When Time Stands Still.....The Kaise Mujhe Tum Mil Gaye Moment!

There are levels in a relationship from the time when you meet someone to the time when you start liking that person and to the point when you can not live without that person. Liking can be based on physical attraction or it can be gradual based on liking of nature, personality or inner beauty. The more you spend time with a person, the more you start appreciating the qualities of that person. Compatibility leads to friendship and friendship leads to love. Or it can happen the other way round, love at first sight is what you call it, the initial attraction itself results in love. You just want to be with that person.

But is love just a realization of the other person's physical or even inner beauty? Do they lead to love or does love make one beautiful, both from outside and inside?

Further, is love a desire? Is love an attraction? Is love a compatibility? Is love wanting to spend your life with the person? Love is all of these and much more. The pinnacle of love is a point which I call the "Kaise mujhe tum mil gaye" moment. Its a realization which is humbling. Its a moment when you think what good you have done in your life to just spend a moment with the other person. Its a feeling which make makes you want to sing...

"Zindagi sitar ho gayi
Rim jhim malhar ho gayi
Mujhe aata nahi

Kismat pe apni yakeen
Kaise mujhko mil gayi tum"

Its a moment when time actually stands still, you find what has been missing in your life. You realize you could live forever with just that one moment of realization. Its a realization which goes much much beyond a appreciation of physical or inner beauty. These are for everyone. But a feeling like a "Kaise mujhe tum mil gaye" moment is only for one person, because only he or she can understand the significance of it.

"Utar aayi jheel mein,
Jaise chaand utarta hai kabhi.
Haule haule, Dheere se.
Gunguni dhoop ki tarah se,
Tarannum mein tum...
Chhoo ke mujhe, Guzri ho yun,
Dekhun tumhe, Ya main sunu..."

Aamir pretending to be a small time actor to Asin, when he is actually a big industrialist, lies to Asin that he is going to see his ailing mother in his village when actually he is going to UK for a business meeting. What does Asin do? She calls Aamir after midnight to give him the money she got after selling the ambassador, which she had recently bought as a step towards a lifetime dream, such that she can give Aamir some money for her mother's treatment.

Notice how Aamir Khan, as he walks though chauffeur driven limousines to his own personal jet with an army of assistants following him, holds on to the small bundle of notes which Asin had given him. He knows the emotional value that Asin had for that ambassador and thus realizes the value of the money which Asin had given him.



They were in love till then, but this was the "Kaise mujhe tum mil gaye" moment when Aamir realizes how much this girl loves him. He is humbled and feels how much more lucky could he have been to be loved so much by a person.

"Tum ho sukoon,
Tum ho junoon
Kyun pehle na...Aayi tum.
Kaise mujhe tum mil gayi.
Kismat pe aaye na yakeen..."

This is the essence of Kaise mujhe tum mil gaye, a kind of love which makes you think that

"Main to ye sochta tha,
Ki aaj kal...
Uparwaale ko fursat nahi.
Phir bhi tumhe banake woh,

Meri nazar mein chadh gaya
Rutbe mein wo, Aur badh gaya.."

So, have you had your "Kaise mujhe tum mil gaye" moment yet?

The MBA Placement Journey...through G-Talk Status messages!

The placement process as at any institute always starts with the finalizing your resume. That is more difficult than it sounds, involving collecting all your achievements and projects, putting them in perfect words which are "crisp" and "concise". Further, it also involves getting it reviewed from other people who always come up with some mistake or the other. Their recommendation is to "quantify" whatever you do....so things like "Organized XYZ event" changes to "Organized XYZ event and helped increase sponsorship by 78% and participation by 110%"!!!. This is quite a skill, as people earlier wrote "Expert in C++", now some, I am sure would be writing this in their resumes: "Expert in quantifying achievements". I for one, as reflected in the status message got really irritated by the whole process.

sid "has frozen his resume and is sick of the word "quantify""

And yes, unlike "Lock kar diya jae" of Kaun Banega Crorepati(Amitabh Bacchan wala), we dont "lock" but "freeze" our resumes. HOT talent with COLD "frozen" resumes! :-D

Further, all institutes have a placement week where all the companies come for placements. The sentiments run really high in the whole process, it a high pressure scenario...shortlists of big companies are look forwarded to with anxiety and then there are a whole lot of group discussions and interviews before you get your job. Not making it is tough, as I found out, where I got rejected in a interview for a dream company before the actual placement week.

