The Year 2009

New-year has always been the time to reflect upon the year gone by - the time when lazy people like me just want to sit back in the veranda, relax in the serene beauty of my home town and take a trip down the memory lane. With 2010 dawning upon us, I thought it is high time I pen down the defining events in one of the most happening years of my life, the year 2009.

The year 2009 began on a happy note with my sister deciding to step into a new phase of her life - she had met the love of her life and had decided to get married on the 5th of march 2009. With so little time left for preparations, everybody in the family was in their running shoes always. I still remember our shopping spree in bangalore for her engagement saree, shopping in Chandni Chowk for uncountable sets of clothes for relatives and friends and the innumerable runs to the sabzi-mandi in wee hours of morning to get anything and everything the halwai demanded.

The day after the wedding, I recieved a call from my manager. There was this opportunity to go to a client site in US for a period of 3 months and with everything in place there was no reason to decline it. Thus 2009 got marked as the year when I had my first "foreign trip":-) Those two and a half months in US (march - may) were a blend of joy and boredom - Joy of being in a new place with new people and completely new lifestyle and boredom for lack of company over some of the weekends. This was the time when I visited a lot of new places , tried out some new cuisines but most importantly the time when I made new friends and reinstated old friendships. Can never forget those endless chats with friends back home which kept me sane over those weekends when I had literally nothing to do. Will also always remember the bread and butter of my life over those three months : garden salad sandwich and enchiladas for lunch and khichdi and readymade paranthas for dinner :-)

While the first half of the year was full of masti and fun , the second half was predominantly occupied by introspection - ........ (Will put up the complete post in a few months..)

Time since then has flown fast. Here I am writing this post just 10 minutes before the clock is about to strike 12, the end of a year that brought with it so many goodies sprinkled with a few lows here n there. But that's what we call life and that is how the year 2009 was for me.

Two States by Chetan Bhagat

I had borrowed "Two states- the story of my marriage" (on an exchange program :-)) from a friend and completed it in just two sittings this saturday. The book is good 268 pages thick , so dont undermine my achievement:-). And, yes, thats how captivating the book is.

Two states is the story of Ananya and Krish. It begins with how our protagonists meet in a B-school and fall in love with each other. Reading through their college life sprinkled with combined study sessions, late night phone calls to their families when STD rates are lower, gossip sessions et al. leaves you feeling nostalgic of the days gone by. The story then moves on to how they struggle to convince their respective in-laws particularly because Ananya is a tamilian and Krish, a punjabi. The chapters where Ananya's mother tries to emotionally blackmail her to marry a Tamilian well settled in US or the one where Krish's mother makes him forcefully meet eligible girls in Punjabi community seem so realistic and just right out there.

The book is no literary marter-piece, but the story has the right mix of romance and drama , that make this book a page turner. The characters come alive right from the opening paragraph and are woven so finely that anyone who has been to college will feel a connect with them. If you have been to an engineering college or alike or have had a stint at trying to convince your parents about the person you love, chances are that you will like reading this book.

The Professional by Subroto Bagchi

I have been thinking of putting down my thoughts regarding this book ever since I finished reading it , but I havent been able to do so . Why? One , I was a little too busy last month with hardly any time to spare to blog (yeah, I do get busy at times :-)) and two, I had set really high expectations from this book which unfortunately were not met and therefore the motivation to write about it was missing.But anyway, here I am...

Well , just to recap, "The professional" is the third book by Subroto Bagchi (co-founder, Mindtree) and aims at answering the seminal question of what makes a true professional and what are the challenges in future that a professional should be prepared for. The book no doubt provides a comprehensive set of qualities that a professional should possess encompassing integrity, self awareness, managing volume, managing complexity etc. But, in my humble opinion, it can be treated more as a handbook of professional qualities which would need to be referred to every now and then, as it is literally impossible to remember everything by the time you finish reading it. As it goes with Subroto Bagchi's writings, the book is dotted with anecdotes but there is so little space dedicated to each chapter and so many views , that it ends up getting too preachy.

