Metastasis

My 24th Birthday Bash at Champa Officers' Club

As the time to bid adieu to the past two inconceivable months draws closer, I guess it is that instance where all your memories converge to a point, that can be reflected upon. Yeah! It may finally be time to say goodbye to Bongaigaon...

All the tied-up workdays and the desultory Sundays, the daily games and the weekend trips, all the praises and the taunts, everything is about to become a page in our mental ensemble. As my colleagues and I finally receive our official postings and get ready to part ways, I'm glad I was able to squeeze out as much as possible from these past few fortnights.

Farewell BGR...

Our trip to Shillong and the magical town of Cherrapunji proved to be especially worth it. The Mausmai Caves, Elephant and Nohkalikai Falls, Shillong Peak, Barapani Lake and the entire journey through the winding mountain roads was breath-taking to say the least. Dining at our favorite eateries at Guwahati was an added bonus.

But, alas every phase must come to an end at some point. With my twenty-fourth birthday bash along with two other colleagues forming the final chapter in these two sublime months, I hope things get even better from here on out, as we gradually adapt ourselves to IOCL, nevertheless retaining our appetite for out-of-the-box ideas and fresh ventures. To sum it all up, I think a famous quote from Steve Jobs would be appropo:-

"Stay hungry! Stay foolish!"

Trip to Shillong & Cherrapunji

The Hue of the North-East

Whether it is the lush green mountains, or the draw of the wilderness, there is hardly any place in India as ripe with natural beauty as the North-East. Although many of my colleagues and I have been sent on a two-month divisional training module to the Bongaigaon refinery of IOCL, that is probably the last thing on our minds right now. With the enchanting presence of the Kaziranga wildlife reserve and the Manas sanctuary, barely a few hours' drive from our township, we can't wait to experience this haven of tranquility!

But we decided to start out small and planned a one day trip to the nearby city of Guwahati. First up was the Kamakhya temple, one of the oldest of the fifty-one Shakti Pithas... With all its history and the splendid scenary surrounding us, it was truly an elucidating experience! The trek to the top of the hill where the temple is situated brought back tonnes of childhood memories.

Next on our list was Umananda, a Shiva temple located at the Peacock Island in the middle of the mighty Brahmaputra. This place also holds the crown of being the smallest inhabited riverine island in the world. And the fact that it can be accessed only by boats only increases its charm and mystique. The langoors sitting on the railings eating chips and pretty much everything they can swipe from unsuspecting tourists also form a sight to behold.

Capping the day off with some hefty winter shopping at GS Road with a wide variety of eateries to fulfill our taste buds, this was probably one of the most memorable days in our young careers. But our coltish nature never rests, does it? About a week down the line and it is Diwali already! The organization's huge pre-Diwali bash has been a total success. With fireworks and DJs, it was the perfect welcome for all the fresh minds that have joined the firm this year. With aspirations running high, I hope everyone achieves all their hearts' dreams and ambitions!

The Transit Ends

Out go the jeans, t-shirts and the hunky-dory lifestyle of the private sector, and in come the formals, ties and discipline of a PSU. Yeah! The transition from Flipkart Internet Private Ltd. to Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. has indeed been quite drastic and the difference palpable. But nonetheless, whether it is long term considerations or simply personal preferences, wherever we are today, we are by choice and it is wrong to jump to conclusions by judging a book just by its cover.

Each of us has a unique story to tell, but alas I'm not here to dwell on that. It is bewildering to imagine just how much our horizons can expand from nothing but a few months' experience! Moving from Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, to the Indian Oil Institute of Petroleum Management at Gurgaon, the journey has surely been an incredibly interesting one.

The sheer number of people I've encountered along the way, combined with a variety of cultures has helped me attach meaning to numerous adages, for example, 'dream as if you'll live forever but live as if you'll die tomorrow', 'small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events but great minds discuss ideas' and so the list goes on. Unless you spend a finite amount of time with someone you can't guess their story just by knowing their names. Likewise you can hear what someone's done but not what he or she has been through.

The first few days of our induction programme at IiPM had been outsourced to People Metrics, where we danced to Gangnam Style, participated in skits, made impromptu presentations and a lot more. As the first week of our orientation comes to an end with a lot planned for the week ahead, many of my colleagues are left with very little time to attend our college convocation or make plans for the festive seasons of Dussehra and Diwali. So I suppose it is best to just live in the moment in a 'convince or get convinced' way. For now, all I can say is that the metamorphosis from a student to a full-fledged professional for most of us is finally complete.

Indian Oil Induction at IiPM

Being A Flipster!

