The reason of being You!

-> If you were to go tomorrow, would you say you lived a meaningful life?
-> What is your identity?
-> What are your values? Do your life choices align with them?

I just finished 'When Breath Becomes Air' by Paul Kalanithi. He wrote this book just before his death. It's an account of his thought provoking journey from being a curious student to a doctor to a patient to a father, written with the clear perspective of someone who is terminally ill.

Some thoughts really stood out for me - 

"You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving." He says this in the context of actively engaging with death as he tries to help his patients beat death, while knowing fully well the deck is stacked against him and that death always wins. This is a beautiful phrasing of what we all experience everyday.

"Before operating on a patient's brain, I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end." The context is the judgement a neurosurgeon has to make when planning high risk operations. A millimetre of difference can debilitate the patient in various ways.

"When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing." His message to his baby daughter who was 9 months old when he died.

"In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete." He says in his search for truth.

When you see life from a dying person's eyes, it shines a light on how you've lived your own. And for me, sadly, it doesn't look good. 

But it's never too late to begin to strive for that asymptote. My line will perhaps remain a bit farther from the curve but, if I start now then perhaps by the end of my life, I'd still have made a journey towards that imaginary point where the line meets the curve and perfection lies.

Heard somewhere..

ये मत सोचो कि कितने लम्हे हैं ज़िन्दगी में...

ये सोचो कि कितनी ज़िन्दगी है हर लम्हे में!


Don't count the moments in life...
Count the lives in every moment!

Creating the thought leaders...

I want to share something with you which completely blew me away. The passion behind this system is overwhelming and I am fortunate to be a part of one such system, if not the exact same.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid992329247?bctid=769654260

We have such similar things here. This makes me see my own system in a very different way - how much it has to offer and how much more I need to make out of it. Term 4 is on in four days...way to go Sodium.

Manish Sabharwal strikes again..

Three days ago, on 12-Aug, we had Manish Sabharwal of Teamlease Services come to address our group who had taken the course on Planning an Entrepreneurial Venture. They call this guy a serial-entrepreneur whereas he insists that the adjective 'Serial' be used with only mean words like 'Killer', 'Rapist', etc.

The auditorium that is usually very hard to fill for any event here because of the continual pressure of acads and a multitude of parallel activities was full that day. The guy has earned a loyal audience by his spell binding presentations and speeches in various conferences here. And this day was not an exception. For 2 full hours, not a single person left Khemka (the Auditorium), and when he finished, he got a standing ovation for one full minute - quite a big thing here.

Here are a few witty one liners I remember from his presentation. They may look weird out of context here but were apt in the presentation. Nonetheless worth reading -

- Even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat (Damn! How many of us have realized this?!)

- You guys won the ovarian lottery (= you were born to a family who could provide you a respectable education. Respect man! what a logic!)

- Sexually transmitted CEOship (for family heirs becoming the CEOs of family owned businesses - blew me away!)

- One biggest advantage of being a bisexual is that you double your chances of finding a date (of course! Just that I never looked at it this way before!)

- If it went right, it was a skill. If it went wrong, it was bad luck.

- Entrepreneurship is about staying alive till you make money.

My quadi says I am influenced by the oratory skills and witty remarks. But, really, sometimes you go just for the pleasure of listening!

The Perfect Entrepreneur...

The International Conference on Entrepreneurship concluded here today. The hours between 4.30 pm and 6.30 pm today alone were immensely enriching. I am a big fan of Mr. Manish Sabharwal of TeamLease Services now. The clarity, passion, and articulation in his words was striking. He is an alum of Wharton.

He gave many insights into the world of entrepreneurship and with sound basis:

"Aim high. Aiming low in the beginning is something I feel I shouldn't have done. Believe in yourself and push in full throttle."

"You don't wait for all the lights to go green before you can leave home." (In the context of waiting for removal of all or existing regulatory hurdles before thinking of starting a venture in India)

"When you go to the 10 year reunion of your alma mater, you shouldn't have put yourself in a situation in all those years where you would tell your old pals in retrospect that there is something you wish you should have done but didn't do for whatever reason."