The good things? Lively stories and lots of them.... If not for imbibing professional qualities, you may just want to read this one for "the larger than life and so close your heart" kind of stories spilled all across this book.

The Professional : Book-reading at Crossword

After "The high performance entrepreneur" and "Go kiss the world", Subroto Bagchi has come out with a new book titled "The Professional", completing the trilogy. There was a book-reading session today by the man himself at crossword. Being an ardent fan of his writings, I was all excited when a friend told me about this session.

We reached crossword just in time and caught Mr. Bagchi at the entrance who was probably waiting for the rest of the guests. Begining the session (well 10 mins late ), Mr. Bagchi explained that the book is all about answering one seminal question : what does it take to become a true professional. He then went on to emphasize two points : One, a true professional is the one who delivers even without supervision and two, that he can certify completeness of his work. Yes I know it doesnt sound too exciting but thats probably because I am not conveying it well. The book it seems is full of anecdotes and real-life stories, just like his previous one's.

And well here comes the interesting part : the guests of honour. Kannada film actor and socialworker, Chetan Kumar and the protagonist of the opening and closing (real life)anecdotes in the book and an undertaker by profession, Mahadeva . Chetan Kumar, born and brought up in the US, came to India on a Fulbright scholarship to pursue his passion for social upliftment and imparting education to the underpreviledged. Mahadeva, on the other hand, after sudden demise of his mother, chose to become an undertaker early on in his life to earn a living.Both of their life stories were truly humble and inspiring and depict true professionalism in Mr. Bagchi's words.

By the end of the session, I had made up my mind to buy the book and read it. Will keep you posted on how I liked it..

Tharoor episode : Political tweeting or chirping?

Shashi Tharoor's recent "cattle class" remarks, in the backdrop of Congress's austerity drive, created a political furore and recieved massive political attention. For the uninitiated, when asked by a journalist if he would travel economy class to Kerela, Mr. Tharoor replied that "he would travel cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows". The use of words "cattle class" and "holy cows" was condemned as insensitive and irresponsible by most of our politicians.

With excessive media hype about the same, I could not resist signing into twitter myself, to gather some first hand information. Unfortunately, by then, the comments had been removed (or was I unable to find them?). So I googled to find the exact meanings and origins of these words. This is how urban dictionary defines cattle class : "pertains to flying economy class (or 'coach' in America) on a flight. It is called this mainly because many people are crammed into such a small space for an extended period of time and most of the time are treated like animals". Basically , it is a common American word used interchangeably with economy class.

At the end of this excercise, when I reflected back on how our political fraternity reacted to this entire episode, I was shocked, once again, by their negligence and inability to think analytically. Now you must be wondering when did this happen earlier. Well, remember Jaswant Singh's book on partition and the political drama that followed? I wonder how many of our politicians actually read his book before commenting on it. Drawing cue from these episodes, I cannot help but point out the tendency of Indian politicians to escalate non-issues. We witnessed this when BJP fired Jaswant Singh for his remarks on Nehru and Patel and just when we thought that it was over, we are seeing this tendency yet again.If you take a look at Tharoor's tweets, you will notice that he is one of those politicians who shares a lot of the information and replies to messages from his followers.These politicians are giving our politics a new dimension in terms of transparency that we have always been fighting for.Its time that other politicians take cue from them and spend their energies on more relevant issues that are awaiting their attention.

Who Moved My Cheese ?

Change they say is the only thing constant in life. Although we all have come across this saying at some point or the other, surprisingly only a few understand what it truly means.More commonly, people (that includes me) think that they already know things and don't need to change themselves.Instead of embracing and adapting to changes, we tend to be afraid of them. This very concept is captured and dwelled upon in this book called "Who Moved My Cheese" by Spensor Johnson.

