Searching at 25

An interesting point in my life, this 3rd day of the 10th month of the year 2008. I have completed 25 years of my existence a few months ago. Today I ask myself the point and purpose of my life. Though I would definitely say that the last 12-13 years of my life were reasonably well spent (with a couple of exceptions), there are a few things that I think I may have missed out on. Some of these were a compromise over the things I chose to do, whereas some were just plain oversights. I don't really know whether I regret not having these things in my 'Been there, done that' list, which isn't very pleasant, since this knowledge is needed to plan the remaining years of my life.
Now the task lying before me is to decide my priorities and draft up a plan towards attaining my goals. This hopefully should be done in the next 48 hours since I am running out of time...

Random Musings Of A Sleepless Mind...

Writing after a break makes me feel a little rusty, but the title of this post gives me the necessary slack to write away without worrying about the result. I still have a log of my Ladakh trip pending, a trip which gave me much needed refreshment and which got my mind to a state of fresh enthusiasm and vigour. The sleeplessness to which the title alludes is not due to turbulence within the confines of my cranial cavity, but due to some crazy idiot outside my building screaming some nonsense on a loudspeaker. Supposedly somebody decided that staying on a cycle for 6 days is among the best things to do with one's time. The local corporator decided to second this decision, and the idle public living in the cow-sheds next to my house got another reason to bring out the loudspeakers. This time, they hired somebody to 'compere', and since the last 6 days, he has been screaming arbitrary nonsense on the loudspeaker preventing the hardworking public of my area from exercising their fundamental right to sleep.
So, what should I muse about? Should it be about India's first gold medal at the Olympic Games after 28 years? Congrats to Abhinav Bindra for that! Should it be about the way the civic administration has dug up the approach roads to my workplace, so that my travel time has doubled? Should it be about my experiences while learning to drive a car (Good for me, but not for the poor innocent vehicle) ? Should it be about plans for the long weekend coming up ahead? Should it be about the software engineer who committed suicide (incidentally the chap was my batchmate's brother - God bless his family!)? Should it be about India's victory at the AFC cup (Congrats to them too!)? Well, I'm so sleepy that I can't even think of what to write about!! Thankfully, I can abandon the search for a purposeful solution to my quandary since the loudspeakers have finally fallen silent, and I can retreat into a peaceful slumber...

I Don't Know!

I was never afraid to use this phrase when it came to questions about knowledge. If you don't know, it is a good idea to say so rather than dole out wrong information. However, in times of decision, especially those decisions that concerned me, I never used it - and never thought that I would need to. I was always in control of things, even if I knew I wouldn't be able to come out on top, I knew that I would be able to handle the situation and had a good idea about how to weigh the options and chose the best possible one.
The last one year has changed everything. The number of things not going my way, have now left me in doubt of my own abilities to 'find the way' in testing times. Many of these events and outcomes occurred for no fault of my own. As a matter of fact, they were just quirks of fate, which I could do nothing about.
Even now, fate is not off my back - it keeps putting a big red stop sign in front of all my fresh starts, keeps putting what I want right in front of me but just beyond my reach and cutting of all my means of attaining it. Now I really understand the meaning of the phrase 'So near yet so far'.
So what now? What next? Well, I don't know, I don't....
... but, there's no giving up on life - so I am raring to go and find out and do my best to come out on top!

The Old Spirit

Software professionals are really lucky, that over the course of their careers they get to work across a variety of cultures. There are home-made service based mammoths (Infy, Wipro et al), product based companies (like my current one Symantec) and the craziest of the lot - startups (my previous company AirTight Networks). Well, why lucky? Coz they get to experience variety and get to chose! Whether choice is always a good thing or not is a topic for another post, but here we shall assume that this choice is good.
Why I am enumerating this aspect of the software profession, one may wonder. That is because today I met with with my former teammates at AirTight. The same folks with whom I started my career and with whom I have spent an exciting and fun 18 months. And after this rendezvous, I realized this difference. I realized it because I had changed drastically since I joined Symantec last Feb. My attitude towards the professional aspects of life, the way I think about work, about technology have changed noticeably. I must say that all this change wasn't for the worse. Some of it can also be passed off as a sign of maturity. However, one of the major differences I saw was the ability to be free in thought and words, to be free in ideas, to be free in how you think technology should progress. In a big MNC, there are lots of processes to be followed, there are things you can't do and there are things you mustn't do, there are things which won't be well received until you are at a particular 'experience level'. While in a startup, well its a free world - you are not too young for anything. Ideas from you are heard irrespective of who you are. Your voice counts - it is at least heard! The main change in attitude that this difference causes is the ability to believe that your ideas can be brought to fruition. A startup mindset thinks that the implementation of an idea is always just a few steps away, whereas an MNC mindset thinks about 'whether' and 'if' and about all the various processes involved that make the implementation seem miles away.
I am not blaming the culture of my company, since I agree that the discipline ensured by processes and procedures is necessary to sustain a corporate giant. In a startup, it is easy to think and ponder over ideas from a few of the 100 employees while in a multinational, it is impossible to listen to even a fraction of the tens of thousands of employees! All I am saying is that, I had stopped thinking about big ideas, but when I met my old buddies, even the casual conversation resurrected the old free thinking spirit! And I am glad that happened - a refreshed outlook was badly needed by this battered soul!

