Goodbye 2014

2014 had been a good year for me. It's not that past years had not been good to me. Past years had been good too. Infact, every year had something special to offer. Each year taught me something new. Unfortunately, I could not capture past years like I have decided for this year. So without further adieu, lets start..

I started this year at Kolkota, the city of joy. Like every year I celebrated this year with my parents. I came to Kolkota directly from Delhi(after my solo trip to Himachal) to meet my parents. Thing is that I am not a party person. Most of the time, I prefer staying in a silent place and talking to friends, rather than hitting the bar or restaurant. 

This year in Jan, Vikram, one of my good friends from IIT Bombay gave me one of the best gift he could have ever given to me. He called me up for tennis. Till then, I hadn't touched the tennis racket after entering the corporate world. So, we used to get up at 6:00am in the morning and go for tennis. Believe me getting up at 6:00 AM in Jan and on Sat morning(after Friday night) is not an easy task. But we did. We used to get up every morning on Sat and Sun and go for tennis to IIT Bombay. Being an alumni, we got to play for free. To me, this game is a beauty. Every minute I spend on the court makes me feel like I am on heaven. Maybe I should write a separate blog and describe my learnings from this sport. Vikram stop playing from mid of Feb due to knee problem. However, I just couldn't. Game is still on for me. 

In mid Feb, something happened to me. I felt in love with one of the most beautiful girl I have even seen. I proposed her in no time and she accepted. This carried on for 3 months and in mid June, we decided to break up. I hate this thing called break up. But, sometimes we have no choice but to do it. The next few months was not an easy time for me. However, I had to move on. I would say those 3 months with her was one of the beautiful phase of my life. Somehow, I felt this episode made me a wiser and a stronger person. Well, that's all I can write about it. 

Oh, I more thing. Somewhere in Feb, for the 1st time in my life, I took part in half marathon running and successfully completed it in less than 2 hours time. This was a very big achievement for me and considering I ran after 3 months of inactivity, it meant even more. Come Jan this new year, I will be running in couple of more marathons including Standard Chattered Mumbai Marathon, 2015.  

On March, I visited Bangalore on an official trip. There I met my old school friends Alari and Jennifer after many years. Jenni's husband prepared a nice food for us. No wonder Jenni is gaining weight. Infact anyone would, if you have such a nice cook at your home. Honestly, I had a great time meeting my old and ofcouse happily married friends. 

On Oct, I travelled to Jaipur and Udaipur on another solo trip of my life. It was really hot at that time. Travelling these big cities in just 3 and half days can be quite hectic. I had to give many palaces a miss. I realized that  hurrying this way does not give you much joy. The best thing about these solo trips is that these trips give you confidence and make you independent in many tiny and unnoticeable ways. Moreover, my learning so far is that,  travelling solo takes fear away from your life.

lst week of December, I took 2 weeks of leave to visit my home-town. On the way, I also visited my old college at Guwahati. There I met some old college friends. I also had a nice photography session with my dear friend Sandip at IITG. Back home, I had a great time with my old school friends. I really miss these get together with my school friends back at Mumbai.

Last but not the least, this year I am back to consistent blogging after 4 years of on and off. Last time, I took such interest in blogging was during my engineering days. Now, I am enjoying this process of collecting thoughts and joding down into words. 

To sum up, every year has been a  mix of small and big things, good and bad times, sad and happy times. This year was no different. Like I said in the beginning, every year has something to offer, something new. This year, I made new friends, learned couple of new things, love endlessly, learned to stay clam or atleast put up a concious effort and more importantly learned to accept rejection and move on.

Well my expectations from next year. Nothing different from this year. Live life peacefully, maybe more passionately. Write more and read even more. Stay in touch with my friends and family. Ofcouse more tennis and miles and miles of running. That's it.

@Himalaya

With GG at Biere Club,Bangalore

The above two places are of Amer Fort, Jaipur

Nahargarh Fort, Jaipur

City Palace, Udaipur

With Mr. Sandip at IIT Guwahati Guest House

With my school friends at Kokrajahr

Diwali@office

At Pre-Christmas celebration at Don Bosco School, Kokrajhar

"If I have to live my life again, I'd will make the same mistakes, only sooner"- Tallulah Bankhead

Taking Things for Granted - Part 2

Coming Soon...

