The last one year has been a harrowing time. A constant conflict between 2 philosophies in life - live with what you are blessed with and make a clean beginning. It takes courage to do either of them and stay sane through the thick and thin of the consequences of the decisions- particularly when it involves your career. Another important question that gnawed my mind was - would i apply similar thought process on personal life?

Is our life compartmentalized, with our personality different in different spheres of life or are we living by one central theme of life across all spheres? Deep thoughts and I get to ruminate on them after I decided to quit my current job. Enough is enough and I decided not to stay unhappy and an eerie sense of calm took over once I decided. The prevarication and swings in state of mind came to a halt once I decided to follow my gut feeling. Employment had to satisfy my at the end of a tiring work day. I just decided to leave other variables to work themselves out once I decided on fixing this end :)

 Man decides on some things and time decides on making you look brilliant or foolish in retrospective. Some urgent decisions on personal front also proved to be constraints and I just decided to stick by certain principles and decided I would not want it all. Money and some short term uncertainty was ok but no compromise on personal life or on satisfaction from job. I learnt one important thing in decision making - fix your ends of the puzzle and work your way through the rest of the puzzle. some times it shall be a gamble and let time take its course.

Of course, decisions related to personal life would work out differently not because we are different people or we have different shades. It is because of the stakes attached to the decision. The costs are high due to emotional attachment and that is less in career decisions. After all companies can replace you but for your family you are truly irreplaceable.

The die has been cast and let us wait for life's brownian motion to take the lead..

I did manage to watch a movie at the theatre after a long time, in peace. Given the hype surrounding Slumdog Millionaire with its newly won halo of 8 oscars, it is difficult to resist the temptation to watch it. On to the movie;

The screen play is quite unique with a style of narration of a life's journey blended with some few questions asked in a real time show on television. One has to doff his hat off for the director's style - original & refreshing. From the question about a superstar in a movie (in a cine-mad setting), the movie logically leads to the final question about the third muskeeter which metaphorically maps to his love interest and also happens to be the protagonist's main aim at the current juncture in his life. Every question leads you through the journey of a kid whose childhood has everything scripted wrong - lose parents, caught in the underworld, having to steal for a living and the list of factoids, seemingly unrelated,  adds up to a story and the contributes to the list of questions in the realty show! Well done indeed.

The movie brings to life the travails of an underprivileged child, orphaned, hounded and forced to live a dubious life. The directorial touch is visible in every frame of the movie and he has earned my applause. The relationship between the brothers is well handled. The manipulative elder brother ensures his younger sibling is alive and protected. He also pushes him off the edge of life and also lends some meaning to his life by allowing his love interest out of the villain's lair. The importance of the characters is well etched despite the short stage time they get. The three stages of his life was also well handled and shows the keenness to absorb things around him in the hero and the practical crook his brother grows up to be. It is essential for the characters to grow into their culmination and the direction and screen play is crucial here again.

The technical aspects of editing, back ground score and sound mixing are certainly oscar-worthy. The background music is extremely well directed - appropriate to chases (almost every time they run away from the bad elements, we see the same strain of music lending some good sense of continuity in the lives of the protagonists), subtleties of love, exhilaration etc. The director has shared his space with the music director well and that can be seen the way the music weaves in with the story. The director and music director team seem to have enjoyed a good working chemistry and it shows well in the movie.

Now to the negatives, the english accents of the three main characters was frankly out of place in the last 2 phases of life of the protagonist. Secondly, the idea of meeting up at VT/CST without a specific place sounds very impractical given the sea of humanity that passes throught the place at 5 in the evening. I have lived in the city and cannot fathom if any sensible guy would ask his love interest to meet him with such loose specifications. I also could not understand the malice in the realty show host towards the hero. I did not get the significance of the same, but could accept it as one of the large number of odds, the hero has faced in his life.

Overall, It is a story of hope overcoming all odds in life and leaves a nice feeling in the heart when you leave the movie hall. But it is hard not to squirm in the seat to to be aware of the evils, the underprivileged children are exposed to in today's slums. I am not sure how I would be able to sleep, if I were responsible for the safe living of a majority of the citizenry after seeing the movie. It talks volumes about the soceity's evils- Is any one in power ready to accept reality and do some thing to make lives safer for the children dwelling in our slums. After all, they have been claiming (without fail only at the time of elections) that their heart bleeds for the underprivileged for the past sixty years!

