Happiness

There are days when those days when you don’t need a reason to be happy. Today was one of those. Of course my exams finished today, but that’s hardly any reason to be happy especially when they don’t go particularly well.

I came home after giving the test, switched on the music system, put it on full blast, woke my mom up and we danced on and on and on…till we heard our maid ringing the bell profusely (she'd apparently been ringing the bell for ten minutes or so). The funny part is I barely ever dance, and the only time I’ve seen my mom dance was the day before sister’s wedding (on the mehndi night).

You don’t always need a reason to be happy. Happiness doesn’t need an external stimulus. Today is the day I realized, that you can be happy when you want to be.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Steve Jobs Stanford CommencementSpeech, June 12, 2005

"I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal.

Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt verystrongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was allset for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.

So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course."

My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life.

So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled intoby following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all cameback to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography.

If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.

So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired.

How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let theprevious generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.

But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from

Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life,

would I want to do what I am about to do today?"

And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything; all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the

morning, and it clearly showed a tumour on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order,which is doctor's code for prepare to die.

It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.

It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow

already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch.

This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid- 1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always

wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much."

A lot has been done, great deal need to get done

As a child I used to frequent the MCD school at Pankha road as my mother used to teach there. If you asked me to describe an MCD school then it would have been:

“poor infrastructure, teachers with low sense of responsibility often seen chit chatting in the staff room, skinny undernourished children in torn uniform and slippers running amok..”

I used to blame the teachers. Failing to see the bigger picture. Looking back, I think I was unduly harsh on them, blaming them for the poor state of affair.

Now that my mom is Headmistress of one of these schools, she much better placed to explain why these MCD are not able to compete with the private schools .

Firstly the children these schools cater to are the poorest of the poor in the city. The one my mom heads its located at the fringes of Tihar Village. The parents of most of these children work as manual labour, sweepers, rickshaw pullers many are beggars, some petty thieves. Most of their parents don’t care if their child studies or not, many of them send them to school only because they don’t have anyone to take care of them during the day. Its anyone’s guess what would happen to these children if the government wasn’t operating these school.

So surely we need these schools, but what about the “poor infrastructure, teachers with low sense of responsibility often seen chit chatting in the staff room, skinny undernourished children in....”

I was wrong to describe the teachers as “with low sense of responsibility”. They have so much administrative work thrust upon them, preparing pay slips, election duties to name a few, that it becomes almost a compulsion for them spend more hours doing that, rather than teaching the students. Though there are always bad grapes, it’s not that all the teachers don’t care about the children, or don’t feel responsible for them. I’ve seen my mom jump in joy when one of her students wins some painting competition, cry on her inability to help some of them. Most of all she refers to them as “my children”.

I do appreciate the governments introduction of the mid day meal scheme, as the students are much healthier than they used to be, I thank them for giving out free uniform, as they are much better dressed these days, I thank them for introducing the ladli scheme, as more parents enroll their daughter into the school. I thank them for work they are doing to improve the infrastructure.

Though much has been done. Every morning when I drive my mom to her school, looking at those children…. I despise myself for criticizing others …..I despise myself not doing anything, when there is a lot which can be done.

CATastophe

Though I never wanted to go for an MBA without some work ex, in recessionary times not being from a so called A-list colleges does leave a doubt in your mind whether you’ll land up with a descent job or not.

Though the recession is showing signs of improvement, I’d joined the MBA bandwagon at a time when things didn’t look this rosy (if you want to call what we have now rosy). Though the chances, that I crack the CAT are as good as Bangladesh’s chances of sending a man on mars. I’m still a part of this rat race, whatever the reason be.

All the bakwas aside. This post is not about why I’m preparing for CAT or weather ill crack it or not, its about my experience of filling the form.

Most of acquaintances who are serious about CAT were worried about this new system, not because this new system is complicated or anything of that sort. It was the Examination window system that worried them. I guess ” what if I don’t my test slot , at the center I want” was borne out fear of the new, rather than anything else.

Damn I keep on strayin from the objective of the post, that is problems I had today..il make it short and crisp

Get to axis bank rajouri 9:15

Debit card doesn’t work

No cash

Go to mom’s school

Get money

Get back to Rajouri, get the coupon

Get back home

Don’t have 5^th sem mark sheet

Go to college

The exam cell female refuses to give mark sheet before 1pm (though this instance needs some explanation ill just chuck it)

Go to Bhanus house

He’s got 5^th sem result marksheet ( bhagvan usko crore bachhe de!!)