P.S. No disrespect to any kind of company here - this post just discusses one (well known) advantage of a startup over an MNC. I have learnt through my varied experiences at each of these two types of companies and gained different things at each place.

Good Don't Go

The difference between right and wrong - isn't that what most people tried teaching us all throughout our childhood? Our parents, our teachers, elders all made it a point to convince us little impressionable beings to be 'good children', 'good people' and 'good humans'. Isn't it ironic though, that most adults actually believe that in order to survive or be successful, it is important that we forget or ignore this difference? That we chose the path which will get us to the goal, giving little importance to the ethical appropriateness of our means? And we give it a flashy term too - street smartness!
I wouldn't blame them totally. I know that expecting the world to be nice to you because you are nice is like expecting a tiger not to eat you because you are a vegetarian. Also, when things in life don't end up going your way or when you are stung by the so-called street smart, it is very easy and tempting too to go all sour and bitter against the world and enroll in the 'no use being nice' school of thought. I have been pretty close (and still am) to crossing over on the other side. Luckily, stubbornness and great friends have helped me stay rooted on this side of the line.
So I wonder, given that I am in the adult minority, am I being foolhardy in believing that good will take me where I want to go? That it will take me much further than bad? Lets see - In a way the immediate benefits of changing my beliefs are many. Firstly, I can blame all that's happening in life to my 'trying to be good'. Bad can make me a winner much faster in all that I have failed to conquer. But my question is - will it keep me there? Will it make me one of those cynics who treat the whole world as 'guilty until proven innocent'? Thats like being wary of others like yourself! Will I start looking at life like a battle to be fought rather than a journey to be enjoyed? Most importantly, will that fetch me sustainable happiness? Well, I don't think so!
So it pains me every time someone from my team decides to change sides. I don't know what to promise to them if they stay on, since I haven't seen too many benefits myself. As of now its only the fact that you will be at peace with yourself. But like all good things, I guess most realize that the value of it only when its gone and its too late for anything to be done about it. Don't make that mistake! Keep the faith!

Learn To Gauge?

At the receiving end of some advice earlier today (which is not surprising given the bumpy road on which my life is traveling), I was told that I should "learn to gauge". Some background for the clueless reader - the talk was about people. Interesting thing this, I thought. How should I learn to gauge things about people? Well maybe, by generalizing - if I can figure out what people do or how they think in certain situations then maybe I can gauge whatever it is that I am supposed to gauge. But then this same kind hearted soul pointed out a major flaw in the above hypothesis - "people are different and they may not always think and react in the same way".
Well, this got me confused... Isn't there something known as rationality and logical thinking? Yet there are people who don't think and act in the same way (as I was told) and hence concluded that they don't necessarily act and react logically. I know that all humans aren't machines (heck even machines don't always act in the same logical way), so I would think it safe to accept a small margin of variance in terms of logical behavior but not enough to proclaim that no rule can be made of it (calling the variances - exceptions). Another useless hint for the still clueless reader - A 'specific subset' of all people was the target group being spoken about.
So, here I am, still left with the fundamental question of "How to gauge"? Well, people of the world (or the subset under consideration here), hear, think and understand:

"Life will be made much easier if what you want the other person to know is communicated explicitly. Speech, written words, instant messengers, SMSes, emails etc are the various means at your disposal to achieve this objective. Use them. Telepathy is NOT a reliable medium yet. Please do not expect others 'to gauge' or worse still, to 'somehow know' what you want them to.
For those of you don't agree, since I still have to share this planet with you, I am trying to learn 'to gauge'... Any help in this regard would be highly appreciated!"

Sulking - Q & A

Question: Well, why do people sulk?
Answer: Because they have the time. If you have a lot of work and responsibilities and are left with little time at the end of the day, enough only to talk to friends and family about happy things and to sleep, you will never sulk.

Question: What kind of people sulk?
Answer: Those think that life sucks and that's how it is and those who think that life should not suck.

Question: Well then who's left? Rather what kind of people don't sulk?
Answer: Those who do not have expectations from life or have rather few of them which are met easily. And those who are really really really lucky to have all their desires fulfilled.

Question: So, is sulking good or bad?
Answer: Both. A little is necessary, but as all things in life - "Too much is too bad".

Question: If I have decided that I will not sulk and even then on a one off occasion, I am still whining to myself about "Why me?" or "Why not me?", is that a bad thing?
Answer: Nope, its human - At that point looking at others less fortunate than you and asking the same questions helps... Also looking at the good in your life and asking the same questions again helps even more.

Question: What is the ideal conclusion to a sulking session?
Answer: A bottle of Old Monk rum which concludes in a sound sleep with the cause of the sulking temporarily deported to a far off galaxy!
Answer (For the poor teetotalers like me) : Well, if the cause of sulking can be remedied then try your best to rectify it. If it can't, then no point crying - there is nothing you can do anyway!

Question: What if .... Hey, stop it - enough for the night! No further questions!

