Be polite everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle !!

          It was a Monday morning, as usual I felt sorry for myself, thought about various task clients may have allocated after I left early on Friday eve, but to my surprise, I had no work. I was frustrated again, now due to the fact that I don’t have anything to do today. I opened my Google reader and started reading out various articles and it made me think about my life. What I want from my life? My friends and family? What is my fear and most importantly why do I get angry on little things??

          My mind immediately began to ponder over past incidents and I started to get answers for my questions and these answers mainly included words like my EGO, expectations, dual standards and not being true to myself. Let me explain this with examples.

          Last weekend I was at my home town for short vacation. I was waiting for a friend, she was late as usual. I was irritated by the fact she never managed to come on time, not once (we know each other from past 6 years). Finally she came; I knew she might have gone late to parlor or been busy attending her phone calls.so I had not asked her about the reason but chided her for coming late somehow tried to pretend calm. She knew I was frustrated, angry at her but kept silent. We decided to go for movie but again I could calm down myself. I was there for more than 2 hours but still irritated. In effort to change my mood, she suggested having some food and I replied- “You can rule my life at your turns, now I will decide when and where we will be going”. Then we had some chat and finally after 4 hour, I was normal. We went for dinner and at the end, just to pull her leg, asked why she was late?

          She told me, she had terrible headache last night, so went to her brother’s place where she had fight with her sister in law. Then she came to her place and started cooking for me (as I don’t like eating outside often), she still had cold but she wanted to cook for me. In between she booked movie tickets for us. Her father called her and informed her, last guy she had visited as marriage prospectus had rejected her and her mother was angry her (somehow she always finds faults with her daughter). After all this, she left for the rendezvous, on her way she met with her ex, who was with her wife. Emotions jamming her mind, her phone rang, now her boss (on Saturday evening) and started to ask explanations for the escalation client just have thrown. Now she was feeling all “Disturb!! Disturb!! Disturb!!”

          She came to see me and you heard the rest of the story. I didn't have courage to ask her what she had prepared. Feeling the guilt, I reached her bag, took out the tiffin and started to eat. Only one statement was echoing in my mind. 

Be polite everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle !!

          Sometimes we expect a lot from someone and if that person fails to satisfy our expectations, we start to blame them. We are not even bothered to find out the reasons why he or she may have done that. We (at least me) never try to understand others situation and what they are going through. We have become so judgmental and demanding we tend to forget what other person might expect from us, they might have their own set of problem, own expectations. In fact, he/she might need us more than we need him/her.

          If you are mad at someone for some reason, sit with them. Ask what they are feeling (don’t be judgmental unless and until you know everything). Speak out and let them say, listen them and if necessary we always have lot of time to get mad at each other.

P.S. I have not mention name of the any character in story this might not be my story or may be it’s all imaginary stuff . But feelings behind words are true. It’s better to think before reacting rather than regretting those actions or reactions later.

Mentors.....

Had thought about writing something on this long ago but was not able to put to gather respect in words. It's just that every time i sat down to write, i felt paralyzed. Where should i begin? every time i started to write something, i'd read over it and it didn't seem right. So i'd tear it up and promise that i'd start over again the next day. But one day just kept turning into the next and then , too much time had passed.

I would like to start the post with a short story. 

"It was hostel canteen of an engineering college. As it was semester end examination time everyone was busy preparing and discussing exams,subjects and course content. Karan was one of those student present in the canteen. But he was lost in some thoughts. He was thinking of skipping semester end exams with a fear that he was not ready for it. It's not that he has not read anything or he was dull. But he just came back from home completing last rituals of his dad. He was brilliant student and had learnt the whole subjects through out the semester But i would say it was the lack of confidence. He was part of crowd but was lost in his own world of thoughts with lots of confusion.

There was one more person existed in crowd with having thought of skipping exams. He was Ravi . He was having same confusion due to some other reason. Both were sitting opposite to each other busy eating their lunch. Suddenly Karan asked Ravi why don't you have any reading material with you, have you completed everything? Ravi replied in low voice that he was planning to skip exams. He had make sure that no one was listening him. Skipping exam in first semester of engineering was equivalent to crime. Karan replied that he was to thinking on same line. 

After completing lunch both them went outside of campus. They have watched movie , have roamed around city and had dinner at some highway dhaba. Both returned to campus late in night. Exam in engineering college is like festival. Most of the students were gathered in single room of friend and were preparing for the exams. These both guys have decided to skip exams so they went back to their room and collapsed on bed.

Aarif was student of 7th semester of same college. He had excellent record in college and already been placed in some multinational. Aarif and Karan were from city and they know each other. News of Karan was skipping exams reached to Aarif next morning. Campus was like home for students and they were like family such news can spread faster than 3G speed. Soon after hearing news Aarif rushed towards the room of Karan. He was still sleeping on his bed as he didn't want to attend exams.

