My philosophy in Life....

The other day one of my friends asked me this strange question :

"What is your philosophy in life??"

(His ulterior motive was to find an answer for one of his submissions due the next day :) He was lookin for sth that he might correlate with...)

Anyhow i m as removed from philosophy as an amoeba is from a neuron.....so i cud not give him any answer for i knew none...

so i cannot say that I live by so and so philosophy that extols the virtues of humanity and helps achieve the zenith of one's own existence...and makes you think beyond the realms of this universe and time..

I am simple guy who wud even find it difficult to comprehend such a thing....

So after much deliberation.. i decided that if I did have one..it would be based on what's more tangible...n wud be an integral part of my life...

finally i arrived at one.. its based on the basic needs of life...roti, kapda and makaan types...In my case its roti and sleep :)

So My philosophy is :

"Be tired enough so that sleep is waiting for you..instead of you waiting for it when u reach your bed....
and whenever u sit before ur day's meal...you have worked hard enough during the day so that you are hungry enough and feel deserving of the precious meal..."


I can sense all philosopher's of yore gettin restless in their graves contemplating options of reincarnation.....

So i wont insult all the great philosopher's of the past by calling it philosophy :)..and restate it as the motto that i live by...I guess this compromise shud do .......

My Sundays....

My sundays stand testimony to Newton's first law....
For those of you who forgot, let me restate it...

"Every body continues in its state of rest or motion until acted upon by an external force"

I more or less subscribe to this law on sundays :)

By the time its weekend, i am more or less drained n only thing i want to do is sleep...sleep and sleep more.....

I am asleep till someone forces me to get up for lunch.....I guess the week's strain catches up on sunday....

I tried to trace it back..and realized that its been a pretty old err two year old practice...
It has its roots during the days when i was workin in chennai......
we were a gang of six (which later got reduced to three but the spirit wasnt lost...)

So sunday's time table used to be...

10:30.. open ur eyes check time..too early to be even thinkin of gettin up

11:15... strange feeling in the stomach...Probably its hunger...

11:30...First attempts at gettin up.....mind wants to but body still resists...

12:00..Mind and body arrive at a compromise....and manage to get up..

The next ardous task is to collect junta n reach mess...

Andhra mess...food with chicken.........eat for half to one hour...
For that one hour u are probably at the top of the world :P

So drag yourself back to the room....What next??

Abbey itna kane ke baad koyi kuch kar sakta hai kya??....

Time to go back to bed :)

Those were the golden days in chennai...

So coming back to present.. well there's no andhra mess..but old habits die hard and i don't like breaking traditions :)

Kabhie kushi kabhie ghum - A Rehash

Dont worry.. i wont summarize the movie here :)
But am not promising any less poignant stuff either......

Today morning I had scary dream...which made me think....
Sometime we dont realize how much we love our deared ones...
We are always after ambitions and goals..and when you look back
are you happy with what you achieved is an important question??

Think of man's life cycle nowadays..

your life is yours only till your 26-27...then you get married...
probably two years is all that you have for yourself after that...

With kids coming in....all your life revolves around your kids...
Your are more happy about your kid cracking the admission process of the best
school in city than the recent promotion that you got....

You are more happy about his school grades and marks thant you balanced scorecard
at office...and discussion with others just tend to be focussed arnd your kids..

Your life starts revolving around them...

I can go on and on..the kid is growing up..he is in his tenth, twelveth...
Engineering...

Suddenly you realize the kid is no longer one :)

His placements, Now the young hunk has his own goals....

you have put your life's investments into this kid who grew up playin in your hands....

And suddenly you realize he has no time left for you.. there is an occassional
sunday call that too only if there's no exam on monday.....

May be a weekday if he has really good news.....

You look back and you see nothing but the kid...and you are into twilight....

So this message is for the kids growing up....

Be ambitious in life..but don't lose sight of those who worked harder for you to be there...
Be there when they most need you.. in fact be there so that the need doesnt arise in the first place....

It good to achieve great things in life..but not being there for your parents is unpardonable.......In all try to give them one-fifth of the time you spend with your girl-friend...

Ok.. too much of senti stuff for the day..may be the impact of the bad dream..that made
me do this....

License to eat !!!

If you were expecting some adrenalin rushing action stuff.. well you are going to be disappointed....
James Bond has the license to kill.. I just have a learner's "license to eat..." :)

Some time back...in fact it was my engineering days...(now it seems light years away..If only time travel was possible....) one of my friends doled out pearls of wisdom to me....

"Eat whatever you want..but ensure that you burn out those extra calories...."

Now in introspection.. this philosophy has become an indispensable part of my life.....

Let me give you some background...

I m the kind of guy who can't resist good food...and whose voracious eating habits have earned me the nick name "Monster....."
(This is the latest one ...still to catch up with everyone :))

(It was in fact a name christened to one of my friends my his foreign colleagues who were taken back by the sheer quantity of his consumption....and He in turn in honor of my greatness conferred this title on me :) )

Now the fact is so established that my reputation precedes me...if not the title :) (its goin to take some time.... May be I need a PR for that....)

So getting back to what i wanted to say.. I quite often get asked questions like:

Why do you want to jog?
Why do you gym?

n stuff....

and my answer to them is its my "LICENSE TO EAT...." (james bond style :))

Whatever i want without any second thought..be it the nth icecream i m having or that last kabab piece that got left over..because others didnt have space left in their tummies :)


But let me warn you..the gains of this philosophy are in the now and here.. than in the distant future..there is no tangible long term gain out here...

Let me tell you how...

People who have known me for sometime ask me a different set of questions...

Dude you have been jogging for so long but I dont see you slimming down ????

