A few weeks ago, we had a reunion of all my batch-mates from my engineering college days. It was a silver jubilee reunion, a quarter century after we all left the Institute and went our varied ways. I could not miss it for anything. I have learnt my lesson many times, I missed my convocation after my MBA because I was busy with something, I missed a vacation with my family because I was too tied up at work and these are regrets that one cannot do anything about, and it sends pangs of anguish even after many years. So I decided that I will not let this one slip and thanks to another friend of mine who was more enthusiastic, everything was booked and planned a month in advance.
I have to admit that the reunion it self was more magical than I had anticipated. There is something about your undergraduate days, the friendship and the bonds that you create during those years last for ever and are much stronger than any that you build anytime after. Many of us observed this and many of us wondered why this so.
I feel that these are the days when you first leave the safe and familiar surroundings of home, you are at that age when you are really transforming from an adolescent to being an adult, and most important of all, you have very little baggage. You meet others who are in the same boat with the same spunky confidence of the youth, with no constraints in what you dream to be, having similar challenges and interests. During those formative years, all of us see the other transforming into a man or woman with lot more pragmatism and focus. We enter the university with ninety percent idealism and ten percent responsibility and we all leave with at best 30% idealism and 70% responsibility. The fact that each of us witnessed the others transformation, makes us feel that there is nothing to hide from each other. Like my friend said, we have seen each other bereft of any layers of cloak in more ways than one!
The fact that after two and half decades when we all met, we could somehow recreate the same feeling of "baggage-less" interaction, was perhaps the most rewarding of experiences. For once you were not a CEO or CIO or CFO ("FO to all that" as one of them put it!) but you were you. I believe that it is this sense of freedom that was so refreshing and genuine about the reunion and I really treasure that.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Driving you crazy
Even as a child I was always fascinated by driving. My dad had an infamous Ambassador car made by Hindustan Motors in India. It was one of those sturdy cars, with the bare essentials and a stick shift gear and a manual steering wheel. My dad had this habit of somehow filling this car to its brim, typically twice its prescribed capacity, and all of us would drive off, mostly visiting temples or relatives. In those days the concept of sight seeing was unheard off! Why would you go anywhere, if there is no one you know and no temple to visit!
Anyway, coming back to my fascination, I always wanted to drive and my dad encouraged me quite a bit. Even when I was 5 or 6 years old, he used to make me sit on his lap and hold on to the steering wheel. Of course, you can't imagine doing this in Chennai today, but the Madras of those days had very few cars and especially if you go to remote areas (which meant about 5 kms from the busy parts, which today is bustling with activity) there were decent roads and no car in sight. So much so, I mastered the art of driving even before I turned 14!
Instrumental in this was Pandu. Most of the households in those days had a family Doctor, he knew everybody in your family and not only dished out the usual "mixture", which you take three times a day, but also advice on how you should deal with your family problems. Well, we not only had a family doctor, we had a family mechanic, Pandu. Pandu was a great guy who knew how to take out any part of the car and put it back (to my surprise, he never had any extra parts left and the car worked fine after that), he of course did this, sort of, intutively because all his training had been on the job. Besides this, he was also a man of many talents, he knew how to climb a coconut tree and pluck coconuts and husk them, he knew how to fix various other things like bicycles, and I am sure that now he must be fixing software bugs in Microsoft windows!
Pandu was my "guru" for many things starting with how to ride bicycles. He taught me how to ride motorbikes even before I was tall enough to be able to rest my legs on the ground while sitting on one. He was my legs, he used to sit at the pillion and I used to ride my dad's motorbike , much to the envy of all the kids in the neigbourhood. He was the guy who gave me the confidence to drive my dad's car. Of course, coming to think of it, now I do understand why he did not have any problems letting me drive, while my dad was a little more cautious!
Even the way I got my license was interesting. One day I was taking my dad's car for a joy ride around our street when, my neighbour, a fairly influential businessman, stopped me and asked if I had a license. I was a bit worried but nevertheless I told him the truth that I did not have one. He said "ok, get two passport size photographs and give them to me tomorrow", that is it, a week or so after I gave him that he handed me my license!