"Remember, entrepreneurs can create two kinds of companies - Babies and Dwarfs. The only difference is that babies grow." (Blew me off!)

"It doesn't necessarily and mostly start with the 'best idea'. You continually mutate your original idea till something starts making business sense and appeals to your customer. While leaving your current job, you don't think that the first plan you work on would work in its initial form. Mutate and adapt to market. 

Entrepreneurship is not an event. It's a process." (Closing statement of the event and the audience burst into voluntary applause. My respect for the man multiplied)

He made numerous thought provoking statements and all came naturally from him. He lives by these ideas. If I wish to be like someone in a few years, this is the man!

Manish Sabharwal

Learnings outside the classroom..

"Hey Ankur, I wanted to apologize to you. I didn't intend to corner you. I hope you didn't mind." 

The professor of Financial Accounting from Duke stopped me outside the dining hall after lunch and said those words. I was stumped. Earlier in his class, I had opined that Shareholder's equity is the liability of a company towards its shareholders. The class opposed me in chorus and the professor told me never to repeated this anywhere. It was usual, a professor correcting his student. I didn't even think any bit about that, then or later.

But still, I was humbled and touched by his gesture. I will keep this in mind wherever I go in my life. The learning has begun.

Thanks professor.

Little bit to learn from everybody...everybody

Sometimes you wish

you could go back in time

and do the things differently

just a little bit...

The Goal...

When I was a child, I liked Sachin Tendulkar. I remember that I cut out and kept a photograph of him with Sir Don Bradman when the former went to meet the later on his 91^st birthday. I was a small kid then, incapable of achieving anything more than a first position in class, so I took a vicarious pleasure in the achievements of my heroes. As time passed and I grew up, a sense of tremendous self respect and independence began to take over. Now I wanted to achieve all such things myself and take pleasure in my own moments of glory. 

I don’t follow cricket now and I care least about celebrities. Today, Sachin achieved the milestone of being the highest run getter in international test cricket and at night I happened to switch to a channel that was airing a live interview with him on his new achievement. I suddenly remembered those old moments when I cut that photograph and when I read an article about his upcoming 24^th birthday in the local Hindi daily, multiple times and so lovingly. 

A sudden rush of emotions and a reminder of an old promise to the self – that is the league I have to belong to.

Hats Off Dad...

I take different things from different people. As such, I don’t have any single role model. I take independence and patience from my father and I take truthfulness and honesty from my mother.

The other day, I was very disturbed about something related to office and he was perturbed seeing me like this. I was touched with his gesture when he sat with me for half an hour at night and told me how a few recent incidents he handled well had been potentially devastating, how such things happen with everybody and how we should take them in stride. For those few moments, I felt something I can’t put in words. He is not a man of exceptional achievements but I realized that every now and then he has had his moments – moments that went unidentified in this governmental bureaucratic machinery –that tell the tale of his exceptional qualities. I learnt a few things from him that day.

He went to sleep but as I thought what he had tried to tell me, I remembered something I had learned sometime back – you have something to learn from everyone.

One fine evening...(an idiot speaks rationally !)

I saw him first in my visitors file
when in innocent arrogance
I wandered carelessly to his profile
perhaps to find there one new idiot
checking people's profiles and living in rut

but awestruck I saw him,

such handsome, tall, and sturdily built
giving committed girls a sharp pang of guilt
here I talk to him but look at my fate
no feelings man.. I am straight !!

hidden in the clutter was that awesome treasure
which I spent perusing through at my night's leisure
the blog had words
but never had the words rhymed to so much of thought
a serenity of senses which hitherto only a legend brought
some people seem to get it all
they don't intend to but you feel small

and guess what's more
the guy even has a 750 GMAT score

It's all in the timing, as I say, some people get it all
unlike my case when the God's printer was perhaps off for an overhaul !