Bitsian Reunion Week - My Reflections

I wanted to draft my reflections on the reunion that I just came out of and in the process renew my blogspot that has been dormant since covid hit us.  

The Mask :  More than decision on what outfits to pack that shows me younger than I am, the bigger one was the decision on what “mask” I should wear!  What image I should create amongst my batch mates – Successful Technologist, Happy Soul,  Great Communicator etc., the typical masks we wear to work.  After some deliberation, I fixated on going mask-free as it is judgement free zone of Pilani campus I am marching towards.  This is the group of people who have seen me in most vulnerable position and most immature phase of life already, there is really no need of wearing a mask to be honest. 

Ice Breaking:  Given the introvertial traits I carry, getting back to the gang of 200+ people was never easy. This is one thing extroverts struggle to understand “what is wrong with introverts” 😊 Even with in gults, I was not in constant touch with many with a notable exception of the 2-3 closest buddies.  I had a sinking feeling in stomach, mulling over questions like what if none of them remember me, what if no one is able to reconnect with me, what if I am loner who has to push along 6 days with great effort!!  To be fair, my brain is pretty logical given the low key life I maintained at Pilani and after.  I was proved wrong on all these counts the moment I landed with the group, same warmth, accommodation and love despite long gap of two decades. 

I embarked on a train journey with my gult friends, in Telangana express that used to be AP express. They instantaneously connected with me and showered warmth. 27 hours felt like 27 minutes with greetings, sharing personal stories,  playing card games, Dumb Charades.  Little did we realize that the train ran more than 3 hours late, and completely engrossed with the gang. 

Networking:  What is more interesting than to listen to life stories of friends, their successes and learnings. It is inspiring and amazing to see the friends with whom we shared wing, classes and campus make it big and earn name for the batch.  It is equally distressing to know heartbreaks some friends faced.  While they coped with it and became resilient and stronger through experience, they never deserved that pain in first place.  Overall, interactions made me stay grounded in our life journey ahead.

Reconnection with C6-ites:  Turn out in C6 is quite good given we are a small gang. We had utlized the opportuntity to share experiences and getting to know each other better.  I am sure many of you would find it difficult to believe that I did not speak a word with C6 girls, with whom we attended exclusive classes every sem, between 1998-2002.  Not even a miniscule mistake of theirs really, instead speaks volumes of the “shy”, “introverted”, “in a shell” type of personality I carried along.  When we (re)connected last week, they were so generous, friendly and warm in interactions,  that left me wondering how much I would have gained from their association had I mustered courage to speak to them while in college.

Same vs Different:  Campus stayed the same in terms of its spirit while bringing technological and infrastructure advances that are world-class.  Among similarities, the old hostel rooms, the vibrant FD1 & FD2,  Serenity of the temple,  the color of chairs in Audi, Sky lawns, IC carried nostalgic memories of our campus life, bringing down our age from 40s to teenage. Among the differences, the new age workshop, fantabulous library,  amazing best-in class LTC,  Rakesh Kapoor Innovation Center, beautiful infra in and around Rotunda that let us wonder if it is same old Pilani.

Friends who couldn’t make it:   There are few friends I longed to meet on the occasion but unfortunately due to work and personal commitments couldnot make it.  I will keep hoping to bump into them some other occasion soon.  There are few friends who have left us teary eyed to heavenly abode, whom we remembered during the event.

Rotunda side chat:  I really enjoyed opportunity to interact with those innocent souls in current pursuing graduate students with high hopes and uncertainity of what life has in store for them. Felt exactly like me (or us if I dare say) two decades earlier.  They sounded bit more matured than we were at that tender age.  But we tried to answer their questions as if we know all answers to life’s questions 😊. On topics like Biotech, Core Chemical Engineering, we mustered courage to say that “we don’t know” and routed them to experts in our batch on the subject.

Parties:  Better said by others than me, given I am coke/Juice candidate who cant draw as much from parties as others.  But I could clear see the vibrant crowd enjoying every party and that’s truly contagious. 

Farewell:   It is incomplete description without mention of organizing committee who has undertaken this event with Super human efforts.  I came in with high expectations and they made sure it exceeded by huge margin.  Some groups had logistics challenges along the way but like aways they all made it on time to flights beating the odds. As we drew towards the closure, we all had heavy hearts and left with renewed promises to stay in touch and frequent meeting at every opportunity presented.

