Manas Garg Speaks

All the ten years this soap ran for, the friends always remained together. From the first episode, till the last one. Lucky them.

I’m missing my friends very badly today. To be precise, I’m missing Satyam a lot today. We became friends on the first day of college, and remained best friends all four years. No day passed (except vacations of course) when we did not meet, or had some chit chat. We always studied together for exams and cycle tests (or did we :P). And we were always there when one of us had to crib about something to the other one :)

Our trips to the city were so amazing - we’re so similar in many respects - both of us love to have good food - however expensive (by college standards :) ). Our Saturday dinners were always at the gate - not at Bamboos but at Rajni anna’s. Gobi manchurian, veg manchurian and parottas :).

We did so many things together - spent some of the best and the toughest times together. Shared the Reliance unlimited STD phone :) So many small things.. which are now so far away. If there was anything nice about me except Spider and my pointers college it has to be Satyam - he’s like my big brother. The four years would have been so much tougher without him.

It is a pity that it is now exactly a year since we last met - in Trichy itself :(. Time passes quickly, and we get busy in our lives. But then..

आते जाते खूबसूरत आवारा सडको पे
कभी कभी इत्फाक से,
कितने अनजान लोग मिल जाते हैं,
उनमे से कुछ लोग भूल जाते हैं,
कुछ याद रह जाते हैं 

I hope we meet again - soon. I’m not so weak to let distance or time weaken a friendship. Satyam? Listening? 

A few hitherto unknown facts revealed in this post.

I wrote CAT this time. I got a 98.XX percentile and have an interview call from IIM Bangalore.

The time I wrote CAT, I thought that maybe this will be a good thing. MBA - will get to learn a lot, will get to experience a new world altogether.

But then as the interview dates comes closer, I am  convinced that this is not the right thing to do at the moment. An MBA at this stage will surely mean moving away from hardcore technology - which I’m crazy about. Two years away from technology, surrounded by people who dream nothing but of investment banks and consultancy firms will prove to be a brainwash. I’m not ready for it.

My observation after speaking with so many people has been that it is usually engineers who do not find engineering the most exciting thing in the world who move towards MBA - it is a great way to make a career shift. The prospects of going to a technology or software company after an MBA are not great - at least not from IIMs. And so MBA does not interest me. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Finally, I love my job. What could be a computer engineer’s bigger dream than to the first line of code in a  Microsoft product?

So I’m decided. No MBA - at least not in the near future. The big question is - should I go attend the interview? It will cost me 8k to go attend it, and all the trouble of the new airport at Hyderabad. Plus, the very next day, I have to make one of the most important presentations I’ve ever made.

Help me out - I’m tempted not to go for the interview. Any ideas?

People have been asking me why have I suddenly disappeared from the blogging circle entirely. I actually have - my last post was something like 2 weeks back!

I’m quite busy in office these days, and have taken up a new schedule where I get up by 6.30 in the morning and am in office by 8.30 :) Which also implies no staying up till crazy hours in the night. I am working on an exciting new project, and am learning a lot. I’ll write a post on work culture in my company and the kind of work I do soon. 

I took up the Art of Living course last week, and it was simply amazing. The best part was that it was not as if they were forcing you to accept some particular belief or ‘Guru’. The yoga was great, and I feel so much better now. I would urge you to take this course up whenever you can - after you do it you’ll realize that you should have done it a long time ago, just like I did!

I went on a company picnic to coorg, and had a great time. The resort we stayed in was just awesome. I got to stay in a private villa that had a private pool (all for myself :), jacuzzi and lots of other stuff. Won’t say that coorg was amazing, but out resort (Orange county) definitely was. In addition, these picnics help one be better friends with people in your team :) However, the resort was expensive (I’m not even sure if just ‘expensive’ describes how expensive it was), so no point going there on your own. Wait till your company takes you there! 

My post, a must have internet explorer add-on is getting a LOT of spam comments - I get upto 10 everyday :( Guess I’ll just disable the comments for that particular post.

This is all that is going on in my life - well almost :) What about you?

I came back late from office today - after 11 pm - had an unusually busy day.

I reached home and turned on my computer.

I launched Internet Explorer and prayed - Oh God! I don’t want my internet connection to work tonight.

It was working.

And here I am, at 1 a.m., dead tired, swollen eyes, but glued to the net. Can’t help it - I’m so badly addicted.

Read what I wrote about net addition two years back here. How things change!

Let me share another childhood memory with you - a funny one this time.

—

When I was a kid, before my voice cracked, I had a very thin voice. In simpler terms, I had a voice that sounded very much like a girl’s. I was teased a lot, and I used to wait for the day when my voice would crack.

People used to think I was my dad’s daughter if I happened to pick up the phone - they just assumed it hearing my voice. It was embarrassing. Imagine me explaining - “Uncle, I’m not his daughter. I’m his son.” Sometimes I used to correct people, most of the times I did not - just used to give the phone to my dad and wait for the day when my voice would crack.

Once it got ugly. Some guy started started blank calling our home phone thinking that there was a girl in the house! This when I am the only child of my parents and I was in class IV and I was a guy.

I used to tell that guy ‘Dude, I’m not a girl. I’m a guy. You’re wasting your time and money.’ But that dude never believed me. I used to laugh my head off when that unknown guy used to call and go like ‘Madam, please talk to me. Please give me a pappi (Hindi slang for a kiss)’.  

