Decisions

"In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."
- Theodore Roosevelt

Decisions – It is one truth that is as true as life itself. A decision is like a seed and our life is like the tree that it bears. Without the seed, the tree has no existence. It is one thing in life from which we have no escape. Even our mythological Gods who had the privilege of escaping death could not escape decisions.

Decisions are of different types. Some are important, some are not important, some semi – important, some hot, while others cool. Leaving a job is an important decision, whether to go to a movie is an unimportant one, getting up in the morning is of a semi – important type, not saying ‘yes’ when your girlfriend asks whether she is looking beautiful is a hot (more appropriately a stupid one), and deciding to have a Coke is a really cool one. Then there are some decisions that can be put into the ‘ultra important’ category – marriage, choice of career. Marriage specifically is one such decision that does not come with an inbuilt Ctrl+Z function. You cannot undo what you have done. Even something as important as a career choice can be undone. You get into a college and then if you feel that it’s really not the place you would like to spend the better part of the next decade in, you can always come out.

The other day I was thinking about the decisions that I have made in my life. And what surprised me was the realization that most of the decisions that I had taken I had not actually taken myself. It was either my parents or the circumstances or a combination of both that had dictated them. Starting from the start - the decision itself of my birth was taken by my parents. The next couple of years I was totally at the mercy of my parents and elders. Then came the decision of getting me into a school. The sole discretion was with my parents. In any case, what differentiation is a 4 year old going to make between a Don Bosco or a South Point or Little Flower. (And I am so happy with what they chose for me as whatever I am today I owe it to my school). During the subsequent years of school life, there was hardly any earth shaking decisions that I was called upon to make. Choosing between Hindi and Assamese as the language subject in class 7, deciding which teachers to take tuitions from, and choosing between Computers and Advance Maths in class 8 are some of the important decisions from that period I can remember having a hand in. I say “having a hand in” because my parents and school-mates did have a lot of influence upon what was decided. Next came higher secondary and getting into Cotton College was more of a default setting than a decision. Of course, we had all dreamt of going there with the tag of a rank holder but that was not to be (our batch of 1999 from Don Bosco is incidentally the only batch in the past 25 years not to have got even a single position in the 10th board exams). My marks, the general social perception that males are doing something worthwhile academically only when they are pursuing a career in engineering or medical sciences, the feeling among fellow mates that the only ones who are opting for Arts are the ones who do not have the percentage to go for Science, and my own personal feeling that I was more of a scientist than a laureate made me take Science. Of course, equally true is the fact that going for a career in Arts in Guwahati has no fruitful consequence. If I had to pursue Arts, I should have decided beforehand and left for Delhi or Calcutta maybe. But there was one thing that I had decided and most probably that was one decision that I had taken myself. It was more of not doing something than doing something. I had determined not to become a doctor and so I deliberately chose not to take biology as my elective subject in higher secondary, thus sealing shut all doors towards the medical line.

Next came engineering. The college was decided by the marks I got in the JAT exams (Gone were the IITs, the Trichys, the Surathkals and the Warrangals. I was fortunate enough to have even scraped through to an REC after the kind of exam I had given), and the branch by the people standing in front of me in the line during counseling (i.e whatever was left after they took what they wanted). In college, the hostel I went to was decided by the faculty, the people who would rag me was defined by my mother tongue and the place I hailed from, and everything else thinkable and unthinkable was determined by my esteemed seniors. When it came to jobs, it was the same thing. Our college was not one with a great record for jobs through campus interviews. So there was hardly any choice regarding the company we wanted to sit in and subsequently join. We were ready to work in whichever company that was foolish enough to recruit great engineers like us. Of course, I particularly had decided not to go into software and did my best not to get recruited by Wipro (it had come before ABB). After joining ABB, my posting was decided by the company management, my BU by the HR people and my department by my BU Manager. I was tossed into production and then hurled into what is “supposedly” sales and marketing. And here I am now, languishing in ABB, Baroda for the past two years.

What’s very apparent from all the above is that there is hardly anything very significant that I have decided as regards to my professional and academic life in the last 25 years that I have been roaming this planet. So there comes the trillion dollar question – “What exactly have I decided all these years?” And pat comes the reply from somewhere inside – FRIENDS, LOVE, MUSIC and BOOKS.

