Why...

Why after making a mistake
vow definitely not to repeat it again,
yet letting it happen again and again.
Why lose temper over the same things
even after knowing it wont help,
hurting others and your own self.
Why feel bad at all from within
and expect beyond the range,
already sure,nothing would ever change.
Why put a false smile
pretend to keep something off the mind,
still,hiding the pain deep inside.

Why make them cry who do care for us
cry for them who never care for us,
and care for them who will never cry for us.

Recapitulating dreams and reality..

Nowhere is the lesson,that life is beautiful and that whatever happens always happens for good, more vividly illustrated than by the sequence of events that have been happening in my life in the last three months..

Ever since I joined Goldman Sachs for summer internship,it had somehow sunk deep into me that I would not enjoy the work there.. Ofcourse its the world's no.1 investment banking firm.. people just yearn for GS..but then I craved for 'M' and not 'G' S :)... Not that I didn't enjoy the two months stay...Infact it is one of the most memorable summers in my life till now.. afterall it was my first exposure into the big glamorous corporate world!I have loved each and every moment of my stay in Bangalore.. infact as the days were passing by and the internship was coming to end, I actually didnt want to come back.. though deep in my thoughts I always used to say right from day one 'I hope I dont have to come back and join GS for a job'.. And as it turned out to be, GS actually made it sure I had this wish of mine fulfilled by not giving me a PPO:(... And believe it or not,it did make me sad .. for this was something very unexpected... the first shock.. that too just before the placements!

Somehow assured myself that I didnt need it and I wouldnt hv taken it had I got it, and so I didnt get it.. as simple as that! Geared up for the next round,the significant one, the campus placements ..Come August 3rd and we had SETlabs, Infosys.. Who is interested in research but then beggars cant be choosers.. anyways tumbled up here again in the interview,as they took just one!

August 5th and August 8th were like Hiroshima and Nagasaki day for me.. IBM, India Software Labs came on 5th and the news being that IBM was a mass recruiter, I thought I had a decent chance.. only to be stunned again to see the results of the written test..I was nowhere there in that long list of 191!!Go hell with the dream job..huh!I couldnt even make it to a normal job.. the second shock.. and unfortunately, this time neither I had nothing to convince myself nor my friends because everybody knew something had been wrong somewhere.. I had lost all hopes, but then thanks to Pankaj who went and persuaded them for rechecking,I was called for the ISL interview... I had already become famous with the recruting team for being the one whose paper had been rechecked.. I was called in for the first round.. the interviewer seemed to be challenging me every moment to prove how I could claim that I deserved to be considered.. Luckily the better part of my day had already begun and so he appeared to be impressed with my performance and readily referred me to the senior manager for the second round.. And this guy was the one who had done approved of the rechecking process and so tackling him wasnt very difficult.. Finally the ordeal was over..but nothing was clear until the results were declared that I had been selected.. and.. and.. and..the best part of the day was yet to come.. the manager called me when I was on another call and said that they were happy that the mistake had been brought to their consideration and that it would be bad if I wouldnt join ISL next year.. Tonnes of thanks to him and few more tonnes to my brother, Pankaj.. had he not been there,the better part of the day would have never come and I would be sulking somewhere...Back to hostel,it was time for clebrations and wishes from friends and kicks and bumps too!! Oh yes!I was employed now:)

August 6th...the DEShaw day..I was earlier in a confusion whether to go for it or not but by now I had decided that I would not be going for anything which I was sure of that I wouldnt enjoy and be proud of..even if it would be giving me a whopping figure of 9.04...Who cares when you have a decent job..So I went for the written exam thinking that clearing it will boost my confidence and that I will finally screw up the interview but then it happened again...DEShaw outsmarted me just like GS did:D..I didn't get through the written itself:))))))))))

August 8th..the do or die day..the CODING day..and the day I studied last:)).. two rounds of written cleared and the biggest delight being that even Megha had cleared them.. the one who had gone just to accompany me :))... it was me always encouraging her that even if she wasnt frm cse,she could still crack it.. but..haha.. just like I wanted MS,she wanted MG (Mentor Graphics).. and so she had to study digital even an hour before the written!

August 9th..Who knew this day was going to be even bigger... the MORE ALGOS MORE CODING day...finally after three rounds of interviews..all coding and no OS thankfully:).. six of us got the offer,including Megha and myself.. something so astounding that took us more than a day to realise and believe..

Before a year back I couldnt have even dared to dream of being in MS.. but then it came here last year for the campus placements and that time the results were simply stupendous..making MS a dream for me and all my batchmates...From then on, MS appeared as if I could have it only in my dreams..not in reality.. but finally after lots of confusion,ambiguity and apprehension,I did get what I have wanted and desired most in my life,after JEE..a job in MIcrosoft Corporation(India,for the time being:D)..

On Perfection..

The mind of a perfectionist is a madhouse, with every task finished incomplete in suit of perfection, every thought left inconclusive in quest for conclusion. All for the fear that someone will 'spot' an error.

I know I am far from perfect, however I too struggle with the problem of perfection. No wonder, I love to be called a perfectionist. A cruel irony for any one! However I also know that all humans are far from perfect. Therefore, for any person, perfection is a stuggle in vain for something that is seemingly unattainable.
Or is it?