Just FYI, the above monologue is not the result of a bottle of Old Monk rum or any other intoxicating spirit for that matter :)

Vegetable Buying - Redefined!

Another weekend ends. This weekend had all the essentials of a good weekend - an evening out with friends, a good amount of personal and household work accomplished, a nice trek to Sinhagad on a cloudy summer day and an evening full of rest. I had planned on writing a little more on the topic of blogging, but now another interesting experience needs telling.

This experience of which I talk about, which was a rather interesting part of the weekend was buying vegetables for the house. Well no, I am not saying this was interesting because this was the first time I have bought any (I am not that hopeless you see). It was interesting for me because it was the first time that I bought them at a supermarket.

Until now all my vegetables buying experiences were at the local markets - either Shivaji market or Pulgate market. Buying vegetables at such places was nothing short of a mission. I had to go mentally prepared to survive in a noisy, crowded marketplace, with the end goal being procuring self-picked vegetables at not the most expensive price available and in the shortest time possible. The brain needed to tune itself to enter a filthy narrow corridor of a public market between hordes of fruits and vegetable sellers screaming out the prices of their wares to the whole world. The intention behind their screaming seemed more to outdo their peers in the exercise rather than attract customers. The 15 minutes spent there bargaining, selecting, ensuring the correct weighing and eventually buying the vegetables would end up being the most arduous part of the day.

This time I bought vegetables at a quiet spacious air-conditioned store (named 'more' or something like that) with polite staff ready to help you with every task with gleaming smiles. There was no need to haggle, no need to try and select the good vegetables from the bad (all the vegetables appeared to be of a reasonable quality) and no need to lend a hawk's eye to inspect the process of weighing and packaging. This was smooth sailing all the way from the entrance to the shopping and back to the exit... Well, almost smooth - being a little rusty in the vegetable nomenclature, I did confuse a couple of vegetable names, but I am sure that would not take anything from the feat achieved by buying a scooter-load of vegetables effortlessly without going through the motions of a battlefield-like marketplace.

The 'Why" On Blogs - Part 1

Lately I've been surfing around the blogosphere. That got me back to some 'why' questions about blogs. These, I had asked myself the very first time I made an acquaintance with the concept of blogging. I was told 'A blog is like a personal diary on the Internet'. I wondered why the heck would someone want to put up their personal diary on the Internet? I had an electronic personal diary at the time, but I could not imagine putting that up in the open for all to read, analyze and judge. Why? Because they were thoughts which needed to be expressed somewhere but were not suitable for public consumption. Mind you, some of the entries would definitely have ruffled many a feather! Isn't that why people write personal diaries in the first place - to let out your thoughts which you think you can't even share with your friends? And for all the other thoughts one wants to share, you always have friends and family. With this simple chain of thought, I happily concluded that blogging was only for some lonely souls who had no one to lend a ear to their thoughts and were trying to seek solace in the hope that their transmission in cyberspace would increase the chances of them being heard. I did create a blog to see what it was all about and blogged anonymously for a short while but I soon lost interest. Thus, after corroborating my theoretical conclusion with practical experience, I dismissed blogs from my online itinerary.
The time at which the above research was conducted was while I was in college, i.e. when I lived the majority of my life in the real world. Since I graduated and joined the software industry, I see many things (blogging included) in a different light. So if you were wondering, why the heck has this guy spent his time to write a blog post if he doesn't believe in the concept in the first place, I must tell you that the new light to which I was referring to earlier has led to newer thought chains and newer conclusions, which I shall elaborate on, in a subsequent post.

Game Over! A New One To Begin Soon!

This weekend marked a tribute to a journey, which though unsuccessful, was quite an eye-opening one. I primarily reflected over the roads traveled, the turns taken, the turns mistaken and the eventual result. Dwelling on all these, I drew up a road-map for the road ahead - not a very long one - just for the next few months. Seems like a weekend well spent.

Here's me looking forward to a brand new start tomorrow!

Testing Times

There are times, some things don't work out. Every man and woman lives through them. That was something I knew. One thing I didn't know however, was that there are times when all things don't work out and nothing happens as planned. The last few months have elaborately rid me of my ignorance in this regard. So much so, that now I am highly tempted be a devout believer in Murphy's Laws. It is a unique feeling when you question whether the entire universe has conspired against you to create turbulence in almost each and every aspect of your life.

The good thing about such times is that they truly test your strength. The bad thing is that they run the risk of making you cynical. They make you lose enthusiasm in life. One may then begin to live life accepting that reality is always dark. That thought occurred to me too. In the fight of hope versus reality, reality always wins - so why does everyone say "Keep Hope"? Some say that hope and reality don't fight - they simply move on their own paths which meet on and off. Some say that hope has various sisters - one should side with the sister called "Realistic Hope". The only difficulty lies in identifying "Realistic". Well, the truth as I see it is that hope keeps you prepared for the impending reality but does not allow you to give up.

An adage goes - "The good thing about bad things is that they come to an end." I hope that that end is near! As of now, I hope that my stubbornness helps me continue to keep faith in the fact that life is beautiful in spite of all its ups and downs, and help me through the current 'down' that I am going through. Yes, I trust hope again...