Didn't expect to be back on the blogosphere so soon, but I just couldn't hold myself back from writing about this out-of-the-world place that I'm honored to have become a part of. Yup! Its Flipkart... It intrigues you more and more as each day passes, with conference rooms filled with beanbags instead of round-tables, the gym and cafeteria taking up more space than the actual workplace itself, flip-out Fridays held every fortnight and the only dress code being 'big smiles and the Flipster spirit'.

Just a week since I joined and it already boggles the mind. The first two days were mostly fun and games, not to mention the 24x7 coffee, yummy snacks and luncheon we were being served everyday. It didn't take us long to get to know our colleagues, whose equally high intellect but varied backgrounds never seize to amaze. The next couple of days however introduced us to the real deal at Flipkart, where we were blasted by a concentrated dose of information regarding fulfillment centers, mother hubs, delivery hubs, etc.

We were shortly addressed by the directors and vice-presidents of all the business units including business finance, supply chain management (SCM), commerce platform (CP), analytics, marketing among a wide assortment of many others, about which we are just beginning to wrap our heads around. The place is ripe with news of Flipkart going 'app. only' in a few months time, as it grows exponentially making the rapid transition from an exploding startup to a massive stable e-commerce big shot, which is already changing the way India shops and is maybe also on the brink of casting a worldwide shadow, while remaining young at heart.

As the excitement of the first week here, staying at IBIS and working out of the ultra-modern Cessna Tech Park, begins to sink in, thoughts of the days to come begin to emerge. Although its difficult to predict how things are going to shape up in a few months time, both internally and externally, as I anxiously await the final interview results of IOCL, it is more important to thoroughly enjoy the here and now! Irrespective of what the future holds, this is one experience I'm glad not to have missed out on. Cheers to Flipkart and my entire Graduate Trainee batch!

The Flipster Life

A Different Perspective

Having just a few days left before jumping on to the professional bandwagon makes one wonder as to exactly what kind of attitude will propel one forward the fastest and in the most gratifying way possible. But having already been through the Sturm und Drang of college life, I can't really say that I've nothing to go on.

The first key point I think would be to learn to use whatever we have to its maximum potential rather than crib about stuff we don't possess. Most folks are in the suicidal habit of beating themselves up regarding lost opportunities, under-utilized chances and even more ridiculous, things we have no control over! I'd say a 'no regret' policy needs to be adapted where everyone makes the most of the situation presented and then goes on his own merry way.

Secondly, I've seen people using two very different approaches when faced with a challenge to be conquered. One incorporates the 'thoughtless state of mind' widely preached and much popular among the scholarly types, while the other has everything to do with 'killer instinct' more akin to sports-persons. I'd like to draw a parallel between the two optimized for contention and call it 'cold intent', where a happy composed face masks a glacial design.

Thirdly, I think one should start with a clean slate when beginning a fresh endeavor. The triumphs or follies from the past shouldn't filter through to the present, thus preventing either complacency or guilt from needlessly building up within one's psyche, thereby allowing one to operate at maximum efficiency. Only by getting thrown into the deep end with ruthless sharks does one learn to swim and survive!

Lastly but most importantly, only two outcomes are possible when someone is confronted by an obstacle... You either crumble or you evolve! To each his own, but as for me, I'll always choose the latter, as success is a reward in itself and as important to me as the air we breathe in. Life has taken a busy turn and I'm sure it will be quite a while before I visit this blog again, so until then good luck to all the would-be professionals out there and of course anyone who has spent a couple of minutes to glance through this article, portraying a precious piece of my mind.

The Inner Sanctum

Only one month removed from leaving IIT-BHU and it already feels like ages! I'm sure a lot of young graduates fresh out of college are going through a similar phase, where emptiness sets in all of a sudden for apparently no reason among a storm of brewing emotions, many a times difficult to interpret. Five years seem to have gone by in a jiffy and yet when you leisurely think back they seem more like five decades!

It is a weird sensation especially for me as never before have I been mentally attached to a certain place to this extent, but considering just how much it has changed me, I guess IIT-BHU is an exception from all angles! It is like pieces of your soul being stretched out from behind as you try to move on, somewhat like the ice and dust trail left behind by a comet due to gravity, or puddles of water left behind by a retreating tide...

The leap from an educational to a purely professional life has created a strange new buffer zone, where you are excited by the prospects of the times to come and yet wonder if a bit more zing could have been extracted from the years gone by. Many new college entrants dream of a filmy joy ride when they first get enrolled, but little had I imagined that my life would take so many unexpected and wild turns at every stage as it did!

Life in an IIT might not exactly concur with its portrayal in movies, but there are quite a few similarities. Some things keep getting better and better, while others reach their peak and then slowly fizzle out at the end... I should say my buddies and I have had an immensely fulfilling and successful personal, academic and extra-curricular journey through college, so much so that I am willing to stick my neck out and confess how unlikely it is that these five years will ever be replicated again!