This book presents an allegory of two mice(Sniff and Scurry) and two little people(Hem and Haw) whose goal in life is to look for cheese to nourish them and to make them happy.After some struggle and running around in the maze, they discover enough cheese to feed them.However, while the mice anticipated and were prepared for the cheese supply to end, the little people settled in their comfort zone oblivious of deplteting stocks. And when finally the cheese got over, Sniff and Scurry moved on to look for more cheese in the maze. Hem and Haw, however, started analyzing who moved their cheese and when would someone else replace it. And the story continues...

What I liked about the story is how you can replace cheese with just anything under the sun: professional goals, personal relationships, and the story still makes sense.And what did I take from this story? - "Old beliefs do not lead you to new cheese" and " The quickly you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese". A cheesy treat to cherish on a lazy sunday afternoon and to remember for a lifetime!

LA trip : In the FantasyLand

Our trip to LA was special in ways more than one : It was one of its kind,something which I had never seen or done before, and second of all it was a girls only trip( :-) just me and Sups) after a looonnng time. On friday morning(the 1st of may'09) we packed our bags and went to the airport to catch our flight to LA .(Just a reflection on the hind side of it being a gal only trip : we could not drive to LA :-( which is supposed to be breathtaking due to looong stretches of roads winding along the beaches).

Anyhow we landed at LA airport at 8o'clock in the morning.Since we had a lot of time in our hand we decided to take public transport to disneyland which was our destination for the day (the 16$ ticket to disneyland from airport seeemed expensive to us considering our flights costed us only 100$ round trip).So equipped with the maps of LA metro transit system and exploratory skills good enough to make even Vasco da Gama shy, we navigated our way and reached Anaheim (where we believed disneyland was) by 10am. But we were in for a shock, when we asked for directions to disneyland at the station.We had reached Anaheim in Long Beach whereas we were supposed to be at Anaheim in orange county.After convincing ourselves that even Vasco da Gama would have made this mistake and cursing who-so-ever names these places, we took another bus to "Anaheim in orange county" and finally managed to reach Disneyland by noon:-).

Being in disneyland was like taking a trip down memory lane and being a kid all over again. Meeting and taking pics with disney characters ( Sally of monsters inc fame, Mini, Alladin) may sound kiddish but we literallly ran after all of them for those pics:-). We saw the making of toy story, went to the haunted house and bugz land and tried out a few roller coaster rides (the kinds I had only seen in TV so far). Fantasyland, true to its name , had rides with special effects based on all time favorite stories of Sleeping beauty, Snow white , Pinnochio and Alice in wonderland. The frontierland had adventures of Tarzen, Indiana Jones etc. The disney live show and street parties were exciting. However, the best part of the day was the submarine ride where we were made to sit inside the submarine and the submarine travelled in the water portarying the story of finding nemo in the water around us : it was amazing. In the evening we checked into our hotel, had dinner at Dennys and came back to see the fireworks. The fireworks were were breathtaking .Well after buying a few souvenirs and still enchanted by the days experience ,we finally retired to our room at midnight.

The next day,although we had decided to get up and leave by 8am, we reached the Universal Studios (Hollywood) by noon (after yet another "LA darshan trip" through Beach boulevard, Knotsberry farm, downtown LA, Newalk, Long beach, Westminster, Compton, Artesia, Imperial, Wellington).And the first thing we wanted to do was to see the Shrek 4-D movie, Shrek being one of the favorite animation characters of both of us.We also managed to get a pic with Shrek and the Lion of Madagaskar fame(dont remember its name).We then went for Studio tour. We were shown some of the studios and sets used in making Universal movies. There were automated sets for scenes with floods, rains, earthquakes : one moment there is an earthquake and everything collapses and the next moment its up again and things like that.It was interesting.We then went for Simpson's ride, the best at universal studios.It was not a real ride but they create an illusion where you are speeding up and fallling down , fighting the rivals and coming out alive : Amazing feeling :-).We then went to Jurassic park set, special effects show and the animal show. We were getting late for our flight in the evening so we quickly bought a few souvenirs and rushed back to the the airport. We reached the airport at 745 for 820 flight. Things were not smooth even after that but thats a different story. We were captivated under the spell of fantasyland and we didnot want anyone or anything to pull us out of it......

