I will comeback!!

When everybody seems to undermine you, when everybody seems to have forgotten you. You need to stand and say to yourself "I will comeback".

This is not for the world to look and have pity, this is for you to remember that make these scars count.

I will comeback!!

This buck cannot stop.

Why people can't stop passing the buck. Where will the buck stop? After being quite pissed of at the things at work, i can't stop thinking.
At this point of time, I can clearly remember what Sarda said 6 months ago. He said, " Whatever i've imagined of my professional life, this is far worse than worst of my dreams".
I hate these long hours. I'm not adding even iota of value to myself.
Wonder is there somebody around who can stand up and say, that i will hold this, i will take all the responsibility come what may. But such is the mentality of people that if he fails even in 1% of the cases, they will tell that we already told that this is going to fail.

Is this true for every organization?

Tale of Three Legs..

Tale of three legs…

If the contents were to be anyway related to the title, then you will probably draw a picture of a three legged animal or some thing of that sort. A few ‘good’ men would go a step further, and will put a little more stress on their blue cells, but I prefer more direct ways.

If somebody has to be credited for today’s India’s win over Srilanka, in a match that India so typically turned into another high heart beat encounter, it has to be those three legs that saved the match for India at crucial junctures, time and again.

If you haven’t seen the match, then it’s very less probable that you will get to know about those three legs, which based upon today’s performance should get more sponsors than Dada, Sachin’s bat. The kind of world we live in, Aajtak’s match ka mujrim.. star news’s ho gayi teri balle(bat) balle(bat), package match in a kind of musical melodrama, which would give Suraj Barjatya a run, for his money. These match review shows, use echo effects twice more than the number of times it was used when Mihir came back in Kyunki Saas bhee kabhee bahu thee… because har balla(Bat),wicket, pitch kuch naa kuch to jaroor kehta hain.

The fact that makes them more interesting, is the very fact that people who keenly listen and interpret these chuckles, shrieks were unable to even connect the ball properly with their bats, and hold catches; when billions of Indians were there shouting in the stadium, drawing rooms, street corners, front of TV show rooms, only a few year ago. Saba karims, Nikhil chopras of yester years are guest specialists today, and have atleast 2-3 limos waiting outside studios to rush to another such review show.

Getting back, to today’s match, without extending the suspense further, the three legs I was talking about belonged to Dhoni and Bhajji.. pair to dhoni, Bhajji chipping in with one..

Dhoni’s today innings was so un-Dhoni like, and was one of the first of it’s kind, in many such incidents that were there, for all of us to see, but for few to observe. His innings of 50 had no lusty hits to boundary. Actually it was more of a craftsman, deft at his art, beautifully maneuvering the ball through the Inroads, setu’s of lankan field, and running as if somebody told him, that Dada will get back to the team, if you don’t reach the other end, within this much time. This innings was so different from his innings of 180, against same opposition and pretty much the same belter of conditions, after which the number of children opting milk over cola’s sky-rocketed, and Pepsico, coke had to call in for some marketing, advertising guru’s to tackle Dhoni’s Dhood-o-mania.

The way dhoni ran, not only for his runs but also helping yuraj, pathan to convert singles into two’s, which Indians, not much time before were masters at converting into runouts; was stand out feature of whole Indian innings. In the latter part of the innings, when he was visibly cramped up and was limping badly, he ran with such urgency, yet confidence that it almost made aussie commentators use figure of speech’s that they generally reserve for Gillys Haydens smashing bowlers out of park; Tendulkars, laxmans are an exception, you know.

Dhoni’s pair make it two, but the third and the most timely used leg belongs to none other than Punjab ki shaan, apna sardar who visits zoo often, and has an uncanny penchant towards tailed, human emoting species. Bhajji guided a wide Malinga delivery to boundary with such elegance and class that, for a minute everybody in TV room was stunned with his footwork. A classy straight drive from Tendulkar’s bat, showing MRF logo for exact 2.67 seconds (a .69 sec. more than the time, Dada stares at Puma logo, after getting a nick down to keeper’s throat), wouldn’t have fetched more applauds and astonished gasps, that bhajji’s supremely accurate, well honed footwork fetched in the TV room.