To end On a lighter note, a gult friend teased multiple times Shashank to give his message to the group “ జాతిని ఉద్దేశించి మీ సందేశం”  and Shashank delivered a hell of a message on responsibility towards women at home that kept us grounded.  Overall it was a great week for me, and potentially the best week in many years.

Are you ready to bear consequence of your actions?

 In the telugu movie directed by legendary Bapu-Ramana named “Sampoorna Ramayanam” there is an excellently scripted scene that goes like below.

“Ravan, the King of Lanka, kidnaps Sita, wife of Lord Rama, when her husband is not around. Rama finding the misdeed, comes with monkey army to Lanka to fight Ravan. Ravan did not expect Rama to cross the sea and ready to fight him. So Ravan arranges a meeting with his ministers and kins to discuss strategy of defeating Rama. Ravan has a wise and good natured brother named Visbhishan.

Vibhishan questions Ravan “Brother, when you decided to kidnap Sita while her husband is away, you took the action without consulting anyone. Now when Rama who vowed to kill you, comes with his army crossing the sea,  you get terrified. When the consequence off your action comes to give its result, you are asking all of us for suggestion. Why don’t you decide for yourself how to deal with it, the same way you acted independently while kidnapping Sita”

This obviously made the King of Lanka furious and Vibhishan had to flee out of the kingdom is a different story.  The wonderfully scripted scene depicts that humans when they have face consequence of their evil deeds, struggle quite miserably to come to terms with it. They either try to avoid, escape, transfer that to others or blame others for their actions.

Every action comes with a consequence of some intensity that we would have to bear. Good actions have good consequences. A student who attends all lectures, who studies well, who prepares well for examination – would get the grades that he/she capable of.  A student who does not apply himself to studies – would suffer the wrath of examination through bad grades. Simple isn’t it?

If it’s so simple why is that lot of people fail to recognize this and indulge in irrational decisions?  People give in to sense gratification and unable to visualize the long term consequence the action would bring. Also they think they can get away with their evil deeds without having to face the consequence. Or they play victim card stating “I was immature and so didn’t realize the consequence would be this tough”.  In the epic novel Veyi Padagalu, there is a character named Rangamma who indulges in extramarital affair that eventually leads to suicide of her husband and losing all reputation. She transforms herself and asks her mentor the same question. Her mentor answers “A kid touches fire without understanding of the consequence, would the fire not hurt the child? Similarly whether you do a deed with or without giving enough thought to consequence, the result is certain that you are to bear the fruit.”

Also the consequence may not always be evident and traceable to the action. The student in above scenario might score by indulging in malpractice and think that he gotten away from the consequence of not studying. But then as he did not accumulate knowledge, that is needed for his job he would struggle at work. Or he might make huge loss in business that requires necessary fundamental abilities education imparts. So the consequence can come in many ways and at different stage in life. But it certainly would. Only intelligent folks can take cognizance of it and make good decisions in life.

There are certain group of people who through their shrewd and predatory nature, try to transfer the consequence of their actions to weak or innocent person. Through this they are committing another evil deed. Little do they realize that at some point in life they would face compounded result.

 

Human Touch

 Today while availing Urban Company service for getting my Haircut done, I felt a bit odd to get the feel of hand wrapped in rubber on my chin. It didn’t feel that odd, I got when I met the dentist to check on my teeth, dentist adorned in PPE kit met us in the cabin. Indians are brought up in touchy feely culture where lot of communication happens through non-verbal communication like facial expressions, laugh, pats, handshakes etc.,  Post Covid era, masked faces covering most of the facial expressions and gloved hands reducing the human touch became the norm all over the world.

If someone is thinking this is going to be a temporary phenomenon, are definitely underestimating the long term lifestyle impacts covid would permanently leave a mark, when it leaves. We would get used to social distancing coming into cultures that thrive on personal intimacy in                 closely knit relationships. We might as well get used to masks to some extent when meeting strangers or visiting populous places. We might forget handshakes and pats completely or meet gloved hands when we do in near term.

