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

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.

Once in a lifetime...

"Congrats to Devesh for cracking Harvard."

I stared at Madhur's status line in my Gtalk window in disbelief. Disbelief because all through, despite my fighting spirit, I had somehow accepted that it's not the likes of me who go to Harvard. And yet he was just like me. I saw him maturing from a 17 year old carefree adolescent to a 21 year old, still carefree, engineer. All I remember about him is his ever smiling face. Nothing seemed to perturb him enough to take that smile away from him, be it a semester exam screw-up or seeing his batch mate dating this eye candy when all he did was hanging out in the civil lines with his SAE executive committee members, and I have reason to believe that he did have some trampled feelings for all those few candies of architecture around.

It was a delight and in a moment he changed my perspective. It was 27-Mar-08 and it was a renaissance, a new desire with a renewed faith in the possibilities that lie ahead when all that is needed is a will to venture into the unknown.

Once again, I promise myself to live by the standards I had set for myself when I was a very small child, a 11 year old who had just recovered from a prolonged terminal illness and was secretly setting out on his course to pay back his parents for all they had lost on his little, uncertain life.

It's human to grieve over the time lost but today I try to tell myself...

Girte hain shehsawar hi maidan-e-jung mein
Woh tifra kya gire jo ghutno ke bal chale !

Work hard for whatever you dream of...you may not get the ultimate goal but you would have the satisfaction that you tried

karmanya vadhikarasthe ma phaleshu kadachana | ma karmaphalahethurbhurma the sango sthvakarmani ||

To work alone do we have a right ! Not to expect fruits thereof. Action with attachment is very inferior opposed to action performed with an evenness in mind.

Striving for excellance

Khudi ko kar buland itna ke har taqder se pehle
Khuda bande se ye poche bata teri raza kia hai

Khudi ko kar buland itna ke har taqder se pehle
Khuda bande se ye poche bata teri raza kia hai

Sitaron se age jahan aur bhi hai aur bhi hai
Abhi ishq ke Imtehan aur bhi hai aur bhi hai
Sitaron se age jahan aur bhi hai aur bhi hai
Abhi ishq ke Imtehan aur bhi hai aur bhi hai

Khudi ko kar buland itna ke har taqder se pehle
Khuda bande se ye poche bata teri raza kia hai

Tu shaheen hai, Tu shaheen hai, Tu shaheen hai
Tu shaheen hai, Tu shaheen hai Parvaz hai kam tera kam tera
Tere samne Aasman aur bhi hai
Tu shaheen he Basera kar Paharon ki chatano per
Tu shaheen hai tu Shaheen hai tu shaheen hai

Khudi ko kar buland itna ke har taqder se pehle
Khuda bande se ye poche bata teri raza kia hai

Khudi ko kar buland itna ke har taqder se pehle
Khuda bande se ye poche bata teri raza kia hai
bata teri raza kia hai
bata teri raza kia hai

"Can you raise yourself to such a level
that when God wants to grant you a fortune
He asks you what you want"