Life changed from happy to:

"Turn the page..."

and more worse...

sid "just wants college to end"!!!

Looking back an interview seems like a small thing but right then when you are going through it, it seems like a huge loss. Negativity creeps in and a lot of other things start looking bad.

I was lucky here, to have some really special friends which helped me come out of the whole thing and focus on my placement week preparations.

The mood then again changed from depressingly negative and back to happy...

sid "is back!"

and then very happy and optimistic...that reflected in my status...the line taken from the commercial of my summer internship company..

"Nazar ko kya chahiye, khwaab thode zyaada...khwaab ko kya chahiye, rang thode zyaada..karlo phir Zyada Ka Iraada!"

Then the placement week preparations started and most of Christmas was spent reading up the economic meltdown.

"What Santa gave me...Philip Kotler, The Economic Times, Santa’s own GD-PI tips...am overwhelmed….Christmas Rocks!"

The placement week was in the 2nd week of Jan, so between Christmas and the 2nd week the mood kept changing between:

a) Self-Motivation :-(

"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go by"

b) More Self Motivation...this time through a song :-( :-(

" Aditi Maan Kabhi Kabhi Saare Jahan Me Andhera Hota Hai, Lekin Raat Ke Baad Hi Toh Savera Hota Hai..."

c) Then it turned into a plea by new year..

sid "needs the Rhythm Divine.."

d) and then hope...this on the eve of the placement week...

sid "believes that the fog is about to clear....a new light about to emerge...a new destiny about to be written..."

I was wrong here regarding the timing, thanks to the negative sentiments which lead to the scarcity of good companies on campus, that "fog" did take quite a long time to clear. :-(

e) Finally to over confidence, hours before the week started...

"says you cant stop me, baby don't even try..."!!!

(talk about attitude ;-) )

f) Then as week came and went, the wait became longer and longer. It was just hoping and praying that its all over quickly.

sid "is hoping he gets to "earn" his cadbury bournville soon "

But then the biggest realization came that after all being happy and having lots of fun were not related to getting placed. Yes, placements were a very important part but not the whole part. In other words, I realized that you don't really have to "earn" your bournville!

"life is what happens when you are busy thinking about other things"

Finally, getting placed in a dream sector, with a dream profile in my home city days before the convocation and ending unexpectedly with a GPA of 8.5 in the last term, I finally realized that everything happens for the good, and till the time it does not happen, life doesn't stop!

This last status just after my placement, reflected the feeling:

sid says "jab mile thode fursat...kar le khud se mohabat...."

(Note: The gtalk status messages shown in this post are taken through the Kwippy website which automatically saves the status messages of an individual at a dedicated page.)

On the Last Day....15th March....

Vishnu did not want to say good bye...


Neha was sentimental...that explains the touching good bye mail she sent to the group..

Manoj remembered his friends...


and Saikat gave parting a touching, musical twist...ya...These "Seasons in the Sun" will be long cherished and remembered....


Coming to HR, Bhasin was confused...hota hai...

and Shailesh Jha was looking for go back or move on quickly....


but Sid J was just sad...

It took Prashant to quantify the achievement...

and Ashutosh Modi to put it in perspective...


What about Sid Saxena...he just knows something very precious is slipping away...and he can't do anything about it... :-(

The RED Tree and other related memories

There is a tree, a tree with red flowers..standing and seeing what all the last 2 years have been...its now full with flowers...but everyday you look...the flowers keep falling...and the tree...standing like it has always been...saying goodbye to the flowers fallen...waiting for the wind to take them away and spread their fragnance...the tree stays the same...only the flowers keep coming and going.

and then...one fine day...a time comes to recollect...to remember..to rejoice...to cry....sometimes you just don't want to move on....you would want time to stay....life's always like that...a set of moving images with no pause button...and then you just don't want to stay in that place...where every thing reminds you...of the time, the image, the moment...which just wouldn't stay!

