"If..."

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it...


--Rudyard Kipling

PS : Thanks to Gayathri for introducing me to this amazing poem!

Bundles of joy

There are clothes that you love and then there are clothes that you cherish...Your favorite (and lucky!) bottle green t-shirt, the magenta saree you so love to see mum wear, brother's blue cotton chequered shirt (which you loved dhapofying when he wasn't around), dad's favorite pair of socks... along with the favorite faded blue jeans - clothes that evoke warm memories - all bundled up in granny's orange cotton saree... (which acted as your own personal comforter in times when you most needed it)... packed to be given away.

Clothes that bring out memories, clothes you'll recognize even when you look at them after ages, clothes that remind you of loving people, places and events in life...

Your bundle of joy, now ready to give security, comfort and joy to someone else...

Pass on clothes, books, toys and things you don't need/use and let your bundles of joy be a reason for some one else to find much more than happiness...

Today there are many NGOs which help in collection and redistribution of stuff, from places of excess to places where they are are required - a noble task indeed.

Some of these NGOs include :

VanVasi Kalyan Ashram : This is mostly managed/run by volunteers from in/around Kalyan/Dombivli. Every Diwali, they set up a stall at Sarvesh Hall, Dombivli (E) to accept donations in the form of clothes, books, food grains, essential medicines etc. These are then given away to the lesser privileged people of Devbandh, a village in Kalyan district. If you talk to these people, you'll realize how systematically they sort and redistribute stuff, an awesome lesson in Management!

Goonj - They primarily collect clothes and redistribute it to the under-privileged. More on their work and collection centers at - http://www.goonj.org

PS: These are just what I am aware of, there are many more such people/NGOs out there..what is needed is just the willingness to pass it on...

A Diwali Wish

Let the light of a million lamps brighten up lives...let it illuminate every dark corner, let it banish away darkness, bitterness and sorrow forever...

                          Source : http://www.worldmostamazingthings.com/2010/10/diwali-deepavali-festival-of-lights.html

Let it shed light on all cross-roads and help us make our own way, let it shower brilliant starry specks in the night sky and make us realize our dreams...

This Diwali, let there be Light...:-)

Direction-less

PS: This is a "pre"-script...(no idea if such a word exists, merely had to warn you that this is one of those TOTALLY random posts I often come up with, and one that you can choose to safely ignore...plus it also rhymes with the usual "post"-script PS)

Have you ever felt lost? As if you are in the middle of a vast desert with dunes and dunes of yellow sand stretching away on all sides...As if you are stranded on a tiny island with miles of blue ocean staring at you till as far as you dare to gaze... As if you are in the middle of a crowded street, standing on the divider with vehicles buzzing past at full speed in both directions - caught like a deer with headlights in its face, rigid, incapable of action...

As if you have been given a map without any specific destination, a map that seems to change directions randomly at will...As if you are caught in some weird time-warp and everything seems to go on either in slow motion or in fast forward mode...you are either just dragging away the day routinely doing stuff you are supposed to do or are whirring away in your own sweet world at fulll speed, your thoughts sometimes switching at the speed of light, quite oblivious to what's happening around you...

But then again, isn't this what they told you is supposed to happen - that the journey is more important than the destination itself?
Maybe, perhaps it is true...that being direction-less is indeed a blessing...but at this point, all I badly need is a compass and the safety of relying on that li'l black pointer...

Follow your dreams

Came across this poem on a blog.

If while pursuing distant dreams
your bright hopes turn to grey
don’t wait for reassuring words
or hands to lead the way.

For seldom will you find a soul
with dreams the same as yours.
Nor often will another help you
pass through untried doors.

If inner forces urge you
to take a path unknown,
be ready to go all the way,
Yes, all the way alone.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t
draw lessons from the best;
just dont depend on lauding words
to spur you on your quest.

Find confidence within your heart
and let it be your guide.
Strive ever harder toward your
dreams and they won’t be denied.

-- Bruce B Wilmer

One last time...

