Candid confessions in my last hour as a teenager!!!

It is 28th of July and the clock just struck 11 pm... The next one hour is not an hour, neither is it 60 minutes, it is more like 3600 seconds. I count down each of these 3600 seconds one by one as they are the last 3600 seconds of a phase of my life. These few moments are my last few as a teenager as I turn 20 finally...
20!! Twenty!! Wow... i am an adult at last as far as the definition according to English literature is concerned. From thirTEEN to nineTEEN and now finally twenty... I know i just grow older by a day from today to tomorrow but there is something psychologically significant about getting out of your teens. I am not excited because it is my birthday as i dont really believe in celebrating my birthday (what have i achieved for the world to actually celebrate my birthday???... it makes more sense to celebrate 29th july as the great J.R.D.Tata's birthday as he has influenced in the shaping up of the world in his own way... it makes more sense to celebrate 29th july as fernando alonso's birthday as he has been a two time F1 champion to date...it makes more sense to celebrate 29th july as sanjay dutt's birthday as he has entertained loads of people though cinema....but celebrate 29th july as my birthday? ridiculous!!! for now at least)
[3000 secs to go] There is a sense of regret in turning 20 as this is probably the end of the most challenging yet enjoyable phase of one's life. In your early teens, life may seem harsh as it is a transition from the innocence of childhood to the crudeness of the world. You are suddenly handed responsibilities and you are answerable to the world for your failures. You are made to understand that the next few years as a teen are the most important in your life as it basically sets up your life. There is one part of you which wants to carry on with life as normal and be happy with what you get and there is this other part which compels you to take up responsibility and set goals and work to achieve these goals. Now which of these is the angelic part and which is the satanic part is something that cannot be discerned. And this is the most inconvenient period for your hormones to start kicking in. Had man been created such that these hormonal changes take place after the teens, it could have lead to more people attaining their goals. Here you are, as a teenager who has understood the importance of the years immediately ahead of you and set goals for yourself and started working to attain them and other than the obstacles you have to face in the society, the mightiest obstacle you face is yourself- your wavering mind which would be looking for the slightest distraction to weaken your resolve. Some are strong enough just ignore this satanic part of the mind and keep up their assiduousness while some succumb to it and end up choosing a different path which is less likely to lead to being "successful" in life as the society describes it. Thus a person's teen life is a rocket launcher to his future. Of course, you do have the opportunity to steer the rocket, however it took off, but often the initial momentum provided by the launch is probably what sets the rocket to attain the height.
[Hey just 1800 seconds to go... ]Now my teen life, from that point of view has been mixed. Pre-teen, I was very studious and fiercely competitive in school and loved to be on top of my class, then my resolve wavered as I entered the dreaded teens and I became this guy with multiple personality, one part wanting to freak out and the other wanting to continue being this focused studious guy. The final avatar of Ajay in his teens turned out to be a cocktail of both these, who freaked out quite a bit sometimes (during when he was regretting not being more assiduous) and who also was quite assiduous sometimes (during when he was regretting not being more freaked out). Both these traits were like the first law of yin and yang [Yin-yang are Opposing-Yin and yang describe the polar effects of phenomena]. There was this rebellious part of me which didnt want to do what I didnt like doing (and there were a lot of things I didnt like doing academically- like studying history, biology etc [loved reading these but not studying as I felt all this can be looked up in books anytime..so whats the need of memorizing]) and there was this other sincere part which wanted to do what I was supposed to be doing. These subjects made my academic life till my 10th grade pretty dull.
