Snapshot...

I was watching Grey's Anatomy today and I heard the following statements which just stuck to me. I thought I should snapshot it somewhere. Where else would it be if not for this blog..:)

"I was not the brightest student in the music school. But, what I lacked in ability, I compensated with my practice. I practiced... a lot... and I became the best."

"One can achieve anything in life as long as they are willing to sacrifice everything else for it."

"When I thought about what I did with my life, the only things that I remembered were the ones where I chose to do things that I was not supposed to do. I realised that life is not to be lived by the rules."

Theory of Human Distribution

We were celebrating our monthly birthday party in my new startup company. By the way, for those of you who dont know already, I have quit Juniper Networks and I have joined this startup called "Nuova Systems". Now, you can see why I dont write a lot of blogs anymore..;)... Anyway, back to birthday party. There were only 2 people out of a company of 50 people whose birthday was in April. It kept me thinking.

I was trying to find out if there is a distribution in human birthdays. I partially believe in zodiac signs and their generalisations on characters of people born in different months. So, I was wondering, if people's birthdays fall in certain months more than others, it might affect the opinions based on generalisations. Fundamentally, based on the number of days in a month, the probability is different for each month. For example, february will have the least probability. Also, there must be some climatic influence and in India, the "good" months identified for marriage and all of that must certainly influence the birthday of a given person. Isnt it? There is this famous birthday problem that most of you must have heard about. If you have a group of people more than 23, there will be atleast 2 people who will have the same birthday with a probability greater than 50%. But, my feeling is that it may not be true if the distribution is not uniform.

Anyway, I tried to search in web to find out if I can get any pointers to it but in vain. In one of the sites, the distribution was kind of normal. But, the sample size was less and hence I wasnt very convinced. It would be interesting to analyse it and see how it impacts society and its culture. Well, the fundamental premise lies in the belief that we agree on zodiac signs, which is probably a subjective thing. Was wondering what you folks think.

An evening with Amma

This is a mail that I had sent after visiting Amma,aka Amruthananda Mai . Decided to post it as a blog.
On June 16 2005, we drove to San Ramon to visit Amma. We went to visit her especially after hearing about her philanthropic nature and all the good deeds that she has done and ofcourse to get a nice hug too.:-) .Reached that place around 7:45PM . When we entered the temple, there were volunteers to assist us as we were first-timers .The temple was packed with people and we were given tokens in 600 range. Yes, the tokens do start from 1 incase anyone has doubts.There were lot of Americans and few indians too. Interestingly, many of them seemed to be very normal people with children who we see in our day-to-daylife .Ofcourse, there were the usual bunch of "hippies" with atrocious hair styles and dancing without inhibitions during the bhajans.
The programme started with a lady who talked about Amma and some general philosophy. Nice to hear. Then Amma gave a talk about attachment to God and detachment from family etc. They were the regular preachings given by all the saints. I guess reading these preachings really help when you are tyring to figure out your sufferings.OK, dont want to talk about philosophy and spirituality etc.Around 9:00PM, they started singing bhajans. As we know, our lord Ganesh has the utmost priority and so he took the credit for the first few bhajans followed by others. Amma sang most of the songs including an english song . I sang some of the songs as I love singing songs and that too bhajans .The last song was on Amma parameshwari, devi etc.Since the song has lot of Amma words in it ( being a Durga Devi song) , the crowd became very enchanted and lot of people started singing. I think people thought they were singing about this Amma though actually this Amma was singing about God Amma !!. I had a nice time singing bhajans with leg-tapping while Suresh tried to accompany with a falsetto now and then. Around 10:00, once the bhajans ended, they took aarathi of Amma and sang some song written just for her .I enjoyed everything till then. I think it is still tough for a logical mind to think of someone as God incarnate .
After that, she started the darshan, which is basically hugging. One really needs to appreciate her vitality and energy in hugging millions of people. She goes on hugging without a break till the last person in line is blessed. Mostly, it goes on till 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning.
But, we were under special need category as I had undergone treatment and was not able to sustain the waiting. To top it, first timers always get the highest priority . Hence, we were given a place right next to her and a chance to hug as soon as she started the darshan. Tissue papers were given to wipe our face before hugging her.There were interpreters to translate as Amma speaks only Malayalam and can understand Tamil. Since he had to defend his proclaimation of knowing Malayalam,Suresh was trying to form a sentence in Malayalam atleast an hour before the hugging, but was too dumbstruck on getting close .Suresh got a hug first and then we got a family hug where she hugged both of us together and whispered something in Tamil in our ears as we had announced our mother tongue as tamil.
Here comes the most interesting part...
She said "Amma Pillai, Chella Pillai" while hugging us. The ever exuberant Suresh heard it as "Mapillai , Chella Pillai" and was jumping up and down on coming out proclaiming that he is Amma's "Mapillai" . We were each given a "viboothi packet" and a " hershey's kisses chocolate". But, I think I got extra blessing 'coz when she hugged me, somehow, I got distinct chandan paste on my forehead and no one else got it. Maybe, it was on her saree and stuck to my forehead. Anyway, I consider that a good omen . Bottomline, we had never seen any saint in our life so far..It was an interesting experience for both of us .