Helplessness can be numbing. I was and am deeply disturbed by the happenings at Bombay. But it is not just the Bombay happening alone - it is the culmination of events in the last one year. Every city had a blast- blames bartered across communities. As rational people we would be forced into look into basic reasons. It is stupid to blame it on a whole community that gave its heroes - Abdul Kalam, the people's president, Maulana Abdul Kalam from 1940s and a bevy of artists from the gharanas who did their bit without wearing their religion and faith on their sleeve. Their service to nation is no less to what even Father of our nation did and not one patriotic indian sees red in hailing them as great leaders including the much maligned right wing (in fact they nominated the people's president only to be replaced by the dumb doll whose only worthwhile attribute is her loyalty to the first dynasty of free india)

What befuddles me is the total lack of focus by the community on issues that are important- education, reforms for women etc which lead to a better employment prospects and better life thereon. But that assumes people want better living conditions- peaceful living conditions. Aggrieved communities preoccupation on being accorded separate civil code, allowing their religious heads to issue fatwas (unconstituional in a great way!), seeing red in everything which is progress oriented is confusing. Is it too difficult to look across the border to see where our neighbour is, with religion occupying the vortex of life? Is it tough  to understand the trappings of clinging to medieval customs that belonged to that age and not this century? The unfortunate masses in our neighbouring nation do not have an economy, industry or anything to take pride in.60 years of focus on hatred can only lead to heavy hearts, oppressed women and borgeoning terrorism. Does it take 50 years for sensible people to realise that religion and state should not mix?

I cannot fathom why our Dr Azad, the people's president, is not the idol for all communities - his greatness is in the fact that his progress, contribution and unquestioned elevation to Rashtapati Bhavan has nothing to do with the fact that he belongs to a community (which thinks it is marginalized) or his faith. India has her faults- the inequalities due to caste, community, economic status, but it is a free civil soceity which has room for people to pursue their ambitions if they put in their efforts. (I was not previliged- was born in a simple family with limited economic means and have known people of humbler origins rising up to heights due to simple focus on one thing- education.) Look at the adulation received by cricketers or film stars- I can promise this is a country which celebrates its heroes for their contribution. We have our faults but this model works well for people who are willing to work hard on securing education. The schools built by Government are not the best, but can boast of imparting decent education. The institutions for higher educations are few, but nevertheless admissions are possible for the people willing to put in the effort and the loans available [I took educational loan and went on to finance my own education for PG]

All in all, I am trying to drive one point - there is only so much Governments can do - build instituions from schools to colleges to reasearch labs. It is upto individual initiative. Look at the one of the other liberal nations - the US. For all its faults- we see a person from its minority community become its elected preseident. It would not be possible to see this day without the fact that the soceity had its infrastructure and opportunities in place. Inequalities exist, deviations happen but the direction is clear -towards a pluralistic soceity as long focus is on development and contributing to the progress of the nation. It is a slow process and people should have patience and determination which our people's president had huge reserves of. Except for the left and the oldest party which swears itself by the first dynasty, I am sure Dr Kalam would be a unanimous choice to lead the nation- and that is a testament to our nation's culture which has embraced all invaders and refugees alike. Can countries where religion lays down the constitution claim anything like this?

For their own good, all communities need to abide by one code and that code is simple human code unaligned to any religion. I guess our civil code is civil enough to accommodate every one but it cannot be right to allow any community to follow its own civil code. But look at those countries which have the religious law implemented in their land. Compare the inequalities and backwardness there and make a rational judgement for humanity's sake.  What does the largest minority community in India want? I always assumed all humans across religions, faiths (or the lack of it) wanted good living conditions for themselves and also allow others to live their lives peacefully. In India we have seen celebrities, cricketers and even the champion of our missile program have been from the community. I still cannot understand the perceived alienation. One has seen that 60 years of India's growth has seen people of all communities grow and people of all communities left behind as well. There is nothing which is a serious problem based on faith or religion except that is the fear built in the minds by politicans from 1947 till Sachar Commission of today.

The politicians who allowed Shah Bano incidents and Sachar Committees are the ones who have held back our development taking advantage of the drummed up fears in their minds. One would like to see some observable change in the thinking of the communities as a whole - like plumping for development and not being treated as a vote block.

What beats me thoroughly

But our left leaning ideologists (?) and Shabana Azmis or Arundhati Roys highlight the plight of Kashmiri freedom of self expression but are they they genuinely interested in those people's development? Can you imagine their standard of life once they are handed over to Pakistan or left alone? The region is replete with examples of states where religion takes central place. - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi. I am sure India is a matrix of cultures. States with distinct cultures are enmeshed well in this fabric. If we do not act now by electing the right guys, We would all be squabbling amongst us - Do not forget we were under foreign yoke for 3 centuries due to this disunity. 

It took me 18 months to write my next blog after graduation from B School. Life outside school takes away so much from your time and energy one cannot imagine. We had a nice baby boy who, took our lives by storm; gave us sleepless nights by making an entry 2 months ahead of time; underwent a surgey on the 70th day since his birth and has made huge strides with his tiny feet. Everything he does takes my breath away and he has been able to garner all my attention and my wife's - to the point where we feel apologetic about spending an evening with out him. For once a really genuine excuse for not not having time to blog, isnt it?