But, in any case, a closure needs to be obtained at some point. It is sad to think that some of the best friends you have ever made have already gone their separate ways. Fortunately for me, all my experiences have been forever preserved in this very blog, to be relived at any time via the extensive and sometimes abstract articles, thereby creating an inner sanctum of solace and strength. An era has culminated, a new one waiting in the not-so-distant horizon... So I guess there is nothing else left to be done other than planting our feet firmly in the present and looking only at the future!

 

Abstraction

Well, what is abstraction? Put simply, I'd say it is looking at only the important details of something to keep the overall picture in mind and make decision making easier and quicker. But what many of us fail to realize is that we use abstraction in our daily lives more often than we think! Technically speaking if we try to dig deep into the trivialities of every insignificant matter, there would be no end to asking why... And while looking for reason is good, once the truth or a course of action has been established, it shouldn't be dwelled upon time and again. In other words, once the logic behind something is figured out, we should act instinctively whenever a similar situation crops up, as the luxury of time might not always be on our side!

But when we do look into the minutia of an issue for the first time, we are faced with the paradox of 'right and wrong', the two sides of the same coin... Right and wrong are highly subjective and relative terms, meaning what might be right for you, may be wrong for me and vice-versa! Instead I think one's logic must be based on one's goals and what one deserves, which form a much more absolute basis for judgement.

Now, if you need an example of abstraction, I'll probably be able to furnish an experience that I'm sure is very familiar to us all. Consider the case where someone provokes you, let's say by insulting your family without grievance... What is your first reaction? Do you lose your temper and come out swinging? What incites such a dramatic response? Is it love? Well it might as well be, but love is just an abstraction for the noesis that if we simply ignore any such act or comment, it would display a rather doormat-like attitude, thereby increasing the chances of something more severe but along the same lines happening again. So it is all about making a statement! This is what emotions like revenge are borne out of... I guess we can say that love is a chemical process that helps us make the appropriate choices at a moment's notice, without which life would become totally mechanical, boring, laborious, and quite frankly a drag. 

So you see abstraction is much more than just a concept with a textbook definition. All of us live and breathe abstraction at every single step, and I believe that this has partially helped disprove the well known saying 'think before you leap'! This also finds an unlikely ally in Darwin's theory of evolution! The philosophy of 'survival of the fittest' has laid down a lot of pre-programmed rules deep within our psyche for our own benefit. Do we think before we taste our favorite victuals? No, we don't! Doing things spontaneously or using abstraction, makes our lives a lot easier, so that we reserve a greater fraction of our thinking capacity for concerns that actually demand greater cognition. All this makes the key role of abstraction in our lives plainly visible, so much so that I'd dare to say that without abstraction we would all be zombies fumbling in the dark!

Self Ridicule!

I must say that I thought twice before writing this article, because in it I'll be delving into one of the most sensitive and highly debated topics in modern day India i.e. the caste system. Come to think of it, the word 'modern' doesn't really match up to the term 'caste', right? In today's individualistic choice-driven world, doesn't a hereditary social structure mean almost nothing? I guess to wrap our heads around this issue, we must first peer back into the past...

Looking way back to the pre-independence period, the people of India were divided into different classes according to their various professions. As a result, those that were more highly valued received better pay and occupied the highest rung of the social ladder. This resulted in a strict hierarchy of classes starting with the Brahmins (priests), followed by the Kshatriyas (warriors) and the Kayasthas (business men), and then by the Shudras (workers or servants). In due course of time, this distinction combined with baseless superstitions and social stigma gave rise to a vicious cycle of injustice and grief!

Hence, after India gained independence, the government tried to rectify the situation by giving folks hailing from the so-called lower strata benefits in every walk of life, to uphold the principle of equality. Fast forward to India today and surprisingly not much has changed since then. Although measures like reservations, etc. balanced out the scales back in the day, such practices have become totally illogical in current times. The tables have been turned and now many of the poverty stricken families of the 1950's are much better off than the average Indian household, and don't need any special arrays for survival. The absence of a time limit on both the medieval policies of the government and the caste system as a whole has resulted in mass unfairness and open lies.

We see it happening every day... A deserving candidate's seat in a premier educational institution snatched away by someone who had it easy and might not contribute as much to the society in the long run, government Global Fortune 500 companies half-filled with a cesspool of ingrates retarding the work efficiency created by hard working people with a vision. I'm not trying to sound biased here... All I'm trying to say is that whatever an individual accomplishes in his or her life, may it be personal or professional, is the individual's responsibility, irrespective of his or her background. If help does need to be provided it should only be in the form of financial aid and only on the basis of current economic circumstances and not some ancient mambo-jumbo!