When I look around, what I find is that everyone, from my family members to my college mates to my colleagues have not been decided by me. It’s been some external factor that has decided them. Friends are the single-most entity in my life upon which I have had 100% decision rights. Its only me myself who has decided with whom I want to stay with, who I would like to know me better than myself, who I want to share my feelings with – both joy and pain, who I want to confide in, who I want to talk to whenever I have a problem……….the list goes on and on. Nobody can compel one to become friends with somebody. Yes, circumstances might force somebody to become an acquaintance but never a friend. When it comes to friendship, there is only that one thing that takes all decisions – the heart.

Next comes ‘Love’. Maybe I should have put love before I put friends, because without even an iota of doubt, the involvement of the heart in this matter is more than in any other thing in this world. But I have just tried to state things in a chronological order. I must admit that some of my intimate seniors in the college did have a big hand in persuading me to go to the girl’s hostel, and henceforth helping me “get my girl”, but the decision was entirely mine. How can I forget those days in the third semester when all I wanted to do was walk up to the girl’s hostel in the evening and meet her. If there was any compulsion whatsoever, it was from within. The desire to know her, understand her, allow her to understand me, and million other emotions that cannot be expressed in words were what ruled me those days. I was under a spell and thankfully, the spell continues. More about those days later. I guess a single paragraph can in no way do justice to what I felt and did. A complete blog needs to be devoted to it.

Music – what can I say about it. It has been my friend in the best and worst of times. It has given me the courage to face difficult situations and also been the cause of great happiness in times of joy. Maybe I am trying to portray too dramatic a picture but what I am stating is exactly what I really feel. And I have always been absolutely uncompromising about the kind of music I am going to listen to. I never bought albums which had music by Anu Malik (the only exception being Refugee) and/or lyrics by Sameer (Sangharsh being the exception here). Strictly no remixes. No rock or mindless shouting and instrument banging artistes. And I am proud to say that I have held on to these resolutions even today.

Books – another wonderful hobby that I developed around class 5 or 6 and have nurtured ever since. From those days of Hardy Boys to John Le Carre today, it’s been a long and mesmerizing journey. And I have been as usual very finicky about what I read. Never have I allowed anyone other than me to decide what I should or should not read. Of course, good reviews might have pushed me towards a book, but the decision has been entirely mine. Non-fiction is a strict No No. When we started coaching for CAT last year, I was asked by some many of my fellow mates as well as the faculty to start reading these management books and autobiographies. But I never have. I don’t read because I need to get through a MBA admission interview process. I read because that’s something that moves me, and stirs me. That’s something that makes me feel wonderful. I read because I like to read. It has no hidden or secondary agenda. And if there is something that I won’t enjoy reading, there is no point in forcing myself to read it. It’s disrespect to me as well as the author.

So, what transpires from all these is that the decisions that I have made in my life are small in number. But its those decisions that are my life today. I live for my friends and my love and if I do find any time away from them, I spend it in the company of a wonderful novel or an intoxicating melody.

"Once - many, many years ago - I thought I made a wrong decision. Of course, it turned out that I had been right all along. But I was wrong to have thought that I was wrong."
- John Foster Dulles

Mechanical Engineering at REC Silchar................Part 1

Our dear friend Xonii once remarked “Once in a lifetime show”. Although he had uttered those words in some other context, no words are more apt to describe, what happens to be one of the greatest enigma and sweetest truth of my life – Mechanical Engineering at REC Silchar .

Its been nearly six years from that 10th day of August, 2001 when I took admission for the course of mechanical engineering at REC Silchar (although the name has since been changed to NIT Silchar, I still prefer to call it REC). But everything that happened between that day and 13th June, 2005 (the date of our convocation) is so clearly etched in my memory that even the mere mention of the word REC deluges my mind with a vista of recollections. It was also on that day (i.e 10.08.2001) that I received an entity by which I was going to be identified for a long time to come: 01-2223, my scholar number.

That was just a prolusion. But where do I begin and where do I end the real story. Of course, I don’t think I can end it anywhere as the saga still continues. But begin I will. It all began in that classroom on the first floor to the right of the staircase. The most unserious bunch of people in the world had gathered out there to begin their journey towards becoming an engineer (of course, with the sword of “Ragging” hanging above everyone’s head, the atmosphere was not that joyful to begin with). An unusual mix of apprehension, fear and excitement is how I would like to describe the situation. Moreover, that classroom in those days was the only place where the seniors could not directly access us and so in a way, that was our only shelter from the omni present and omni preying seniors. Maybe, the only encouraging fact was that the classroom for CSE and Electronics was next to ours and there were quite a few ladies in that class. And they had to cross our class on the way to theirs and it was on those moments that everyone forgot everything about the ragging in the hostels or seniors or anything and concentrated solely on displaying the highest decibel levels that their lungs could reach and the wonderful voice modulation facets that they possessed. We had also been made to believe that being Mechies, this was our birth right. Many a times, even the professors had to come and warn us to behave properly but these warnings had their effect on us only for a very brief period of time. The moment the ladies appeared again, things were again back to normal.

