked for 7 at ‘Case Del Sol’ which is located on Residency road – some 3 km from office. The traffic on the day was at its peak and no one had the courage to take the bike that day. Also there was no certainty that we will be capable of driving after the party. so taking an auto was the best option.

We reached there before akhil and baba and quickly ordered the “starters” I was in complete mood to reach to the “elevated level” asap…. There r several reasons behind getting it done asap -

1) I hate the taste of beer. I have grown up munching all that tastes good and feels good and fortunately or unfortunately beer has neither of the two qualities.

2) The faster u drink, with max bottoms up the earlier u reach that elevated level.

3) I don’t drink just for the sake of drinking and getting cheered up. or to run away from reality. that elevated level does give me the opportunity to think otherwise and helps me sort out many things which i find it difficult to do in normal circumstances.

4) I don’t like drinking in public so asap when there r less people is a better option.

Coming back…the service was cool and v got what v ordered pretty quickly…. i had couple of bottoms up and feeling the true flavour of beer as i didn’t have lunch…. a practice which is bad but i don’t wanna compromise on the promise that i made to myself…. Akhil n Baba arrived and then we were all set to have “some quality time” …. v had beers and chicken and mushrooms – good open place, perfect breezy weather…. my bottoms up count went to 4 and i could feel that i was near my destination…. PK had ordered a cocktail which everyone tasted and admired…. it was one of the best cocktails i ever had…. its a different issue that i can count on fingers the cocktails i had but anyways it was good one and me and baba ordered one…. i guess by that time Amita and avinash too arrived…. i don’t know much what all v guys were discussing but its the case everytime v have “the quality time”…. I’ll appreciate some narrations of incidents from friends:

Avinash:

Baba:

PK:

Bihari:

All i can recall after 10 PM was that avinash was on cloud no 9 and firing bcs from there to anyone who interfered with him…. the situation was going out of control where i expected his majesty Akhil and the mastermind Baba to rise to the occasion and establish a bit of control on what was going on…. in my drunken state also i could foresee that its not going in right direction…. but i guess they too were a bit drunk at that stage…. somehow i couldn’t control myself and i tried to stop avinash who was going berserk – giving gaalis to waiters and us, breaking glasses, taking shots and shots of vodka and even throwing his camera…. baba too felt the physical tyranny of avinash who threw away his glasses and pulled his hair – one time in front of me and a lot in my absence…. baba got so much enraged that he almost decided to get his hair cut so that he wont have to face the physical torture nexttime…. Bihari was in his own mood after baba said something something to him which neither of the two wanna say…. the final word is that it was some ‘misinterpretation’…. Amita too was……. Actually if someone could figure out what was going on in her mind or why she didn’t retaliate (as she was the only one in her senses and had the authority) at that time plz enlighten me on it…. could be a case that she was afraid of ‘Mr Hyde’ avinash…. or maybe she was enjoying the drama…. or she was bold enough to withstand this and taking it lightly…. or maybe she thought it not good to leave the party halfway through as it doesn’t look nice. also finding and going by auto alone could be a problem….

Anyways after the party when v were looking for an auto avinash was giving gaalis to auto drivers too…. luckily they didn’t understand…. We got an auto at double rate and when traveling avinash was frequently bulging out of the auto window and the driver warned me many times that he might fall off the auto…. I knew someone had to carry him to his bed…. I was not confident that i can carry myself through, carrying avinash was a distant dream…. i called the roommates who came on time and helped me make him reach home…. and then started “Baap re Baap” cassette and the vomiting barrage…. I was about to go so i guess bhattu and amit will be better narraters…. but i know that some sweet lime was made and they were discussing whether they should call a doctor for avinash…. but ya i guess baba might have got it right – Bipolar syndrome….

Anyways its ok to let it go in front of friends…. thats what friends r for i guess…. to help u out when in need….

First Day First Show

Around 10 AM when i was relaxing on my bed on a perfect Sunday morning, lost in the thoughts, that I got a call from Mr Gulshan informing me that a faculty who was about to take some class in indiranagar is unavailable and he wanted me to take the class…. it was the first request so didn’t wish to disappoint him and agreed to take the class…. i have confidence on my ability to solve maths problem and agreed to take the class of the subject (DEX) even though he reminded me that its one of the toughest DI sheets…. I told him that i’ll reach the center some 10/15 minutes before the class and have a feel of the paper….

