Sunday, October 28, 2007

Serious Concerns

Concern 1: Last week, while traveling from home to office, in train, I noticed two boys studying a subject, and the moment they started reading the book out, one of them said ‘This is the f***ing subject, it f**** my mind last night’ and all the sentences he spoke there on had the same four letter word in different connotations, with his other friend joining too, I mean whats with the language these days, the 4 letter word has been used with so much of importance to it and that too with ease without any public shame. I guess the writers of constitution would not have even thought that freedom of speech would be so misused, I mean, I also know that the subject is abstruse as I too studied it, but I or none of the people around me in college would have spoken such an abusive language in front of common people around. And this is not the case with one or two students, I have seen this phenomenon from quite some time now, and nothing can be done from it as this all has come from the influence from west in our race to be developed, but as far our Indian values are concerned, we as youth should take care of not using such bad influences in public at least and in some way retain the original Indian values even while simultaneously blending with the west.

Concern 2: While traveling back from office the other day, when I was outside andheri station, I could hear two females chatting, and one of them spoke, “Its ok to be 5-10 minutes late, we are punctual as per Indian Standard time ”, both of them laughed and agreed. This statement clearly tells that what we think about India and ourselves personally in terms of respect for time, by making this statement we are just lowering ourselves in respect, we are lowering ourselves in what we call as professionalism, and this is the major factor that is differing us from our peers. I mean there is problem with the basic thinking in us, why can not we be on time. Our laid back attitude and lack of respect for time in smallest of tasks can harm us in a big way, because we never realize the importance of time and continue with same attitude in biggest of tasks. I think this is a serious issue because most of us falter in time management, I m not saying that everyone should be the best in time management, but try not to make such statements honestly, as by making such statements we are just ridiculing ourselves and losing respect for ourselves.

The thing I pointed in above two concerns is, that while in 1st case we are learning or getting influenced from the west, then why not in the 2nd case?

Lets think about it for ourselves, and decide what we want to learn?

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Good Old Days !!!!

As I mentioned earlier, there have been few people around me without whom, I would never be what I am.

Today morning after seeing old pics of college days, reminded me of those lovely friends and those memorable days we spent together, those days of fun, masti, study and adventure. There used to be so many things happening within a day that felt like a day was more than just 24 hours. There was no limit to what we did, there was always a positive attitude towards doing anything big and bigger, it was like a person comes out with an idea and the entire class would come ahead and support it.

We have done as crazy things as changing desktop backgrounds to some ones pic in the class, editing someone’s photo and keeping it on library cupboards, to playing road rash and eating lunches in the practicals, taking weird photos of students sleeping in the class while lecture is on, enacting a professor’s English accent with special hand movements and gestures, enacting the way they react to situations with their own special tones and sounds (mch mch) and imagine we did not even spare a lab assistant whose reactions were always of “A Computer about to crash”, u ask him 3-4 questions together n he will faint then n there…(there were many such incidents that took place)
All these little things happened 24 x 7 and got smile and laughter on our faces and kept us alive and jovial through all the studies, assignments, practicals, journals, print-outs mid-terms, vivas, main exams….

Amidst all these, we did had something running back of our minds when we were in our final year, that this is going to be the last year we all will be spending together and our paths may be separated from here on, so in order to preserve these strong bond of friendship that entire class shared, we celebrated big time.

We made t-shirts for ourselves, I still have the paper that has number of t-shirts owned by everyone (we got 97 t-shirts amongst 67 of us, with some buying more than 1 or so)…the t-shirt has a speciality of everyones name written on the back by siddharth in IT shape…and the front liner goes as “GOD IS REAL (unless declared integer).

