Got Engaged !! :)

So finally, here comes the post I’ve been waiting to write for so long… status on Orkut became committed on April 27th, got engaged on 29th and getting married in June. Everything happened so fast, hardly any time to enjoy the news as it came… So here goes the update of the when and how. We first came to know each other around one and a half years back . In the mid of the first year, I was a part of the hospitality cell of Chaos Nasha 2008 (our cultural festival at IIM A), I had to flood my 'colleges of responsibility' with scraps on Orkut for contact information for the fest. She happened to be an alum of one of those colleges and that was the beginning of an era, so to say. And the interaction moved from scraps…to chats…to calls…to the first meet and meets thereafter...to the first exchange of the three words and the proposal...so that’s how (in a few words)...
A day prior to the convocation, on April 27th, went to meet my in-laws with mom and sis. There was that inherent tension/ uneasiness before reaching, but it slowly melted away and we ended up fixing the month of the marriage as June. Flew back to Ahmedabad the next day for convocation on April 28th and the same day it was decided that we should get engaged right now itself (of-course, both of us didn’t mind that at all…), So off we were back the next day and the ring ceremony was performed on April 29th. Here are the pics (Link)…
Feels great…after a long and patient wait… with uncertainty forming a noose…. with God's grace and everyone's well wishes, it happened very smoothly. As my course (Army batch) completes 6yrs after commissioning (14 June 2003) and all of them get the rank of a Major, I’d also be moving on to my next stage of life in the same month…
Long way to go….
Ciao ppl
Ciao life

An Alum again... IIM A

So I’m an alum now (Pics)...the student life is technically over. When I’d joined the NDA, had thought- ‘Goodbye to studies’…and I just passed out of the most studies-oriented institute I know of, in the country. It has been quite an experience, for the lack of words. I had seen myself stretch to the limit of physical endurance in the NDA days and knew that there is actually no such limit. It’s all in the mind, as they say. The same rigor happened in a different way in the first year at IIM A and a different set of skills were required to swim through the same. In both the places, when things became really impossible (1^st&2^nd term at NDA, 1^st semester at IIM A), seniors built up the morale by just saying that so many people have got through…you will also survive…just keep your head above the water, keep swimming and don’t give up. A few countable numbers did give up both the times, but rest of the batch sailed through and went on to become smart officers and good managers respectively.

I made a great number of life-long friends in both the schools of learning. In NDA there were endless nights and days that we spent together…helping each other in tough times, enjoying punishments and living through them by giving mutual support, having parties, socials and great fun in spite of all circumstances. Even at IIM A we spent endless nights having group meets, presentations, great fun, endless movies on the LAN…The bondage that was developed in these two institutes is so strong that one would go out of his way to help another coursemate.

I would really cherish the moments spent in this institute…those 0100hrs group meets that actually began at 0200hrs after yapping around and finishing off the work in the last 1 hour…ordering maggi in the midnight and rambhai’s midnight chai…those 23:59:59 deadlines and WAC run…the rem sessions of MANAC& the lunch time MANAC quiz notice….the experience of T-nite and d section bonding….the God-level professors and the die-hard sleepers of section B…helping out each other in times of stress…watching movies in parts every day in spite of the routine…the list goes on and on and on to the day we stood in the LKP with the degree in hand watching each of our batchmate walking past us…Those were the fleet of ships that fleeted right through the storm and came out in flying colours…

This is the beginning of an end…another beginning to another end…whereupon I step into a new pair of shoes, dawning on another role…

Ciao ppl

Ciao life

All the world's a stage... & spilled milk...

Read a science fiction yesterday and it reinforced the stand I have towards fretting over spilled milk. The novel was ‘To say nothing of the Dog’ by Connie Willis (Download link). It’s based on time travel into the past, and how the protagonists try to undo a change that causes an imbalance in the working of the space-time continuum. The system self corrected the incongruity by changing a few minor events but keeping the major events constant. As per the storyline the concept of even freewill was questioned. Nevertheless, I believe that all big things in life are predestined and one cannot go about thinking of what If ‘A’ hadn’t happened, and ‘B’ had happened instead. That’s not the way life works. Probably what the novel also talks about in a way is that the script (All the world’s a stage...) is already written and one can’t go about changing the theme that is the heart of the story for a character. Some time back I used to think- what If the driver of that fateful tractor had become late due to whatever reasons, what If I had left the place earlier by say 5 minutes or what If I had stayed put inside the cantonment and not have been driving in the first place, and the likes. However, as many movies based on the theme (like the ‘Final Destination’ series) have tried to state, you can’t change your script. Everyone plays his part in the grand design. It’s something like you have to go from A to Z in your life. On an average, everyone’s B, C, D... comes at various points of time and also to a different extent. What is left to freewill is how you go about going from B to C, C to D etc.

