Do watch Taare Zameen Par

Another weekend has passed.

This weekend I watched "Taare Zameen Par". It is one of the best hindi movies I have seen. It touches upon a very simple subject of life in a very simple way. The best thing is that all the characters and the story appear to be part of your daily life. There is a small child Ishaan sweetly known as innu (at home). Perhaps the first movie in which a child has a nickname also as it is in everyday life.

The song tracks are also quite pleasing.

A must-must-watch-kind of movie. Aamir Khan's fantastic directorial debut.

Backwaters, Coconuts, Wild-life, Elephants...all at one place

Called KERALA.

Rohit and I have just returned from our trip to Kerala. It was a long weekend and none of us had been to Kerala so just planned to go there. Actually the best part of the trip was that it was completely un-planned except for Hyderabad to Kochi and back air-tickets.

From Kochi, we headed towards Kumarakom - place known for backwaters. Yes, that's all what we knew and were thinking of spending all 3 days there. On the way, we called to a resort for checking the room availability.

Kumarkom was a nice place but a small village! Our room in resort was just opposite the Vemband lake.

Also we were informed that "you are expected to relax here". As we hadn't come for relaxing so we thought of going to some other place after exploring the backwaters.

Next day morning after breakfast, we worked out the plan for the day. We would go for country boating and then sight seeing in Kottayam and then a bus to Thekkady.

Luckily for country boat, we got a nice boat person. While negotiating price he told he was an ex-serviceman and won't tell lie and I was impressed! Salute to the great Indian Army! He took us to backwaters...canal and lake and also showed some birds in bird sanctuary area! It was all splendidly beautiful and scenic.

Just peaceful, a small boat, calm water, aquatic plants, coconut trees as far as could be seen and also the local village people and their houses.

No rush, no crowd, no pollution, no noise! But our cell phone signal was there thanks to a rapidly grown Indian telecom industry.

Definitely one can spend three days there just relaxing if one wants to!

But as we didn't so we headed for Kottayam. Saw a church and a temple there. At 4:00 PM we boarded a bus to Kumily. Kumily is the town just next to Thekkady.

To our suprise, the way to Kumily was hilly. So for just 114 km the bus took long 4 hours.

Dead tired, we just got a room in a hotel. Didn't have to negotiate much...or we were not in a mood to! Had our dinner and relaxed watching TV. Rohit wanted to catch up with what's happening in Gujarat politics. Definitely Narendra Modi has drawn national attention for all bad and good reasons. Though personally I don't have a good perception about him because of media reports accusing him of genocide in Gujrat.

There was a slight disappointment about the food in Kerala. We wanted to have Karela food but it wasn't available in decent restaurants. Where it might be, the places itself were not nice.

So we had same north Indian meals except for one Kerala lunch meal.

Again, here there was nothing planned. So we got a tourist pamphelet from a hotel. It listed many things and we marked our priorities.

Next day morning we went to a tourist information center. The lady at the recpetion helped us carve out a plan that was fully tight for whole day. So we just skipped breakfast. The previous day we had missed lunch. Of course, we had come for activity not relaxing.

The first thing we had was Elephant ride over a female elephant named Monisha.

Next a spice plantation tour. Surely nice it was.

Vanilla, Coffee, Pepper, Cinamon, Cardamom and many more. Also natural rubber trees.

After lunch, we went for a 3 hr trekking in the forests of Periyar wild life sanctuary which is also a tiger reserve and national park.

It was awesome to be in the midst of nature. A lake, forest and trees all around and some wild animals like squiralls, monkeys, wild boars etc.

In the evening we watched Kerala marshal art show - Kalari and Kerala traditional dance form - Kathakali. And it was end of the day.

Since we had gone very far from Kochi airport for we had to reserve the next full day for just travel.

Overall it was a fun, adventurous and mind refreshing trip. Some more funny and interesting things also happened which I have not mentioned here. Above all, got to understand about Kerala closely.

Commencement speech at Stanford given by Steve Jobs - A must read

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.

Chachaji got engaged!

