Statuatory Warning : The post is too long and it is only about me,me and me. So plz do not read.All the incidents and characters mentioned below are real and living. And this story is just from my point of view.For the character's point of few please contact the character :-) (Yes you are right, I'm a sadist ;-))
So here goes a blog on moments I have enjoyed in life in no chronological order. I'm not quite sure if the emotions at that time could be named or termed "Happy". But for sure these are certain moments for which the index statistics are calculated often and the query performs faster in my memory and is always in my cache. (It's an IT guys blog after all ;-)).And I'm planning to add up things here as when they happen. I cannot guarantee this.
Back in 1985, the summer of March or April, there is a kid who is called upon stage of his school for being the class topper for the entire year,He goes up the stage gets a prize from his school principal, Thanks him and gets down from the stage.The kid was made to practice this act for more than two weeks i guess. And so it was a perfect act.But he did not know the significance of what he was doing.He was not happy for being the topper of the class,because he did not know what it meant being a topper, He was happy that his mom was sitting somewhere and seeing him go on stage for the first time. And the kid on the same day gives his first on stage performance, a rhyme, with best of his friends(TD,VK,Chaks). Again it was just an act nothing more.
That kid grows up to be the class topper for the next two years. When he was in his 1st std he had an awesome school teacher,Mr.Rumold,who always used to praise this kid for his skills.Mr.Rumold presented him a red plastic box,which the kid has at his home safe till date. What ? Who is the kid ? Damn! Its my Blog, I'll be the Hero ofcourse :-)
2nd Std, the kid has turned to be a bad kid,there was a new guy(Deeps) in his school now, who scores more than our hero (After that he turned out to be my school topper always,he is my gud freind till date).So our hero becomes a character artist now. No Charm, he is being scolded at home for not concentrating on studies.Oh Sorry, Happy moments,I'll come back to the topic. The same year character artist was chosen by two of his previous years school masters to act in a drama and to dance in a drama. I still remember performing in both.One was to deliver a two page paragrah,dressed like Buddha and the other was a dance to be performed in a drama before a king and a queen. It was not just an act, it was getting the lost charm for me. I had pestered my dad to buy the dress. For Buddha we needed an orange saree which was borrowed from my friends mom. And the makeup tht was applied back stage. And the fear of performing on stage and the applause after the act, the colour lights that were flashed on stage during the dance. Everything is fresh. Hoo yeah that was innocent Happiness.Hmmh, during my practice for the dance, I took one my freind to my home, the first time school freind(Siraj)visting my home. Siraj was the first to kindle spiritual interest in me. He used to say, if u r happy,close eyes and Thank god, if u r sad, close eyes and Pray all ur worry will fly. Its not new for you now, but at that age, it was very new for our character artist ;-)
5th std, due to lack of concentration, poor guy has become a kid who will be within the top 10 ranks. Even getting a v good on his note makes him happy now. Joseph sir, he taught us how to write in a beautiful style. Most of my school mates till now will have his style of handwriting. There were guys whose handwriting was also spoiled becuase of this, I had to change my style in 8th a 9th std. But at that class i used to try hard to follow his style and whenever i got a V good, i used show to all my freinds so did they.
6th and 7th std were calm times, but fun times, times when i understood what freindship is all about, and my policy "Anthying for Freinds and Freindship" evolved. And this policy at this age obviously makes u violent.And my favourite was to Slap.
Blah blah blah, and then a Phat (Slap) and then silence. Thats how it was :-)
And this is when i picked up the Jingu and Pingu of JinguPingu, Jingu was from "KoperunJingu" a king in tamil history and "Pingu" my favorite cartoon character on Doordarshan.
8th std, General Knowledge class, Our regular GK sir was not well and a new sir had come just for that day, Mr.Natarajan, I had seen him before and he was teaching Kindergardn kids, but never knew he teaches GK as well. His first question was "What is a Lunar eclipse?". He was expecting lots of people to know the answer, but there were no hands raised, he was amazed and he was saying shame on my school with so many people in 8th Std not knowing the answer.And he was not ready to procceed with the class till someone comes out with the answer. Our violent hero got angry and emotional on this, and raises his hand reluctantly, GK sir notices his hand and asks "What ?"
Hero gets up says" When earth comes between the sun and moon , the shadow of earth falls on moon causing lunar eclipse" and sits down with the same fury. GK sir gets impressed asks Hero's name and says to the class " Do not let the shadow of Sheriff fall on you" (My inspiration for one liner praisings) and the class says "Yes Sir" in one voice. That was the start of our heo's extra curricular activities. From then on he has been in every stage from school till the end of his college life.
I was part of Rotry club, was always there for oratorial contests and quiz competitions. Every year i made a point to be part of the polio campaign. I was groomed in the Summer camp "Catch them Young" organised by GK sir.