There must be something that my dad and Pandu did right because, I turned out to be a good driver, even if I may say so myself. Since then I have moved to Singapore and have been living here for the past two decades. When I first bought a car in Singapore, I had to unlearn a lot of things that I had learnt while driving in India. In India, you always do what is called a defensive driving. You always assume that the guy in the next lane is going to come into your lane anytime without any indication or warning. You never take anything for granted, for example, you should always be ready for a cow or person to stroll on to the main road, fully trusting your reflexes and your brakes. My aunt used to call them "break inspectors"! In Singapore, I slowly learnt the true meaning of right of way, giving way to pedestrians and other etiquette.
Off late though I find that driving in Singapore is not that organised anymore. I am not sure if it is the "Kiasu" nature of Singaporeans (Kiasu, means fear of failure) but standards of driving have dropped here. For example when you are in a slower lane and want to move to the faster right lane and switch on your indicator, the guy who is light years from you, accelerates (as soon as the light from the indicator reaches him) and ensures that you have no space to move in. People do not seem to bother about right of ways and what more, they even show you the finger, when you honk to point out their unruly behaviour. Someone once told me that the soft toys in the rear windows of the cars in Singapore, is to show that the drivers have not "grown up" yet!!
Nevertheless, ever since I have moved to Singapore, I have never got the guts to drive in India when I am visiting. There the traffic light being red is just a suggestion and is not meant to be obeyed always. Everything is relative I guess. This is best demonstrated by those who come from the US. When my friends who come from US spend some time with me on their way to India, they are appalled at the disregard to lanes and other rash driving that they witness in Singapore, but the same guys who spend time here on their way back remark that " it is really nice to be in a place where people follow the traffic rules"!!
Anyway, coming back to my fascination, I always wanted to drive and my dad encouraged me quite a bit. Even when I was 5 or 6 years old, he used to make me sit on his lap and hold on to the steering wheel. Of course, you can't imagine doing this in Chennai today, but the Madras of those days had very few cars and especially if you go to remote areas (which meant about 5 kms from the busy parts, which today is bustling with activity) there were decent roads and no car in sight. So much so, I mastered the art of driving even before I turned 14!
Instrumental in this was Pandu. Most of the households in those days had a family Doctor, he knew everybody in your family and not only dished out the usual "mixture", which you take three times a day, but also advice on how you should deal with your family problems. Well, we not only had a family doctor, we had a family mechanic, Pandu. Pandu was a great guy who knew how to take out any part of the car and put it back (to my surprise, he never had any extra parts left and the car worked fine after that), he of course did this, sort of, intutively because all his training had been on the job. Besides this, he was also a man of many talents, he knew how to climb a coconut tree and pluck coconuts and husk them, he knew how to fix various other things like bicycles, and I am sure that now he must be fixing software bugs in Microsoft windows!
Pandu was my "guru" for many things starting with how to ride bicycles. He taught me how to ride motorbikes even before I was tall enough to be able to rest my legs on the ground while sitting on one. He was my legs, he used to sit at the pillion and I used to ride my dad's motorbike , much to the envy of all the kids in the neigbourhood. He was the guy who gave me the confidence to drive my dad's car. Of course, coming to think of it, now I do understand why he did not have any problems letting me drive, while my dad was a little more cautious!
Even the way I got my license was interesting. One day I was taking my dad's car for a joy ride around our street when, my neighbour, a fairly influential businessman, stopped me and asked if I had a license. I was a bit worried but nevertheless I told him the truth that I did not have one. He said "ok, get two passport size photographs and give them to me tomorrow", that is it, a week or so after I gave him that he handed me my license!
There must be something that my dad and Pandu did right because, I turned out to be a good driver, even if I may say so myself. Since then I have moved to Singapore and have been living here for the past two decades. When I first bought a car in Singapore, I had to unlearn a lot of things that I had learnt while driving in India. In India, you always do what is called a defensive driving. You always assume that the guy in the next lane is going to come into your lane anytime without any indication or warning. You never take anything for granted, for example, you should always be ready for a cow or person to stroll on to the main road, fully trusting your reflexes and your brakes. My aunt used to call them "break inspectors"! In Singapore, I slowly learnt the true meaning of right of way, giving way to pedestrians and other etiquette.
Off late though I find that driving in Singapore is not that organised anymore. I am not sure if it is the "Kiasu" nature of Singaporeans (Kiasu, means fear of failure) but standards of driving have dropped here. For example when you are in a slower lane and want to move to the faster right lane and switch on your indicator, the guy who is light years from you, accelerates (as soon as the light from the indicator reaches him) and ensures that you have no space to move in. People do not seem to bother about right of ways and what more, they even show you the finger, when you honk to point out their unruly behaviour. Someone once told me that the soft toys in the rear windows of the cars in Singapore, is to show that the drivers have not "grown up" yet!!