This is to congratulate our dear friend Rajat for finding his better half for life!
Rajat is fondly called as Chacha.
So in another words, chache ne chachi labh li hai!!!
Well, it all happened in good old traditional Indian way a.k.a. arranged by relatives and parents. There is quite an interesting fact about the names of the couple-to-be. "Rajat" is another name of silver and the meaning of the name of his would be is "of jewels". Sounds like a perfect union!...isn't it?
Wish good luck to Rajat and our to-be bhabhi!

Balle balle...!!!

Time to celebrate!

Jab we met Strangers

Yesterday was another Sunday like all previous ones since I am in Hyderabad. So my roomie (MR) I, as usual decided to catch a flick. Since there was not any must watch sort of movie released on Friday, so the decision making started. But before we did much investigation from net and newspapers, my brother (MB) is also in Hyderabad these days, suggested (read "asked") to watch latest Hindi film "Strangers".

According to TOI it was to be screened at "Sensation Insomnia" at 7:00 PM and we planned for that show. We got the mighty people's transport auto for the cinema. Without any need to bargain, the auto walla agreed to go by meter. After a long 40 mins, we were in front of the cinema. To confirm that auto walla is not cheating and the way is correct, I always have to rely on only MR, the fact that even after 7 months, I am feeling like a visitor here. A +ve side effect of this is that I kind of enjoy going around in the city, always!! That's another thing (only if MR protests to what I just said) that yesterday I was feeling drowsy 'coz of common cold.
Well, so were inside the cinema complex. What man, there was no poster of "Strangers"! Only "Jab we met" and some Telugu movie ones. We had already met Shahid & Kareena (if I remember correctly, in this cinema hall only) and were pretty sure that "Strangers" are Hindi speaking chaps. I decided to argue and try to claim my auto money back from the cinema management by probably threatening to sue them! But MR picked the side of the management saying that it's fault of newspaper...so...with a feeling of being real strangers, we moved on!

Anyway, let's go to Eat Street and try to grab a table in front of the lake. Nice idea...
On the way to the lake there was "Prasadz"- mall-cum-multiplex. "Strangers" was available for 9:00 PM show and our dear MR mistook it for Hollywood film "I am Legend"because of English title and stepped into the 'Q' and stepped out with 3 tickets for some back row middle seats.
There were good 2 hours and it was enough time to go-enjoy-and-return from Eat Street. At the idea of lake, MB suddenly remembered that I didn't allow him to bring the camera with him! What to do with a camera in a movie hall, by the way!
Despite of a lot of crowd(no secondary meaning :-)...normal on Sunday evenings...we managed to get a table just vacated by two lasses. The table was on the side of eat street i.e. next to the lake. Spent around 1 hour there, had CCD coffee (which was soothing for cold also) and came back to Prasadz.

So finally there we were, in the middle seats of 3rd last row with some strangers on back, side and in front of us and all of us waiting for some strangers to appear on the white screen.
Soon the wait got over.
"Strangers" - Jimmy Shergil and Kay Kay Menon.
Both inside a train, sitting in front of each other. Start their conversation in a really weird manner. And guess what they started? A game to know about each other. Both started telling their life stories to each other. One guy himself is somewhat abnormal and his lover-turned-wife is upset with him. Other's wife has become mentally upset after the demise of their small son. So he is upset with his wife. But none of them wants to divorce because they think that's not the right thing to do. Story keeps on unfolding. However all this was flashback. In the beginning Jimmy was taken into custody for a crime...most probably a murder while Kay Kay looked on from the back side of the wind-screen of car.
No, I won't reveal the complete story.

I was enjoying the movie. It looked like some murder mystery novel. The first half, though just 50 mins, was so much packed with story. I would say the direction was good.
Second half was also fine.
But what left us exasperated was the end. Giving a feeling of watching some really crazy and psychic strangers. Almost just like some suspense novels are ended with a not so captivating suspense. For example, even the end of the brilliant "Da Vinci Code" was not that interesting as the plot was. Anyway, good that the movie was only 1 hr 40 mins long.