Taking Things for Granted- Part 1

Many times in my life I take things for granted. For instance, many times when my mom calls me up, I don't answer properly. Still, the next day, she would call me up with the same care and love. We take for granted that, no matter how we behave, our parents would love us anyway. Today when I see my parents growing old, I realize that we can't take our parents for granted. No doubt, our parents would always love us. However, somewhere in future, they will not be there to tell or show us how much they love us. Believe me at that time, we will be the one to miss them the most. 

We take our wife/husband or girlfriends/boyfriends for granted too. We wouldn't talk or show love to our dear ones as we think that no matter what we do they won't go anywhere. Its only when they leave us we realize how badly we miss them.

There are times when we take our friends for granted too. In times of need we would approach them and seek whatever help one could possibility get. However in merry times, we won't even call or ask how are they doing. If sometimes, they call us, we would respond them saying we are busy. In spite of all these, these friends would always be the first people to help us or support us in hard times without looking for anything in return. 

We have the habit of taking those things for granted that we get with ease or for free. Its only when we lose those things we realize the true value of them.

Ole to Fear

Every time I go to client meeting, I fear I may not be able to understand what the client is saying. I fear that I may not be able to figure out the problem the client is facing. I fear that I may not be able to ask the right questions. 

The thing is, this is not the only time I fear. I get the same fear when I play a tennis match in some tournaments. I have the same fear when I go on a solo trip to new places. I fear the same when I walk on the road alone at 2:00 AM in the morning. Does this fear stop me from doing things? Definitely not. 

People say that having a little fear is good. I agree with them. Fear more than anything tries to bring the best in us. Fear makes us put an extra effort. Due to this fear I am made to ensure that I do my homework before I go for client meeting or I have enough practice before I go for a match. 

Does that mean that fear never comes true? Well, it does comes true too. For instance in sports, sometimes I have feared about losing, I have lost matches. However, one thing I found about fear is that it is our best friend. It signals and challenges us do stuffs, stuffs that initially we found them to be impossible. Even now when I am writing this article, I fear what if no one likes my article. What if no one reads my article? What if people say this is a dumb article? I think fear teaches us to be brave. Moreover, it signals us to work harder and better.

So next time, when you fear, say 'Ole' to fear and move ahead.

“Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up” -Veronica Roth, Divergent

Trial & Error

Let me start this article by disclosing you one thing. I am an output of trial and error. Let me also disclose one more thing. I am not the only one. You too are. Is it too much to digest? Ok. Let's hold on for a moment. 

Few days back, I was talking to one of my colleague in office about a bug in one of our software. He was dam sure that this bug was caused due to this issue. So we tried to fix that issue but the bug was still there.  

The reason I shared this incident is because many of us including me suffer from this disease called 'God Complex'. Now the symptoms of this disease is very simple: No matter how complex the problem, we think that we have the solution. In the above incident, my colleague thought he had the answer. Whereas this bug could have been caused by many other reasons. Instead of debugging through various ways, he insisted on trying this way only. The end result the bug was still there. Ultimately, we had to try on different set of ideas to fix this bug. In short, what we did was actually trial and error. 

God complex can be found every where. We find it among our doctors, engineers, scientist, politicians to name a few. We think that we know the solutions, though actually we know only a part of the solution. It may work. It may not work.

Many times, when we are in relationships, we are so sure that this is the girl/boy that we are going to marry. Now how many of these relationships turn into marriage? Perhaps around 50%, might be even less. Infact much lesser. Relationship is the process of trial and error. I know it does not sound good. Let see what happens in relationships.  Boy likes a girl and the girl likes the boy. They talk and try to know each other. They fight, cry, console and in the process test if they fit each other. If not, they break up and move on to the next relationship. So what are we doing here, trial and error.. trial and error.. trial and error. 

In sports, trial and error is no new concept. The coach thinks of a strategy based on his analysis, the team implements it. Will it work? Sometimes yes, sometimes not. If it works its well and good. If not, he has to find new strategy and try it out again. 