Out first vacation to Ooty followed by his birthday at Thailand were amazing. We also relocated to Singapore for the same firm. It has been a joyous ride with lots of tough choices to make about leaving India- Honestly, no complaints - I am happy to have the options in front of me.

I do have some grave issues on the coner of my mind about what kind of world are we leaving behind for our loved ones - not bothered too much about what we would be remembered as; but what we would have - or would have not done due to which world is worse off to live for my loved little one!

Whew! What a ride. And to think of it, it is over now. My life@ISb enters its last week. All coursework is done and I sit here staring vacantly at my freetime and my next one month which promises to be exciting. I need to shop for setting up my first proper setup in India after marriage. Looking for a house to rent, car to buy, furniture to buy etc shall keep me busy for some time. 

Life since Jan 2006 has been a defining period for me and has tested me thoroughly on my self proclaimed equanimity toward varied degrees of success and failure in life. There have been times when I fallen head over heels in love with the faculty here and enjoyed the learning experience. Special thanks to some of the professors from Wharton and Kellogg who introduced us to the world of finance and the engineering part of the same. The intuition introduced redefined the measure of risk in financial world and the principle of "No Arbitrage".

Amazingly powerful and simple, these concepts pretty much built a strong foundation for all courses I took in finance. I did take some interesting courses in IT strategy, Negotiations and Strategy. The amazing part of the knowledge I gained was the simplicity of the most powerful frameworks. Once you heard it, it appeared to be the most intuitive way of defining the problem. I never dreamt the power of problem formulation in defining the solution!  Powerful takeaways and some humbling interaction with some of the professors whom I would worship for the rest of my life have made this year worthwhile. How much I convert these into solving problems in realworld largely depends on me. After all a school is an institution for learning and I think ISB has done its job and pretty well! 

With the end of the tunnel in sight, my stay at ISB turns very interesting. The holi celebration after placement week was a good vent to the visible relief in student body. Parties aplenty, frolic abounding on campus and lack of drive to walk to lectures pretty much sum up the mood on campus

The air was filled with colors and some interesting fluid flow patterns were captured thanks to some good cameras.

Some times, life takes interesting turns and one is pretty much wonderstruck at the turn of events. I took up a job offer in Bangalore in Fair Isaac (NYSE: FIC). I had not heard about the firm before. It was more like, I liked the interviewer and the job content.

The initial exchanges were followed by what the firm does. I had worked on a rule engine called Jess before and I had done some work in adding features which made it possible for end users to mange the busines rules directly. I had also proposed to expose it as a webservice. The firm had done it at a generic level and productized it. Following it was a brief role play on a project kickoff at client place. Also had a discussion on the processes involved in the integration of such a product with clients' systems. The exchange was chordial.

I had no intention of staying in Blore where area under potholes exceeds the area under fine tar; the number of signal and vehicles mutliplied with every second. I had been vehemently against life in a city whose infrastructure is creaking on all seams. But I knew I wanted to shift from IT services where one works with close to zero differentiability as another brick on the giant wall - one among the million software engineers. But I had no clue where I wanted to land keeping in mind, my past experience and skills I thought were transferable.

The idea of working under managers, who would promise by the fire that walking in after 11AM with red eyes is your acid test of sincerity, and the only yardstick for better performance appraisals was making me sick. My worst fears were falsified in one stroke, as it seems today. Time will tell whether this is an intelligent decision. I am joining the firm after interviewing with a boss who sounds reasonable and far away from the managerial culture that plagues Indian IT industry.

I took few moments to reject Bus Dev offers in the US to accept an offer in Bangalore, an apology for a metro, in terms of infrastructure and road;  but otherwise one of the best cities I have worked in. I look forward to living again in Bangalore with trepidation. I shall record my travails of settling down in an expensive place with a prevalant racquet in housing - the deposits etc. The compromises one works out in life have never come out in the light so blatantly for me to settle in a city gunning for job content. May the force be with me!

Six weeks back I saw some real action in ym life. I welcomed my wife and surprised her with flowers, some exceptional floral arrangement - thanks to some real sweethearts from my batch - and by turning up at the airport on time, not necassarily in that order! My wife was flabbergasted and was ready to drop dead as each surprise unravelled. Three years of marriage had spoiled me and I had shamelessly become so dependent on my wife. As usual, shamelessness comes naturally to me and I was so happy to have her back.