India is the only country where such a self-ridiculing social structure still exists and that too backed by the equally laughable primitive ideas of the state! No one knows when sanity will prevail, but quite frankly that might be a long way off considering that vote-bank politics and other such nonsense dominates decision making and overshadows development these days. Let's see if the newly elected Modi government is any different from the outgoing one...

Infinite Possibilities!

Have you ever wondered about the infinite possibilities of how you truly want to spend your lifetime? I'm sure you have... But the myriad of professions you can engage yourself in and the endless number of things you can achieve while you are here, is truly vast! When we're young we dream of becoming something flashy or exotic, may be an astronaut or an actor or may be a world renowned business tycoon! But as we grow older we discover our own unique knacks and interests and try choosing something our talents are best suited to.

As for me, my five year journey through IIT and especially the fifth year, has opened my eyes wide and clear, but has also raised many unsettling doubts in my mind... During our on-campus placement season I tried out for a lot of companies offering a variety of  profiles including software, management, core engineering, etc. I got shortlisted for quite a few and finally got placed in e-commerce giant Flipkart. Along the way, I also happened to receive a few IIM calls and secured AIR-15 in GATE as well, which would open the doors to a variety of PSUs and government R&D organizations like IOCL and BARC respectively. Furthermore, I was informed about a vacancy in the University of Utah for a Ph.D. in computational sciences, for which I was told I'd get a recommendation without too much fuss.

Therein lies the eternal confusion that plagues students my age... How do we decide what to do? Do we listen to the one track, and often prejudiced minds of our forefathers trying to enforce what they think is right upon us or do we listen to our colleagues many of whom prefer something more daring and funky, with security and peace of mind being the sacrifice?! It is an extremely difficult choice to make, faced with so many options and with so little to go on.

I'd say it ultimately boils down to what you yourself want to do, what your preferences are and how far you are willing to go to achieve success. As for me, I like the independence of thought embodied in the quote on Flipkart's t-shirt that reads "You have the right to remain silent or join a company that lets you speak your mind!" I prefer the performance oriented work culture in a private firm, but along with the perks and long term security offered by a PSU, that are very much needed under practical circumstances! However, we all know that it is next to impossible, at least in present day India, to get both! I guess whatever choice is made can only be validated in due course of time with perseverance and dedication to the set goal. But, as for now, I hope everyone succeeds in whatever they have decided for themselves, because a win-win situation can make the world a much better place to live in.

Generation Gap

The term 'generation gap' is thrown around a lot these days, but few experience what it conveys as brutally as I have. Now, I don't claim to be a perfect example of the current generation nor my parents to be the ideal role models for the previous one, but I'd rather relate the conclusions drawn from my personal experiences than give third party observations!

Well, first and foremost, a random word of advice for the young ones... Do not ever speak even justifiable smack about any piece of colorful clay or plastic that even closely resembles the silhouette of any deity or idol or anything that an old timer might worship or attach any importance to, or else they'll go nuts and completely freak out! Don't believe me? Try it!

Secondly, any opinion that you might have about the whole process of one generation raising the next for the sole purpose of survival of one's species and self, with love acting as a mere catalyst to make it more bearable or even enjoyable, is treated with an enormous amount of contempt and may even be considered taboo!

Furthermore, I've unfortunately had the honor of hearing the phrase "no one should be taken for granted" one time too many coming from higher-ups within family circles! My question to all these know-it-all folks, sitting on their high horses, is that if you cannot unconditionally trust and count on your own family, then whom do you trust? Oh! May be distant random outsiders who couldn't care less... Now, I know it is rather difficult for everyone to always be on the same page, but trying to understand each other even partially, is much better than being a bunch of world class jerks! 

The problem (if there indeed is one) with my generation is objectivity. As the new generation becomes smarter using a strict chain of logic and reason, they outgrow and break through the shells created by the older generations. As a result, the former is more adaptable and perceptive to a paradigm shift in perspective if necessary, while the latter refrains from any such change, requesting that the dream world created by them within the tiny confines of their orthodox brains, borne out of naivety and weakness, be respected.

So, the million-dollar question is, what do we of the new era do about such a foolhardy attitude retarding us? I used to argue and curse in vain but I have finally understood that the only responsibility we have towards our predecessors is to honor what they have done for us, and help bolster their fag end as long as they are there for us, while picking up some of their legit competence, instead of wasting our time and energy trying to nitpick each and every one of their silly beliefs, to which they cling on with their hearts and souls by hook or by crook! It is elegantly simple... Let them revel in their fantasy universe as a reward for the stuff they once did, while we take challenges by the horns and find our way solving real world problems.