A tryst with California

Exactly a month ago , when I left from home to board my flight to "The land of opportunities", I had mixed feelings : I was apprehensive but excited, precarious yet optimistic. I had spent countless sleepless nights wondering what awaits me here.(and unconsciously getting by body clock accustomed to US time :-))

Finally, on 24th of March I landed at SanFrancisco airport. Being unaware of the fact that the airport is right next to the ocean, I started repenting my decision to give up learning swimming in college, as I feared that the plane is going to crash into the ocean and I am going to drown :-). I reached my hotel safely in an hour and by then I had gathered a few impressions. Firstly, it was all impressively neat and tidy unlike what I had seen so far. Second of all, people around were very helpful and co-operative and friendly.

The first week just flew by getting accustomed to the new place,new schedule and new people.That weekend I went around San Francisco with few friends. We went to Point Reyes in bear valley and trekked for about 6 miles in the hills by the pacific ocean. We then stopped by at the golden gate bridge. This is the bridge which can be seen in all the San Francisco's pamphlets, ads etc lit up in its glory.On our way back, we went crooked street (roads here have slopes of the order of 45 degrees and wierdest curvatures) which was followed by a gourmet dinner ( :-)) in a pakistani restaurant.

The next weekend was spent skiing at north star resort in Tahoe. Lake Tahoe is the third largest lake of america and is known for its clarity and oustanding purity.The view at the lake was breathtaking : Snow capped mountains on all 4 sides and an enormous lake with crystal clear water presented such serene surrounding that all I wanted to do was to sit there forever.But as all good things come to an end, we had to come back and get ready for our journey back.And thus flew by my first month in California ......

Unaccostomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

When I picked this book, I was under the impression that this will be another banal story of Indians settled in the west and caught up in an identity crisis . But I din't know that I was in for a pleasant surprise. Well ofcourse, there were all the constituents that make up for an Indo-western masala book but the way it was presented was something which was pretty new and amusing to me.

The book is a collection of stories from different walks of our lives.But what ties all the stories together is the fact that each of these stories brings out something interesting from seemingly simple characters and their otherwise un-interesting lives : An old man falling in love again after his wife's death and unable to tell his children , A sister trying to pull her brother out of his addiction without any support from her parents, A woman and a man meeting again after 20 years but unable to decide for good at the right time , the list goes on..... Read it for yourself. If nothing else it will remind you that there are no "lived happily ever after" endings always:-)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I had heard that Jane Eyre is an all time favorite novel of most of the book lovers. Well, after reading this novel it has definitely become one of my favorites...

Jane Eyre is the impassioned love story of a young girl. Jane, having lost both her parents and brought up in a boarding school , had a childhood marked with struggle.However due to her keen intellect and perseverence she bags the position of a governess to a young child at Thornfield.Inevitably she falls in love with her employer,Mr Rochester.But social standing and class barriers prove to be a hurdle to their blooming love.However, to her dismay she later finds that Mr. Rochester is already married (under some different circumstances). The story then revolves around how Jane copes with the circumstances and finally wins her love.

The character of Jane Eyre is so finely woven that you feel her alive right from the first chapter. .She is portrayed as an independent woman with virtuous integrity and determination that you feel an immediate connect with her. And the writing and plots are so betrayingly modern (quiet unexpected since the novel was written in 1840s) that you are glued to the book till the very end. Must read at least for all the ladies out there :-)

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

"I don't read to gain knowledge about people, places or customs; I read because reading takes me to a new high where my imagination knows no bounds and I am a free spirit without any apprehensions ."