9th and 10 th std, was time to capitalise on studies. I was taken for tution, a zone unknown for me till then.I never knew there will be girls in tution classes. So it let to my first crush. I took tuition for Maths and English from Mr.Varadarachari. He taught maths for my mom. So i was happy to study under him.He used a teach and then give a problem. If a gal completes the problem first, then we guys used to get scolded black and blue. So again, our hero made a point that he will always finish the problem before gals. And there was a gal in the tuition who used to solve problems quite fast. So she was my main competitor. Sir also understood I had started competing. And whenever she finishes the problem before me sir used to say "Pakistan Prime minister, look for a plantain tree and hang urself". This became the talk of the tuition, and if guys around me see her getup and going towards sir, they all will say "Plantain tree" , then I would run most of the time solving the problem on the way to show to sir. At that time it was all serious, now it looks to be fun. After our public exams, we arranged a farewell in tuition,She asked me how I had did my exams, I told, I had done extremely good and was expecting 100 in Maths.And asked how she did, She told "Not bad,Hopefully will get decent marks" And I learnt modesty from her. When the results were out, I had 99 in Maths, but she was first in my district.Modesty!!! "Empty and Vessels half filled make the noise,Fully filled don't"
In 10th Std there was a state level science exhibition in school. Santosh who was my bench mate, told that he would want to participate and he needed a partner. We had done a Vessel Washer which won the first prize in th state level science exhibition.It made our school proud and I was happy to recieve the big cup they gave. Did I say Happy ? Yes it was an happier moment!! And then we went to coimbatore for south Inda level science exhibition in which we had lost inspite of our hard work. But was an experience of a lifetime. All credit to Santy.
11th and 12th std, was fun,class in school, gals in tution, early morning waking ups,lots of study,loads of freinds, everyminute was a happy minute. So nothing specific.We did make a big Dinausaur which stood for two weeks in front of our school. It was made of wood, plaster and straw. We had made it overnight for some state level competition again. Again the credit goes to GK sir for the idea. It was gud to be part of the project. Then the exams, results and was happy to be in the top 20 of my school.
I flunked in the engineering entrance. I opted TPGIT as i could do Engineering in
Rs.5000. I was happy on the day after selecting the college as it was DOTE I. If i write a blog on Sad moments in my life, i would write about my first visit to college ;-) The good thing was we were 5 ppl from my town in the college. So we were seen as a gang.
First year, Usha mam asks for volunteers for class representative, one guy and one gal as asst representative. I was selected and sudha from girls side, which gave room for all rumours. The fact that it got intensed when i denied it made me keep quiet. I had immense respect for her from then till date. Science and humanitaries association inaugural function. Class reps had to arrange for it. I wanted to giv welcome speech, but Maha was the default choice for chellappa sir as Maha was already famous for his skills. I got a chance to compere for the function. I started with "Respected dignitaries on the dias" which is still being used to pull my legs. The chief guest was a heart surgeon, his speech was real good, so after his speech, I thanked him with " Doctor has operated upon our hearts without knife and blood" a one liner of praise , I saw a confident smile on Dr.Chelappa's face that made me happy , and then, damn, i was on every stage compering till our last culturals!!!
There are lots of moments that were fun in college, I have my best freinds from college,I can write separate blogs on everyone of them,will do so sometime ;-) The paper presntations on robotics i did which won me two first prizes made me happy. The culturals where about 80 guys from our batch wore blue Hawaaian shirts to prove our unity, moments spent with viji mark and sri in my room, with thiru and his boys.If i close my eyes and look back its all like happened yesterday. 7 years have gone by.Happiest of all was when TVS electronics had come for placements to our college after a lot of struggle we had put to print,distribute brouchures to various MNCs without any help from my college all on our own at the time of the dot com bubble burst.
My first Job, Keerai(Sarathy) is the cause for me getting this job, during college we had decided cadcam is the future for mecheis and wanted to do project in cad cam. So we joined cipet. After the course we did a project on moulding using cad cam.The interview was for sundaram plastics.I thought i hadnt done gud in the interview. but my interviewer had thought otherwise. And I moved to hosur.Happiest days in my career. I was a trainee there, and was not sure if i'llbe made permanent, so started looking out.And CMTI picked me for my CAD CAM skills. Elited I go to Blore. After six months, the govt Job became boring and i started looking out. The dot com bubble recession resided. TCS's first walkin after recession. I cleared all three rounds on the day. Was confident i'll be in but not sure. I did get in and am still here. The day i recieved offer from TCS,,,,, moment i remember.
2004, april 21 , ILP first day. I was made the Class rep again. On the first day I got introduced to a tall guy. he asked where am i from. I told cuddalore. He said he was from bangalore and often goes to pondicherry for visiting ashram. I told "Ah OK".
then he says i had gone last week also, i told "Oh is it". Then he finished by saying "By bike". I was dumb for the whole day. I was introduced to a phenomenon called "Muralism".I just adore it.Never in my life til then i had thought of long ride on bikes or buying a bike. But soon I was on the back of his bullet riding to Pondy and many other places.I bought a bike of my own.And i took the bike from blore to chennai, chennai to cuddalore. Weekend trips from chennai to cuddalore and back for 6 weeks continous.Hoooo,Muralismm!He is God and i'm a tiny rock who looks upto him :-)
At work in TCS i was happy when i got a performance rating of 5 during my first year. After that it is the work that i do that gives me happiness, the new things that i learn at work is what is giving me happiness and not the appreciations i recieve. coz i know the appreciations are a trap.I follow my first PL's words " Try to find happiness in work, else you may not know what happiness is!".During ILP i went on a tour to OOty silently.That was a memorable one.
Then the day i was interviewed for the project in london and i was sent a confirmatuon to move to london. The day I reached here, i knew nothing of london, took a tube from heathrow reached east ham, and was on the look out for the place i had to stay. A guy runs out to me with idly n sambhar on his right hand and asks "uppslinkk inn ?? Shanawaz ??" I say yes and he says he is my room mate and he left eating and came to get me in, as he saw me wandering. I was impressed by this gesture of navin,and have been happy that i met him.After that the Europe trip with bhushan,the reason behind me joining the gym, never seen such a guy with so much dedication. The recent 20 cm snow fall in London, was happy to drench and play in snow.So these have been my memories in cache for now. I'll keep adding more as n when they happen :-)