Then during my last years at school, I enjoyed the most in all my 19 [ 20 in another 1200 seconds] years of life. Had an enjoyable life where I used Yin and yang's second law (Yin-yang are Mutually Rooted- the yin and the yang aspect of any one phenomenon will, when put together, form the entire phenomenon) and managed to draw a balance in life. I knew I had good potential and could compete with the best of my peers. But then as time went on, I realised I am probably in the top 10 percent of the people competitively but not the top 3-4 percent, which is where you have to be in a fiercely competitive country like India. The people in the top 4 % attain what they aim for and the people who are below this 10 percent do not expect much out of themselves. It is people like me who are in this "bracket of disappointment", who end up feeling cheated. Thoughts like "had i been luckier", "had i worked harder" do keep coming up, making you feel low. I ended up that way after 12th std when I got a decent enough top 400 AIEEE state rank which would give me entry into many NITs but none in branches I desire, when I did decently enough in the JEE to clear the individual cutoffs for maths and physics but fell short in chemistry (well short actually- so no regrets), when I did decently enough in BITSAT which would give me admission into disciplines in BITS which I did not fancy taking.
[still 300 seconds left- hey dont ask me my age now.... i will answer only after 5 mins... am probably one of the very few who re into 4th yr of coll and still in their teens...thanks to my being underage...feel inferior..Anyways] Much to the disgruntlement of many of my friends and well-wishers, I joined SRM where I got CSE which is what I wanted to take up. I have absolutely no regrets to that decision I took which some people muse over even now. I have spent my last three teen years here and this has really been a transformational period. From the shy introvert in school, to the gregarious extraversive person that I am now, it has indeed been a huge transformation. Now I am more of this rebel, who questions the norm in everything I do and proceed only if it makes sense to me. I have my own set of ideals which I follow. I have really chilled out in the college part of my teen life and really had a good time. Although my college life here has not offered me as much an intellectual education as other colleges might have, it has definitely given me an exposure which I could ve not got in most other places. I feel this place has set me up wonderfully for my transformation into adulthood.
Transformation to adulthood.... now thats not far away...in fact only some 20 seconds away... countdown...13..12..11..10..7..6..4..3..2..1.. tada i am an adult now... happy birthday to me....and wishing myself a happy and prosperous future... hey ask me my age now.....i am 20 ...TWENTY...that sounds exciting...
Well...anyways i am happy at where my life is heading presently and I am getting a good opportunity to give myself another thrust when I go to UC Davis next month (again thanks to SRM). I just hope my entry into adulthood will be a smooth one and I can attain escape velocity using this thrust...
Wow .... it was nice blogging about an event that is happenening in life presently.... I started with the intention of writing a small blogpost summarizing my [now past] teen years to be and ended up deviating completely from that and writing what random thoughts i was gettting in my mind... it is 1216 am now and this is the longest i ve spent writing a blog entry... an hour and quarter almost.... Gotta end it here before more random thoughts start entering my mind.... wishes thru ph calls and msges ve started pouring in and i gtg to attend to them... will be back with hopefully a more sane blogpost next...