Calc my percentage

Fill in the form

Get my slot

Done!!

PS: I ve just finish conceptualising my cartoon series called the Phat-Toons. I guess ill start publishing them after the exams. Though the first in the series was stipulated for launch yesterday it couldnt be launched due to certain un-froseen circumstances!!

love,hate

Here is an excerpt from Nita Chandrashkhars blogs (http://sosaysfol.wordpress.com) there was a great deal it which I could relate with, so I just thought I should share it with you.

"Why why o why? Why is it so difficult to let go sometimes? Why is it so difficult to forget a person who after the initial happiness has always given u more pain? Why doesnt my mind think more about the agony he has given and not the fun we had ? Why cant I forget him? Why cant I kick him out of my life as simply as he removed me from his ?

I have no answers. But I want to find some. Some balm to soothe my heart. Something to convince me that this is not the end. Why do I get so attached to people? Why is it that I care so much…most of the time not very evidently, but feel so much for that person? Why do I care? heck, why ?

I know I am not important to him. Probably wont be also. But my heart refuses to let go. Its not something that cropped up all of a sudden. It was coming. Now that it has, its killing me from inside.

Time is the best healer they say. Ive waited for so long thinking someday I will forget. Someday I will remember it as something that made me so happy and made my college life worth living. But not now. Is it a crime to like people? Why then does it hurt so much ? Why is loving/liking such a dangerous thing ? Is it wrong ? Do people exist just to hurt you ?

I might act tough most of the times, but my heart is very mellow. I am not a person who shows my true emotions very openly, but sometimes the cut is so deep that one cant help it. I know despite my best efforts, he is one person I can never forget. But should I wait till eternity ? Should I wait for an apology? I know my answer is firm now, but heart of hearts I am waiting. How I wish I was still a kid. All this would have never happened!"

>

summer intern presentation!!

Teacher: have you made a working project or is it just a study?

Me: it’s a working project.

Teacher: where is the hardware?

Me: mam, we are not allowed to bring the hardware with us as what ever we have designed and developed is going to be a propriety of the organization that we worked for.

Teacher: Accha yar what did you design?

Me: I developed a S-Band QPSK modulator which is to be used for GSAT-6 multimedia terminal.

Teacher: QPSK modulator?? Why QPSK modulator? people have already developed QPSK modulator?

Me: mam all modulators are designed for different data rates, work at diffrent frequencies, give different level of noise performance etc etc.

Teacher: (rudely) where did you do your training from?

Me: ISRO

Teacher:go…

The transcript above though may not seem like that of a presentation, but that’s how its done in our college. This how they evaluate 10 weeks of hardwork, 45 seconds flat. There are a few questions I missed like “ if you didn’t simulate the hardware where did you get this from(referring to the spectrum analyzer screenshot)” abeee gadhi teacher kiss ne bana diya.

The boy who wanted world for himself..

Ever since he was a boy he believed that he was destined to do great things. A national level tropy in chess, best programmer of the school award,(mind you he was still in class 9) awards felicitating creative thinking and scientific acumen, he had no reason to think otherwise.

Fathers transfer, shady school and things changes. The boy was taken aback philosophy of those around him in this new environ. In this new land, new ideas were frowned upon and questioning despised. Worshipped were those who knew all the Q&A by heart in some guide. Philosophy wasn’t what the likes of Shakespeare thought, it was what the teacher said, you like it or not. Creativity was a wasteful endeavor, marks you had to get, you were reminded with constant valor.

The boy was confused, he knew something was wrong. He didn’t like the system , but he decided to tug along.

Then school ended not for better, but for worse. With college came the same old plight. Whilst his friend in other countries were teaching robots how to think, he was kept busy maroing ratta day and night. The boy wanted to break free, probably its college he thought, he studied with alacrity, gave the entrances again hoping “this time” ill get a college which is right.

The college he got was again the same, all that changed was that it had a different name.

The boys is still there, so are his dreams

This story doesn’t end here…………………… ending agar theek na ho to woh 'the end' nahin, picture abhi baki hain mere dost, picture abhi baki hain." (Om Shanti Om, 2007)

Money matters

Money has never been too important to me. When you have some you spend it , and when you don’t have any you don’t.