It was on a friend's suggestion that I picked Lolita and it did make a wonderful reading - one of my best so-far. The theme of the book was definitely a revolutionary one and that's why this masterpiece had to wait a good number of years before it finally got published. But then if writers are not free to pen down their imagination without any inhibitions then who else will be.

Our protagonist Humbert, is a forty year old gentleman who loved and lost his childhood sweetheart when he was a kid. The memories of her remained so deeply engraved in his mind that he ended up having several broken affairs and marriages. His life however takes a u-turn when he meets Lolita, a 12 year old girl (actually his step-daughter) and he falls madly in love with her.The story revolves around how he tries to win Lolita, how she goes missing and how he finds her three years later and realises that his love had gone wrong somewhere.

While reading the book, I was shocked and angered to start off, understood the sentiments of the characters as the story progressed and finally felt sympathy and pity towards both Humbert and Lolita (although anger towards Humbert still persisted). What I liked the most about the book is the simplicity in which such a confound subject is presented to the reader.And not to mention the beautiful poetic style of the author which made this book un-put-downable:-).

The Importance of being Earnest

Categry : Play (Romantic comedy)
Author : Oscar Wilde

It was the first time that my entire team (well almost entire team) went out for a play together and what fun it was!!Rangashankara and Evam were showcasing a very famous play by Oscar Wilde - "The Importance of being Earnest". After having read it in high school (this time as part of the curriculum:-)) , I was more than willing and too excited to watch this play . Here is the story.....

In one line, the play is about how two gentlemen win their lady loves and how it unfolds into a comic revelation. The plot is set-up in Victorian era and seems to have come straight out from Jane Austen's novels (in Deepika's words). Jack Worthing, a countryman shuttles between country-side and the city of London for both work and pleasure.To preserve his social standing and due to societal pressures, he takes up the false name of "Earnest" when in city . However to be able to come to London oftener he pretends to have a brother named Earnest in the city .In one such trip to London he falls in love with Gwendolin. Jack has a friend called Algernon, who happens to find out the truth about Jack , goes to Jack's home pretending to be Earnest and ends up falling in love with his ward, Cecily.The tragedy however is that both Gwendolin and Cecily are in love with Earnest (or so to say just the name "Earnest" ). Further spicing up the situation is Aunt Augusta, Gwendolin's mother and Algernon's aunt, who wont allow the matrimony of Jack and Gwendolin, becuase she doesn't consider Jack to be of good socio-economic prominence.How Jack and Algernon convince their lady loves and how the situation unfolds into several comic revelations is what follows..

The play is filled with hilarious moments and witty dialogues.Although the plot is predictable, there is never a moment when you get bored or not feel connected to the characters. In fact we all were too much into the play that the first thing we wanted to do during the interval was to treat ourselves to muffins and tea cakes :-) . And ofcourse if not more, for a split second each one of us thought of going for the auditions which were going to happen the next day :-). A must watch for all theater lovers .....

Watched with my team (Adithya , Anil Ram, Deepika, Jagadish, Karthik, Nithilan, Vivek , Me) on 10thJan2009 at Rangashankara, B'lore.

The Citadel by A.J.Cronin

First published in :1937

Category : Contemporary classic.

Sub-category : Fiction

The Citadel is the story of the journey of a young doctor, on his way up from medical school to becoming a successful doctor. The author A.J.Cronin, himself coming from the same background, presents the situations and weaves the characters in such a way that they appear almost real and relevant even today.

Andrew Manson, a bright medical student, is appointed assistant to Dr. Page in the small valley town near London. Due to his idealism and perpetual strife to stand for the truth, he is not very well recieved in the professional world. The story revolves around how he gets moulded by his profession and is forced to leave behind his ideals to attain success, his moments of self realization and his ultimate triumph.

The best thing I liked about the book is the intricate detail with which each of the chracters and situations is carved and presented. Also unlike the heavy vocabulary that usually gets associated with classics this book is very easy and pleasant to read.