Looking back now, those days bring a smile to my face. But at that time, it really was one of the most testing times of our careers. It was more demanding and more frightening that a thousand KC examinations combined. But here, I will not go into the details of the ragging period. That is another epic in itself and is best if dealt separately. Lets talk about the teachers. They were all great entertainers in their own right. There was Dasgupta Sir who always kept on looking at your feet while giving lectures. A.K. Sil Sir who thought of himself as a great statesman more than a teacher (though both these people were decent professors as far as the academics part go I must admit). Then there was Asim Roy in the physics lab who was more interested in keeping tabs on who was near his wife than in the experiments that were taking place. Miss Krori, who took ICP (although the actual de-abbreviation was Introduction to Computer Programming, we had modified that to I Cannot Pass) and was known to everybody in the college more for her looks than anything else. It was maybe due to this that most of the ones in our class never got beyond learning #include. When only your eyes are open and the rest of your sensory organs stop working, there is no way you can learn anything. Even someone like Dhol was once found paying so much attention to her that when he was asked to answer a question, all he could do was stand up and look from Tanumoy Biswas to Abu Hussain to Prashant Shekhar with the most quizzical look you will ever see in this world. Although no one got even the vaguest idea of what arrays and functions and subroutines meant after one whole semester of learning C programming, there were many who had Miss Krori’s birthday in their mind as if their lives depended on that information and were very disciplined in rushing to her cabin to gift her with cards and flowers.

But the award for the performer of that year must go to Mr. Baharul Islam. From being reputed to having a negro girlfriend to sporting a cordless phone to the classroom (trying to make us believe that it was a mobile phone) to talking and moving around in a way which would have given even Karan Johar a run for his money, he was always par excellence.

These are some of the names that I can remember. Apart from these, there was that Chemistry teacher who used to come to the class with all the things totally mugged up and just vomit out everything on the board before he forgot anything. That old man in the chemistry lab who was so interested in showing how a full bottle of concentrated Sulphuric Acid or Nitric Acid could have no effect on his hand. And last but not the least, Mr. Karmakar. With that wall clock on his wrist, his baby steps and his acidulous remarks, he was certainly not the most loved person on the campus.

So this was how things began. In the three ensuing years, there were many more memorable performances. Mr Canti, K.M. Pandey, KC, A.K. Paul, RCB, Mr.LC Saikia, Mr Partha Sarathi, a cameo by Mr.Lintu Roy, Mr.Agnimitra Biswas, and many many more. Will write about all that later. This blog will get stretched beyond imagination if I try to cram in everything in this one.

As I began this with a Xonii quote, its very appropriate that I end it up with another. This is what he had to say about that initial period of our lives in REC Silchar – “We are all under-training dogs now. We can make mistakes now. But soon we will be thrown into the other hostels and then if we make mistakes, we are finished”

Pursuit of happiness.........

First, let me say that this is not a review of the film that goes by the same title. Its just my take on what happiness is or more precisely, what it isn’t.

At the onset, its very important to define the term happiness. Just by implying that it is important doesn’t mean its easy. Thousand of years of wisdom and soul searching has not been able to yield a clear cut definition as to what happiness really is. So who am I to say what it is. But still, let me try to put it in the simplest form I perceive it as – “Happiness is the most salient entity everyone in this world is after”. Of course, then the second most important thing people are after has to be money. Actually, this relationship between happiness and money is both very intriguing and a highly debated issue. One thing that always comes to my mind whenever this question of happiness vs. money arises is the MasterCard ad: There are some things in life money cant buy......Of course, I think that they should modify the ad to There are some things in life money may not buy......because there is nothing today in this world that money cant actually buy. Love, happiness, pain, friendship – its all in the market today.