The class was in Indiranagar…. location of the center was not known to me prior to the class but it didn’t take much effort in finding it out…. the first reaction was…. oh god…. one has so many students in indiranagar!!!! the center was supposed to be one of the less student prone centers but the whole college floor was flooded with students…. I knew it…. i was lacking the beginner’s luck…. the first step was not going to be easy and it wasn’t…. I reached the place pretty early and asked the staff boy for the papers…. He handed me one and i was shocked…. the paper really had pretty complex problems…. atleast it seemed complex for someone who was about to take his first class…. somehow i didn’t get that strength to take the class and i said its better to teach what i have prepared and decided to take the Trigonometry class….

I entered the class and kept my stuff (helmet and bag ) on the desk beside the main table…. but there was no reaction from the students – I expected things to settle down as they had a teacher in the class…. but it was otherwise…. the class was in its own mood…. I announced that the person who was about to take the horrible DEX paper is not available and i m filling in his place…. and also said that i’ll be covering the basics of trigonometry…. There were sounds of disapproval and dejection…. I too had faced similar situations many times at Time…. many times it happened that the class which was having some ‘quality stuff’ was replaced by a pretty basic boring lecture…. But i couldn’t help them…. I had to help myself…. so i started explaining some of the concepts of angle, radian, etc…. i had planned to take some of the concepts of geometry too but the students said that they already had the class of Geometry and were pretty clear about Apollonius Theorem and all…. i lost half an hour of lecture there itself…. I realized that its going to be a tough lecture…. I plotted the sin, tan and cos curves and then decided to take some examples…. As i turned after completing the examples there were some who would shout out the answers and the whole fun of the problem seemed gone…. I realized that i too did the same mistake when i was a student at TIME and i took away the opportunity from others to learn…. Sometimes its better for the sake of whole that one keeps himself shut….

Some weird problems…. Some good problems…. Some where i explained them the fundas…. overall i guess explaining the examples was a pretty decent part of the lecture…. i looked at the watch…. it was only 1 hour gone…. what I was left with was the height and distance section…. I was pretty confident about it and explained that too – hopefully pretty well with help of examples and i could c the class responding too…. finally i got the satisfaction that i was successful in explaining a concept to a major portion of the class…. looked at watch 12.40…. took some more examples…. reached the end of the chapter…. i didn’t knew what to do and somewhere behind someone started to walk out…. i waved towards him signaling its fine to leave but the whole section of that class rose and started to leave…. i looked again at watch…. i left them some 40 minutes in advance…. god…. TIME’s going to kick me out…. but i was little happy the class was over…. i needed time to sit back and think what went wrong and which were the areas where i needed improvements so that the mistakes r not repeated again…. along the lecture i made good friends with 3 students of mine…. after the lecture i was chit chatting with them…. one was a doc ( i was shocked)…. a doc, after so much hard work was looking at CAT….. other was a 1 yr exp engineer similar to me and the third was a college grad…. I took the engineer with me to have something in nearby place…. I was feeling pretty stressed out and physically a bit fatigued…. He took me to a south Indian restaurant on CMH Road :S …. I didn’t have any money…. but the HDFC ATM nearby didn’t give me the money I was feeling little embarrassed…. I’ll be taking a favor from student…. but i guess when the lecture was a disaster nothing else mattered…. At the restaurant we discussed what he did and howz the work at his place…. I took his number too – for referral and all

The other two lectures in the evening which were assigned to me went pretty well and I guess i was able to share my knowledge in a much better way…. and the time too wasn’t that long…. both the classes ended around 2 hours only so it was a good confidence booster…. I got the first lesson on how one should go about teaching and some feedbacks that r going to help me in long run in delivering a lecture…. I know that i m pretty bad at explaining in a lecture…. hopefully it will help me in shaping myself…. Also there is an opportunity where i m also getting paid