The beginning of a new journey!!!

This entry was long due. It is just that I wanted to make sure it was going to definitely happen before I came out in public with this. At 1620 hrs IST on July the 3rd, all uncertainty vanished and now I can blog all I want about it.
This event i was talking about was my interview at the American consulate for my US visa. Now that I succeeded in getting one, I know what is ahead in the immediate future. I had got a chance to study at the highly rated Univerisity of California, Davis for the fall and winter semesters (from Sep '08 to Mar '09), thanks to a MoU signed by UCD with my college. I had applied for that and was accepted by UCD and they sent me my I-20. The only thing that was to then decide my fate was my visa interview and I had a lot at stake too. I had not really prepared for a scenario where I would not be issued a visa. We had already fixed tenants for our house in Chennai as my mother was also going to shift to Bangalore where my dad had taken up a job last year. I was initially going to move into the hostel before this UCD option came up and now I had not even booked a room at the hostel assuming that I would not be here and it is too late to get a hostel room now. So had my visa been rejected, I would ve been on the streets literally. I would probably have moved in with some of my friends who live together but fortunately I dont have to encounter that situation. And it was not such an improbable situation actually looking back at my experience in the consulate. The whole environment was hostile and it was guilty until proven innocent as far as the consulate people interviewing us were concerned. Credit to them, the Americans at the counter were quite fair and thought twice before rejecting someone. That was not the case with an American Indian woman (note that i dont use lady here as i generally would) and an African American woman at other counters, who rejected candidates with no consideration at all. Take the case of a person I met when I was standing in the queue, who was a passout from IIT chennai who was in the top 5 % of his class with a 9+ GPA and having refused a couple of 8 lakhs p.a jobs through placements at IIT because he had secured admission for MS/Ph.D at the highly reputed Georgia tech with FULL graduate assistantship. Imagine the audacity of this American Indian woman to just reject his application after 30 seconds consideration on grounds of lack financial backing. To think he had a full scholarship and did not have to even spend any money from his pocket for his education. And he had so much at stake and was hard done by just due to the arrogance of a particular woman. Its such a pity that so many Indians [including me] have to queue up outside the hostile US embassy to just get a short term visa while they can just walk into our country at their will. We even welcome them with red carpets. Would not there be such a situation ever in my lifetime where American people would queue up outside the Indian consulate in the US to be granted entry in India. I guess thats all wishful thinking. I understand I am being hypocritical as I was one of the people who queued up just a couple of days ago but I sincerely wow that I will do whatever I can to turn India into a place people from US would want to visit.
The future which was hazy, just a couple of days ago, suddenly seems bright and clear. Now [unless i have an accident while crossing the road and my face gets deformed and I require a plastic surgery and the surgeons conjure me a face which resembles that of Osama bin laden and the flight authorities detain me from entering the US mistaking me to be Osama or maybe while I am typing this blog entry I turn into ashes due to Spontaneous human combustion...nah forget it..i can think of a thousand other more plausible reasons] I know that I am taking the September 7th Cathy pacific flight at 0245 IST and going to touch down at San Fransisco at 1315 PDT. [i fly for 18 hours and still end up spending less that 11 hours travelling...wow...i love time zones....but hey as I will be flying through the pacific at one time I will be GMT+9 hrs when I fly over Japan and in if I take a short nap and wake up, I will be GMT-8 hrs....that means I jump 17 hours in a few mins!!! hey this is too complex....i just wont wear my wristwatch during the flight and get confused thinking about the time...]. And once I land at SFO, I know that I will be taking a connecting flight to Sacramento from where Davis is only a few miles away. I know that I am going to move into the apartment arranged for us by UCD with my friends. I know that I am going to fall for a blonde there. Ok academically, I know that I am going to take up courses of my interest in UCD and get good grades, conjure up a good rapport with the professors there and do some good projects there so that I would stand a great chance of getting into either UCD itself or hopefully an even better college for my MS, which is what is my aspiration. I really hope that, one year from now, I can look back at the previous sentence and rejoice about how right I was rather than cringe at the sight of it.
I guess I owe a lot to my college [especially the men who have made it possible, Prof. Gopal, Kiruba Sir, Mr. Sathyanarayan and all the others involved... wow...i never thought i would hear myself say this] for providing me this wonderful and unique opportunity, often unheard of in most colleges in India, and I just hope I can make full use of it to do something worthwhile. As, I would be spending effectively the whole of the next two semesters here, I will not be attending many more classes at SRM. It does feel a little sad to think I wont ever be attending classes with the amazing friends with whom I ve shared my life for the past three years. It does feel sad that I wont ever be attending the classes of some of the professors here whom I have known well. Correlating both, i am sadder that I wont be able to sit together with my friends and criticize and laugh at some profs whose classes (more accurately reworded as gags) have been a constant source of entertainment. I am even sadder that I wont ever get an opportunity to bunk classes at SRM. But then if I aim to move on to something bigger, I guess these sacrifices are a part of the bargain. Let me wish myself all the best for the future..

My experiences during transition into the big bad corporate world!!!

