killing procrastination

Well, I am bad at meeting deadlines, not because of my lack in capability to finish the task but usually, almost every time, because of my procrastination and forgetfulness. And I am pretty sure there are many, millions in this world, who has got the same issue and the proportion could be roughly estimated from my college, XL, itself. Despite the fact that the college's students belong to the skimmed category, we observe a lot of late and post-deadline submissions and many of the on time submissions are result of a hastened effort, which generally results in sub-optimal output. My opinion is that this is very natural, the "who wants to put an effort" syndrome. However, I also opine that the world around us demands more out of us, since your school days till now, it's either your mom, dad, sibling, teacher, prof., boss, girlfriend, friend or even the guy behind you in the queue who pokes you to remind you that "move on", "boss, you are getting late", "please get me this", "do this" and what not.

So, in order to help the target junta, like me, I have started a new service, yet to be christened, which would send SMS to remind about deadlines. The pilot is only for my section's guys, who will receive messages about SIP deadlines. The detailed plan about the pilot is yet to be finalised but I think that will be made on the fly. Full coverage of this service will be made available once the

feedback of the pilot comes out positive. In a full coverage, I would like to target all the students of this college, sending reminders about almost everything, ranging from important notices like re-scheduling of class to even a seemingly mundane notice like, "collect the XYZ-handout from Prof. ABC". I would like to see this service as an additional support system for the students. For now, to provide this service, I am depending on www.way2sms.com, and would like to p

ut forward the caveat in front of you all that this is third party-free of charge service, and hence I have no control on it's operation, and would be helpless if the site gets down or sends delayed SMS's, however considering it's popularity I hope it will serve the purpose.

Eagerly waiting on the pilot roll-out.

p.s: I hope this effort will help me get rid of my own issue of procrastination.

And those who are "victim" of the pilot are always free to un-victimise themselves, just tell me. :)

A Date With an Old Lady

It's very wonderful to observe that giving joy to someone also imparts joy to your life, probably more than what you give away. And it was today afternoon that I got the first hand experience of it. I had never been to any old-age home, whe

re destitutes and elderlies who have no societal support or have been abandoned by their family spend rest of their life. I volunteered to be part of one of XL's Joy Of Giving Week, A day with an elderly, where few students from XL got the opportunity to visit an old age home, known by the name Nirmal Hriday and run by Missionaries of Charity. It was bunch of around 30 young and bright students ( exclude me :-P ) who finally got to make use of this opportunity. Here, I would like to emphasise on the word opportunity as I believe that I was actually a chance in front of us not only to quench the CSR thirst, which might have occurred due to various contrasting reasons, and to shoulder some of our social responsibility but also a chance to get away from our LIK and SIP obsessed frame of mind.

I had my own reason to be part of this event. I wanted this visit to be a tribute to my late Granny, who passed away around 10 months a

go. Our granny was an amazing person, who not only showered us, me and my brother, love and affection and protected us from numerous dangerous situations, such as getting spanked due to some mischievous act, but also taught us many lessons which helped us immensely to be what we are today. She was a person loved by one and all and had a wonderful health and an evergreen toothless smile complimented by full-silver hair. We were very close to her since the day we checked-in to this world, but apparently I was pampered more than my brother, reaping the benefit of being younger, I guess. I can continue to a great length to talk about her but I would like to cut short and just say that both of us loved her very much and will always feel her presence among us throughout our life. Due to this reason, I just wanted to visit this place and pay my tribute to her, to her unconditional love

to us and also to her evergreen-toothless but the most beautiful smile.

We left for the old age home at around 1430 hrs and 20 minutes later we were at the gate of Nirmal Hriday. At first we were not permitted to enter as the person keeping the main gate refused to let us enter the premise but after making a few calls to the Sister we managed to get the permission. The premise was a decent one, it had a 2 storeyed building bearing the common cuboid shape. Initially, We could observe only a few male occupants on the roof-top and the compound felt quite tranquil. Probably, most of the people were having their post-lunch siesta. After around 15 minutes we had a nice gathering of peop

le around us. There were many people around us, men, women and even children. Initially, there was an awkward feeling among all of us, as I could feel, probably because very few of us had faced such a crowd before. They belonged to different religion, had different language but now in this place they were all bound with one commonality, they had nobody as family and we all understood that pretty well. I tried to connect to them and was able to do so with few of them without much difficulty. Then I met an aged lady, probably 70-75 years old, a 5 feet tall figure. She had a mix of gray and black cropped hair, was bit lean but had a very bright smile on her face. We talked and I soon discovered that this lady has got an amazing sense of humor, she cracked many jokes and I reciprocated accordingly. She was not literate but had a good sense of the world around her. While chatting, she told me that she had worked for Mother Teressa many years ago and that was the most fulfilling achievement for her life.

Somehow, within minutes, I liked her and even she

liked to talk to me. Later when I asked for her name, she said, with a big smile on her face, that she won't tell me her name. And the reason which she gave surprised and moved me a lot. She said with her aadivasi accent "jo bhi ata hai, photo leta hai aur naam pochta hai, aur dubara wapas nahi ata...itna photo le liya lekin kisi ne ek bhi photo diya nahi" (whoever comes, he clicks a snap, asks my name but never returns. Moreover, nobody gives me a copy). She was bit unhappy because many of those people promised to return and give her a copy of the picture and unfortunately it never happened. I was touched, I felt that more than the fact that nobody gave her a copy of the picture, the fact that none returned to meet her was hurting more, although she stated this with one more smile on her face. Then after chatting for some more time, I asked her if I could take a snap of her with me, and she permitted me to do so. I took a snap and while saving the picture I resolved to my

self that I would get her a copy of this snap, within a week. We had a look into the pic, it was nice and she was happy to see that. I was pretty sure that she would be more happy to have a copy of that snap.