Indicator? I don't care!

I am very sorry to see the increase in number of people with utter disregard for indicators. It seems like a major attitude problem. It is not as if people don't notice indicators, it is a very conscious disregard.

There are certain drivers that weave through traffic. I suppose these drivers must be in a mad rush to save some planet! And many a times when I see these drivers, I must admit I am guilty of trying to keep them from their goal. When I feel the intentions are plain and straightforward though, I always yield. It is wrong to assume that every one who is trying to change lanes is just trying to get ahead. The poor fellow (both genders) could merely be trying to take an exit or a turn.

This has happened to me many times. So many times that it couldn't be just coincidence. It has happened when I had the indicator on for a short time as well as for lengthier times. What is with these people? Why the huge display of attitude? Why are people so competitive when it comes to the roads? "God forbid if the other car overtakes us"! At first I thought it must be paranoia. Last evening me and my husband were driving our regular route. There was this SUV which was quite a bit behind the sedan, but would just not give the little sedan a chance to get into the slower lane even though the sedan had the right indicator on for an exit. Instead the SUV driver revved up his machine to overtake the sedan and then move to the faster lane. It would have been much easier to slow down some and yield. The sedan had to cross the solid line to get to the exit. Both me and my husband were observing this behavior. I swore a lot to get over it it. Now in continuing my observation, the next is to see how size/model affects these attitudes and if people live upto "Might is Right"!

My Foray into "The Relay" !

On April 8/9, 2006, me along with a group of 11 others completed a milestone of completing 199 miles of running, starting from Calistoga to Santa Cruz Boardwalk. First of all, I should thank my guru Sri who inspired me to take up running. Though I didnt dare to pick up a marathon, I thought that I should be able to do a relay run where you run several legs of run over 1.5 days which adds up to 15-16 miles. That being said, at the end of the relay, it was more than the run. I met some wonderful people and had a lot of fun during the 2 days of fun filled adventure. Though I cant possibly comprehend the experience in a blog, I will try my best to describe the sequence that I went through.

It all started when my ex-colleague Mukunda told me about the relay. He said that he had a group of friends from India Literacy Project (ILP) who run the relay every year. Though my main objective was to be part of a team, the secondary objective (to me) was also to raise fund for ILP, which is an integral part of the team member's role. I was initially unsure of whether I can take up something of this magnitude. Soon after I attended the initial session, I started practicing my runs, with some tips from Sri. Based on his input, I started following a book called "The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer (Paperback) by David A. Whitsett, Forrest A. Dolgener, Tanjala Jo Kole". I am not sure if it is the best book to follow. But, it gave a clear program that I followed without slacking and it seemed to work for me.

I started my run during the last week of December. A 2 mile run was my first attempt to run. I was terribly tired at the end of the run. However, I later figured that, it all stems from the mind in the way one views running. This is how I saw it. In long distance running, it doesnt matter how fast you finish, it only matters if you complete the run or not. If you think that you can walk 5 miles, assume that you can finish 5 miles of running if you choose the right pace. The faster you run, the lesser the miles you will cover before you break down. Once finishing becomes your goal, one can easily improve pace over time. Once I got this enlightenment, I started increasing my distance over time with a corresponding reduction in pace. In a couple of weeks from the start, I was able to run upto 6 miles without much problems. In a month's time, I was able to run almost 20 miles a week and in 2 months time, I was able to do 35 miles a week with my long runs of 10-12 miles during the weekend with the ILP group. My shortest runs became 6 miles...My personal best was a practice relay run of 19 miles over a morning, evening and the next day morning. I totally ran around 300 miles during the 3 months of training I had. I was all set...