Yet, the most craziest stranger in this outing was to meet us soon. It was our auto walla who took us back to home. Seemed like he was the force behind Narain Karthikeyan's win in GP car racing in China. But our race was without any safety guards!!
Finally we reached home safely so that I could write this blog!

UpRight or LeftDown

Recently I went to the the US of A a.k.a. the land of opportunity. Frankly speaking I didn't like it initially. Someone showed me some good infrastructure like flyovers in Los Angeles and I retorted "So what! Delhi is also very good. The flyovers are more beautiful there!" But after some days and seeing that they have utilized the technology everywhere to make life easier (or tough for new comers), I sort of started admiring US. In two months, I got to know and analyze a lot of things. Thanks to being in California, I picked up a few words from Spanish also. Like 'San' in San Diego or San Francisco means 'Saint'. 'Los' in Los Angeles means 'The'. Also 'j' in jalapeño is pronounced as 'h'. 'll' in tortilla is pronounced at 'y'. A very good example : a place "La Jolla" in San Diego is pronounced as "la hoya".

Well, coming back to the title of the blog, I observed two things with extra curiosity. As they say, in US everything is made different from what it is in Europe. The first one being driving on right side. In Europe (and India also) we drive on the left side of the road. There doesn't seem to be any difference at first thought. We are concerned with driving and the auto manufacturers have to make their products accordingly. But if we think more, doesn't it sound better and make more sense to drive on the "right" side? Yes, the RIGHT i.e. the correct side. To me at least, it makes. Quite thoughtful...isn't it?

Second difference that I contemplated is the way switches are turned on and off. Very much unconscious thing...press down and it's on and press up and it's off. That's in India and Europe. But not in America. There you press it 'UP' to make things on and press 'DOWN' to make things off. Again, it sounds more meaningful. Something is up (on) when switch is 'up' and it is down (off) when switch is 'down'.

Another differences like use of miles (not km), feet (not meters), inches (not cm), pounds (not kg) etc. are quite irritating. I wonder how does their scientific community like NASA and alike adjust with these when they are at work.

20th May 2007 - I landed in Hyderabad

At about 1:00 PM I landed in Hyderabad (Hyd for short) by a flight from New Delhi. A driver had come to pick me up for a hotel/guest house which I myself didn't know. Well, it was a nice welcome arranged by the company.

I asked the driver about where we were going, he said something in Hindi with Telugu accent which I actually could not understand.

Anyway, he dropped me at hotel Ohri's Banjara - a 3 star hotel on road No. 12 of Banjara Hills - one of the poshest areas of Hyd.

Famous NTR Gardens Hyderabad

From then on, my "voyage" of Hyderabad started on. My very first impression about Hyderabad became that of a "clean and green" city which holds immense importance for me since I had come from Gurgaon - a Hi-Tech city (the technology which is only evident in the office premises and not outside) whom I had termed as "The City Under Construction"

In contrast, there was very little dust in Hyderabad. You can move around in the city seeing the beautiful scenic locations driving on enchanting hilly roads lined with trees on both sides.

I came to know about the facilities that my remunerator has provided me with.

I peldged to visit a different restaurant everyday...and it just started from Day 1.

A new place, a new job, a new journey...

After a long time, in fact for the second time, I have again decided to write my blog. As the name of this blog 'Freexpressions" suggests, this time, I have lots of stuff to share, to express.
And all of this will be about my shifting from the Millenium City - Gurgaon to another beautiful place in India called 'Hyderabad".

I came to Hyderabad on 20th of May 2007 to start a new job. On the next day, I joined Qualcomm India Pvt. Ltd, the Indian office of the wireless leader of the world. I will write later on why I joined Qualcomm. For a hint, the basic reason is a quest to work in one of the best technology places of the world.

So today it is my 9th day in Hyderabad - the 6th most populous metropolis in India. I have only added to its population :-)

So in the subsequent posts, I will write about my rendezvous with Hyderabad and various places inside it - especially my office, the Hi-Tech City, the lakes and the hotels & restaurants.