After the 7th semester was over, we organized a trip to Goa for ourselves from 8th to 12th January. With 54 out of 67 coming in it, it was the tremendous response that we got,( as the other classes who went for the same got no more than 30 people going together. And this was bound to happen, because choosing one location for spending 4 best days of your life with 50 other people is not easy, specially when everyone has his/her own opinion on the same. But we managed it despite this), Despite the groups that we had amongst ourselves, we always behaved as one, we had plans for entire trip and all went fine on all the days, people enjoyed, had fun, some made a debut of their drinking life, enjoyed boat rides, life at beaches or rather beauties at beaches, then singing songs, screaming aloud while riding in the gypsy, teasing locales around, ridiculing people’s behaviour after they r down and out, I remember one of us sang “Signal pyar ka signal” and said he felt as if he was flying, then the other walking or rather trying to walk along a straight line just aside a swimming pool, then one trying to control the other two, one getting bruised meeting an accident after drinking, and few who did not drink had to run around beaches searching for lemon and salt for people vomiting around and in no control of themselves. Well apart from all these there were quite embarrassing events which I can think of, but it rather be in my thoughts…
And ya how can I not write about the controversial “CERTIFICATES”, well, we all had some unique quality in ourselves which we were famous for and in a sarcastic manner we put it on certificates and gave to all at the last day of the trip in train, as I mentioned in my previous blog ”Grandmother of DJIT” was given to Rutu Patel as she keeps on behaving like one, then “Outstanding student of the class” was given to one as he always to be late and stand outside class then “Most refreshing face” to one as she used to always look harrowed . And many more such funny and sarcastic titles, but some sarcastic tiltes went far and created controversies, which after discussions and arguments, was taken in right spirit.
But, ya those 4 days definitely made me see a different “me”.

Then came the final event of farewell which we had between vivas and exams, we partied at a hotel on one eve with dance, sing, games, Q an A round where we received one amazing answer from a person to a question he was asked, emotional speech, hugs, photos and drinks (hard and soft). I remember 2-3 of them nearly were down and out, out means literally out, sitting near the tree outside party hall and vomiting, and one making regular visits to the loo, and spending 20 mins vomiting. The party went till 1 in the night and finally some of us who were still there were requested to go home.

On the last day of our exam, we distributed photo of all of us together, which we had clicked earlier, where everyone is wearing DJIT T-shirt, I can still remember the expressions on everyone’s face when they came out and saw the photo given to them…the expressions were of happiness, a bit sad as this was the last day we all met, nostalgic reminding all good old days….

I personally, feel really proud of my class and those special events as I was a part not only organizing them but at the same time receiving trust from the entire class as I don’t think in today’s world, anyone would give you even a penny for a class event without trust!!!

OHH!! What days, what people, different mindsets, different background, different opinions but all came together as a strong force and bonded with love, care and affection for all!!!
Miss and love them all!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Lessons from LIFE

Sometimes I wonder that if it had not be those people who came in my life, would I have been the same person as I am, the most of the times I reached to the conclusion that it might not have been the same “me” as I am today.
One Sunday morning back in 2000-2001 during preparation for 10th exams, in one of my tuitions, my teacher told all of us sitting there, that “Observation is the biggest teacher of all and the best way to learn anything is to observe it as close as possible.”
Since then, I have been following this statement of his and observing things around that I like to incorporate within me.
I observed my fathers’ punctuality and the value he gave to time and money; I liked it and am incorporating it in me. I saw my mothers’ hardwork behind my education and I thought as a tribute to her efforts, I should work hard and make her proud. So, punctuality, hardwork and respect to money without giving it undue importance is what I got from my parents. Then the love, care and affection that my grand parents bestowed upon me, made me realize the importance of these qualities, hence I follow them with people when required.
Apart from that my uncle, my cousin, and my friends, taught me how to live life freely despite faced by tensions and disappointment. The spirit of positive competition is the thing that me and my other 2 friends from school learned while studying together during 8th, 9th and 10th standards. And this is one thing which I actually incorporated during my tenure as CSI Vice chairman in DJSCOE while positively competing with IEEE committee and with equal support from them as well, we were able change the image of CSI V/S IEEE to CSI with IEEE to certain extent (am sure Grandmother of DJIT will support me on this as I clearly recollect having this discussion with her during one of our AMAR Lunches).
But one thing I missed out on was during years before my engineering was the kind of charisma or dynamic all round development that certain people have in them. But life at its most unexpected turn got me into engineering and here I learned how to be dynamic in nature and to take initiative in all walks of life (obviously by observing people around), be it a small thing or big, you got to be decisive and analytical to take the right decision at the right times. The one thing that I have found in most of us is the fear of taking risks and the fear of being ridiculed by others while giving out an idea or making any decision. I read this statement in one of college posters of IEEE 2005 (during my tenure as CSI Vice-chairman) and it said “The thing required to have the best idea is to have lots of ideas”, I completely second this statement, as it says that brainstorming is the best way to think what to do on any occasion, as unless and until, you don’t have option, you wont have any solution. So, most people in the fear of getting ridiculed by others for their weirdest ideas shut their mouth and don’t even think about the problem.
One more thing I learned in these past 3 years was Teamwork and respect for everyone’s efforts in the team, I heard this statement just yesterday from my friends at TCS “How can you get individual attention in a team/group?” and that is exactly what one needs to understand while working in a team. Here again people fail to realize this.
Apart from all this I have learned a lot from failures that I have faced personally and academically, and those failures have given me philosophical kind of thinking towards problems and I learned to take the positive outcome of those failures, and believe me that is the best thing one needs to succeed after failing.
No doubt I have learned many of qualities from what I have observed around, but the basic sense of adjusting myself to the situation and applying brains then, is what I have cultivated with in me as I believe that there cannot be the same solution to the same problem in different situations, you have to be situationally analyze the problem as per the circumstances at that instant of time and then solve the problem.
Ya people may say that there are few qualities which is original from within you, the only thing I argue would be that humans are bound to be developed and improve themselves to achieve highest level of perfection in them, and in that process if I am incorporating certain qualities from certain people then it should not be wrong, on this occasion, I got to write one more statement “If you copy from one source then it is Plagiarism but if you copy from many then it is research and development” (courtesy of this statement is the status message of one of my friends on gtalk).
What we behave and the way we react to situations, in some way or the other, is always influenced by our surroundings, by people around, and by the kind of environment we have grown and that is the basic reason for arguments/discussions/disagreements etc. So, observing qualities if combined with incorporation in the way you originally feel is what I follow.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

