Farewell to Pillars of Team Sanskrithi

It was an emotional event indeed because the founders of Sanskrithi, the greatest cultural team that ever walked (to be specific, ROCKED) PESIT campus were about to graduate and leave the dance troupe. The least we could do is to bid a heartfelt farewell to them.

Credit goes to Rashmi who took the initiative of making the arrangements from booking the party hall to designing the collages to buying the gifts to our beloved seniors. 3 Cheers to Rashmi.

Shweta took up a tedious responsibility of compiling a short movie or a video clip describing Team Sanskrithi’s achievement. The video gives a sneak peak of Sanskrithi’s path from a humble start to a humungous leap to USA. 3 cheers to Shweta....

End Note : 

We, the junior team bade farewell to 6 seniors who graduated this year. But unless I’m very much wrong, there was this 7^th person in the group who had already decided (with 100% surety) to quit the team with these seniors because for that person “Sanskrithi is Raghu, Nisha and Chithra”. I bade a silent farewell to that dancer as well. 

Stop Speaking and Start Doing...

Yet another time, the terrorists have tried to shake the mighty Indians.  Today's well organized attack by the "Deccan Mujahiddin" terrorist group on the Economic Capital of India, Mumbai has worried me like never before. If you ask me why, India's Anti-Terror Squad (The ATS) is located in Mumbai itself !!

 

Some facts that I gathered from Websites like NDTV and NowPublic :

• Places attacked : Trident Hotel, Taj Hotel, Nariman House, Wadi Bunder, Cama hospital, GT hospital, VT station, Bootleggers pub, Girgaum and Metro cinema.

• Many foreigners have been held hostage by the terrorists.

• More than 100 people have been killed so far, including nine foreigners

• "Gunmen wanted anyone with British or American passport" says an eyewitness.
  

• English cricket team currently touring India has cancelled its remaining matches and decided to return home after a Briton was killed in the Terrorist Attack.

• Cricket Australia (CA) has told the Victorian and Western Australian sides, participating in the Twenty20 Champions League scheduled to begin next week, not to travel to India.
  

Observations :  A very clear intention.. Jeopardizing the International Relationship of India. We can also see that they are partly successful as the 2 cricket boards (England and Australia) have pulled out of their Tour Of India. 

My acquaintance Abhi posts in his blog :

Yet another attack, yet another pandemonium, condolences and political rhetoric, the cycle would be complete in few days as the incident would be confined to the archives of media and zero hours in parliament - life will go on, awaiting another vicious cycle. If you have lost any of your loved ones or your limbs you are the lone loser, my heart goes to the family members of those brave soldiers who lost there lives Ga Ga to media sensational programming and lots of TRP and condolences to fools like me who gets, just emotional and do nothing much other than posting such blogs……….. time to think should we do more than blogging and talking – will we ? or waiting to loose something to act ?

Friends, a couple of questions before we proceed..

• It it right on our part to pay tribute to countless noble souls, the soldiers, cops who have sacrificed their life just by  reading the news of their heroic death safely at home?
  
• Don't you think we have seen enough of these happening to us lately? 
  

 Before our mother land finally shatters and beseeches for external help to prevent terrorism we have to act. But how? 

Lets start with this. Lets stop being Corrupt. Its painful to see that every year, India's position is slipping in the Corruption Index (13 places down to 85th corrupt country in 2008).  Don't you see the link here? Corrupt Government officials tend to compromise India's security system JUST FOR MONEY!! Having a well-organized terrorist attack on some of the technologically superior countries (USA, UK, India etc) is not a child's play.

Unfortunately I can't see a ray of hope with the existing system. In his book,  “India’s External Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)”, Maj Gen (Retired) VK Singh clearly makes the modest allegations of corruption, mismanagement and petty behavior in RAW, Our own External intelligence Agency (equivalent to ISI of Pakistan)!  Mr VK Singh is the retired Joint secretary of  RAW. (Click here to read more on this). I am shocked.

Lead India, Youth

Rather than speaking about the catastrophes and maladies of Corruption, its time to act. We, the youth of India have to change the system. Involve in politics actively, enroll into IAS, IPS, RAW etc, participate in campaigns like Teach for India etc. Afterall, the country cannot change itself, we have to change it right?

I have vowed to make my country a better place to live. I am sure you are with me. 

One cool website you ought to visit

I came across this website named My Heritage. Its an amazing site and I'm sure it definitely keeps you hooked onto it. Its got a feature called "Match Your face with the Celebrity". I tried it and I got some cool results..