When it came to the D-day of running the relay, my morale was at its peak. I was very confident that I can do the runs without any problems. I was more worried about the timing than completing my runs. We had 12 people split in 2 vans consisting of 6 people in each van. Each runner ran his leg in a given van till the 6 people completed their legs. The second van took over in a van exchange point and they started running from then on. This continued till a total of 36 legs were completed (3 legs for each runner). When runners in van1 were engaged, the van2 members rested. The run was continuous, which meant that some folks got to run at night. Since I had collected the most money at the time of leg assignment, I got the most coveted golden-gate bridge stretch as one of my leg. The golden gate stretch was the time when most runners converged based on their start time and the run is on a full moon day. That made the golden gate leg "special". Though I didnt realise the "special" factor, I enjoyed running at midnight in golden gate when no one else had access to the bridge. It was as if I had the bridge all for myself which was quite interesting. To top that, I had my loving wife Shoba, my dear friend Sri and my cheerful buddies Meena and Manohar waiting for me at the other end of the bridge inspite of the odd time. It was simply amazing !! It was undoubtedly one of the happiest moments of my life...



When I started my first leg, I was all charged and when I started running, I was doing 7.5 minutes per mile and was cruising. Just when I hit my 2 mile mark, I started breathing hard and realised that I should not try to be a hero and pace myself to reach the end point. At the end, I had done a 8.5 minute/mile pace. I reinforced myself by saying that I shouldnt strive to be faster, especially when I have 2 more legs to finish. The main issue with relay is that, it is not a one time thing as in a marathon. Giving the best you can in one leg could make your other legs difficult. Also, you have to warm up everytime as if you are starting it fresh which is quite different from running a single stretch of the same distance. Coupled with it is the factor of sleeplessness. My second stretch was the golden gate stretch. It was categorized as a hard stretch since I had to climb about 300 feets over the first 4 miles. I paced myself and it was one of my best runs though my pace was only 9.5 min/mile. My last and final stretch was a 3 mile run with 1250 feet of climb with only a 3 hour sleep the previous night after my golden gate run. We had our dinner at 2:00AM in Mel's drive-in in San francisco. Anyway, my 3rd leg was categorized as a very hard stretch. Uphill is usually a very different ball game. Though the miles might seem less, it takes a lot of energy and stamina. I could only maintain a 12 minute per mile pace. But, given the uphill, I was quite happy with the pace. Yes, I finished the run ! without getting injured !! I accomplished what I set out to do.... And the team accomplished what it set out to do as well.




During this relay, I had a lot of fun to cheer up each runners as we stopped to give them water along the way. It was amazing to see some of the old people running outpacing a lot of young individuals. I got to meet the incredible runner (Dean Karnazes) who was doing almost 150 miles out of the 199 mile run all by himself (FYI, he has a world record for running 350 miles without rest). Every team had the best spirits in mind to cheer everyone as if they knew them personally. In our team, nearly everyone outperformed their expected performance. The real goal for our team was completion and in maintaining a positive spirit throughout the run. And, we did complete the relay !

Deal or No deal?

It was a Chennai summer day and time was 2PM. The year was somewhere between 1986 to 1988. The weather was ideal (38 Celsius) to play our ezhuthukaran st World cup. Entire brats are out on our backyard. (total area = 10 sq m).

Pitch was cleared and poor grass was hanging to its dear life. Since we want to create a ground like atmosphere, we left some grass and players are forbidden from walking on the grass (Irony: Real Players are not allowed to walk on the pitch and allowed only on grass).

Following the Indian tradition elders are respected (if not, they took their respect) and hence 13-14 yr old became the team captains. Team was selected by most proven, fair and democratic method of picking by hand. (One captain will hold his palm out and other captain must hit on his palm and point the person he wants for his side). Side note, the literal odd man out will be selected as "oppuku-chappaney" (in sophisticated term, 'Joker') you can play for both teams but always will be given the second class citizen status by both the teams.