So if you think, it was only this was worth knowing about the match, then you pretty much missed out on some vital stats.. that any statistician in world wouldn’t tell you.

For starters, It was first match of it’s kind, where Tendulkar didn’t adjust his Abdominal guard during the whole innings. Skeptics will claim, that his stay at crease was short, but then we have seen him adjusting it, standing at non strike and getting run out without facing a delivery.

It was first of it’s kind incident, when Dhoni refused a interview, after running that winning double and completing his fifty.

It was first of it’s kind crowd (Indian section) in recent times, where no supporter in the crowd had a cut out of Padukones, Zeintas, Kim Sharmas.

It was first of its kind coverage of Espn star, where no blonde was telecasted adjusting her clothes, putting sunscreen. Discounting the fact that it was a Day night encounter, and no aussie affair, but then shaz and waz were there in the commentary box for almost 3 hrs. I guess they need to get good bino’s or may be get their far sightedness index checked.

And for H-3 TV room Fans, it was first match, event of it’s kind, where a special guest, face was missing in the crowd of 100s.. It was none other our own Akshay(Jha-2), who was so dearly missed in the whole match.

Enduro3

Disclaimer:- All characters, incidents and events in this account are true to their nature and yours truly(y.t.) was present there as an eye witness, only to wake up early on valentine’s day, and present this world with one more of his story’s, in the lack of better things to do...

Abhee to mein jawan hoon…

It all started when y.t., being irked by ‘friendly’ remarks on his ageing bones and habits, decided to show his mettle, and started to look for avenues.

Enduro was always on the cards, specially after last year when i preferred a quiz over it, that too in a course where i finally ended with a DD( least possible grade to pass, offcourse 1000 Rs. as re-exam fee is always an option.. but then the prospects of so many Happy hours are always good).

Enduro, off late is climbing the popularity charts in IIT, replacing events like Froh-Fete et al. in the list of most pseud, 'happ.' events but still is a distant second to AIDS. After, rounds of talks and schedule checking, team TRANSISTORS (Pooja, Nitish, Pranith) was born.. According to some, it was a good balanced team; with somebody like NARRA(it's a household name, in IIT for somebody very strong) as essential as a item number for bollywood flick to click.. and some experience in form of Pooja, who had completed the race before.

Pre – race.

After a week of preparations, which included pasting notes on every other geared cycle parked in hostel, to chasing freshies on one.. and ‘n’ indispensable fundaes, some coming from as far as US of A, it boiled down to two of us(-pranith), hitting the road on Thursday, 7^th Feb. only 3-4 hours later from the scheduled(12:00), but then who expects a elec. Fifthie to get up on time..

(From now on, lets make a simplifying assumption, wherever the team gets behind schedule, y.t. must have been on the centre stage in the thick of action.)

Dadar from IIT, on eastern express highway had it all, from Crossing flyovers, changing lanes, to inviting speed limits; but being on cycle, the only two problems you face are that either the traffic is too fast or it is too slow.

Volvo agents at dadar can charge you anything, for anything, depending upon number of gears in your cycle to which juice stall you head to, mousambi or sugar-cane. Do get everything written on the ticket, coz. Nobody’s boss out there; boss will be a distinctly huge,overpowering guy, who without letting you speak, will complain about you, not listening to him. Everybody in between will try to get a share of his own, in the rent for cycles, just like independents in the cabinet of a coalition government..

Finally the bus started around 7:00 from bby, and so did Dewaana mastana, with chintoo candy ads adding to the party. Journey was pretty good, and same was expected of the cycle ride to harshu’s place, which was a near-by place according to uncle. Little did we know of his high Army standards and were soon wondering whether we would take a fourth right, and life ‘ll go a full circle, fortunately that wasn’t the case and we found our ways into warm, cozy quilts with a glass of hot chocolate..

