Theory of irrelevancies!

Hi there, welcome to my blog, appreciate your interest in following my posts. I was just lying in my bed and these weird thoughts kept rolling over my mind. When I try to put things in to perspective I thought this whole world to be full of contradictions and irrelevancies. So let me start with my story, an Instrumentation engineer turned Software engineer, but it isn’t uncommon to find electrical, electronics, mechanical or civil engineers turning in to software engineers. The interesting fact is that there are more software engineers from other backgrounds than those pursued computer science as their major discipline.

Think over it, this isn’t just about software profession, the examples are many, many IITians going to IIMs, Doctors becoming IAS officers, Engineers becoming managers/ entrepreneurs, Scientists becoming poets, MBAs becoming cine actors, Spiritual Gurus turning Management Gurus and so on. The examples doesn’t end here it includes the people at the top as well, our honourable prime minister Mr.Manmohan Singh an Economist turned politician,  former President Mr.Abdul Kalam - a Professor turned scientist turned President, Barrack Hussain Obama - a lawyer turned politician. All this is just the tip of an iceberg, so if you are a chemical engineer and your prospects seem bleak, who knows you might turn out to be the most sort after fashion designer.

If you look at history, the most embarrassing failures were the ones who turned out to be the most successful people, take for instance Thomas Alwa Edison who invented thousand ways for failing as he says it. There are these weird happenings, you see most of the successful people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates who struggle to go all the way to the top, get everything that they would want for generations, earn all the wealth and finally donate it to charity and involve themselves in to service. Lesson to be learnt from them is that, if you want to go to the top and earn a lot to give back to the society, better start serving with what you have now.

For all those who say we are giving back to the society from high net-worth individuals (HNI) to big corporates, “why did you take the wealth and resources from the society in the first place?” or are you going to say that they didn’t take anything from the society at all. And here comes another set of people who go to the top and show that they never care about their wealth and are very simple, if they were really that simple why don’t they write-off all their wealth to the poor like Buffet did. So what’s all this fuss about life, career, success and service, I really couldn’t understand.

Coming back to my story, how all the blogging that I do now started has much to do with this theory, I observed this weird trend of people who studied in IITs and IIMs turn out to be successful writers. I had these plans of getting in to IIMs as everyone does (underline the word “plans”), so when all these people coming out of IIMs themselves turn out to be writers why waste a valuable seat in the IIM, So I took off to writing directly. By that way I have given back an IIM seat to the society, Also I got rid of one potential competitor at least till he completes his degree. If that isn’t a reason enough to believe why I’m not in to IIM at least I believe it is a reason enough to believe why I took to writing :)

Rose, I am in love!

Welcome back to yet another post of mine. Thanks for all your encouragement and for continuously following my blog. I was really surprised to meet a friend of mine after quite a few years, adding to my surprise the first thing he enquired was about my blog and not me. He enquired in a loud voice “Buddy, how’s your new post coming up? Your blog is really good”, he has been following my blog for quite some time when he was at an onsite assignment in the US. Just a small note of appreciation from him made the rest of my day! And yes what everyone of us need is that small little appreciation that keeps us going, drives things without boredom and makes our lives cheerful and interesting both personally and professionally.

So I start by thanking my friend for being the driving force to write this post. Any credits should go to him and the blame to me. Don’t forget to point out my mistakes or oppose my point of view, you are always welcome to comment, be it of any sign (positive or negative). After working late the night before, I was well asleep in the morning until my mobile phone alarm started singing, I got up after snoozing it for the fifth time wondering if had mistakenly reduced the snooze time to one minute, but no it was the same five minutes that I had previously set. Well I guess Einstein’s theory of relativity applies to our sleep as well, five minutes of sleep looks less than a minute while asleep and the reverse is true when you are waiting in a traffic signal.

I got out of bed and came out to the balcony to get some fresh air and noticed a small rose plant in a clay flower pot in the balcony, a beautiful little rose has blossomed in it. Noticing it, all the drowsiness in me disappeared in a moment; this small flower gave me a refreshing feeling. I enquired my Mom about the new plant and she said that she had bought it that morning. Out of curiousness I went further and asked her “how much did it cost?” and she replied “eighty rupees!” I have never imagined an amount as little as eighty rupees can do this magic, and what struck my mind was this anonymous saying “Beautiful things in life don’t cost you much” and yes I felt the saying as true that moment.

This is the rose at my home!

From that day I adopted that plant and started watering it twice a day, and I somehow get a feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction after watering it every time. I get curious to know if it has grown any bigger, every time I water it. I feel a sense of pride in serving this beautiful living being, it really makes sense to me even though this little plant has just got one (sense). 

In modern day flats where we live, it’s really difficult to afford to plant a tree for we lack space, but you could always buy a small flower pot and start growing a plant which you could later improvise to a little garden all this for a start up cost of just a little less than a hundred rupees.  And for all those out there, this could even mean presenting a very personal flower or a bouquet as a present or a gift to that special one and is absolutely free of cost and just full of love. Need any more reasons to buy a flower pot, better try doing it and find out for yourself!

With Roses,

Jagan

The Adventure Island!

Hi everyone, nice to see you back again through my post after quite some time.  Hope this post finds you all in good health.  It’s Friday night now and it was a wonderful week that had just passed. I was just thinking about the weekend plans and nothing worthwhile struck my mind, so just thought of connecting with you through my post. It’s been a long time and I always want to keep up with my blog.

Last weekend was one of the memorable and wonderful weekends for me; we were on a trip to Pondicherry just like that, it was totally an unplanned trip; we started off on Saturday afternoon after getting up late in the morning due to a friend’s birthday celebration last night. It was cloudy and a cool weather outside and so did the journey in the ECR (East Coast Road), though narrow at some stretches.

We had our lunch at a Dhabba on the way and continued our journey. While on our journey we found a boating place which hardly had anyone in it except a few boatmen who work for the state tourism department (TTDC). We don’t know if the gloomy weather was the reason for the desertedness or if the afternoon times here is usually like this. Out of curiosity we stopped the car and jumped out to get to the small front office present there.

The people over there were friendly and explained the various boating packages available; to our surprise they had a trip which will take us five kilometres in the backwaters to a small, less known island on the way to the Bay of Bengal. They also stated many interesting facts about the beach island, many movies have been shot at this place, for instance many scenes in the Tamil movie “Ayirathil Oruvan” were shot at this very place. So just to see how this place looks like and to see if it is worth its salt we decided to visit the place. We hired a motorboat for five of us excluding the boatman and started to sail towards the much hyped island.

As we were sailing through the back waters we could see the point where the backwaters met the Ocean (Bay of Bengal), which was really awesome to watch and to know. The journey lasted for around 15 minutes passing coconut and palm trees adding beauty to the place and the trip, the weather was just right and we were really lucky. We landed at a land resembling a beach with almost white sand that we usually see in the movies, to our surprise there was no one around this beautiful place. I haven’t seen such a beautiful place left unexploited. The air was free from pollution and the sands were free of plastic bags. The coconut trees and the backwaters just reminded me of Kerala - the God’s own country.  

After being there for about an hour the guide cum sailor alerted us that the time is over and we got to head back to our dock. We drank a tender coconut in the island and it was too good to taste, this place has really satisfied our thirst both for nature and water literally. I have posted a few pictures that were taken there in this blog, these were taken with the help of an ordinary digital camera and the pictures posted here don’t carry any photo shop or whatsoever effects. Just see if your eyes can believe it as real? If yes, what are you waiting for, pack up!