What one can do is to firstly live the part one’s playing, that is- enjoy doing what one does. Secondly, there are choices that one makes: there’s always a choice (Link). Once you make that choice weighing the situation, stand by it and don’t have any regrets (even if you have any). If the choice was right, good for you and if it was wrong, it’s a sunk cost. As the adage goes, ‘don’t cry over spilled milk’...taking it forward, we needn’t even keep thinking what we would have done had it not been spilled.
Ciao ppl !!
Ciao Life !!

A few lines....

Few lines dedicated on this valentine, to that someone....

I was walking a lonely path, aloof and alone;

Bliss was the next stop, I hadn’t known.

Then came an angel, brighter than thy eyes could see;

I asked of myself, could this be ‘The one’ for me?

Side by side we walked along;

Nights seemed shorter, days seemed long.

Time whizzed by and distances began to pare;

Sure enough, there was something in the air.

One fine day, the momentous moment came;

When cupid struck, the dude and the dame.

Sweet words flew across, that beauteous night;

Those starry skies had never been so bright.

A voice from the sky, smiled on me-

“All that is beautiful is thine to be”.

Walking on the path, no more alone;

Bliss is all around, love has only grown.

I have an angel, brighter than thy eyes could see;

She is the one, ‘The one’ for me.

ciao life...

My Autobiography

I finally wrote my autobiography (as a part of a course here, though)...spent quite some time in reminiscing, pondering over things, a few thoughts from this blog.... published it in a new blog, since it was usuriously long - Link

Tangibles let go.....Intangibles let go not !

Long time no blogging…I was just wondering on the way back on the last term break to my home, 2 days back…most of the times we give importance to wrong things in life. It is the intangibles which we should value and always remember and not the tangibles which come and go. What do I mean by this statement? Well, nothing in this life that has a form is permanent. Be it your friends, your job, your family, money, etc. What remains once everything goes through its life cycle is the love you had for your loved ones, the way you utilised the money when you had it, the friendship you had when people were there, etc. If one tries to hold on to the tangible aspects of life, then there would only be sorrow once it goes.

This does not mean that you be a spendthrift or be frugal, but to be savvy enough to utilise that money while you have it on something which has a high utility value for you. For some this might be buying a top notch branded product, for others it might be buying something for their family, for still others it might be saving up for that house they want to buy. The emphasis is on the fact that we should not give importance to money per se. It comes and goes, but what’s important is how you use it when you have it. Even Gita says- “Kya le ke aye ho, jo le ke jaoge” (What did you bring with you when you were born, that you would take back when you go)

The same goes for relationships…people keep coming n going out of one’s life….If we turn over the pages of our lives by say a decade….we mightn’t remember the faces of people we knew, friends we had but what we do remember is the good times we had…Life keeps giving examples of how uncertain things can be, what with all these blasts happening in most unlikely of the places… It always helps to have a mental attitude of holding on only to the intangibles….what something represents- be it a person or a thing…If we give more value to what it represents and not to that ‘something’, it would always be easier to let go, when time comes…

Ciao ppl !!
Ciao life !!

Never Give up: A story

Had a communication class yesterday….told the class an inspiring story about an Army offr. Felt like it penning it down, so here goes. The facts of the story are more or less true, with minor modifications. As a backdrop, Siachen glacier is the world’s highest battlefield with temperatures ranging from -15⁰C on a pleasant summer afternoon to -50⁰C on a chilly winter evening. Soldiers get posted on a rotation basis for 3 months. The enemy there is no human, no country, but the inhospitable weather.

There is this Army officer, Capt Amit (name changed): 28yrs old, happily married, 3yr old son. He gets posted to glacier and the routine begins. In the first few weeks, no major incidences happen. One day while on a routine patrolling activity, his party gets stuck in a blizzard. On returning, they realise that the officer has a bad case of frostbite. The message for evacuation is sent immediately to base camp. Unfortunately, due to bad weather the helicopter evacuation party gets delayed by 4 days. The delay worsens the situation as the gangrene spreads further.