Being the most honest player (relative integrity is all we are talking about), I was awarded the honorary post of umpire, apart from being the star player (?) of our team. By younger brother being the most athletic in the family became an automatic choice for my team.

5 Paise coin was tossed and our opponent team won the toss and promptly elected to bat (the fear of not getting Gaaji made the winners picking batting the obvious choice).

I do not remember the entire detail, but our opponents did OK and we were confident about our abilities to do the run chase. Only concern we had in back of our minds was about parents walking into our game and taking their children away to do home work causing imbalance to the team which may lead the opponent to drop the match without giving us the Gajji (not letting you bat after bowling for 10-20 overs is called - not giving Gajji)

We started our run chase in brisk pace. Keeping with the international standards, star players are introduced as 3rd or 4th down only. When the first wicket went down, my brother was sent in as pinch-hitter. (to get quick runs) Unfortunately for him (and for me), I was the umpire at that time.

First few balls were negotiated carefully as per coaching manuals(?). Then my brother started his usual hard hitting. Boom.. the ball went to the ditch. G2 I signalled. (G2 = Granted 2, according to pre-accepted rule) My brother was not happy since he already took 3 runs (the guy was not willing to put his hand in Ditch and that provided a window for runs of course).

Few balls later, he again hit one good short which was obstructed by our washing stone. By now, he is getting irritated. Our ruthless team committee (standing behind that ditch) is asking him to hit or get out. (retired hurt is another option they were suggesting :) )

Next ball was a slower one and my brother did well to place it for a single. It is a tight single and he was running hard, but the fielder picked the ball and hit the single stump. Now I have to explain this point, the runner as a unwritten rule should give a call when they reached the line. This is for everyone to have reference in case of photo finish run-outs (remember: these are pre-third-umpire era and we thought about these issues well).

Anyway, my brother made the call 2 meters before even he saw the line (it is norm then). And I being the umpire could not agree with him for 2 reasons. 1) He was not even close 2) The fielder is older and heavier person. "OUT", I signalled, to the relief of the opponent team and the next player in my team who is too eager to play.

When I did well to estimate the opponent's strength, I forgot about my brother's temper. He was furious as expected and asking for replay(Duh?). All I could do was to replay my signal. "OUT" I said avoiding eye contact with him.

When I eventually turned to see my brother, the situation was getting out of hand. He had bat in one hand and hard cricket ball in other and hit a biggest shot of the match. I tried my best to avoid the path of the ball. But to my bad luck, the ball hit right on top of my head. Boom! it flew few meters in air before it thudded on the ground. The entire 'stadium' was stunned. I was down in the pitch holding my head.

My brother realized the mistake few seconds late ran towards me to check whether everything is intact in my head. To every one's surprise and relief all I had was a bump in my head and no bleeding.

But the bump and my acting (it was not paining!) is enough to scare my tough-to-scare brother. I was screaming that I am going to inform it to our strict Appa. (guartneed slaps, of course). My brother has to decide quick to get him out of trouble. He out thought Jack Bauer's (24 show fame) of the world and came with a deal.

If you don't tell Appa, then I will give my 2 days daily allowance for you and do your household duties for 2 days. If you tell Appa, then he is not going to let us play for few days for sure. What do you say?

Damn! He made a very convincing story. I will pick my battle later. "Deal I said". And brotherly love prevailed in the world.

Note: The match was abandoned at the fear of brothers clash/fight that could have happened in the aftermath of run-out situation. So, no Gajji for me.

Interview Process

I interviewed couple of engineers recently for open position in our team. I was called as last minute replacement. There used to be a time when I would wait for an opportunity to interview someone since it kind of pumps up one's ego. (Not that I am totally over that ego-thing)

Anyway, I started contemplating the questions I should ask the candidate. Should I ask basic questions? What will he think about me? Would they think that I am being silly or I underestimate them? Questions kept coming at me. I went into the interview room and it was easier than the preparation I went through in my cube.

I asked what I consider as lollipop question. The candidate gave some random answer. May be he did not understand my question, I told myself. So I downshifted and asked easier question on his turf. Nope. The answers were difficult to obtain. I resigned to the fate and asked him about the project (Have to kill the remaining 20 minutes right?).