After that promising preamble, and a delve into hibernation, I am back again. I had possibly picked out the worst time to start my blog as it was the middle of my sem exams and added to that there was the ongoing placement saga. So now that my part in it is over, let me just reflect upon it.
It was May the 23th 2008. When the next day dawned, TCS was going to pay a visit to my college for hiring people. I was still undecided whether to appear for it as I was inclined to wait for a production company like mindtree to come, because it was a rule in the college that once you get placed in a company, you cant sit for any other. And looking at the numbers that TCS takes, I didnt even consider not getting a job if I appear for it, as even a possibility. I took a call to actually sit for it (and of course get placed!!!) late into the evening, because I realized the job was not a priority for me because I aspire to do an MS after my undergrads and not work. So it was better to have a job under your belt for backup and move on to more important things. I went to college the next morning having shaved the previous night, having prepared my resume, dressed in formal clothes, ready to take on the interviewer once (note that I use "once" and not "if") I get through the "formality" of a first round called the aptitude test, in which about 1000 people out of the 1500 who appeared got through last year. And I was pretty upbeat about my chances of being in the top two thirds, especially in a test like an aptitude test (upbeat is an understatement; affirmative is a better word). And with that mindset, I entered into the computer labs (it was an online test) to get the formality over with. I was through with the verbal section and was waiting for the timer to countdown to 0 so that it would move automatically to the next quants section. I watched the timer countdown 5..4..3..2..1..0 and instead of moving on to the next section, the screen stayed the same except that the timer now started ticking into negatives (-1..-2..-3...). Half-startled, half-panicky, half-amused, half-exasperated, I called one of the people conducting the test and even he was baffled and directed me to another computer and asked me to login and resume from the next section, assuring me that the first section had been saved, which was logical as they had an autosave feature on every few seconds. I moved on and did the rest of the test quite well and was sure getting about 55 questions of the 72 right. I congratulated myself for getting through and was preparing my preamble when I appear for the interview as I clicked on the submit button and voila.....the next screen was a hammerblow. It read "Sorry...You have not qualified...Better luck next time". I read it and reread it and rereread it umpteen times to see if the message was coded and I had to decipher it but it read the same how many ever times I read it. Each time I read it, it seemed as if the sledgehammer was getting heavier. In a trance I walked out and met a few friends who refused to believe I had actually not got through and thought i was pulling their leg. With each passing moment, it was like being strung up by thumbs. And when I met a few friends who had made it, I felt a pang of disappointment rather than delight for them. And this made me feel more miserable that I was acting so immature. So with a heavy heart and a heavy bag too (had formal clothes, tie, resume, certificates etc) for the interview which was never going to come, I made my way back home. People suggest the computer mishap might ve been what went wrong, some say there were dummy questions for some sets, some say say there was an upper cutoff but those are just excuses. Bottomline was I was not among the top 550 in 1500 people in my college!!!
The next one week was a painful one, where each passing moment was not exactly gleeful (more because I could not measure up to the competition than because I was still unemployed) and it was further compounded by the barrage of sem exams (3 in 4 days). And then it was June 3rd at last, the day I would get the second bit at the cherry (or a bite in the second cherry) when Cognizant was to come next to college for placements. This time, I went with a more balanced frame of mind with the primary aim of getting through the aps before I thought about the interview. There was no difference in my "preparation" though (which was none at all actually as I feel aptitude tests are supposed to be an indication of how you actually are and that is determined by what you have learned all your life and not by how much last minute preps you put in by going through previous years' company papers etc which apparently keep getting repeated). I went with the frame of mind that the TCS disaster was a one off day where luck was not on my side and lightning does not strike twice. As they say, failure is the stepping stone to success but I just had to hope that only one stone was necessary. This aps was on good old paper and I did pretty well (as well as TCS, which was the hitch) and was upbeat about my chances once I submitted my paper. The results were announced in about an hour and fortunately I had got through. The next day, I went for the interview which only in the evening after a 6 hour long wait. It was a great experience and went on for a mammoth 30 mins. I felt I did as well as anyone could ve possibly done as the interviewer took the bait I deliberately laid out when I told her programming was my passion and so all my technical questions were directed towards programming which I manged to ace. After another 3 hour wait the results were read out in the auditorium at 8 pm and as each name was called out, it seemed like a final countdown. I was quite confident but still it was one of those times I was nervous because I was not nervous. When at last the auditorium resonated with my name, it seemed to linger in the air for eternity and seemed to echo from all directions and when I grasped it at last, it was a feeling of relief flooding through more than anything else. I couldn't have stood another failure as it would ve created self-doubt more than anything else. However the relief transformed into sorrow once again the names of many of friends who had done the interview well, were not called out. I had experienced what it felt to get rejected and it was one experience that I would not forget so easily. The auditorium was one of the most sombre places to be in when there are 300 depressingly sad faces among 550 people. It was embarrassing to sit there as one among the 236 employed people to witness the welcome speech as the others trudged out. I would ve given anything not to be present there. There was a mini-celebration of sorts with 235 delighted people throwing around a cake brought by our new employers but I just sat there in my seat with feelings of amusement of watching everyone get so excited and relief of getting through but happiness?...Not really as the disappointed faces swam before me. I felt like a dementor had kissed me. But then that is how life goes. Whoever you are and however you are, you need something which is not in your hands (popularly called "luck") to be on your side. So all I can do is to hope that there are not many stepping stones between success and failure for these people who re not placed as yet.
It was only as the next day dawned that I felt some happiness for myself. It was heightened by the fact that it was second time lucky for me. In life, when you succeed a task in which you ve experienced failure, it is indeed doubly delightful. But it is always better not to have an opportunity to experience double delight but keep experiencing single delight with success on the first attempt, as the period preceding the double delight is not the most delightful.

