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Showing posts with the label People

When Destiny Sends Its Helpers

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Keep running. The right people find you on the way. At different stages of life, you’re confronted with different challenges. And each time you cross a hurdle, you feel that familiar sense of accomplishment. It’s tempting to attribute that success to your own skill, tenacity, and willpower — to pat yourself on the back and feel proud of how you handled it. But when you zoom out and look at the moments where you somehow managed to trump the odds, a quieter realization sets in: It’s never just you. There is always an unseen army that shows up at the right time. It was 2005. I had decided to pursue my Master’s in the US. I picked a few schools in the Midwest where the expenses were manageable, and that’s how the University of Missouri–Rolla entered the picture. But funding was still a massive question mark. I hadn’t secured any assistantship, and we didn’t have the means to pay out of pocket. We went from bank to bank, hoping for an education loan. Each manager aske...
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Kalady in my heart: A once in a lifetime Upanayanam

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Kalady is the birth place of Adi Shankaracharya, the greatest spiritual philosopher of Hinduism.   Adi Shankara was the proponent of Advaita Vedanta - Brahman alone is real; the world is ultimately an illusion.  His ideal of non-dualism unified diverse schools of Hindu thought.  He played a major role in upholding Sanatana Dharma and spreading Vedanta.  Kalady is a quiet riverside village in Kerala, set along the banks of the Poorna river, surrounded by lush greenery and a serene, unhurried pace of life. Its temples, ghats, and gentle landscape create a natural atmosphere of reflection and devotion. When my wife and I had the initial germ of thought about Akhil's Upanayanam, I immediately went to my favorite, Sringeri, a place nestled in the beautiful Western Ghats, and we also thought about Kanchipuram, home of the Maha Periyavaa, a revered 20th century saint of the Kanchi Mutt, and in the eyes of many, a walking God.  My parents were here in the US in early 20...
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Thriving

The good and bad thing about life is that you meet different kinds of people; some making quite an impression on you.  That's one of the things I like about travel.  It's not just the experience of seeing new places, but meeting some fantastic people along the way that makes a big difference.  That doesn't mean day to day life doesn't fetch interesting encounters.  All along, you have interesting conversations, and once in a while, you look back and think twice about what the other person said, and that's when you realize that the conversation has made an impact on you. Bay area is all about crazy entrepreneurs and insanely smart people that you come across almost on a daily basis.  And they talk about how they have had successful exits from previous startups and so on.  It's actually pretty inspiring. I came across one of the guys who I don't even know why he still works.  Apart from a regular job, he has side projects, and talks about passionate...
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Mandate for the man

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"Abki baar, Modi Sarkaar" Political parties are easy to understand.  They are the most opportunistic, self centered and egoistic people on the planet. So, alliances are created compromising on principles and values, just to make up the numbers.  And often, that results in a fragile political system, with everyone clinging on to each other fearing every instant as to who is going to let go. Most parties take the average voter for granted.  There is a point to that.  For a voter, it's very hard to switch loyalties.  Some of them have never voted for more than one party all their lives.  They believe in the legacy of the party, and feel a sense of wrongdoing when it comes to the crunch moment of switching loyalties.  So, every election is defined by swing votes from each constituency; percentage votes that can be swayed by the election campaigns.  During the 2014 elections, every vote cast felt like a swing vote, and maybe, has altered the cou...
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The gradual fade

It's been close to ten years (nine to be exact) since I have been in the United States.  A lot of things have happened in the given timeframe.  Having never stayed outside home, I graduated from a tense, uptight character to a person with a relaxed and confident demeanor.  Staying in another country changes you completely. At home, I have missed almost every possible festival, several marriages of friends and relatives, the big and small celebrations, walking down the streets of Malleswaram as and when I like, taking a stroll to the railway station and watching the trains pass by, and the little things of significance.  And sadly, I also missed the deaths of my paternal grandmother, maternal grandfather and my maternal uncle.  My maternal grandmother passed away during my Engineering.  These are people who cared for me.  These are people who never doubted even for a minute that I would be anything but successful in life. I am the eldest in both th...
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Meetups

Meetups can be predictable, and also, totally unpredictable and unexpected.  In the Bay Area, we meet people consistently without a planned agenda.  Sometimes, we go to a restaurant and it just doesn't feel right, "How come we haven't met anyone today? What's wrong?" We have really had strange encounters. I had gone to the nearest Indian restaurant with my colleague.  Nowadays, I don't even act surprised when I see someone I know.  It's become a part of life.  I just greet and move on. Anyway, we both picked our stuff and were having our food at the table.  Suddenly, I see someone walk up front, order his food and walk back to his table.  I immediately told my colleague, "I think I know him.  He resembles a guy who was in Boston, but what is he doing here? I don't even know whether it's the same guy." My colleague told me to go talk to him if I was so confused.   I figured I would rather go talk to him, than wonder the rest of ...
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Two of an era - Jobs and Ritchie