Aarif had woke him up and asked him to wear shirt and follow him. In engineering college campus seniors gets more respected than Professors. Without arguing much Karan joined Aarif with puzzled look. It was 9:00 and exam was scheduled on 9:15. Aarif have rushed towards the exam hall with Karan. He had drawn 2-3 pens out of his pocket and asked him to attend the exam and write down  what ever you know.

As soon after reading first question Karan was like yeah...i know bit about this let me write it down first and then second and third. He had completed paper with a great satisfaction. He has attended almost 80% question. Same was the case with other paper. Karan has completed the semester with B+ grade and completed his engineering with same. He is now working with some very good company with handsome package. It was due to Aarif. He had mentor Karan on right time. When on the other side Ravi didn't get that much needed mentoring . He had skipped the exam and went in depression. He didn't completed his engineering and lost somewhere in the crowd of unemployed youths."

The story ends here. But there are many Karan's and Ravi's are there but very few Aarif's. It's important for every Karan's to get mentors in form of Aarif's. 

I too have many mentors in my life (touch wood). I have always been lucky to get someone to mentor me as and when needed. Be it school, college or company.  

Many time i have tried to cry when i couldn't take it any more.

 But they have helped and taught me to get back and roar....

 I would like to mention their initials....( ab,db,sv,no,uc,tp,ht,hp,sj and last but not least mg.)

Thanks guys to be there for me.... at some stage of my life.

Innovation competition - Part 1

Innovation competition

So after a long time got a chance to write and publish on this topic.

Had thought about writing something on this long ago but was not able to put to gather those magic moments in words. It's just that every time i sat down to write, i felt paralyzed. Where should i begin? every time i started to write something, i'd read over it and it didn't seem right. So i'd tear it up and promise that i'd start over again the next day. But one day just kept turning into the next and then , too much time had passed.

It was the first time i have took part in such competition. Even it was the first such competition held at my office. Competition to find innovative ideas, discuss it and present it in front of jury.

It was just my good luck to be part of such unique team. As per one of the member ours was the complete team with lots of diversity. We had one developer, one QA, one documentation expert and one architect in our team. We all were cab mates and one fine evening one of the member came up with idea that why don’t we participate in it. We were travelling from GNR to AHD and without much discussion all were agreed to it and we had beautiful days and life long memories.

We used to spend 2 hours daily in travelling and we have decided to utilize those two hours to discuss the idea. One of the senior member had suggested that first we have to zeroed down on problem statement. Then we can start thinking about solution of that problem. Let me correct bit innovative solution of that problem.

So we had started looking for problems we used to face in our day to day life... There were plenty of them but i don’t remember all of them or say all of them were not that much important. I have listed down few of them which had some funny discussion associated with.

First one is traffic problem. One of the team mate suggested that in Ahmedabad we have very big issue with traffic. Certainly all were agree with problem statement. So after that we had started discussing about solution and that discussion was the one of the funniest part of the competition. One of the friend suggested that traffic issue is result of our typical Ahmedabad mentality.

For normal people....

Red light - stop, yellow means stop watch and go.....green means go.

For ahmedabadi people....

Green means go....yellow means go fast and....red means.... (check if anyone is looking otherwise) go very fast...

So very basic solution is to stop them forcefully at traffic signal. What normal people think about the situation...well that’s not important we were not normal not at that time at least. One member of team came up with idea. Let’s install spikes at each traffic point. When signal turns red Spikes will come up on the surface so vehicles can't break signals. Just like German cops use to stop criminals. I don’t know how this spike turned into iron grill which block the road entirely. Now that was the rule of discussion that when one team member suggest solution other team member have to throw counter arguments about solution. So one more member had said that what if street cow or dogs tries to cross the road. In this case we will have barbecue :p. I just have small smile while writing this but believe me we had a quite 5 minutes laughter on this during that time of discussion.

I don’t exactly recall all the point of discussion but at one point of time we also had one of my friend suggested idea of creating fighter train. She was just like we have fighter plane...fighter ship...but how come no one had idea of creating a fighter train. All of us were just listening and suddenly I woke up with statement like "but train runs on track...its route will be very predictable and how can it fight...."... I know it seems very normal to read this line but again you have to believe that the expression on my face and that situation was damn funny. Again we had quite good laugh on this topic at that time and many a time down the line during this last one year.

There were few more funny topics like smart fridge and bio luminous something something....but i don’t recall any funny incident related to those topic. Only funny part i remember is the image of Chinese girl which one member had shared with us. I can also recall one more incident and destructive idea but someone will kill me if i write it over here.... :p

Then we also had lots of fun after zeroed down on topic . But let me limit this post to topics we have not considered for presentation. I will cover that topic and funny moments associated with them in my next post.

Thanks a ton for giving me few memorable moments of my life.

P.S. I have tried many time but was not able to write .....I have started many times but abandoned idea soon after writing few lines. Right now I am uploading this while sitting on highway having coffee in hand. After fantastic start of week i have spoiled it. Starting of the week was so perfect that I can never imagine but as always i have spoiled it.... regretting it now.....there are many happy moments associated with this and I don't wanna loss any of them by any chance.....