One last time I want to hit snooze until it's 9.25 on the clock. One last time I want to go tap-tap-tap at A#43 and ask a sleepy K to come for breakfast ASAP. One last time I want to be woken up by K knocking away at my door and me requesting her to let me sleep for 5 more mins. One last time I want to have a night out and walk back to the hostel early morning, to have fresh hot breakfast. One last time I want to sit at my favourite spot in the mess near the window,with upma+sev+corn flakes and a tumbler of hot chai and day dream like there's no tomorrow. One last time I want to forget about the time and have debates/discussions with S&M over any arbit issue @ the breakfast table. One last time I want to read and funnily interpret our horoscopes in all the papers@h11 with C&K. One last time I want to wait at the bus stop near h11, start walking after some time and watch an almost empty tumtum drive past just as I reach staffH. One last time I want to buy the (now rarely adrakwali) chai and 'tilwala' biscuit at Badlu. One last time I want to go to shakti with P and gorge on the unexpected puranpoli/thalipeeth special on the menu. One last time I want to be a part of the registration frenzy at ASC. One last time I want to get frustrated attending calls from Mr.K during MtechApp. One last time I want to doubt the mtechapp algo, spend a long time decoding it with P, only to conclude (for a hundredth time) that 'we should be trusting our algo'. One last time I want to request a song, ask for biscuits or some munchies at teatime@asc.

One last time I want to skip a heartbeat as soon as I see an unread email from my guide in my project folder. One last time I want to have a meeting with sir, discuss/brainstorm/nod, come out confused, totally blank, go in and discuss the same thing again. One last time I want to work like crazy on a paper deadline. One last time I want to forget to eat/sleep/bathe and pore over the bug in my code. One last time I want to curse the traffic and autowallahs at Kanjur for not plying till IIT. One last time I want to carry heavy bags and a laptop and get frustrated looking for an auto at Vikroli on a rainy Monday morning. One last time I want to tease (the now working from 9am-3am) D as Mr.Cinderella because of that one rdb project. One last time I want to have Saturday snacks@mess with C&K. One last time I want to promise C/M to go swimming @6.30 and doze off. One last time I want to swim in the rain till the sky and the rain blurs and merges into one. One last time I want to sit by myself and read a book by the lakeside. One last time I want to take off on the lake side road on a breezy evening and meet AM on her daily walk. One last time I want to go just in time for the aarti at DeviTemple. One last time I want K to forget her room keys,watch youtube lockpicking videos and try breaking the lock on her door. One last time I want to share my craziest ideas/whims/fancies with C. One last time I want to go for aarti@Siddhivinayak and dinner@Visawa with K. One last time I want to go to M's lab and raid her lab 'kitchen'. One last time I want to go on a shopping spree by myself to dmart and crosswords. One last time I want to have crispy roomali masala and sizzling brownie@gullu. One last time I want to (try to)whistle 'kisiki muskurahton pe' (out of tune ofcourse, it's me afterall!) and do the step-dance with K on A wing ground floor. One last time I want to get and give peptalks during placement season. One last time I want to bug D and pull his leg over silly issues. One last time I want to say (and believe) 'sab moh maya hai' during trying times. One last time I want to trip on the uneven road on the way to hostel. One last time I want read athvankar mam's warning of stopping the stipend and rush to sign the kresit attendance register.

One last time I want to zooom down the slope to hostel on my blue bicycle. One last time I want to order a cheeseburst pizza and watch FRIENDS re-runs with C&K and laugh till our sides ache. One last time I want to sit @the porch lazily on a Monday morning, reading newspapers and watch the sprinklers water the hostel gardens. One last time I want to come home dead tired, drop down on the bed and find the moon peeking at me through the window. One last time I want to wake up to the glimmer of powai lake outside my window. One last time want to relive the past three years of my life. One last time...

PS: One last time I want to wait impatiently with A and wish the clock on the asc wall ticks as fast as it can. One last time I want to hear A say his golden words 'ayushya asach asta...*sigh*'...'

Moods of the ConvoHall

The ConvoHall has always mesmerized me...

The very first time I entered it was for the MTech intro and orientation programme...where the very sense of "being there" was awesome.

The next time I remember going there for an HSS exam...huge rows and rows of students writing away merrily (merrily because it was non-tension non-graded (pass/fail) course :-) ) while the fan ad the digital clock ticked away (merrily) :-)

Little did I know that the "merriment" was short-lived (Okay, not exactly "short-lived" - two years to be precise :P - because the next time I saw the ConvoHall, it was in a totally different mood!

Damn serious, damn competitive, damn demanding - December 2010 - Placement season.
I have to agree though that it also became our virtual/pseudo/alternate home...with us spending all our time eating,drinking ,and even sleeping there.

Cut to 18 Jan 2011, almost a month and a half later.
Event : Annual InSync Dance Fest.