The tree in front of the mess at IMT, full of flowers two weeks ago, now when the time has come to depart, empty branches remind you of the the time that went away...

Something about nature...changes according to times...changes according to moods...you see, the red tree is empty today...flowers come only to go away...moments come only to stay..etched in memory...years may come and go away!

Placement to Placement...Engineering to MBA...

Final year at Delhi College of Engineering to Final Year at IMT Ghaziabad. The same time of the year, the same dreaded 'P' word. P for placements. The same feelings, the same fears and aspirations. Seems nothing has changed. There is an economic meltdown and C/C++ and Quant practice has been replaced by Sub prime fundas and marketing gyan, but still, the essence of the placement time is the same.

In 06, TCS was the first company, followed by Infy and Aricent. In our quest to quickly get a job under our belt, a majority of the 550 strong batch had applied for TCS. A simple objective MCQ paper, not doing all questions right intentionally, as from what we had learnt TCS rejects you as being "over qualified" if you do all the questions. :-) So, we having done just the right amount of questions right,were overconfident that we would qualify for the next stage and be home for Rakhi which was on the very next day, the day on which Infy was scheduled to come.

The results of the initial shortlisting round came out and while almost all of our batch mates made it and even 100+ got eventually selected(TCS is not known as Bulk Recruiter at engineering colleges for nothing!), there were three guys who were surprisingly left out. There was myself, and there were two other friends, all living in the same floor in the same hostel.

Not being shortlisted was hard to accept, as we knew all the answers(Software companies tend to repeat their questions every year and these are freely available on the net!) and had deliberately marked a couple wrong as not to be "over qualified". What ever the reasons might be, the point was we were not going home on Rakhi and were sitting for Infy the next day.

It's said that circumstances and bad luck bring people together. It did, that day, as three friends bonded over their seemingly bad luck and cursed their tormentor TCS, without any limit. As time passed, we realized that cursing just would not do, and there was a company coming up next day. We arranged for material which would help us crack that. For Infy it meant, the famous Shakuntala Devi puzzle book. So confident were we of cracking TCS the very first day, that we had not even bothered to go through it before.

Interesting things were happening then as we prepared for our savior Infy, which was due the very next day. One of us suddenly got a call from the office, that TCS had indeed shortlisted him for the interview and he had to be there in 10 min. Sitting in his night pajamas, he managed to get ready, tie and everything, in 10 min flat. He went, he gave the interview and came back. Dejected. To join us again for the preparation for Infosys. All in a space of 45 minutes. I also got a call from one of my classmates who also had not been shortlisted and with whom I was on msg-msg terms only. ;-) Call was to stay cool and that "there were great companies ahead, this is only the start, and that I was good enough to make it" types. But it worked. A girl explaining you things always always works.

Then, did we get through Infosys? Well two of us did. Did that girl call again to congratulate me? Well she did! Did something happen between us? Well, we became very very good friends. A lot of stories, related to those three "rejected by TCS" friends happened, from that time when they bonded over their failure in the DCE hostel to today. One is now an electronics guru, another a finance stud and the third, well third is me...going through the whole placement process again, which would start very soon.

The butterflies are back and as I read about how managers should cope with the economic crisis, I hope I mange to come out smiling from the placement season, with some new stories to talk about!

Best of Gtalk Status Messages
(MBA inspired, Micro Blogging at its Best! :D)

I know there has been no post on confessions for some time. There are a couple of poems written somewhere in my 4th trimester note book and there is an idea of a post inspired by an amazing thought shared by one of our marketing faculty teachers in his last class. But, alas...till I and those poems and that "amazing thought" find a common time to get together in the form of a couple of posts, I am posting some of my favorite gtalk status messages. Stages come in life when you pass through the entire rainbow of emotions, in the same day. The MBA only further accentuates the whole “feeling” thing. Hoping some of these gtalk statuses capture what is going on around here.