If humans are far from perfect,that means they are at least on way, maybe the perfection I seek is attainable, at least conceptually.The imperfections of the tasks I do, and the words I write may just as well be overlooked by the many imperfections of the surveyor.

And therefore, perfection, as beauty, truly does lie in the eyes of the beholder...

A twist on the famous line, "to err is human" allows me to continue writing, accept all criticism with due respect, and still never be perfect.

Vista..beta version

Microsoft finally releases the beta version of its much awaited operating system, the answer to google, sun and every other software company in the world ,Windows Vista.

Windows Vista Beta 2 is now available for you to install, test, and enjoy.You can go to their website and download, for free, the beta version. Windows Vista, along with code, will be available for a few months until Microsoft finalises the version and releases the final version of Vista probably sometime in 2007. Sneak peeks so far have unveiled that Windows has, in characteristic style, lifted the Mac OSX interface and other features from its minority counterparts. Engineered to be the most secured version of windows yet,With Windows Vista, your system is ready when you are. Many such features are supposed to be included in this operating system. Do check it out, and have fun. Sections of the internet, including this blog, will groan with disappointment because another much-awaited Windows Vista feature is biting the dust. The PC-to-PC sync, which would enable users to synchronise data between different PCs using Windows Vista. The official reason is that the feature was not stable enough, and hence had to be pulled out at the last moment.A Breakthrough computing experience, you can see what your files contain without opening them.Along with that you can seamlessly manage Windows Vista and applications by saying what you see on your desktop.

If you are in India though, you might want to think twice before you download, because the file is 3.5 GB:)

So here's the deal. You get windows vista, absolutely free of cost, in beta version. Its Microsoft, there's gotta be a catch, right?

Right.There's no un-install feature.Now you will say OSs never had this feature..haha..then let me not forget to mention the bells and whistles required to run an OS like Vista- Graphics card,min memory of 512MB and their likes.

Milestone 1..

I'm a bad blogger...couldn't even wish my blog on june 3rd, when it celebrated it's first birthday! Well, I do the honours right now...

"Dear blog, a very happy belated birthday...thanks for being with me through my joys and sorrows and lending me a patient ear when I had almost deserted you all this while... thanks for introducing me to some lovely people out here who have all along boosted my morale and spirits, whenever I was down, who have amused me, made me laugh, moved me and taught me, through their comments here and posts on their blogs ...I wish to spend a lifetime with you and confide in you my innermost thoughts and desires, and know that you would fondly nestle them deep in your heart..."

Those were a few lines I came up with at the spur of the moment, while writing this post. Blogging was introduced to me by Anki...since then I visited many blogs and read pages of many lives. They all seemed similar, yet different in some aspects. And the one quality that appealed to me most about blogs was beautiful expression. I was amazed and aghast at the quality of language I came across. I realised this was the perfect place for me to romance the language, at the same time put on record, things that I otherwise couldn't, in the real world.

I do get trapped in mundane activities sometimes, that leads me to go silent for a while...but this is something I surely wanna work on and find time to write atleast a line or two, regularly. I really appreciate Anki in this regard...she posts with amazing regularity... Cheers to you, pal!Do you still remember how we had begun this stuff in summer of 2005 in IITkgp:)

Decision or Destiny?

Is there really a thing such as fate or destiny? Conversely, is there anything called choice or decision? What I have seen is that when people achieve what they want, they say they did so because they chose to, because they made the thing happen...because they deserved it. When something they hanker for equally or perhaps more, does not come through, oh well, bring out the favourite whipping boy....Fate! It was not meant to be. Kind of takes me back to school and our physics class on the theory of light.

When you need to explain phenomenon X, you say that light has a "wave" nature.....but if you want to explain phenomenon Y, you say that light consists of photons and is not wave in nature!

The point being that we believe in whatever we find convenient and whatever suits our needs at that moment. So we believe in God when we want something or need someone to lean on or someone to blame for the varied injustices meted out to us in life. Ultimately though, do any of these two schools of thought hold any merit? Do we choose anything in life? Is there anything called choice? And is there something called Fate? We reject one of the two in almost every scenario we face in life. So, if certain scenarios disprove both theories, isn't it safe to assume that both are false? If they are, what is the truth?

We spend our lives hankering after things we never achieve...true happiness and peace. And these are the very concepts that ensure we never achieve them. Or maybe, it is our approach to them that ensures this constant dissatisfaction. More on that later..... Adios!

Inane thoughts...

Sometimes you see things in a manner so different to someone else. You think you see things the way they are, you think you know exactly where the other person is screwing up and most of all, you think you know what should be done to set it right. Ask someone else and it's highly likely you'd be told your views are right and should be explained and dinned into the other person's head......

Pause for a thought though and it strikes me that no one is senseless really. For all the seemingly inane things you hear, there's always some kind of logic in the decisions that people make, there's always something behind their words, or they wouldn't behave in the manner that they do. After all, no one wants to be senseless. Even a "mad person" has his own logic; we may call it perverted or crazy, but to whatever brain he possesses, his actions are perfectly logical!

Sometimes I see things and wonder just what logic the other person is working on. Sometimes I wonder if I should stop the other person and try to explain what I think......but then I wonder.. We judge things from our own limited perspectives and viewpoints. The person facing the situation sees all that we do and more. This person makes decisions based on what and how the facts appear to be......so, why question the wisdom behind the judgment?