We do trial and error everyday in our lives. Be it the time we go to shop to buy a new pair of shoes or be it the time when we decide to start a new company. It is everywhere. Then, why is trial and error not an obvious thing? Perhaps, I will leave it for you to find out. Let me put forward another question. Suppose we have an electoral candidate who goes around saying this:

“I want to fix the health system. I want to fix our education system. I have no idea how to do it. I have half a dozen ideas. We try them out. They will probably all fail. Then we test some other ideas out. Will find some that work. We get rid of those that don’t“ - Tim Harford on TeD

Are you going to vote this candidate?  If yes, then trail and error is an obvious thing. If no, then you know why God complex exists among us.

"Sometimes a clearly defined error is the only way to discover the truth”

― Benjamin Wiker, The Mystery of the Periodic Table

PS: This article is an outcome of an brilliant lecture by Tim Harford, an English Economist at TeD on God Complex.

Entropy

First of all Happy Diwali to all my dear friends. Let's hope like every year, this Diwali too brings tons of happiness and brightness in our lives.

Now, you must be wondering on what subject I am writing on. Entropy! what the hell. Well, if you happen to read physics or chemistry in your school days, you will know about it. It's nothing but the measure of state of disorder. One must be wondering why on earth I am writing about this topic. After all, today is Diwali, I should be either celebrating Diwali with my friends or family or writing about some other good things in the world.

Well, to be honest there is something about Diwali that triggered me to write this article. Every year, during Diwali time, whenever I login in fb, I find my wall flooded with Diwali wishes like  'Wish all my friends a Happy and Safe Diwali' or 'Let celebrate this Diwali noise free' or 'Diwali is a festival of light not noise' etc etc. In short,people want Diwali to be celebrated noise and pollution free. Still we find people firing more crackers than lighting diyas. Every year we find pollution level going high on Diwali. Though we keep on saying that Diwali is a festival of light, we keep on doing the same every year.

The irony is that, though we hate disorders in our lives, somehow we tend to go/move towards it. Its like though we know that smoking kills, people still enjoy smoking. We know that speed can kill us, still we fantasize driving fast. We human being somehow enjoy the state of disorderness or in technical term high level of entropy. For instance, you can't expect children to sit down in one place and play. They will obviously move around here and there and enjoy among themselves. Or most bachelors would love to keep their room unclean or play music in volumes louder than our ears can bear. In simple words, entropy is all within us. No matter how much we want to avoid it, we only move closer to it.

I won't say having high entropy/disorder is always a bad state to be in. Sometimes being in a state of disorder is good too. Putting our-self out of comfort zone can expose us to what we are actually missing in our life. Take the case of our career itself, we might be in a good job that pays us good salary but still deep inside we might not feel  good. We feel we are missing something. So some of us who's entropy level is high would leave their job and go out to fill their voidness and there by giving birth to companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google etc or atleast failing while giving a try. While some high entropy people would leave their comfort life and travel places in search of perhaps what they even don't know.

“To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.” Elizabeth Gilbert- Eat, Pray, Love

What I talk about when I talk about Gender Equality

Few weeks back, I saw a video of Ema Watson delivering a speech[1] at United Nations. She was speaking about Gender Inequality as a part of her campaign for 'HeForShe'. What was striking about her speech was when she says that 'Gender issue is a men issue as well'. Yes it is a men issue too. Many times in our daily lives we hear men say things like 'don't be a girl/women or don't act like them'. I must admit I have a said it few times myself. By saying that, though sometimes unintentionally, we consider women to be weak and someone who is not at par with men.

The other incident that triggered me to write this article was when Times of India wrote an article[2] about Deepika Padukone with the photos of her boobs exposed and tried to prove that she is a hypocrite. The article was an in-effect of an interview where she said that 'based on the roles demand she can cover her body as well as keep her body uncovered, it's her choice what she does with her body'. In many countries across the globe, people have a problem when a women wears small clothes. However, in the same locality, when men walk around in shorts or banyan, people have no issues. So you know, Deepika is not a hypocrite, people who wants girls to go out on the road fully covered but who themselves keep tons of porn movies in the laptop are the real hypocrites.

Every day in our daily life we see gender inequality happening around us. For instance, I commute to office on local bus. Many times when we see around girls/women standing in front of our seats, we tend to offer our seats to them. I think the act of offering our seat to women itself is supporting gender inequality. Ofcouse it a good practice to offer our seat to old women or men or a pregnant women or maybe a women with a baby. However, to young women who is healthy enough to stand, it is an act of gender inequality. And the women who accept such offers make the case only worse.