Drama begins

Day 1:- day started @ 5:00 in the morning, after a round of garam chai and mast parantha’s, we were ready, all geared up for action… the only problem being gears of pooja’s cycle( which weren’t exactly on friendly terms from the start, itself).. undeterred by all these itsy bitsy hiccups.. we reached the More college grounds around 7:00, where almost 500 participants were there already, which was for the first time I felt that it’s a competition with many teams, not only with your ageing spirit. Not surprisingly, there were at least 10 more IIT teams here, with almost third of them having fifthies and final yearites.

Here we were joined with the third and the strongest partner of our team Transistors, Pranith, much was expected out of him, with comparisons already being drawn with The NARRA. Race was officially flagged off @ 10:00 from More grounds and after 40-45 minutes of riding through the city traffic, we reached NDA campus gate, TC-1(time check point). After waiting for an hour there, due to crowding of all teams, and after a can of red-bull(which served as sanjeevani to most of us, in the rest of the course), we started our race@ 12:00.

Cycling was fun to begin with, with beautiful NDA campus, and panschet lake’s water, a sight to behold.. but we were soon found running into troubled waters, with pooja’s cycle’s chain breaking down, which was with me now. To keep pace with team members, I started running with the cycle, asking every team passing by, for the chain link, 1 team really had it, but then you need to be a Tarzan (DEV), a member of fellow mixed team from IIT, to fix it up.

We finished the cycling stage around 5:15 and were 126^th team to reach that point..

Cycling would have been really tough, in the absence of hand pumps spanning the course all the way through (Jai Rajeev Gandhi, for having the vision) and it would have been worse without the effortless services of baby (mayur), a fellow maverick.. salient features of the whole cycling trip was Dev’s rescue act with the cycle, and those little passing by kids, whose one smile, was enough motivating for a further km… kk. 2km’s in case he jeered, and chased your cycle too.. J

Of beacons and Saptarishi’s

We, The knights in shining torches, started trekking around 6:30 with last rays of sun, almost dying. Soon we lost our way, and were atop a hill with almost 15 other teams. Armed with pooja’s wisdom(looking for revolving beacon, for next PC) and priya’s wit(confusing saptrishi, a constellation, with a boyfriend of an iitian girl), we reached koshimgar top(PC-4) around 12:15 a.m. We reached next destination, a ferry point, around 2:00, from there, we were ferried to a point, where we were asked to cross a river, at that time of the night, when it was almost freezing to stand.

Pranith wanted to swim, from the start only, but he wouldn’t have imagined in his dreams too, that it would shape up in this from and at this time. The way pranith and baby did the whole task, with no complaints, was really inspiring. Here we did the mistake of not following the other teams (again :P), which were flagged off @ 2:30 a.m. and started 30 minutes late, joined with S.A.M.’s (sanish, anish and manish).

Race nahi to Dil sahi..

After wandering in jungle for almost 2 hours, we lost our way, and I was no longer able to convince my team to go ahead, (damn those GD’s at campus) the group finally decided to rest in a village, which is surely going to be in headlines for years to come.

The house whose courtyard we used as our araamgah in night, housed some amazingly warm and nice people, who provided us with much needed ‘bed tea’ in the morning.

Day 2:-A bus bound to panshet Dam, our destination, was there standing right in front of us; I’m very proud of our team, who despite watching people board the bus and choosing the easier path, continued with the trek and took the path less traveled. And all of us were rejuvenated with the prospect of coming back to the village “pole” (pronounced pooale), next year as barati’s in singla’s barat. Elec’s class of humor was once again proven to be the best in business, y.t. and chachha doing the onus, this time. but i guess that was more than enough for the rest of the group, who somehow decided not to wait for us, and find their own shortcuts.

But us, (SAM + yt) now loaded with extra burden of responsibilities looming ahead in future, were occupied for most of the part with the list of invitations, possibility of cuisines, to booking tickets to Switzerland (singla, EPFL has a good VLSI lab too), treaded our path silently towards next PC on the motorized road( wonder they must be applying motors to goats, otherwise it was almost impossible even for cycles to make it’s way through)..

