The transition between the First and second innings…

This is for all my friends between 25 to 30 who are dangling in the biggest dilemma!!!

It was just few years back we were kids playing on the grounds, roads and fields giving damn about anyone who asked us to study or questioned us what do you want to become in life. Then came the season of boards and entrances. Each one of us dreamt of IITs/DU/AIMS some made it some not. But at the end of the tunnel there were the golden days of life.

The college days, special friends, bunking classes, night outs, first beer, first booze, first hangover, flirting, love in air, last minute exam preparation, failing in few papers and cursing the prof, going for movie in the college time, cursing hostel food, gang wars, fights with girlfriend/ boyfriend,  spending sleepless nights playing online games or just listing to music, going for tea at 2:00 am……

Everything has to come to an end and there comes the new season of placements, we bribed every God possible to just get into our dream company. Few got it few not but life moved on.

Soon all the kids became corporate guys/girls, with all the fire to do something in life, to prove all those relatives, neighbors, seniors that we have the best potential on earth, living all by ourselves taking pride in being the bread earner, the man of the family. A year passed by living the tag of fresher, another year or 2 passed by trying to get promotion, trying to get an onsite, trying to go for higher studies, few got it few not and we always kept trying to re live the college life.

So now here we are working as corporate guys and girls, few are leads and few are not, few are techi few are not, every now and then we meet someone new they ask us so that you have a good job now, so that you are settled now, what’s next? When are you getting married? Every time our moms call us she has a new story of a cousin or relative or neighbor getting married or having kids, the next question would be… When are you planning to? Do you have some guy/girl in your mind? Shall I look for one??

Now here comes the big question for all of us, are we really grown old enough to go for the second inning? Do we have the best job on earth we had thought about? Doesn’t our job sucks? Don’t we hate marriages? Are our girlfriend/ boyfriend the one we are looking for? Do we take the decision of our own or leave it on our parents? When we can’t handle our boss how will we handle another boss in life? True that we need someone to stay around cause we can’t handle my loneliness but are we ready for any committed?  Why do we have to do this? Do we even know what we want from our lives? Did we really do any good to our lives till now? Have we made it as large as we wanted?

With all these questions in our head all of us are moving towards the second innings of our life? We are all driving a bike in a dark tunnel without any lights. So let’s ride our bikes as slow as possible not to reach the other side of the tunnel where second innings is waiting for us. Let’ keep trying to re live those golden days!!!! Here goes a Hindi song for this.. “Har fikr ko dhuwe me udata chala gaya”

An Ironic day of an ITAN’s life

As someone told me every morning is a good morning that’s what I believe and started my day bidding myself a big GOOD MORNING. Like every other morning did my usual house hold stuffs and started for my office thinking about the deadline that we have today, thinking about the issue we were facing last night and wondering if the team could solve it last night they must have solved it else they would have called me or dropped me a mail later in the night, but if they haven’t then as the manager how am I gonna handle the situation I have committed this delivery to the client, I can’t afford a problem today I need to be ready with the plan B, think lady think what can be the plan B today.

 Lost in my thoughts I forgot the speed limit and bumped my car on a bike. Getting down the car thought Oh My God! Not today I don’t have time for all these nonsense today. Got down and found that there was a little kid sitting in front of the bike and now I am stuck. Shit man!! I gotta rush to the hospital with this biker though he was not injured much. The biker was furious but I was in back foot with all apologies. Fortunately he considered that and let me go.. Oh God!! Really he was a good man he let me go. I offered him some compensation but he was a person on self-respect and declined it. I couldn’t believe such people are still there in this world. I sped up my car and left the place.

Finally reached office, parked my car and rushed to my team asking whats the status. Everyone was too engrossed with their work. The lead came to and informed that the team stayed back till 4:00 am in the morning and resolved the issue. I was quite happy to know that the problem is resolved now that but the next sentence from him tensed me again. Looks like there was a mistake in analyzing the requirement and there is slight difference in the one of the module from the expected behavior. Now the ball is in my court I have the demo scheduled at 2:00 pm with the client and it’s already 11:00 am there is no time to make any change in the plan now. I need to think something.

The rest of the time went off doing the final touch up and making arrangements for hosting the meeting. The clock ticked 2:00 and I started the presentation. My heart was beating louder as I was moving closer to the defected module. Now I said “So finally we reach the last but not the least important module of the project, we applied our special knowledge and improvised this module and I bet you are gonna like this part of the project the best”. Confidence is something which is always bought, after few arguments from one of them they accepted the so called improvised version of the module. Wow it made my day. I finished my presentation with all applause and spend rest of the time building relation, making new strategies, making new plans for new projects with the client.

Today was the winning day for my team which has given up there days and nights for last 8 months for this project. So we decided to have a blast tonight. Few freshmen organized the party for tonight. So we left for the party to one of the best hotel in the city. Everyone had their share of fun may be even I felt light. Party got over and we all left.

 Driving alone on NH4 got reminded that there were few missed calls from few unknown numbers during the day, thought of checking them but was too tired to use my brain now. Oh no it started raining.. No man.. Why this bloody rain has to pour in now can’t it just wait for few more minutes? Anyways can’t help it. The radio played “Yaroo Dosti.. “ and few memories flashed out in my mind. How I use to love the rain when I was younger. How I use to steal the college hostel terrace key and with friends use to go to the terrace and dance in the rain. How I use to go for long treks in rain. How we use to go for tripling bike rides in rain. How I use to love to hold his hand and walk in the rain. But all that sounds so far now.. And now this rain brings just a sense of irritation and nothing else stuck up in traffic in rain at midnight.

So finally coping with the traffic and rain I reached home at around 12:00. Was looking for the key and realized the door was open. I got goose bumps in my whole body this was certainly not a good day. Shouted thieves and pushed open the door. Out of dark a candle blew up and few people sang happy birthday to u… Looking all these idiots in front of me I couldn’t stop my tears. I am an old ass of 40 now and still these idiots remember my birthday.. I let me tears flow and hugged them all. It is not a good day it’s one of the best day of my life…

To all my friends whom I would love to see on all my birthdays be it 25, 40 or 80..

Cheers!!

Some random thoughts!

They say there is a magic in arts.

They say there is a magic in science.

But today I think in a different way.

Isn’t the magic really in your own passion or in something you see through from someone else eyes?

When I was in school I use to love Chemistry. Every atom/electron/proton every reaction use to fascinate me as if there is a magic happening all around all the time. I use to think there is a magic in the way they react and form something new..

That was the time I fell in love with science.

Now today when I am an engineer I still love science and thought there is no place for any subject apart from science in my head or life. Eventually I had to attend a training on Capital Market. On the first day I was like ‘Oh My God!!! What the hell is this instructor talking about??’

It’s been three days I went through the training and now I can say ‘Capital Markets rather Finance is not a bad subject!!’

It is not because I learn too much in these three days and started loving the subject. It’s because I could see the magic of the subject from my instructors eyes. Then I realized it wasn’t Chemistry my favorite subject because I was found of it. It was because the teacher who had taught me the subject could see some magic in the subject, And as a kid I could see the same through her eyes.

So I am just wondering now… Is your likes/dislikes/hobbies/passions all really yours?? Or you have just picked it up eventually from seeing things through others eyes???