This is just one such example. There may be many such cases you must be observing in your daily lives.

No doubt, some of us are trying hard to make this world same for all the gender. As you can see today, men and women are paid equally in corporate world. Women sports players are paid the same salary as their male counter part. You can also see many women holding the topmost positions of the organizations like HP, Yahoo, Pepsico, Facebook to name a few. Still, they are only very few. Major portion of the women across the globe are still living under the shadow of this inequality. And perhaps, as Ema Watson mentioned in her speech, some of these women might be holding the top positions because their parents didn't differentiate between boy child and gal child. Their teachers might have taught the same lessons to them in the same way as they might have taught to boy student.

Again, no doubt, women and  men are built differently. So physically both the sexes are different. There is a chance that physically most men might be a little stronger than the women. But that does not make them weak in any way. Not to forget what women has to undergo during pregnancy. I don't know if we men can ever undergo such pain.

We live in the world of Mary Kom, who fought against the odds to enter the men's world of boxing. Like Mary, there are many such women who has time and again proved that women are at par with men across different domains.

So then how do we tackle this issue of 'Gender Inequality'?. What tangible steps can we take? Ofcouse we can say 'Change the mentality of men'. But I am sure that won't come under tangible steps. By tangible step, I mean small-small steps that we can take in our daily lives. For instance, stop offering our seat in bus to healthy women, stop categorizing anything(sports, work etc) as manly or womanly etc and more importantly to parents let you girl child choose whatever they want to do just like we allow our boys to do that. That's it.

I would like to close this article with a very nice good quote I came across

"We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters"- Gloria Steinem

[1]http://sociology.about.com/od/Current-Events-in-Sociological-Context/fl/Full-Transcript-of-Emma-Watsons-Speech-on-Gender-Equality-at-the-UN.htm

[2]http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/Dear-Deepika-our-point-of-view-/articleshow/43084705.cms

Why I am addicted to running?

It's 5 am in the morning, my mobile alarms rings. I get up from my bed, dismisses the alarm and put a new alarm at 5:10 am and gets back to bed. At 5:10 am, the alarm rings again. I get up and dismisses it again. Drinks the water from the bottle lying at the table. Put on my running track pant, my regular running T shirt, put my socks, put my mobile phone in my pocket with ear phone in my ears and I go down the stairs. Put my Nike running shoe. Now you know what I am up to. This is how most of my day at Kokrajhar begins.

Before I start running, I warm up by streatching by legs, arms and shoulders. Then I put on my running app and start running. I make sure that whenever I am running, I have my ear phone with me. Listening to music while running keeps me motivated. Generally I like listening to soft melody songs rather than rock songs while running. Yea there are also days when I forget my ear phone in my room. Those days can be tough to keep yourself motivated...

At Kokrajhar, most of the time the roads are empty early at the morning. This leaves me running solo. The first few kilometres is never easy when you are running long distance. Many times you feel like stoping and going back home. But after you have cross that threshold mark, you start tasting the sweet of long distance running.

Whenever I run alone, lot of things come across my mind. I tend to think a lot about life. Not just about my life. But life in general. Some I think about what my life would had been if I were a Superman. How I would have manage my life as Superman. Sometimes I even wonder what if I would have been an actor. What sort of role I would have played. All these random thoughts do come across my running mind...

There are times when after running the distance, you feel your legs are gone and you can't go any further. But you won't stop just because your mind says you can finish the race.Then, it becomes the battle between the mind and the body where at the end your mind wins. Atleast till now. The satisfaction that one feels after completing the distance is something that only a runner can understand. That's the reason why it is said that running can be an addiction.

There are also times when you will find rain falling down heavily over your head. Running in the rain is totally a different experience. I remember during my final days at IITG, I use to run in the rain. Infact it was raining when I ran for the last time at IITG.

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional" -  Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

I guess I have written enough on running...

Have a great day ahead...

My Dream Life....

             
                                     When I talk about my dream the only thing that comes in my mind is Travelling Places. And  nothing else. No fancy cars, no luxury house, no money, no start up plans, no joining dream company, just travelling around the world.