What to write

Sometimes i have few thoughts that appear in my mind, and i want to write it and preach it, but since there has always been lack of time in this fast paced world, my thoughts remain in my mind only....
Since this is the first time i am writing online, i dont know how far i will go with this.. but my aim of writing it here is to give some solid form to my thoughts, beliefs, issues etc. and i think this could be one of the ways to do so...
Grown in the middle-class traditional gujarati jain family, i have seen many ups and downs in my life but there has been this strong sense of achieving something in life and be perfect in whatever i do, well i am on that path and will continue to do so....
I do have certain set of beliefs and certain principles which i observe as in
(1) I do believe that hardwork is always better than intelligence, i dont know how many would agree to that, but this is what i believe from somethings that has happened in past few years, and the reason for this as i see is that with hardwork, any other quality can be cultivated, may it be dedication, determination, intelligence etc..
(2) I also believe in punctuality and i know many would agree to that, and the very good thing that comes as a by-product of punctuality is the well-structured thinking process that you develop, i mean the thoughts, the ideas become so well structured that everything falls in its place while execution, ther wont be any mishap or unfit when ur thoughts are crystal clear and organised.
(3) I do believe in God but not the way the others in my house do, i feel that respect for God should come from within and i beleive being kind to others and helpful to others is one way to respect God. Rituals are fine at their place and one should follow them at right times but that feel perform a ritual should come from within. I believe, we humans are a bit hypocrits in this matter, on one hand we pray on the same day we do something that is inhuman....
(4) I do not believe in QUOTA SYSTEM (now thats the latest one), not that i am against quotas but i am against the way it is implemented and against the process with which it is implemented, i do believe that deserved backward category or undeveloped category of people should given a chance to progress. But here what is happening is different, if a person from a so called backward category is rich enough to live without help, then he cannot be termed as backward in any rspect. I mean to say is that the label of backwardness should be on the basis of a person's inability to fulfill his daily needs and progress, but not the basis of CASTE.
If any person builds a college for educating people, then it should be open to all and in same amounts, A gujju college should not have gujju quota or sindhi college should not have sindhi quota, because if a person wants to benefit society, why does he has to benefit only his community and his people, he should work for all,
ya u can have quota for general backward class who can be identified by a thorough process before admitting them
(5) I believe dufferent situations bring out a different "you" and being static in all situations wont work, so need to be dynamic and growth in Life is key to go ahead and improve, i belive Life is an indefinite learning process and more quickly we adjust ourselves in the environment, better will be our performance. According to me, LIfe is Full of Experiences (LIFE)
(6) well other than this there are few principles which i observe at my workplace and as and when necessary or if i feel to do so...