The school gave me all the time in the world to spend time with my wife; well I decided it would be so. After all, these sweet years would not come again and I would not give up the glorious young present for a fortune in future! The second and third terms saw me consoling myself about my inability to convert knowledge into grades. It took me some time to realize that I had to put in some amount of effort and hopeless romantics like me would yearn for the perfect grading system till the cows come home. Was it a problem with the system? I did not think so- Any system would have its pitfalls and I just was not ready to focus my efforts towards grades, whatever they meant.

Moving from grades, my second term break was wonderful and we traveled to Kanyakumari and neighbouring villages. I, hailing from that part of the country, always loved the place and its hospitality, rustic charm and the respectful dialect which one does not come across in the hustle of the metros. Amidst the roaring seas, stood majestically the rock memorial for Swami Vivekanand. The last time I visited the place, I had completed high school and that was 13 years ago. Time had flown and I could count the number of sunrises I enjoyed in this period. Staring at the sea idly for hours long, was something I loved doing and I always thought of the time when the shore would just refuse to welcome the waves out of sheer boredom! A part of me yearned to see more sunrises and more of nature as I realized how improbable it would be only made me sadder. 5 more terms and I shall get back to the routine which I escaped with much difficulty for an year!

Last week was eventful for all the wrong reasons. My age old habit of procrastination triggered an impending doom in the mid semester exams. Trying to cram in the last minute ensured that I would not do as well as I could. There were a list of funny incidents following that. The batch of 400 took the exam badly and had done some funny mistakes. The exchanges/dialogues/ pretence of a dialogue showed the immaturity of the students involved.

The crux of the issue was that, a majority of the batch was not well prepared and were given a reality check. Being used to the system of autonomous colleges where the professor is the deciding authority, I found it completely natural that the professor set a tough paper and happens to the deciding authority. After all, to retain the best brains in academia, one needs to grant them the autonomy to grade the students, as they deem fit.

A section of the students felt that if the majority of the students could not perform well or overlooked some crucial things in the exam, the system of evaluation had to change!! Bordering on the atrocious where the exchanges between the fledgeling GSB and some of the wannabes on the one hand and the professor on the other hand. It just brought the inherent attempts to beat a system which has proved successful in transforming people. After all, does the fact that majority people do the same mistake justify it? The populist mind set (take off from the recent elections, I presume) and the impending elections for the student body brought out the fake candidates who played the popularity card.  

Attempts to beat or circumvent the system shows clear lack of character on the students' side. Afer all, in my previous entry, I had mentioned about the politicians who took the easier way of expanding seats in premier institutes. This bordered on the ridiculous, as did this incident. Some one mentioned that the leaders represent the population that elects them.. well so it was to be!

Well, two happenings captured my attention and increased my worries for India as every citizen should be duly worrying, hearing about the two announcements. The first one is the populist election in Tamilnadu and the second one is the re emergence of Mandal.

When one observes the populist election campaign where freebies were vigorously offered, one is tempted to ask the question - whose money is it anyway? It pains more when the finance minister fumbles on national television about how his coalition partner is going to meet the promises made. I can see the FM smiling once the cameras are off with one point in mind - who the hell said poll promises are meant to be kept'. The more relevant point is, who cares about the tax payer. Let us look at the poll arithmetic. The proportion of people who pay taxes are less than 2% of the population. But the 98% gets to vote and elect governments. If you were a politician, whom would you care for?

We have seen umpteen politicians getting away with attrocious appropriation of tax payer money in the garb of RobinHoods and this malaise is here to stay till the day we have most of the stakeholders becoming tax payers.

The next best (or the worst) thing that rattles my mind is the reemergence of Mandal. The venerable prime minister and ex Governer of RBI seems to think that opening more IITs or converting existing colleges to  IITs would help provide opportunities to all. I dont know when the wise and sagacious thought that IITs are some magic wands that transform frogs to princes, boys to knights and morons to geniuses. Pardon my language, but IITs are not magic wands. They are what they are because they do not compromise the entry criteria. If one could create IITs by building some structures and run the sham of educational business (politicians can only make this worse), by now why did not the multitudes of engineering colleges not score as well as the IITs. Mr PM, we do not suffer from lack of quantity, we suffer from lack of quality. The ones whom opportunities are denied to, are the meritorius ones and the ones who had the chance if provided the right environment in childhood.

One needs to address the basic problems in our school system. The learned FM seems to defend the indefensible and the learned PM and the motley bunch of crooks around him who dont have time from the busy schedules of staging the next act of sacrifice seem to propogate the increase in IITs. One wonders about the levels of sanity of the people who voted these guys in. Well, after all the it is the set of people who have right to vote a government which would loot the guys discharging duties by paying taxes. From every one according to his ability to every one according to his need! Just that we have 2 in 100 who provide for the 98 who would elect people who would hang the 2 hapless guys in a noose made not to kill but only to strangle. Arithmetic sucks