I did try to live this dream last December when I travelled alone to Himachal. Believe me this was a awesome experience. It's true travelling alone is not easy. Atleast when you are doing it for the first time. I mean I have travelled alone many times hopping from one city to another. But this was my first back pack trip all alone. Believe me the drug of independence is just too good. You are all alone and you just have to follow your heart and nothing else. This trip left me wanting for more and more. Its true sometimes in solo trip, you might get bored sleeping alone in your hotel room. You have to ensure that you have enough books to read or some video games to play in your hotel. As you start travelling solo you will realize that you are not the only person travelling solo. You will find lot of other guys doing the same thing as you. It's good if you could open up with these solo experience packers and get some tips. Believe me these tips come very handy in ur future trips.

Running is another dream thats come along with this dream. As I travell to new places, I dream of exploring new places thorugh running. Running gives me confidence that I can achieve anything in life. It gives me courage that no matter how bad my life may be, I can always overcome them. It tells me to 'never ever give up in life'. In short, it teaches me to 'Fight'.When I say fight, I don't mean violence, I mean fighting against your weakness, fighting against the impossible. Thats the reason I am addicted to running.

Like any dream, this dream also does not true unless we wake up and run towards it. At the end it comes to us, how much time we take to wake up. Either we wake up and do it now or we keep on waiting......

"We all have dreams, in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort"-Jesse Owens, Olympic gold-medalist runner

I m going home

Yep... Finally I am coming home.... It's been almost a year since I have been home. Tomorrow at 7:25 am in the morning I am catching a flying ship to go home.

I have been in Mumbai for the last 3 years. Two years of those I spent at college. Since getting out of IIT, I have not been at home. So the excitement level is different this time. This is the first time I am going home after I have started earning. I know when I make plans, most of them does not work, still I have made a few. So lets hope all works......

Flash....

For some reasons I wanted to write this for a long time. But for some reasons I could not take a time out to write. Today though I am sitting in my office desk, I have made up my mind to write about it. It's now or never. So lets start....

Some people come to your life and in no time flashes out. Something like that happened to me too. Few months ago, I met a girl in fb. We connected instantly. It's very rare that I would connect to or talk to a stranger girl on phone. But I did. We started to talk on phone and in no time I propose her and she accepted. So we became bf gf without even meeting each other. Strange na. Yea it is.

After I proposed her, we started to talk each other through phone, whats app etc. Worst part is we started to discuss about marriage.  Even worse, we started to make plans about the unseen future.

Important thing is I was happy with her. I liked talking to her. Whenever we talked I felt as if I have known her for a long long time. I think I was really in love with her. This continued for around 3 months.

Then one day, all of a sudden she said me something which did made me think this relationship will come to a halt. She asked me to never take any relationship seriously because when it does not work, it hurts. To be honest I was surprised to hear this. Yes when things don't go well, it hurts. But that does not mean we should not be in love. Lot of things do hurt us in life that does not mean we stop doing all those stuffs that hurt us.

My fear did come true. The same evening when I tried calling her, she did not pick up my phone, I tried calling her at different times, still no response. The next morning I tried again still no response. At around 12 noon, when I was on a conference call with the client, she called me up, I pick up the phone and told her that I will call her bk later. Then I called her up, she said she was busy with some office work. So I decided not to call her at all.

So I did not call her. In the evening when I was warming up for my regular evening run, she called me. I picked up the phone. She apologized and told me that her mobile was in silent mode so he could not pick up the phone. Then she told me one more thing. She told me that she has said yes to her parents to meet the person, who was coming to see her for marriage.

From that day onwards, I started to take for granted that if I called her, there is a 50% chance that she would not pick up her phone. And this is how it exactly turned out too. Our relationship was no longer normal.

When I asked her how good are the chances of us getting together, she would just reply that if the guy rejects her we could be together. I felt like stoping our relationship right at that moment. But I did not....

This way it continued for some days. Then all of a sudden one day I get to know from her that her marriage was fixed. I asked her if she was happy. She said she was. That was all I wanted to know. It been around 2 and a half weeks since that day. And I would say I have move on too. Yea it hurts, it still hurts. But this is what life is all about. You do things which you think is right, but circumstance does not help and then you have 2 options. Either you blame or curse her(sometimes yourself) or you just take it as a learning and move on. I prefer choosing the later.

I know for sure she never intended to hurt me.I also think she did loved me in the same way as I did. But there are certain things in life which are not within our control no matter how much we try. This was one of them.