The next interview went on in a different angle. The interviewer became the interviewee. The candidate due to his over-confidence thought he can just walk into any role and started asking about my role. Hmm..Now it is time for some introspection??Anyway, he even had the attitude to say my colleague (who interviewed him before me) couldn't answer the questions he asked. *Confused look*

After all the interviewing process, we had a meeting to discuss the candidate. It brought an interesting side of people.

- A lead engineer who is from middle-east, said, I knew he lied in his resume but I couldn't confront him because the candidate look little old, I have to give respect. Note: The same guy fought tooth and nails with me during a technical discussion before.
-Another lead engineer from China, said, the candidate was giving bigger picture so I decided to let him talk about the project instead (sounded familiar?). But she concluded that he wouldn't pick him for the position
-A white American, said, I went through my list of questions and he did not answer 3 out of 5. Definite no! He was not arrogant, just putting his point.

I know I am stereo-typing people a bit here. But I thought it was interesting.

Another general feeling I got was that, People feel bad about rating someone very low.May be they put themselves in the candidate's position!

During the discussion, I was wondering they all would have discussed me like this and somehow decided to hire me 3 years back. I also wondered how flimsy the process is. It could have tipped either way with few bad answers or some minor attitude issue.

Reservations...Good, Bad or Ugly ?

This is a topic that has bugged me right from my school days. This is also a very controversial topic that has been debated widely. I think the fundamental core of the problem is to balance the problem of minority. To some extent, I think the idea of balancing out resources among unequal consumers is a classical act of a communistic society. While everyone is totally against communism and claim that it is not a good model after all, I dont understand why balancing out the resources is even considered. On the other hand, the question about the condition of poor and suppressed people who live in a negative spiral of economy is a very important issue that needs to be seriously considered as well. The question then becomes, what is the cost of balancing ?

I read in a siliconindia article today that IITs, IIMs and other leading government based elite institutions have been asked to reserve 49.5% of their seats to SC, ST and OBCs. I think it is a ridiculous move and will have significant long term impacts. Till I completed my +2, I never had any notion of what reservation was. As a school student, I never looked at my fellow students in the mental filter of caste, creed or race. Things were very simple. But, as I wrote my entrance exam and waited for the results to come, that's when I realised how skewed the system was, in the act of "balancing". Anyway, I got into a decent college (I am sure I have a majority here by saying that..:)) and was able to succeed. I can think of a large pool of students who didnt get into a good college just because of the so called "reservation". I also know of a large pool of "qualified" students whose future was spoiled for the same reason. Where did they go wrong?

When I looked back into history, I can understand that people like Ambedkar and others wanted to see a society which is not limited based on their racial background. I perfectly agree with it. No one in this world should be devoid of an oppurtunity based on their racial background. I would even go as much as to say that, people from certain communities should be given some discounts, not based on their castes but based on their economic background. A little amount of "discounting" of the order of 10% is still understandable. But, numbers of the order of 50% or 65% (used to be the case in Tamilnadu) is just intolerable. I think politicians in India play a major role behind these moves. Are they to be blamed? Should people who back up political parties based on these reservations be blamed? I dont know. I was wondering what you guys thought about the same.

Moments...

Yesterday, I watched a movie called "Bluff Master". Though it wont be in my list of recommendations for sure, there are parts of it which I really liked. Especially, the dialogues. One of them created a lasting impression on me.

There is a time when the hero (abhishek bachan) would hear that he only has 3 months to live. Obviously, abshishek will be really shaken. The doctor and abhishek would have a conversation about what the next 3 months has in store for him. The doctor would say, "Life is full of moments. The more moments you have, you can be assured that you have lived a richer life. Remember the things that you would never forget. Imagine the time when you first learnt how to drive a bicycle, your remarkable achievement in class, your first kiss, the first time your heart was broken and so on. If you count those days, how many do you get? 5, 10, 20..30? You have 90 more days to live. If you cherish each day and live the best life you possibly can, you have 3 lifetime worth of time left to you.... No one knows when their life is going to end. The good news is that, you know it. So, live it rich." Optimism at its best...

As I usually banter around, I think passion drives life. One question that everyone need to think about is that, if today were your last day of your life, would you do the same as what you are about to do today. If the answer has been "no" for a while, then, there definitely needs to be a change. One of the quote that has stuck to me is that, "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made a deep impression on me. It is the quality, not quantity, that adds richness to life...