Two months down the line, the officer is lying on the bed, surrounded by his wife, son and others. Due to the severe infection and primarily because of delay in evacuation, he has lost his entire right leg, half his left leg and half his left hand. His commanding officer finally gets a chance to visit him and asks him how his morale was. The officer says (with a smile that makes everyone in the room so proud), “Sir, my morale is as high as that cloud I can see from the window. I’m alive…It could have been much worse…” With family support and his never-give-up attitude, Capt Amit goes on to recuperate fully, joins back and always maintains- “Don’t give up on life, and Life will never give up on you”.

The message being, life is very iffy….very uncertain….and as I keep saying (Tom Hank’s disclaimer)… "Shit happens"…and more importantly, "Life goes on.."

Ciao ppl !!
Ciao Life !!

Basket of Problems

There goes an old fable which talks about how everyone has their own set of problems and how it is wrong to go about thinking – “I have so many problems…look at them…they are so happy, have everything, etc.” Here goes the story. There was once a kingdom with people from all walks of life. It so happened that each one of them was so troubled with their woes, cribbing that other people were so lucky & happy that God decided to make them an offer. It went like this- “Each individual, from the poorest poor to the king, can write up each of his problems on small paper sheets, put them in a basket with his name and hang it in the kingdom’s biggest temple by midnight. Next day morning anyone can exchange their basket for anyone else’s basket and the problems will be exchanged by noon”. Almost everyone was happy because as far as they were concerned, no one could have had the problems that they face. The night came and everyone hung their baskets in the temple. In the morning when they went for the exchange, each one of them came back with their own basket. Each of the baskets turned out to be of the same size and no one wanted to bear with someone else’s troubles.

The moral of the story is that everyone in this world has their own basket of problems. If we do not see it in other people’s eyes, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have any. How often do we look at someone and think, he/she is so lucky….has money, nice job, good looking….so lucky in life? One might not want to believe, but it happens and it’s human to have that feeling. We choose to see only the fairer side of the coin for others and ignore/ refuse to see the other side….tip of the ice berg, as they say. Be it the person sitting on a sidewalk, the one sitting on a machine gun post on the border, or the one presiding the meeting of all CEOs. The balance of nature is always maintained; size of the basket remains the same, only the contents vary.

Ciao ppl !!
Ciao Life !!

Life & Comfort Zone

Events in the past couple of days (multiple blasts- Bangalore, Ahmedabad) has shook people from their well entrenched comfort zones of “We are normal….such things don’t happen to us”. As they say, ‘Nothing could be further from the truth’. These events are just one way of ‘Life’ per se reminding everyone of the uncertainties surrounding it. There was an insightful dialogue in the movie ‘Matrix’- “Every Life has a purpose”. Sadly, this is also what many of the terrorist groups teach their disciples in a distorted fashion. The way these people are brought up sets up the wheel in motion such that when the seeds grow into a tree (or even before) a ‘purpose of life’ is drilled into them. Unfortunately this ‘purpose’ is the root cause which is difficult to eliminate because ultimately the end of all such events will come only when the root is destroyed.

The reason the panic has exponentially increased in the last 48 hours is that 80% of the world believes that injuries because of bomb blasts, riots, vehicle accidents, etc. happen only to “Others”. For them it’s like another article in the newspaper about somebody else's woes. Every other day there is a write-up on some blast that took place in J&K where men in the olive green died and no one flashes an eye-lid. When such news flashes (like yesterday) on the TV, people start thinking- “It could have been one of our dear ones”; within a couple of days they forget everything and life is back to normal. The standard belief being-“We are in our comfort zone…nothing can happen to us…we are normal”. In fact I’d say a decade-plus back, before my family had the first shock, even we were a so called “normal” family and apparently such kinds of misfortune fell only upon the ‘Others’. However so wasn’t the case and it was confirmed again by my accident that such incidents were a random case of probability with everyone having equal chances. It was so sudden, out of the blue….as if ‘Life’ decided to press the ‘pause’ button and instead of replaying the movie, changed the movie altogether. Now when I meet new people, some of them try to empathize, others look at me with pride, and most of them with ‘hope’. Nevertheless, it’s not easy for many of them to imagine that life was once ‘normal’ for me too. It’s rather unfortunate that some of the people who make important decisions in other’s lives subscribe to this school of thought and refuse to think big. Only one sentence for them- ‘You & your loved ones might be standing in your comfort zone right now, but this zone is highly prone to the vagaries of ‘Life’. Please appreciate this and think big’. It always helps, not to take ‘Life for granted'.

Life is big, but Life can be very small,
The only way to live, is to "Live" it all.

Ciao ppl !!

Ciao life !!