Nevertheless, ever since I have moved to Singapore, I have never got the guts to drive in India when I am visiting. There the traffic light being red is just a suggestion and is not meant to be obeyed always. Everything is relative I guess. This is best demonstrated by those who come from the US. When my friends who come from US spend some time with me on their way to India, they are appalled at the disregard to lanes and other rash driving that they witness in Singapore, but the same guys who spend time here on their way back remark that " it is really nice to be in a place where people follow the traffic rules"!!
Friday, August 7, 2009
Story of the Axe
There are many stories based on the humble axe, like the woodcutter who loses his axe in the river and is given an option by an angel to choose a golden one etc, which teach us about values and morals. There is one other story which really hit home that I want to talk about. While I have told and retold this to many people, I just can't remember where I read it. The reactions to this story has ranged from a "what the hell are you talking about" to " wait a minute, that is really profound". Sometimes some incidents just trigger a kind of epiphany and this one did it to me.
The story as I said is very short. There was once a man who proudly showed his visiting friend an axe and said that this axe has been with his family for almost a century, " we may have changed the head a few times but the handle needed to be changed more often".
That is the story.
Suddenly it hits you that there is not a single thing in that axe, he was showing off, that is 100 years old but in the mind of the friend it is the same axe that has been passed on from his great grandfather!
Take your body. Your body is constantly replacing old cells with new ones. The replacement takes place at the rate of millions of cells per second. By the time you finish reading this sentence, 50 million of your cells will have died and been replaced by others. This is a necessary process in our bodies, some are lost through 'wear and tear', some just reach the end of their life, and others deliberately self-destruct. There are over 50 trillion cells in your body and while I have not been able to find an answer to the question if there are still any cells that I was born with that has not been replaced in my body, I know for a fact that most of them are gone. There are apparently some neurons and muscle cells that are not replaced after adolescence, but you just go one level lower and look at the molecules that make up the cells, they certainly are all different from the time you were born.
So what is the difference between that axe which has lived for 100 years and you? So what is this thing that you call you?
The story as I said is very short. There was once a man who proudly showed his visiting friend an axe and said that this axe has been with his family for almost a century, " we may have changed the head a few times but the handle needed to be changed more often".
That is the story.
Suddenly it hits you that there is not a single thing in that axe, he was showing off, that is 100 years old but in the mind of the friend it is the same axe that has been passed on from his great grandfather!
Take your body. Your body is constantly replacing old cells with new ones. The replacement takes place at the rate of millions of cells per second. By the time you finish reading this sentence, 50 million of your cells will have died and been replaced by others. This is a necessary process in our bodies, some are lost through 'wear and tear', some just reach the end of their life, and others deliberately self-destruct. There are over 50 trillion cells in your body and while I have not been able to find an answer to the question if there are still any cells that I was born with that has not been replaced in my body, I know for a fact that most of them are gone. There are apparently some neurons and muscle cells that are not replaced after adolescence, but you just go one level lower and look at the molecules that make up the cells, they certainly are all different from the time you were born.
So what is the difference between that axe which has lived for 100 years and you? So what is this thing that you call you?
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
why blog?
Frankly I am not sure why I am doing this. Actually that is not true, I am doing this because of a couple of friends of mine. They sent me the link to their blogs and during lunch today, I paid them a visit and wow, I was impressed!
The first one is blogging about software and it is a serious kind of blog, musing about the idiosyncrasies and the complexities of software engineering, very interesting and something I could relate to. The second one was a humorous, satirical blog on various things in life, again something that really entertained and caught my attention. I was impressed and here I am starting my own blog. I hope it is not one of those which just dies its natural death after a couple of attempts! I am sure I can at least aspire to the standards these friends have set!
Well, there it goes the first baby steps at blogging. Let me sign off for now and see if I come back to really start blogging.
The first one is blogging about software and it is a serious kind of blog, musing about the idiosyncrasies and the complexities of software engineering, very interesting and something I could relate to. The second one was a humorous, satirical blog on various things in life, again something that really entertained and caught my attention. I was impressed and here I am starting my own blog. I hope it is not one of those which just dies its natural death after a couple of attempts! I am sure I can at least aspire to the standards these friends have set!
Well, there it goes the first baby steps at blogging. Let me sign off for now and see if I come back to really start blogging.
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