On Life
· Connect the dots forward, you see hope...connect them backward, you see destiny...
· It’s said that happiness is along the way, not at the end of the road. Once you realize that, the journey itself becomes the destination.
· Life is a string of pearls....pearls made of moments and people....some of the pearls so precious...you would just want to treasure them forever and feel lucky and blessed you found them....
· Apart from the ones whom you really love and care about, letting other people become a source of your unhappiness is giving too much importance to those people. They deserve not time, but indifference.
· The Abhimanyu Dilemma: You know the ways in...but you can’t find the wayz out!
· The problem with life is, you get things and you want more...and as we get things the expectations increase...the satisfaction is never there because already the expectations reach a higher level....and that’s true both for material things and more so for relationships...
· Looking back, life is just some moments...moments u just cant forget...some people who touch u...people whose just being in your life changed the whole meaning of it...those moments u cant forget....those people you would alwayz remember...these are the essence of life...some v.special friends and some v.special moments....
· Life gives you seemingly unrelated parts...you got to join them to see the real picture which life is trying to give and also to realize the importance of each part in the overall scheme of things.

Girls…
· A woman has facets and dimensions to her that a man can just never have. The more you try to know them, the more you realize there’s so much more to know...and learn...
· What’s the difference between Take-Out and take-Home? The difference between Bipasha and Deepika!

Finance
· As my CGPA is a depreciating asset (liability!), a put option on that would work best!
· The Indian constitution gives us 7 rights; the Rights Issue is certainly not one of them!
· Love is like a high risk, high return stock, but without the hedging option, the possibilities of getting hurt are always there…

Marketing
· CB: Studying Brand Switching Q1) Is there any guy better than your present boy friend? Q2) So, which parameters can be classified as barriers which don’t let you "switch" to the better guy?? Q3) Rate them on a Likert scale? :D
(For the non MBA types: CB is Consumer Behavior)
· My childhood dream was to sell soap...but I would settle for selling washing powders and shampoos as well ;)
· For a marketer, TETRA packs seem much more exciting than 6 PACKS :D

Strategy
· I now have "strategic intent", but my "strategic plans" keep facing changing "external environments” :D

The Bottom-line
They say life starts after 25, but that would happen if we get out of this place, alive!

Blogging is out...Microblogging is in...

This is how Wikipedia defines micro-blogging ...

“Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web.”

Micro-blogging is emerging as a new form of expression. Be it the Facebook or Orkut 'Status Update' or the G-Talk or Yahoo Messenger status messages, people are using micro-blogging to express themselves in newer ways. Now with just a couple of lines, you can convey what you are feeling at the moment. The challenge is to be creative, so that that one line or couple of lines not only are interesting to read but also capture your feelings at that moment. This momentary capture of feeling is what makes micro-blogging so different from the traditional blog. The traditional blog post has a limitation that it is an expression of a collection of feelings over a slightly more extended period of time. It sometimes fails to capture the moods changes, the change in feelings as they happen, which a simple messenger status change does. So, if a status changes from :-( in the morning to :-) by lunch, you get the broad picture of what that particular person has gone through since morning. No need of a lengthy blog to convey one's feelings.

Sometimes finding original content, which would just give the perfect measure of the feeling, becomes tough. Then quotes and song lyrics come into play. Sometimes interpreting why a particular person has put a particular song lyric or a particular quote at a particular time as a status update, is in itself a source of great fun and time pass. Sometimes it is less a case of feelings being expressed and more a case of trying to be humorous. Even them, the expression the humor takes gives an indication of the present state of affairs for that person. Let me give you an example:

Commitment as measured on a Likert Scale: 1) Not Committed 2) Committed for the time being(time constraint) 3) Committed in the college/office ( institutional constraint) 4) committed for the city (geographical constraint) 5) Committed for Life!!!...so, where do u rate yourself?? ;-)

This was one of my status messages for gtalk during my summer internship. Feelings are no where into play here, it is a pure trying-to-be-funny status. But still, for someone who would have a slight idea of what I am doing these days would know that some where I am connected with a marketing research problem(where else would the famous 5 point Likert Scale come into play?). So, it can be deduced that somehow the summer internship effect is showing.

Another one of my summers related gtalk status messages:

MNYL: Your Partner for Life..."Your" defined as a TG of single, beautiful women...bhasad in the times of summers...am lovin it!!!