The last couple of weeks have been particularly bad for technology related stalwarts.  If the death of Steve Jobs hadn't even sunk in, it was even more painful to read up that Dennis Ritchie, the father of C programming and co-developer of Unix was no more.  Dennis Ritchie may not be as famous as Steve Jobs is to the layman, but there is no denying that without C, one cannot fathom the existence of these super powered smart phones and almost every other embedded device today. It was in my Engineering that I was first exposed to C.  Already, the message was spreading quick and fast. If you miss even a single semi-colon, you are in trouble.  It is so difficult to debug.  And, maybe for the fun of  it, somebody added a comma as well.  Given a choice, my fellow batch mates would have added every punctuation mark to exaggerate the whole thing.  There were also suggestions that it was mandatory to add two slashes after a semi-colon as a part of the p...
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Maamis discuss job prospects

The topic of Maamis never ceases to amaze me, and as they don several hats, and develop their knowledge base in almost everything with commanding ease, no wonder they have so much to talk about.   Maamis have become the know all and end all of all things, which we thought could be accomplished only by someone like Lord Vishnu.  Their expertise ranges from the confines of the kitchen to the interiors of US, inside pages of Kumudam to the web pages on the internet, a close coterie of friends and neighbors to sending (and responding to) friend requests on Facebook, keeping a tab of soap operas on TV to finding Youtube videos with ease, listening to Vishnu Sahasranaman as easily on the cd player to Googling the meaning of the verses and even creating tutorials on cooking and uploading them on to Youtube.  In fact, as recently as last month, when my wife had to wear a madisaar (nine yard) saree for the Varalakshmi Puja, she was directed to a tutorial Youtube video on how to...
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The legend of Uncle Pai

I have been meaning to write this post for quite some time now, but due to my laziness, it was just sitting in my drafts folder in an unfinished format. If there is one character in modern history that deserves the ultimate recognition for igniting young minds, it has to be Uncle Pai, the man who was bestowed with tremendous vision to have nurtured the greatest comic books in India - Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha (ACK).  Mythology and folk tales were impinged in our minds with highly simplistic narration and fabulous pictures. The books were absolutely Indian in style and substance.  We all loved it. I was in my third or fourth grade, and it was the time of my life, when "I doesn't know" and "I don't know" were used interchangeably and without a trace of guilt.  All that I knew was that it just couldn't be "I know don't".   It was not an outstanding realization but nevertheless, a very important one.  We had moved our house to a new loca...
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Mumbai

I try to keep away from current affairs on my blog, simply because, there is so much media coverage that you feel who cares about what is written here. But then, I also realize, that this statement holds good for other posts as well. Whatever said and done, my mind just refuses to forget what happened last night at Mumbai, the financial hub of India and one of the important centers of the world, where a small ripple here can cause major waves in the global market. I try to switch my mind to other things, but, invariably, and rather, involuntarily, my fingers make an impression on the keys that correspond to the different news sites across the web. I want to find out more and at the same time, get away from what's happened last night. I am not sure whether I am getting callous. Yesterday afternoon, when I was at work, there was an update in the web space that Mumbai was caught in the midst of yet another series of blasts. Oh, God! Yet another one. I hope nobody is injured, an...
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Khelo aur Jhelo - One of a kind

Controversy theories have plagued Indian sports in the last week much to the delight of some of India's acclaimed serial killers. Ekta Kapoor , in an exclusive media interview to SaaS TV , thanked the Indian sportsmen for her inspirational new biopic, Khelo aur Jhelo (JLo?). In her usual candid self, Ms. Kapoor spoke about the various problems troubling the cricketers of today. So, in her typical style, she chose a name starting with 'K', and says that this is one of a kind serial, bringing to the forefront, the relationship between sportsmen and their in-laws. In-laws? Yes, as she has repeated often, this is a " one of a kind " serial. Media sponsors are thronging her house, in a bid to gain valuable advertisement spots for her 1199 episode drama. When quizzed why she has to offer only 1199 episodes, she said that the story will take its course, and depending on the response, she plans to continue the plot. The interview has generated never before heard ...
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HP-NH-HG-EW-HD

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Well, well, well, before I break your head with acronyms, three out of the five refer to the same topic. I am referring to the Harry Potter (HP) series, which had readers hooked all over the world, thanks to JK Rowling . What really pleased me was the fact that there was so much anticipation, that kids and adults alike had lined up stores at midnight to procure the first copy of the book. That really is a good step and it was good to see people give so much importance to literature instead of other trivialities. I read the books after a long time, actually, really long. After the final edition of the series had come out, I took up to Harry Potter reading. I just wanted to know what was there in the book that people were going crazy about. I read the six books in about two or three weeks time, in between office and household chores. I don't know why, but I could never take out time to read it over the weekends. There was a point when I was reading the fourth book that I fel...
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The week that was...