FMP……. :) 20 June 2007

Its a Rang De Basanti dialogue – “Duniya vich do tarah ke log hote hai. Ek jo sab sah lete hai. Aur ek woh jo himmat uthakar sachchai ka saamna karte hai.” ( There r two kinds of people in this world. One who accepts and tolerates all thats wrong. Other where people fight for the truth and the right). I don’t know whether i totally belong to one of the camps but I try to be in the second group for most of the time. One such instance where i can proudly say that i belong to second group is FMP. The terminology is coined by v all. FMP – Free Marriage Party. I hope the full form itself explains the concept If not then FMP is the fruit of success out of the effort put in to get good food without compelling our pockets to make much effort. rather doing without the pockets to making any effort. In college days v had a very monotonic meals at our respective messes – which is so in almost all college messes across India During the third year v decided its high time to find a solution. It was a little harsh on our pockets going to Jewels often and relishing the served Butter Chicken…. And that butter chicken used to be v awesome…. v used to fight among ourselves to get that piece of ‘tangdi’…. and the curry too was awesome…. v had a ‘chinki’ waiter on our side who would help us reduce our bills v used to tip him heavily and the guy used to decrease the order in the bill => double profit but spreading corruption…. v used to relish around 8 butter naans and the bill showed 6 plain rotis => saving around 50/60 bucks…. v used to tip him 20/25…. i recall that for the first setting v tipped him so much that the final profit was just 1 Rupee…. but it was planning for future that was important…. and it did pay us rich dividents…. even though the amount saved might not excite us much now but at that time v earned something more too…. it was confidence in ourselves to fight it out and find a solution…. do something daring where success chances r less…. v ourselves faced the uneasy situation many times and its a debate whether v should do it or not…. but it was the ultimate goal that mattered…. not a bitter look from waiter…. later v gave all those who rejected our proposition a bit more of that bitter look…. but it was an adventure that raised the confidence levels in all three of us…. if not it raised confidence in me – that much i m certainly sure….

Coming back to FMPs it a ‘free’ (the most liked word of Uncle Scrugge – Ducktales) way to get the job done…. the only price v paid was risk and if v got of the edge the consequences could have been v severe…. but it was worth trying for me…. it had started at Dhaivat’s place a year back but i wasn’t sure that a pastime will help me much when v were in dire situation at roorkee…. Initially all of us were little scared internally but v new that to minimize the risk that ‘scare-score’ needs to be decreased and v had to believe that v were don at this…. i had to believe initially that the more i hide the scare the more safe i m…. and as “Practice makes a man perfect” v too got the perfection…. rather than running away from battlefield v used to wait or long for the battlefield to come as quickly as possible as it was an opportunity to taste sweet success of victory

Some of those were simply awesome…. ones near Neelam cinema and on that road were cool…. even couple of parties near boat club were cool…. sometimes v regretted too…. it sometimes used to be so pathetic that v thought it better to have dinner at college messes…. atleast the food used to be hygienic…. After v became pro some of the guys around wanted to try out something more too…. and with gals around but i guess none had success…. atleast to my knowledge…. but it was fun being around and enticing someone specially anshuman tanwar alias tawal/towel….

The current count of my FMP stands at 32 or 34…. which i forgot too as its stagnated after i left roorkee make it 31 or 33 as because of the following….one night as usual v followed the music …. the signal that v had was music and fortunately or unfortunately it was the same as always…. v reached there and found the place to be a little less crowded…. v thought it must have been a low budget party…. v found the number of kids to be much…. but who cared…. all v were interested was food…. v had the starting appetizer and then took the main plate…. filled it with everything that was there on the table and in the end on a small table there layed a cake “Happy Birthday”…. gg…. big gg…. v looked at stage and v saw a kid, with a paper cap surrounded by his parents accepting gifts from visitors feeling like being on cloud #9…. v were left drop-jawed…. thats why 31/33 FMPs + 1 B’day….

Lets c…. trying it out at bangalore is playing hide and seek with lion…. well to camouflage oneself in UP was a simpler task with the local language being Hindi and i had the looks to cover myself…. to speak kannad is different issue…. i m not even sure that i can do a lungi correctly…. v need to be full proof before taking risk or else the odds r in favor of defeat…. to have the taste of victory one needs to pull down those odds against and the easiest stuff is by doing the basics that u can do correctly…. forget what i can’t control…. but no blunders from my side atleast…. lets c…. its another everest not conquered…. if i get a company to try it out i m most anxious to achieve it too…. A fight never goes begging

“Try Try Try till u succeed…. but don’t expect success if u subconsciously think that u don’t deserve success”