My first sincere attempt at blogging

At last here I come into the blogosphere... Are you scratching your head and tickling your gray cells as to where you might ve seen that one-liner... It is most probable that you would ve started to journey with me, when I undertook my several attempts at blogging in the past, only to find that the journey ended as abruptly as it started. The first time, being the perfectionist that I am, I spent an hour thinking about what name my blog should have as I felt it should be a reflection of a person's thoughts and attitude and came up with way too many options which made me ditch the attempt. After a month, I cooked up some weird name and was about to click on the create blog button, when I contemplated whether I would be active enough to keep posting regularly and the immediate answer was pessimistic. So I abandoned that attempt too. Then, for the third time, after intense pressure by loads of friends, who were blog-addicts and wanted to make me one too, I finally created blog and wrote the preamble (like i am writing now) and even posted an entry once. Then I got my hands on Fifa 08 and i was immediately addicted to it and so felt like blogging was a waste of time when I could spend it in playing fifa.

Now here I am at last with what will (hopefully) be my first sincere attempt at what is a pasttime-turned-addiction for many people, called blogging. In fact, it seems embarrassing and even taboo in today's world not to have a blog. Now why do people blog? There are two kinds of non-profit blogs in the world: one by means of which a person shares his thoughts with other people. These blogs are attractive and written keeping in mind the target audience, with the aim that the people reading the blog are delighted by it. In these blogs, the posts deal with a variety of subjects, that appeal to most people and which people can associate themselves with. And there is the other kind of blog, where the blogger writes for the happiness he gets in venting his feelings and expressing himself to no one in particular. He can blog his thoughts at will, however profound or uninteresting or controversial they may be without any fear of the society or other factors. The purpose of such a blog is only to please one's alter-ego. This blog is of the latter type which is written to vent my thoughts so that I would end up happier. The posts are not written keeping in mind that an audience would be reading it. A sincere blog should be a reflection of one's thoughts rather than a showpiece where one writes (about) stuff people want to read. And if my views end up drawing an audience unintentionally, it would be a bonus. I christened this blog pensieve because it gives me a medium to empty my thoughts when I am full of them and reflect upon these thoughts at leisure, analogous to the pensieve Dumbledore uses in the Harry Potter series.

I am a critic by nature and love to profoundly analyze things around me, however minuscule they may seem. And a critic who keeps his thoughts to himself is an oxymoron in itself. And what better way to share one's views than the blogosphere. So with the sense of duty of sharing my views flowing out of me, embark with me on this all new journey (in fact I hope to make it an odyssey) which I vow would not end abruptly like last time... Enough of this preamble... Fasten your seatbelts. Wheeeeeee!!!!! Here we go!!!!!