When I saw ConvoHall today, boy! Was it different!!
I couldn't even recognize that this was the serious place where we gave the innumerable placement tests at various ungodly hours ranging any time from 5.00 AM to 1.00 AM. This was the very place where we took turns sitting at different rows/blocks so that even if we didn't manage to clear the test, at least we could boast of having viewed the stage from all angles :P (And the no of tests ensured that every one had a fair chance to sit at almost each and every block and row of their choice :P)
This was the very place where we had cribbed about the seats being too far from the desks and how writing in such a scenario was difficult, let alone solving a test paper. And now the same people were dying to grab the same seats!
The same place where the mosquitoes that once troubled us, were no longer an issue
(I remember a friend, during placement tests, saying that you should sit in relatively crowded row so as to minimize the probability of mosquito bites :P)
The place where the ticking of the clock that was SO vital a month back, was nowhere to be heard amidst the cries of "Sheila ki Jawani" and "Get out of your Mind" (All right, there's no ticking - it's a digital clock, but I so wanted to use the phrase for "effect" ):P

The difference in the mood, the people, the lights, the energy was so vast that when the audience burst into applause at the Lavani dance "Mala Jau Dya na Ghari", I could not help but laugh at the irony of how aptly this song captured our sentiments just a month and a half back, at the very same venue and almost the same time as well! All of us were yearning to go back and saying "Ata vajle ki bara" (literally!) after the series of continuous back to back tests that ran long until after midnight.
(For the non-Marathi junta, "Mala Jau Dya na Ghari...Ata vajle ki bara" is a popular Marathi film song meaning "Let me go home...it's past midnight now" )

Seriously, I have never before experienced such extreme and opposite emotions and elements in a single place within such a short period of time !!!


With this also came the realization that in a few months (hopefully) I'll be here once again, albeit for a totally different reason. This time too the emotions will run high, it'll once again be a-once-in-a-lifetime feeling - the Convocation! :-)

I guess every one identifies with the ConvoHall, the one place that is capable of rendering a plethora of emotions - over-awing orientation sessions, inspiring lectures from the very best minds, tensed placement tests, enthu Dance Fests and of course - the ultimate and very solemn - Convocation.

A heartfelt salute to the one place that always makes my heart thump and gives me goosebumps!

Kites, Camels and Krishna

A very happy 2011!!!

I got to welcome the the new year in a new city - Ahmedabad - the city of Kites, Camels and Krishna...:-)

Every city has its own unique flavor - its culture, history, climate, food and people make it a totally one-of-its-kind combo.

Ahmedabad city : first look from the railway station.

The first thing that leaps out as soon as you step out of the station are the auto-rickshaws - bright green and yellow, a fresh welcome from the "taxi" black and yellow ones here...

Another prominent thing was the numerous vibrant kites lined up in a riot of colours along shops in the street. Also got to see the "manja" in making... along roadsides - between two rotating wheels, and lines and lines of colorful thread spinning away merrily! Ekdum jhakkas!


IIMA - saw the campus from the outside!

What stood out in the city were its rows of quaint little pretty bungalows - complete with a lawn,garden and a swing - making me wish I owned one!! *sigh* ;-)

Peacocks - everywhere : from hotel motifs, kurta patterns to real ones along a particular stretch of the road (not kidding!) :-))

Camel carts : saw these quite frequently along streets, as conspicuous as horse carts in some parts of our city.

Gandhiji: Visited the Sabarmati ashram...will write about it soon.

Awesome tea and coffee : everywhere from roadside canteens to hotels to railway-ka-chai...normal tea was always spiked with masala - u needn't specify a "masala" chai! Ah, loved it! :D

Traffic : We named it "manmaani" traffic - thanks to the "manmaani" of the autowallahs, car-drivers and bikers who ignoring the presence of traffic cops and signals alike, continued to go about their way as they pleased.

Narendra Modi : staring out from posters and ADs promoting a "vibrant Gujarat 2011" - won't get into the politics and all, but you couldn't ignore the presence of this man - almost everywhere in the city.

Akshardham temple : Housed in huge grounds - the infamous terrorist attack spot.
But inside the temple, it was pure serene calm - almost making you disbelieve that such cruel and heinous attacks could have taken place within such environs...

Krishna : It was almost synonymous with the city, with every other shop/stall/hotel named after the God.

The food - TOTALLY deserves a separate post! :D

Have a wonderful and rocking 2011!