But is money happiness? The most straightforward answer to that question is “NO”. If that was the case, then me and my friends would all have been happy today. Of course, I don’t mean to say that we are drawing a very handsome salary but just that, that today we have a lot more warmth in our pockets than when we were in college. In college, we used to spend the whole month within 1.5 to 3 thousand rupees. But we were happy. And that I can say without any ifs and buts. And I am sure that if the time machine ever gets invented, we would all give the last penny we have in our bank accounts for a chance to hop into that and go back to those wonderful years. Its when you don’t get those things that u look towards money to give u happiness. What I mean is that if me and my friends were together now, maybe I wouldn’t look for all the material things to make me happy. But the fact that they are not with me (and the more painful fact that there is no chance of that happening in the near future………and maybe in the distant too) makes me think of money as my closest companion in my quest for happiness. Indian Terrain shirts, Reebok shoes, Central, Pantaloons, Westside, Inox and PVR, Digcams, I-pods…..the list in unending. And this list is what has become our definition of happiness today. Today everything that we think can give us happiness is contained within the 8 cm by 5 cm card that we keep in our wallets – the debit cum ATM card (another thing that we did not have in college). So what we see is the wonderful way in which money and happiness have merged into one single entity and the worst part is that there is nothing we can do about it. We do try to keep in touch with one another over the phone (that again involves a lot of money as none of my friends are board members of Airtel, Hutch or Idea), but its hardly adequate. We have been planning to meet but even after almost two years, we haven’t had the chance to do so. Non availability of leaves, non availability of tickets, inability of some people to be there are some of the reasons that we cite. But at the end of the day, I really don’t know what the real reason is. Previously, if the holidays were for 7 days, then it certainly meant that we won't be back in college before a fortnight of absence. And now, even getting an hour or respite has become a luxury.
We had debated at length about this tussle between money and happiness in our college days. Most of my friends were of the opinion that a life where there was decent amount of money is what happiness is all about. U don’t need a lot to be happy. U can get happiness with a Hero Honda bike, u don’t need an Opel Astra to be happy in life. And I was always objecting to these by telling them that “No, that is not the case. When u find that other people of equal caliber and competence are spending their weekends in the Swiss Alps and u are here rotting in M.G.Road in Bangalore, that’s when ur going to feel it”. But they never agreed. They thought that money was not the source of happiness but other things were. How I wish they were right and I was wrong. But unfortunately, in today’s context, happiness is defined in terms of some specific words and abbreviations that have become such a part and parcel of our lives – CTC, take home, etc etc.
Another important definition of happiness is contained in an entirely different set of abbreviations – CAT, XAT, GRE, GMAT, and if u are somehow able to successfully cross this hurdle then a second set – IIM, XLRI, MDI, MICA, IMT………Of course, a lot of money is also involved in this too. I lost more then 20k last year in all these coaching and all (the end result is that I am still here in Baroda working in the same old company). I gained nothing, lost time and money and I am unhappy with the entire episode. I know I am not alone. Most of my friends are in the same boat. Some are in a worse position than me. One of my colleagues in ABB left the job last year at about this time to prepare for CAT. He got through nothing and at the end was desperate to get into any decent job that he could find. Of course, now he has settled into a comfortable job in his hometown and hopefully he is a bit happy.
Another important aspect of happiness that I have not addressed is the place where we spend the majority of our lives nowadays – the office. Irrespective of what the CTC is, irrespective of the fact that there is a mesmerizing beauty sitting on the desk next to you, irrespective of the fact that our boss approves your leaves without even raising an eyebrow, nobody is happy with his job. Of course, none of the conditions that I have just stated apply to me. I studied in a all boys school (from nursery to class 10), then in college stuck to those school friends only and ignored the girls (the worst decision of my life), then did mechanical engineering (girls don’t take mechanical) and then got a job in a core company and today I work in the only business unit of ABB where there isn’t a singe female. Coming back to the job thing, everyone I talk with seems to be unhappy with the job he or she is into. Some days ago I happened to chat with someone in a Yahoo chat room and when asked about what I was doing, I replied that I was making an invoice which I would then be scanning and then sending the scanned copy through mail and also fax a copy of the same to a customer in Bangladesh. The person asked me one simple question – are u a clerk? I logged out of the chat room then and there. But if we think about what really we are doing then that question in precisely the answer. We are clerks. There is no other definition that fits the work that I am doing. Scanning, printing, faxing, receiving telephone calls, pushing people to dispatch materials, tracking airway bills through online cargo portals…..etc etc. What can u call these? Whenever we are sitting in the lunch, there is so much talk about how we began as engineers and we ended up here. How we have not been given any technical work and it’s a total misutilisation of our technical knowledge and all that blah blah. But the truth is that I never had any technical knowledge. The 4 years spent in the engineering college was just to get the degree. I remember how I and my friends used to shout out at 12 at night from Xonii’s room’s balcony in 3rd hostel – “Ami Eku Najanu” (it means we know nothing). So I guess the job I am doing right now, I am suited to do something like that only. If they had put me into something technical, maybe I would have had to search for some other job where my profile would be somewhat similar to what I am doing now. So, even though there is so much complaining about job satisfaction, a satisfied job profile would have made me a more unsatisfied individual.
I don’t whether I have been able to stick to the topic I had begun writing about. That invariably happens. This is all the effect of the “adda” culture that we are all so used to. When u keep on constantly blabbering for hours without halt, u are bound to deviate into many other things other than the main topic.
About happiness, I think it will be very appropriate to end this with this – “You can be happy if and only if you are happy with yourself. Finding happiness in anything external is of no use when you are not happy and content with yourself”