Not many achieve, on personal and team front, what singla did with only an hour of conversation at the Fireplace (who needs Golf courses, club houses to talk business and relations). Singla not only won the hearts of damsels but villagers too were impressed by his act of humility, when he offered to open a world class VLSI centre at the prime location in the village. Singla ka bus ek hi sapna, gaon ke har bacche ke pass ho chip apna. MPD ‘ll be proud of you, my boy..

Race against time..

We started at 7:30 a.m., walking around the lake, we made it to the next PC around 10:00 a.m., and then the next around 12:00 p.m., where volunteers gave us fundaes to keep cool, literally too, with sporting towels around neck and head, and didn’t we look like classy Laxman, during his 281 innings at eden. The organizers were so busy, telling us stories of teams gone ahead, that they didn’t mark our time cards, which provided us with some suspicious faces at further points. Next PC was a 10-12 km walk, in not so friendly weather conditions, with sun glaring directly into eyes, but discounting it, the path was not that tough, an early morning start would have made it, more enjoyable. Red bull once again, won some more fans, lifting our spirits for the rest of the trek.

The destination now was pretty much in sight, with reaching koshimgar top and then back to panschet Dam, but then it’s more difficult then it seems, Red & White bravery moment of this whole trip was when pooja refused the lift from the jeep coming from behind.

The final countdown

We reached koshimgar top, the final PC before destination, around 4:00 p.m., here we took a bit riskier path, to reduce the travel time, only to follow people coming from longer path. This was the only stretch, where I, for the first time realized that time was also one of the important dimension in the race. In the end of the race, where we made a target for ourselves to reach before light fades away, each sun ray was as valuable as each assignment's, quiz’s marks in a typical third year core course.

We finally made it to the point where our cycles were parked and we officially completed the Enduro3. After some hurray calls for the team, organizers and the ever merciful sai. We hired a jeep to get back to the city, whose driver seemed to be one of the who’s who of the town, stopping at every km, putting milk cans. The jeep was also one of it’s kind, It wouldn’t start by the normal ignition, needing people to push start, villagers who would start touching the jeep, some how disappeared after a sec. or two, leaving y.t. testing his ageing bones again..

A good dinner, followed by two buckets of hot water, was exactly what doctor (ever so helpful harshu’s Dad) ordered.

Mountains are nobody’s friends, but they give you friends, whom you remember for lifetime, I hope they Do.. :)

If you are still reading this, then there's a high chance, that despite all the follies and lack of brevity, both in my post and course, you would like to go there for yourself. So, there's is a general list of Do's and Dont's that you need to follow..

Do’s:-

1. Sleeping bag is a must. Not everybody has a good fireplace, the likes of chachha, haneef for company to spend the night, together.. J chacha, haneef you must agree…
2. Carry at least 2 pairs of extra socks…
3. Have a good torch, with two extra pair of batteries.
4. Carry 2-3 red-bulls, or any such energy drink.. (they almost drive the sleep away).
5. If lost, specially in the night time, call, whistle for people and once you find them, stick with them because if you keep going in the night, you’ll really have horrible time in the morning, when you actually realize where you are..
6. check your cycles at least 2-3 days before going to the actual race, and test drive them specially after servicing, get a good seat, coz it ‘ll in the butt of the action for the most part..

Dont’s :-

1. Don’t be a Balti… respond to your team mates calls, and be honest. Everybody is tired and let your team mates know, when you are.
2. Don’t argue with organizers, specially in the course of the race, coz they can’t do anything at that particular time, and most of them do it voluntarily. So there’s no point wasting your time.
3. Don’t loose your patience, when things aren’t going the way, you would have wanted to, because it will make conditions worse. Be calm and composed, a little humor always helps. There’s nothing like a faintest of smile on your partner’s face at the end of a very tiring stretch.
4. If somebody says that path is tough and specially, if that somebody happens to be one of the organizers, don’t go by that path, adjectives like little, bit don’t count. If you are out of the race, competition wise, follow time tested path, your insurance agents are otherwise busy too.