Drishti - the vision

What can be more misleading than the title of this post? The immodest title implies that I have failed only once in my life so far. Nothing is further from truth but I will stick to this as it allows a punchy opening to this post. So unless you have absolutely zero tolerance for lies and poetic liberty, please bear with me. I was once appointed (another lie, in fact I was elected through a political process which left much to be desired when it came to fairness but may be more on it someday later) the Secretary for the English Debating and Literary Club at IIT Delhi, quite a coveted position I must say. And for those of you who have been spared the agony of moving through IITs here is a quick description of how these clubs worked. So we had nine of them in areas such as Hindi , Quizzing, English Debating, Dramatics etc and each of them had a secretary who was elected through a free and fair election (now I have really run out of my quota of lies for the next 7 births) and every hostel ...

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Hello (to anyone who has had the patience to hang around for a long long time to wait for this post). So this one is about winning hearts and minds. Hopefully this post will become progressively clear over the next 300 words or so. I was just talking to a colleague a few moments ago and suddenly I thought I was acting a bit foolish. Helping her more than she would ever expect or imagine. So essentially foolish by our social standards. Now I am not sure if I am generalising too much but I have seen that the society in which we live (or at least untill 10 years ago) valued those who would remain reserved and inapproachable, show up late in meetings and crack jokes that would make everyone else laugh and they themselves would never even acknowledge other'e joke by even as much as a smile. And growing up as corner office aspirant's we tend to copy some of those behaviours as well. Now going back to this colleague of mine, my first impulse was "not to help" and quickly bec...

This morning when I was coming to the office, a guy jumped out of a running bus and only by a hair's breadth managed to avert falling on my car. This isn't the worst of such actions that I have seen but this reminded me of something similar from the past and then led to a chain of (un) connected thoughts and finally to this blog. So during my years at college I used to go home on the weekends and generally carried a small hand bag with me. During one such trips in my first year I had done a similar (to the one by the guy above) stunt and jumped off the bus while it was still moving. This was not the gravest of my sins, what I had done potentially fatally wrong was that I was about to jump off the bus in the direction opposite to its motion. One of the guys in the bus (he was probably a labourer or someone) noticed this and shouted "aage ki taraf, aage ki taraf" (face towards the front) - the words hit me like an arrow with a firehead and flamed in me the thoughts - ...

Ok so here is my promised blog on Ahmedabad trip that I recently made. Most of it will be about Ahmedabad rather than the trip (just a convenient filter for some users who might want to carefully choose what they read). A bit of a history here - I have grown up in Ahmedabad, went to three different schools there and spent almost 8 years in that city. So I used to use IIM Ahmedabad as a landmark to give directions long before my fellow-IITians made it their ambition, goal and all that. Not to say that its value as a landmark is anywhere comparable to its value as India's best B-School but thats just how useful it was to me back then. Not only had I demeaned the status of IIM Ahmedabad by using it purely for the purpose of giving directions but also I had sinned against other great institutions such as PRL (Physical Researc Laboratory) set up by Vikram Sarabhai, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) frequented by Abdul Kalam and what must have contributed to the success of Chandr...

Apologies to those for whom it is a repeat telecast... My Resume Most prominent was the name on the top, though little difference did it make. Even with a Tom Dunst sitting there, Little notice people would take. All the time that I have spent on this earth Sat right there on the corner of the page With a sense of remorse on the years I had lost I looked once again at my age And the days when I had gone to school, And the days when I had earned some glory. Were right there in a nice looking table, Forming the next part of my life’s story. It was all there sitting one after the other My talents, my interests, my skills and my knowledge And placed arrogantly in a league of its own Was the name of my prestigious college. The college days asserted their authority And demanded a line for every year Courses, politics, posts and grades Was all spelled out loud and clear And here it was, a desperate effort To prove my worth to everyone A verbose and glossy account Of all the work that I had e...

I have just returned from my trip to Ahmedabad. It was a great experience but more about that in my next blog. This one is about feedback. I am very particular about safety, so much so that it borders on obsession sometimes. This can be partially attributed to the industry I work in (oil) where all the time you are dealing with a potential mass-destructive bomb and partially to the fact that I believe dying on roads is a waste of life. Anyways, so I took this taxi to the airport the other day. I had ordered a Meru Cab, which is one of the best taxi services available in Bangalore (and also in Mumbai and Delhi I think). They have very high safety standards etc etc (so they claim). But half-way to the airport the driver started to resort to his own ways (which he must have picked up driving call centre cabs - a guess) which included driving at 100 Km/hr without maintaining enough distance from the car ahead and talking on the mobile phone at the same time etc etc. In spite of repeated wa...