But looking at what is happening around me, it seems to be much more for some people that just some notes and coins. It is what people live for.

Money certainly doesn’t make the world go round, but it’s certainly got enough pull to keep people running around you in circles.

I wish I could’ve disclosed the reason for writing this, I guess I will when the time is right.

Indian mountaineering foundation(wall climbing and more)

If you ask a Delhi wala where they go, when you they want to hang around with your friends? Most of the time there answer would be some eatery(some plush south Delhi restaurant if with a girl!!) or some mall wher after a tiresome regimen of buying nothing after looking at everything you end up eating again.

Those looking for a break from mall hopping and food stuffing at x y z restaurant or market, the IMF can be a great option condition being that you are ready to put yourself under some physical stress. I particularly recommend this place because it provides such a pristine environ, right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the city. Besides you wouldn’t be putting on any weight, stuffing all that junk food. Of course the Buddha Garden and Lohdi Garden are other places which provide such great environ, but they have earned themselves the notorious tag of being a “lovers spot”(more like a place to make love for shady people). So if you suggest it a place to visit you are likely to be frowned upon.

On top of all this, wall climbing is funn!! You can also go bouldering which I haven’t tried yet, but do plan to very soon. All this at a small fee of Rs 50.

PS: those who want to go there, it is located behind venki at DU South Campus. Though the wall climb in going to be closed for two three months because of renovation. Though Bouldering would remain open.

all's not good

The past two years of my college life, have all been about the girl I was going around with. During that duration you do tend to ( or some time forced to )ignore everybody else. Does “you don’t spend enough time with me these days” ring a bell in the minds of those who have ever dated.

Now that I am over with her, i have no one I can call a true friend. The sorts who would to stand beside you during the thick and thin.

First there’s this friend X who I really like, but I’m not so sure if he likes me back, because he did once tell my ex that he doesn’t think that I am a good person. I wish I had a clue for why he has/had such an opinion of me, when I’ve been good with him ( probably he didn’t mean that I’ve done anything wrong with him he just doesn’t like me, probably because I’m a horrible person). Well but I still stay with him because I feel that he is a genuinely nice person.

Then comes friend Y, he is one hell of a complex character, sometimes you do feel like you have never met an ass hole opportunist like him, and sometimes he can be like the nicest person to walk the surface of the earth. I guess the day I decode him, the Nobel committee would institute a new award on psychology and ill be the first one to receive it. But I don’t see that day coming(I mean decoding him!!)

Then comes Mr. Z, again a nice person who has been molested by life one time too many, so he’s friendly with everyone but doesn’t really trust anyone. You can’t blame him for his psyche, after all you do tend to stop trusting people after some time.

To tell you the truth sometimes I don’t like the person I have become,I’m not the person I’ve strived to be for years.

where is the love?

There are people who you don’t care about, there are those you like, there are those who you think you cannot live without and then there are people who you know nothing about.

In life as one goes about his day to day life, you tend to get used to people cheating you, trying to use you, people trying to mess up your head. But somehow you manage to keep faith keep marching ahead because you know there are those who care about you, love you.

What does one do, when one of those who you so dearly loved, lies to you, try to cheat you try and take advantage of the fact that you trust them?

The scooter re-discovered

The cool breeze blowing through you hair, the cacophony of the traffic passing by. Its been some four, four and a half years since I have ridden my dad’s old scooter partly because its hadn’t been repaired, serviced for the past four years and partly because it isn’t considered very hip by my college going peers to be riding one.

In my eagerness to graduate from driving the two wheeler to a car, I had forgotten the joys of driving one. I have to thank my dad for getting it repaired when he had come home for my sisters marriage, so that he could use it get petty chores done.

Driving one through the bustling streets of West Delhi, allows you feel vibrant character the city has, one which tend to give a miss sitting inside the bubble created by the car. Some of those familiar with the Delhi traffic and the summer heat, might be wondering what I am talking about. I guess u can add that to list of reasons why I used to cringe at the thought of riding my two legged buddy. As a matter of fact it was one argument I had put forth, for my dad to allow me to use the car. I guess some times heart doest follow any reason, you just had to be in my place riding to feel what I felt and know why I felt it.

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Interesting fact: the registration no. of the scooter ends with a 007!!!