(Btw MNYL is name of the company where I did my internship, and “your partner for life” is their punchline. Further, TG is marketing jargon for Target Group)

One status message related to my being in Chandigarh/Mohali for my internship:

Hit a six, take a wicket...get a hug from priety zinta...no wonder Kings X1 Punjab are doing so well :D:D:D

Finally, one of my favorite status messages:

The truth about marketers: "baatein toh acche karte hain, kaash aadmi bhi acche hote"!!!! ;-)

Who better than a marketing student, to spill the beans about the reality of marketers. So, all in all, micro blogging either depicts a feeling or even when it is humorous, it is somehow related to the present “external context”. These wont replace blogs but in their own small ways, they give an outlet for individuals to express themselves as and when they please.

Note: The gtalk status messages shown in this post are taken through the Kwippy software which automatically saves the status messages of an individual at a dedicated page.

About a Girl...
...(searching for things...that I just can not see...)

Before realizing a dream, the first step is to realize what is it exactly that we want from life. To many times we wander aimlessly without knowing what is it that we really desire. This poem is about one such girl. It is about everyone infact, everyone who is going through the path towards self realization and awareness.

About a girl, a story begins.
Her life it was, caught in a cage.
To break free was what she crazed.
In deep thought she spent all day.
Something was missing in her life.
A dream maybe, some wings to fly.

Khushi na jane kahan chale gaye the.
Anginat parchaiyon main kho gaye the,
Ya, raat ke sitaron main so gaye the.
Pata nahin kya chah rahe the,
Apne aap ko he pehchan rahe the.
Ek sapna, ek manzil talaash rahe the.

(The is the first of a set of two poems...the second is about the same girl..having realized what she wants and now aware of herself...there is no stopping her in her path towards the fulfillment of her dreams...as in Taare Zameen Par...Udne ko Tu Azad hai....bandhan Koi Ab Hai Kahan...!!!)
Ps: ideas, suggestions relating to the theme of the proposed second poem are most welcome!

Taare Zameen Par...

Yeh To Hain Sardi Mein Dhoop Ki Kirane
Utarein Jo Aangan Ko Sunhera Sa Karne
Mann Ke Aandheron Ko Roshan Sa Kar Dein
Thithurti Hatheli Ki Rangat Badal Dein....

Rarely, does one come across a song which expresses so deep a thought using so common examples. Through things like the different facets of nature's beauty, the song tries to tell us that there are certain invaluable things in the world, whose value and importance we usually overlook.

Taare zameen par comprises all such things that make life beautiful. But to enjoy their beauty, we have to recognize and value them for what they are. It is too easy to overlook and too easy to lose them.
The most precious things anyone can hope to get are not always the most apparent. Too often, only after we lose something, we realize its importance. Getting the love of someone is something that many of us do not value while we have it. Why is it that we hurt those who love us? Why is it that we let go of love so easily? The case of "missing the woods for the trees" is made clear when we allow small differences to come between love.

A line from the movie Don Juan Demarco illustrates the importance of love,

“There are only four questions of value in life. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made of? What is worth living for? What is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love".

To have found someone who loves you and understands you is like having the most precious of all stars. But by not recognizing and respecting that love we run the risk of losing it.

As the song goes,

"....kho na jaen yeh, taare zameen par".

So, if you have found love, hold on to it and don’t lose it. The seas like love are both calm and troubled. All it takes is a bit of patience to live through the stormy part.

The Poem for all Times 2nd Edition

The first "The Poem for all Times" which was co-written with a friend touched on one aspect of love...."the finding part"....The second goes beyond that...to the "reclaiming part". Here it goes...

Main jee raha tha zindagi kuch aise,
Khushiyon pe badal chaa rahein ho jaise.
Bhula raha tha saare baatein aur yaadein,
Akele raah pe chala jaa raha hun jaise.

Ek mod pe do rahein mil gayein,
Zindagi bhar saath chalne ke asha jag gaye.
Woh raah na jaane kahan chale gaye,
Zindagi ke bahar patjhar mein kho gaye.

Us raah pe phir jaane ko dil karta hai,
Woh kasme phir khane ko dil karta hai.
Main jee raha tha zindagi kuch aise,
Usse raah pe kise ke raah dekh raha hun jaise.

check out the first Poem for all Times....
http://confessions679.blogspot.com/2007/08/presenting-on-friendships-day-neha-feat.html