Like mentioned above, human touch is one aspect that we are missing in the middle of the pandemic especially when we need it most.  Take for example, a covid patient would long for support, someone to lean on, someone to give reassuring pat, or someone to wipe tears.  But given the contagious nature of the disease, you are going to get them the least. Without the human touch, the reassurances family and friends give might sound shallow but that’s all they can afford to give unfortunately.

Human touch also means empathy and touch of humanity. In the current situation, we all need to pay explicit attention to fellow humans both within family, friends or work colleagues. We need to strive as much as possible to understand the challenges they go through and be kind to each other. We may not be able to give commercial benefit to all but kind words are not expensive, so use them generously.

The First Week

I knew it all the while or at least I had the feeling that I knew it (may be a hindsight bias). Our generation and our parents were lucky so far that they have not really witnessed a crisis of this scale. Well there were some economic slowdowns, some personal setbacks but we never really seen what freedom struggle looks like or a situation of world war could have been. As India fights the impact of Covid-19 by announcing the lock down, this is the closest to a crisis we would witness in our life time. So I thought it is worthwhile to document some bits of feeling.

Slight Panic:  Well to be honest, I felt a bit of panic. Why would not I? I am deemed head of the family with a wife and 2 small kids to provision for and protect. Also it happens that my old parents (including father recovering from a major surgery) are also to be looked after in this crisis. Slight panic is natural. Ahead of the lock down, couple days prior, I did my share of panic buying of provisions enough to last for 3-4 weeks.(reason1 for my opening statement)

Hectic weekend: Weekend prior to the lock down, whole of our management teams were quite busy to understand what it means to our teams. To be honest, it didn’t feel like a weekend as we were on for most part of the week. I still cant imagine, what I would have done if my team mates didn’t have equipment to work from home. (reason2 for my hindsight bias)

Working from Home: If I would have worked as hard as I have during last week, I might have become a CXO by now J. Jokes apart, initial week of full work from home, teething issues, inadequacy of experience, requests from management for impact analysis, colleagues trying to ask for help, too many twists, many unreasonable expectations - all meant one thing, more than I usually do in a typical week. Being not a great fan of work, I am hoping this would change soon.

Kids: Kids are great. They are omnipotent. They can relieve stress, they can induce in the same magnitude. When you are on an important call, when you least expect it, they can come and press disconnect button on your headset. They most certainly can! At the same time, when you are off a point less meeting, they come innocently ask for a biscuit or something as if that’s the most important thing in the world.  More often it feels like yes it’s the more important than the meeting we are on.

Level headedness:  Well this is the most important characteristic in life. There will be highs and lows. Usually people walk with bloated chest and heads held high when things are going in favor. On the other hand, people stoop heads below shoulder, when the tide turns. We all need to have a level head, irrespective of what’s going on around. This is the time when we need to collect ourselves and show our strength when we face an adversary that we can fight it. Taking all precautions, staying put and staying home is the need of the hour.

Learning: Signed up for FT trial for  one month for $1 and trying to read markets across the world and response to Covid-19.  Read 2 chapters of Accelerate book on Devops. 

Optimistic: When this is all over, I would want to narrate the tales of how usually frivolous characters turned into conservative when it comes to using provisions and how scared we were but tried to maintain balance. Hopefully humans will reach to a solution in the war with the invisible to naked eye enemy soon.

As we end first week, got some time to rest and geared up what new week brings.

The Unjust Divide

Not a big fan of controversial topics but one thing baffles me about India is the huge perception/real divide between the Hindu and Muslim communities.  

 ·       In school days we had Mohammad Rafi, whose mother shouldered burden of feeding kids after his father’s death. He wanted to settle in life soon so that he can help his mother financially. Then there was Madhavan, whose father lost fortune in business and he wanted to do better in life to support his family.

·       We also had a gullible Imran and Raman, who were close buddies and marched all of us to the house of a pretty girl in school, only to be intimidated by her big brother.

·       We then had Praveen and Hidayat, who fiercely competed with us to become school topper in 10^th.

·       In college days, we had Shahid who used to study with me with a common ambition of getting a good job in campus placements. When Shahid fell short of funds to pay fee, it was Hari who helped him with a loan.

·       We then had Basha who used to tutor us in Biology course, who in turn got tutored by Chalapthi or ramki for math where he needed help.

·       We also had Rafi who partnered with Ramki who is building fintech in India and working with Global MNC.