Finally, after years of wait, my voice cracked and I started sounding like a man. Thank god! :)

I feel at home at only two places in the world - one is Ghaziabad, where I have spent my formative years of my life and one in the campus of NIT Trichy - my alma mater. I don’t feel at home in Hyderabad where I stay currently or in Ahmedabad, where my parents stay.

I was in the bus from my campus to the railway station - and I was very uneasy. And suddenly, before I could do anything about it, hot tears rolled down my cheeks. I don’t want to go back. I’m sitting in the waiting room at the railway station typing this, and how I wish I could stay just one more day.

Its my friends - Hari, Preeti, Suren, Lavanya, Isli, Maruti… - I love you guys so much! It is so much fun hanging out with you guys, and I look forward to this happen again. You guys mean the world to me!

Oh NIT Trichy - you’re a piece of my heart. A thousand salutes to you!

I’m going to share a few of my childhood memories. Some of them pleasant, some of them unpleasant. I’ve hardly shared some of them with anyone else - because I’ve been so embarrassed about them. But here I am making them public.

Here goes the first one - and I think the one which affected me the most.

—

 This happened (or started rather) when I was in III standard.  I was pretty bright and other kids and teachers held me in good regard. There was this guy in my class, named Musharib. A typical naughty and trouble making fellow. Fine with me. However, our class-teacher was quite concerned about him (Her name was Tanvi S Khan, if I remember correctly) and as you’d expect, changed his seat in class and made him sit next to me - hoping that he’d pick up a good quality or two from me. Fine with me.

This guy, happened to have a friend in class - her name was Diana, and both were good friends. Like kids in III standard are. Then I made that mistake.

One fine morning, I still vividly remember - it was the first period, Musharib had a chalk piece, and told me that he wanted to write ‘Musharib and Diana are friends’ on the desk. Of course, he said that to me in Hindi, as kids generally did not have great command over English. And that is why he wanted my help to write that in English.

Too mature for my age, my brain came up with a mischief - instead of writing ‘Diana and Musharib are friends’, I wrote ‘Diana weds Musharib’. I don’t know why.

Kids around asked me what it meant. So I told them. I just remember Musharib going ‘Hawwww’ and erasing what was written on the desk. And so began the most painful time of my childhood life.

Musharib was smart. Smarter then I could have imagined him to be. He did not go and complain to the teacher immediately, however, he asked me if he should go and complain. I could not believe it - he was blackmailing me!

He did tell the maths teacher and I was punished - made to stand in front of the class with my hands held straight up. However, I was scared that my parents would be very disappointed to know what a hideous crime their only child had committed.

Meanwhile, Musharib kept me in constant fear of telling my parents - I don’t remember him making me do or get anything for him, but he kept me in constant fear - that he would go ahead tell my parents.

Little did I know that the ‘crime’ I had committed was not really a crime - and that maybe my parents would just have laughed it off  - for me, it was the worst kind of crime that I had committed, and was too scared to even imagine what would my parents do if they found out.

Musharib scared me for a few months, and then the thing was old. But I had still not told my parents, and whenever Musharib asked me - “Manas, should I…”, my heart would skip a beat.

It ended when my dad got transferred and we moved to a new city. I was so relieved. I still havent told my parents.. It doesn’t matter now.

However, the thing to notice is, that a child’s mind is so innocent, that he can easily be scared, and even when my parents were the most understanding parents in the world, the fear of disappointing them made me hide something, which did not really mean anything.

I wish Musharib had gone ahead and told my parents on the first day itself - at least I would not have spent those months in constant fear.

I have hated him ever since - but now I realize - even if he was enjoying having the brightest kid in the class in constant fear, the real fault was mine - I wanted to hide my mistake. Since then, I make it a point to accept my faults out in the open - it makes you feel very light.

If you’re reading this, I’m sorry Musharib, for what I did. (Diana did not speak with him for a long long time after what I had said about the two).

Peace. 

Note: Any  similarity with real life events is highly hypothetical 

One of my best hypothetical friends, whom I call chutkoo, has lately been doing everything to make life difficult for himself.  He forgot to submit his CV on time for his placement, and then when the D-Day was three days away, his marksheet was no where to be found. I have been telling him, hypothetically of course, to stay more in the real world, to prioritize, not to postpone things. But, even in this hypotherical world, his attempts to be better can only be termed hypothetical.

To add to my hypothetical frustration, every time something like this happens hypothetically, I get the same hypothetical assurance - I’ll take care from now on.

I can only wish - hypothetically. 

Such a simple sentence. However, it has a meaning so deep, only when you mean it you realize its deapth.

 I did today.

Around 1.5 years back, I wrote this post titled Another Addict where I described how I enjoyed being online. I was in IIT Kanpur, and the connectivity there was much better than in NIT Trichy.

Long back, when all I had was a dial-up at home, internet access was quite expensive (See here). Being online meant doing nothing but looking for information you needed and disconnecting as soon as possible. I used to think that in the US, computers are always on, and always online - It must be so wonderful to just minimize Internet Explorer and continue with other things!

Well, now I’m out of college. I have corporate internet in office, broadband at home and EGPRS on my phone. I do not shut down my office computers - ever - ‘coz that way I can access them from whereever I am, whenever I want to. Always on, always online.

Basically, it has come to a stage where the only time I’m not online is when I’m sleeping. I’m obviously online when I’m in office, I’m online at home and I’m online while on the move.

Do I need to sleep more?