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Obviously the biggest news of the week is the Indian team's superlative victory against arch rivals Pakistan in the inaugural edition of the Twenty 20 International Tournament comprising all the test playing nations. I don't think I can add anything more than what is already said in all the websites. Basically, everyone has run out of cliches. The feel good factor for an average Indian cricket fan is at an all time high, thanks to the out of the world victory in a big tournament after almost 25 years. No wonder, we are so excited about this wonderful victory. Dhoni and his boys have got us a great pre-Navarathri gift. All said and done, I was just wondering when the Indian media is going to look beyond the actual euphoria of the win. Well, what is that, you may wonder. Shoaib Malik , the Pakistani captain, came out with one of the most atrocious comments. Let us quote him verbatim, so that we can clearly understand what he says First of all, I want to say something o...
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Who is in the herd, Ms. Sengupta?

Hello Ms. Porcine Creature, I am sure I have the right to address you that way after reading your column on IBNLive . Ms. Anuradha Sengupta , a prominent reporter of IBNLive, I would have expected neatly worded sentences than the crap you wrote on your insane piece of so called review. It was disappointing and totally disgusting. More importantly, it was totally unwarranted. Do you realise that it was not due to certain individuals that the whole country was talking about the biggest movie of the year, the Rajini starrer Sivaji . Are we the ones who control the media? I remember every ounce of publicity being generated from every leading channel, and of course, even your sty (IBNLive) was a part of the campaign. Did we as the general public ask IBNLive to splash photos of Rajini all over your front page? Do you think we cared about how much money it made on the first day? Thanks to all the media hype, the movie made an impact like never before in the publicity arena. Every individual...
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A reason to flee - Quick(x)star

The greatest pleasure I derive can be attributed to the incoming flux of new people that I get to befriend. I have always found it fun to hang out in groups, come up with long discussions late into the night, hit the right topics of interest and venture out for some outdoor activities. As I came to Boston, my enthusiasm for meeting new people never died down. My enthusiastic fervour as a student remained the same even after employment, and I went on to grin and smile as soon as I met a fellow Indian. Not that I did not smile at an American, but it is just that a fellow Indian provides a local solace! I realized over a period of time, how wrong I could be. Here in Boston, hardly the Indian public returned the smile. Oh! Let alone a smile, it was a stare like that of Shoaib Akhtar giving at Sachin Tendulkar after the latter hits a six. This did not happen just to me, but to a couple of other guys too from school. We were all in a fix. We did not know whether to continue grinning or smili...
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AR Rahman in New York - Simply Magical

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It was the year 2005 when I came to the US to do my masters. ARR then had decided to come to Bangalore about two months after I came here. The depression of not seeing the God of Indian music perform live in Palace Grounds, Bangalore had hit me hard. Two years hence, I came to know that he was performing live in Nassau Coliseum , New York City . I was dead sure that I was not missing the show for anything in the world this time. I was in Rolla at the time I came to know of his performance and I was coming to Boston after a month, but I knew that I was making the trip from Boston to NY exclusively for ARR. Almost every friend of mine knows how fanatical I am about ARR. I just had to call Shubhika who is in NJ, Shubhika, Do you know something? ARR is performing live in NY on June 16. She replies, Yeah, Of course. I have already got the tickets for both of us. Do you think I don't know about it? The drive from NJ to Long Island need not be written about at all. The traffic was movi...
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SPB - The best of many generations

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Talk of South Indian cinema, and immediately you have some vintage names ripping through your mind. In terms of music, you have MS. Viswanathan and Ilayaraja making gigantic waves in Tamil cinema and the first instance of singer who can leave you craving for more is none other than our very own and dynamic S. P. Balasubramaniam (popularly known as SPB ). SPB is one of a kind singer who has added so much versatility to the vocal world. Be it a Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or Malayalam movie, you couldn't find the songs not having SPB lend his voice to it. That was the case in late seventies, extending to the eighties and well throughout the nineties, and the best part is, he still continues today for selective compositions in the same way. He is a music director's delight and his well defined voice modulation is truly unbeatable. There is so much life to the song when sung by SPB. SPB made his mark in Tamil cinema when MGR was looking for a fresh voice. It was way back in th...
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