After spending some time with other inmates, especially children ( I loved to play with them and believe me that was fun) we asked for their permission. Before leaving I went to meet that lady again, and this time she came to with both the hands raised. She blessed me for coming to their place and spending some time with her and kissed on both of my cheeks, just as my granny used to. I thanked her and took her blessings. When I reached the gate, I said goodbye aloud but kept the words "see you soon" to myself. I hope that I would live up to my resolution of getting her a copy of the snap, very soon.

Updated: 16th Oct 2009, 0255 hrs( Cristina and me)

The groundhog is back from hibernation. After months of inactivity of this weblog, now its time to awaken it and keep it active, for which I have decided to break the jinx of procrastination by starting with anything that comes in my mind.

During these many months, many things happened and changed in and around me. Whether it was preparing for various interviews and waiting for their results, balancing my office and personal life or having some quality time with my friends, change was omnipresent. People, perceptions, reality, relationships, the whole world around me changed in this short span of time, and I hope most of the changes will have positive repercussions in future. Now I see that during this inactive period I have built quite a decent source of ideas which I would like to exploit for my blog writings...lets see how it fans out.

As many say, destiny has brought me to this new place called XLRI Jamshedpur, which many consider as Mecca of business schools in India, I have loads of activities and events to watch for and present my views and perceptions on them. So you, my readers, may expect me to focus mostly on my current life, which revolves in and around XL, or also on some other topic which might be somehow relevant to our #$*?-phadu academic regime. I would love to post as frequently as possible but again the frequency is a dependent variable on my schedule here @XL.

However, considering the fact that it's early morning now and I have loads of tasks lined up for tomorrow, I sign-off for now..catch you soon.

The Butterfly Effect

It was a Sunday afternoon, after a three hour long and exhaustive exam I came back home ate a candy bar and lied down. Then I decided to chill by watching a movie. The pick was the 2004 flick "The Butterfly Effect". Let me first tell you about the movie as quick as possible then I will try to explain what I liked about the movie.

Movie starts with a note from 'Chaos Theory', stating that even a flap of butterfly has the power to cause tornado halfway around the world ( sounds very ridiculous, I know). The movie dwells over some key incidents in the life of the protagonist, Evan, and how he tries to achieve all by fixing or manipulating his past. Evan stays with his mom as his dad is admitted to a mental institution. Evan's friend circle consists of three folks viz. Kaylee ( his love interest), Tommy ( Kaylee's bro, one of the antagonists. Kaylee and Tommy's father being the other, as the Paedophile) and Lenny. Since his childhood, Evan suffers from periodic blackouts, these blackouts are very strange as during such times he is totally normal but devoid of any memory for that particular period. Evan has a habit of maintaining his daily journals and apparently after every blackout he scribbles his feelings in his journal.

Evan's childhood and teenage had very few sweet memories. Incidents like him and Kayley being sexually molested, killing of his pet Crockett by Tommy and an accident in which Evan and his friends get their neighbour and child killed, are some of the most important and defining moments of his life. I guess, the only good thing that happened in his life is his friend Kaylee. But circumstances grew bad and eventually Evan and his mom had to move to another city to make a new life. Few years later, Evan ends up as an A grade student in his college and is happy with his calm life. But not Kaylee, who now works as a waiter in a suburban restaurant. Evan wants to fix this, he wants a better life for Kaylee and for himself. The movie takes turn when Evan discovers that he has the ability to go back to the past, exactly to the time of one of his blackouts. The journals plays critical role in this case as he uses them as time tags. Not only he can time travel back but also can take decisions which can change the course of his, his family's and friend's life, just by taking better course of action during the blackout moments. With his new found ability he now tries to fix everything. As he fixes one wrongdoing something else bad emerges, he repeats his quest many a times to fix everything in his life and his surroundings. But never manages to get all of them right. So how does the movie ends?

This movies has got more than one versions with different ending, the one which I watched ended a bit optimistically. It ends like this: going back to his fifth birth day party, Evan manages to scare Kaylee away by threatening her and her family. The climax shows Evan happy with his friend Lenny but without his love Kaylee, not sure what happened to his mom. ( To know more about the movie click here, trust me it's not spam or viral, it's wiki)

What's interesting in this movie? Well it is the 'chaos theory', it sounds very stupid but I find some sense in it. May be because I don't believe in destiny; what I believe in is the power of present, power of you being in control of present. I think, like Evan all of us wish to undo or change something in and/or around our life. What most of us will wish for, is a life which is better than the current one; but the fallacy in such yearning is that we the human being can't be satiated. If we are blessed with good we will ask for better and if we get something better we will yearn for more and eventually die doing so. Many of us would even dream to have the ability to go back to past, like Evan, and get things changed. Even I would love to do that to check out the chaos theory, but I also understand that won't guaranty that things will turn out for better, it might be worse. Sometimes, we need to carry on with our mistakes or carry somebody else's mistakes as an inseparable burden. We can't get everything totally under our control. Just imagine of getting rid of the worst part of your life, will that make everything else remain same or go better? Well I don't think so, all our actions will have some effect, however small, on us and our surrounding which eventually have significant implications. And our life being full of such actions and reactions, mistakes and mishaps are bound to happen. Even if you try to make sure everything goes right, may be I or somebody else will do something which inadvertently, may be advertently too, will effect you negatively. Moreover, life without mistakes and unwanted situations would be like eating a black forest day in and day out. You will eventually get cloyed by the goodness of life.

The wise tortoise ( quote from the movie Kung Fu Panda) said "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present". So go ahead, learn from history, crack the mystery and voila ... you got your present, the present of your life.

Merry Christmas!