Well the answer is ...I dont do stuff because i want to be the next hrithik or display my curvy triceps in my new sleeveless... or be the next brad pitt :)

(For the enthusiastic body builder 80's was the time when everyone wanted to be like arnold.. biceps big enough to cover your face looked smaller next to them...but the 90's saw a new trend catching up..the brad pitt style...its the lean metro sexual look with nice six pack abs....this is what is in vogue now....)

....Its because I wanna eat without holding back...

Freedom i call it.... from the shackles of obesity, fear,consequences...

Because ultimately it is what matters most rite :)

How long can i sustain this plan?? GOK (God only knows...)

The Pursuit of the Short-term......


Life tends to be fire-fighting exercise for all of us.....We tend to think that its because of its poor planning....
but have you ever wondered if it could be because of being too optimistic and demanding on yourself...we have great expectations from one's own capabilities...and this results in a water tight plan assuming a 100% efficiency rate which is not true in real life...so one lapse leads to another..

Anyhow i am digressing from what I wanted to say.....Everyone of us would have faced an interview at some point of time where in you were asked to list down your :

(1) short-term
(2) Medium-term and
(3) Long-term goals

and we are like...I am not sure what I am gonna do tomorrow and you want me to speak of next 10-15 years......why god?? why??

But in my case.....if I look back i wonder what i was doing all along... was there a method to the madness.....I always make plans as to what I want to do in this week...and may be the next week...thinking beyond two is too much stress on my brain....

In pursuit of this short term we always fail to do something for the long term..and life becomes a journey without a direction....following where the events lead you rather than going where you want to be.....

The problem as I see it is our long term plans tend to be too grandiose...Its like the Prime Minister unveiling a new Nuclear power plant if i were to draw a comparison...

If we need to overcome this syndrome...one possible way is to break up this mega plan into bits and pieces sth....a piece small enough that it can be dealt in the short term without being concerned about the magnanimous efforts that lie ahead......

so fire-fight in the short-term..but do bring a part of your long-term plan into it.....Else life will be a maze where you can get lost...and when you look back..you can only but wonder what were you thinking.......

Uncle....Uncle.....Uncle!!! - The mustache connection......

I was sixteen when I was first called an Uncle....it was out of the blue...I was walking towards my college....it was early morning and a few playing kids wanted to check time...so they ask me : "Uncle what is the time??"......


That was a rude shock.....for someone who is just out of school and into his plus one....being referred to as uncle can be depressing!!!

Acceptance is such cases takes time...First there is denial....Look there wasn't much light around and i was growing a beard ( as if I had one by that time :))

The second stage is trying to convince yourself that it was just a one off mistake made by that kid...and you can get on with ur life....

The third stage is where you accept the fact and move on....(but to reach this stage you would need a few more ppl to call you uncle...hehe)


I would like to believe that the world has changed since I was sixteen...but sadly that ain't true....The world is still the same.........

By now i have got used to kids calling me uncle......It no longer bothered me....
But it wasn't to be the end of my woes....

When i reached mumbai for my internship and entered the office.... i cud hardly see anyone sporting a mustache on the entire floor... i looked entirely out of place.. .but was I going to shave it off......I shud say I was tempted.....But my pride was too strong to be influenced by others...

So I move on displaying my proud mustache....and all of a sudden one night...an autowallah says to me : " Uncle change do!!"...Now that guy is in fact older than me.......Hmm i convince myself that it was dim enough and given that I was sporting a mustache I should give him the benefit of doubt........

But then this incident happened which shook me pretty strongly.......

I went to a medical shop with two of my friends to buy some antibiotics..when suddenly the guy who's handing over the medicines says to me : "Uncle yeh lo!!"....

Now i was devastated...there is no logical possibility of how that mistake might have happened.....the store was well-lit :)

As if that weren't enough... the guy realizes that he made a mistake and starts joking with his friends as if to add insult to injury.......But by now I had been too many times at the receiving end to be too surprised......But this incident had established beyond doubt the bias held against mustached guys...............

Now am I going to remove my Mush?? No way...I am not changing just because someone's calle d me an uncle....

When ppl ask me the reason..i tell them that I would be thrown of my house in case i remove my Mustache :)...but the real reason is I love the way I am and even if someone's going to call me grandpa...i don't care.....

First Impressions!!!

Often we are the victim of our first impressions... we tend to judge a person based on the first opinion that we form of a person even before we talk to him....

Today we had a guest presentation in one of the courses... the speaker was not someone who would make a great first impression.. He had a tummy which would not allow him to see his feet ...
Neither did he have the pseud accent that we tend to associate with effective speakers....

When he started off, it felt like he was globing away without any specific context..but when he narrowed down the discussion to something specific....he really showed great clarity in communication....which you often lack in presentations.. its difficult to get a hang of the central theme....

The discussion was focussed on leadership in the software industry... His analogies were really good...

The first tendency of a manager faced with a disgruntled employee is to make an all out effort to retain him but he was of the opinion that we should engage the person first....try to ascertain the facts.... Try to see if there are any disguised reasons.......Ask him to think of questions about new organization that he might be joining.. give him pointers in terms of direction he needs to think instead of being dismissive of his new organization.....

Engaging a person is akin to maintaining a bank account..you make debits as well as credits...but ultimately its the engagement in the past the leaders can count on to retain the person....

Moving in a different direction, leaders have been glorified while the word manager has been used in a pejorative way....What we need in the software industry is Management++...a manager who is on the look out for opportunities and who is willing to take calculated risks......

While i presented his views in a bland way...his anecdotes were very interesting......Its simply too difficult to catch them in words......