·       In our colony, we have Mr. Jaishakar who goes about his life as blissfully as Mr Khan, who exchange cordial relationship.

Well as you can see in the above examples, there is so much similarity between a common hindu and muslim. But we unjustly draw a divide basis religion, as if they are poles apart. I don’t see any commonality between Rafi and a certain MIM Leader, whom we try to see in same lens. Nor any comparison between Madhavan and RSS leader (or some hindu leader).  Our basic premise that muslims have lot in common with the leaders who pretend to work for them (likewise hindu leaders) needs review. There is a huge divide between them and the leaders who vouch for them in terms of financial, social, political status but we unjustly put them into same club. Just like an average hindu, a muslim wants to live peacefully providing for his family and trying to improve day by day. We are getting divided for political aspirations of few leaders who don’t really care about us, which is a pity.

We all need to realize it and bridge the perception/real gap to strive live in harmony.

Role of Neutrals in a Polarized World

India was historically country with less political polarization. This trait gave raise many regional parties and national parties to coexist in the largest democracy of the world. Each of states were ruled by different parties owing to dynamics of the region, preferences of people, charisma of the leaders, and issues that were prevalent. This is good sign that there is good portion of people who are open to choosing option that they think is suited to run the state. Similarly at nation level even though Congress ruled the country for most part, there were enough evidences that nation did not give clear mandate and the choice kept waving  basis the agenda and policies backed by the parties that came to power.

In recent past there seems to be a change in demographic on the political affinity attribute. Noticeable polarization is being observed in people and the neutrals are being reduced to a small group. Given this shift neutrals are now entrusted with responsibility of ensuring they analyse and read the situation and decide well, this is not easy task.

•  Resisting Strong urge to be part of a gang – Like every one neutrals may get sense of being wanted, part of a gang. This can lead them to sway one way or other thus shrinking the group even further. It is an urge that needs to be resisted.
• Social Media distractions – With explosion of social media we get fed what they want us to hear. We are continuously being fed half information, fake news and some logical lies which distract you and try to pull towards a gang.
• Biased Media – Even the most lauded new papers and TV subscribe to one ideology or the other and deliberately or otherwise feed us with biases info
• Lack of proper analysis – with so much information to grasp it is not an easy  task to comprehend fully and decide. There is chance of misunderstanding/misinterpretation of information at disposal.
•  Blind followership – Some neutrals due to limitation in point#4, resort to follow an intellectual blindly with a view that I am sure he would have thought through this.
• Apathy – Over a period of time, some neutrals lose hope and become apathetic towards the process and system 

Neutrals in fact decide the fate of the nation as their votes are decisive and crucial for fair outcomes in democracy. They must understand the value of their contributions and try and resist above traps to make the nation better.

Age is just a number

Age is just a number is a catchy phrase. But Roger Federer proved it again. Nearing 38 many would retire from demanding professional tennis and go for less physically demanding job like coaching or commentary. Roger has other plans and defies all trend by trying to become oldest ever to win a Grandslam title. He did not succeed, unfortunately, but in the process produced marvellous tennis any player would dream of in the final against world number 1 Novak.

Tennis as a sport is cruel at times. In a 5 setter where players have shared 2 sets each and standing at 12-12 games in decider, why should there be one winner and one loser? Instead they can declare both as joint winners. But the irony is one of the two gentlemen who produced such exceptional tennis had to lose, what a pity!

Roger’s journey to final did not come by chance. Unlike earlier years when he reached finals without dropping a set, this time he faced young generation players and the long time rivals during the course who did grind him enough. He has to face long time rivals Nadal and Novak in semis and finals, who are presently ranked 1 and 2 ahead of Roger.

What pains Roger fans more is that he had his chances. He won 2 sets convincingly and all the sets he lost ended in tie-breakers, which tells how close he was to win. He also had two championship points in his serve at disposal but credit to Novak who snatched victory from that position.

To those who were waiting to watch Roger extend his Grandslam tally to 21 and Wimbledon count to 9, Sunday night has ended in disappointment. He might have lost the match, but won many hearts. As Roger himself put it “I hope I give other people the chance to believe that at 37 it’s not over yet”. No Roger, its not over yet, we await you at US open, then at Australian , then at Roland Garros and then at Wimbledon. Year after year until you decide to move on. Hail Roger, The Greatest Tennis Player of All Time!