Kya se kya ho gaya...........

Being a avid quizzer for the last 10 years, its very appropriate that I start off my first blog with a question.......Whats common to the following places in REC Silchar - the road just after crossing the GH (especially after 12 at night), Xonii's room in third hostel, and Co-operative? The moment this question is seen by any one of the following people - Hrishikesh Misra, Gyan Vikash Baruah, Prasurjya Das, Sauvik Bhuyan, Zakir Husain, Ratnajit Dey, and me, the answer would come in a flash. These were our favourite "adda" spots. If we were awake 15 hours in a day, we used to spend about 75% of that time at one of these places. And the rest 25% we spent waiting for that 75% time to come.

And what did we talk during these addas......? If i start writing at one go all that we have discussed, then im sure even a website like google which prides itself of providing unlimited server space would have to think twice. There is just sooooooo much to say. So lets take it one at a time. There is one topic of course that was always a winner hands down and which continues to be a winner even today ( courtesy Idea, Airtel and Hutch ) - Girls. Im sure even when we have reached 70, we wont be able to stop. Its just like what Oscar Wilde once said - "I can resist anything but temptation". But as this is my first blog, at least for today i will try to alienate myself from this wonderful topic of girls and talk about something else ; something that also took up a lot of our time – Money and Career.

…………..We are all lying down on the road. Its 11'o clock and we have just had a grand feast in third hostel ( Xonii and Misra are the mess managers and so we were the last to take the food ). All that extra chicken and extra custard is beginning to have its effect. Even the hardness of the road feels like a cushion and we are all falling asleep. The gentle breeze dancing to the rhythm of the moonlight playing amidst the clouds is creating an awesome ambience. Just then Prasurjya Das raises a question - where do each one of you want to settle down in life? And the question acts like an ignition at one end of a firecracker. Gone is the sleep. We all start throwing our opinion as to what would be the ideal place to settle down and which place would suit whose personality and how. Someone settles for Bangalore, somebody for Calcutta and somebody for Bombay. Of course the idea of settling abroad after a couple of years of job life is also toyed with......

And thats precisely where i find myself today - not abroad but 'after a couple of years of job life'. Things looked so good then. We had all got jobs through campus selection. We were waiting for the time ahead thinking about how the corporate world was waiting with abated breath and outstretched arms to welcome us all. Nothing could beat us. We were going to conquer the world. And just look at where we are today. I was just thinking about our group and i realised that we really are the "most billa" people in the true sense of the term. Just look at us. Two of us are there working for the defence forces (read it as doing time pass in DRDO), one is there in hyderabad with the gultis, one has left the job and gone home under suspicious circumstances, one left the job and went to delhi for coaching to again return back and join the same company, and the remaining one in living in a place where the people end every word they say with a "che". We have all wasted the two most wonderful and productive years of our lives, wondering what we have done and producing nothing. To use the age old cliche - "khaya piya kuch nahi, glass toda bara ana"

The first shock came in the month of august'2005 when i got my first salary slip. My CTC was 2.4 and simple calculation told me that i was going to get 20 k in hand. But that simple calculation turned out to be so complex that an sms from ICICI bank on the 28th of July,2005 told me that only an amount of Rs 14,740 had been deposited in my account. I asked the Hr people the reason and they gave me a great presentation expalining to me very many things, how this was done for ur good and how that would benefit you and all that crap. But at the end of it all, therewas one clear message - thats what ur going to get till July, 2006. After that, i have had two salary increments but although the increment percentage is quite handsome, i fail to see why my in hand salary is still competing to cross the 18 k mark.