So happy to know that I look like Nick Carter of Backstreet Fame!! 

Why don't you try it once and see which actor/actress is lucky to look like you  ;-)

Click here to goto the website

Think About IT

As a quizzer, I had 2 dreams : 

• Climb onto the stage where the Grand Finale of the prestigious TCS Rural IT quiz happening in Palace grounds on the occasion of BangaloreIT.biz

• Be the state winner of TCS IT quiz. 

As a team, Ashrith and I had put enough efforts to win the event in 2004. A small, unexpected mistake from our side put us in the runners-up position at Udupi Zone in 2003. The winners eventually won the STATE level quiz also. I was very well aware that the same team would come back in 2004 and it will be a tough game again. So we had spared no effort to ensure our victory. 

But man proposes, God disposes.. The 2004 zonal finals was indeed a battle of nerves. When we lost to the same team again,  140 to 135 (the other 4 teams on stage had scored 10, 10, 5 and zero!). When the quiz master announced that in the other 5 zones, the highest by any team had been 105, I could just keep myself from crying.

For the first time in my life, I felt like a loser. All my dreams were shattered as we were in our 12th Grade and that year was our 2nd and final chance.. 

When my mom consoled me that my efforts will never be a waste, I was not convinced, yet I believed her. It came out to be true. 

The pain of failure urged me to THINK OUT OF the Box, discard every convention and author India's 2nd ever IT quiz book, Blitz - The IT quiz book. Unless I am very much mistaken, I am India's youngest author of a commercial IT quiz book till date.  Failure indeed makes you learn more than what you could have with Success..

 

Mr Giri Balasubramaniam, the renowned Quiz Master of Tata Crucibles and TCS IT wiz fame identified my interest and talent for IT quiz and took me in his (Greycaps) technical quiz research team. 

The happiest day was when I was invited (along with a couple of other budding quizzers) to join the research team of Giri Balasubramaniam and Lloyd Saldanha to compile a book, "Think About IT - 3rd Edition". 

To add to this joy, I was felicitated by Mr Aravind Limbavali (Higher Education Minister, Government of Karnataka) and Vishveshwar Hegde Kageri (primary and secondary minister) on the occasion of Grand Finale of Rural IT quiz 2008 in Palace grounds on 7th November. 

All the finalists of this year had read my book. They thanked me for writing Blitz and Think About IT and really appreciated my efforts. What more does an author need?

On my way home, I thought, my first dream (climbing onto the stage finals stage) had been fulfilled! More royally than I had ever expected! 

And as far as winning is concerned, I will see myself winning every year when the young  quiz champions of TCS IT Wiz and Rural IT quiz come down to me and say, "Your book really helped us. Thanks for writing Blitz" . 

I haven't won it yet. But one thing is sure, I am not a loser anymore. I have got another chance. My latest attempt has been the strongest....

Is there something called "A Destiny" ?

I wasn't sure whether or not I should agree with Mr Douglas Adams who famously said, "“I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be”. According to him, there's something called destiny and no matter how much you try, you'll end up being somewhere which you would never anticipate!  

It is indeed hard to believe isn't it? Yes and No. Not if you haven't experienced it yourself. I shall narrate my experience..

Look at this snap. 

This was taken in February 2008 when my dance team Sanskrithi had been to USA on a cultural exchange program with Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The day before our grand performance in IUP, we were invited for a formal dinner in Eberly College of Business and Information Technology. After the dinner, the Dean of the college took us to their Stock Market Trading Simulation centre where the students practice share trading . It was one of the best computer labs that I've been to. Every student has 3 monitors streaming real-time simulated stock market. Awestruck, we took photos standing besides the Flash board..

The flash board keeps ticking every 5 seconds or so displaying the current share values of various NASDAQ, Dow Jones etc listed companies one after the other. 

You might ask me, thats fine, but what has that to do with my destiny? Now I shall ask you to look at the zoomed part of the photo..

If you still haven't got it, let me request you to look at the company that's displayed in the board.. Its CISCO !!! This was 7 months before I actually got placed in Cisco!! Now, all 16 of us took photos and when it was my turn, Cisco Value got Flashed!!

If you've read my previous blog entry on Cisco Placement (if you haven't click here), you know very well how I never expected to get into Cisco. 

Now, should I believe in Destiny? I would want to say, have never got a reason not to believe..