Teacher

So there was this funny saying back when I was in school and even in college, "Take as many pangas as you want - but never, never ever mess with a teacher!". People knew that their teachers could take their career apart if they wanted. But somehow more than that, people also respected the good teachers, the teachers who knew what they were talking about. Teachers who encouraged questions in class - who made learning an enjoyable experience not some gut-wrenching judging game - those teachers were really respected. I personally owe everything I am, everything I know to all the teachers who taught me from my first school in Jagdishpur(DPS) to my current school - Stanford. Each and everyone of us has teachers to thank. But somehow we often forget them - we never attempt to get back in touch or pay a visit to them or may be even send a postcard - no we dont even do that. But I read about this touching story and I was really left feeling a pang of guilt - Gosh I wish I had done something for my teachers too. http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/nov/10ab.htmIt talks about how a dying former teacher of IIM Calcutta was helped by his students to try to import a drug from the US which could save him. Though he did not survive, the gesture really touched me. We should all go back from where we come. I feel that often, in the daily rush of life, we forget who we are and where we come from. And often many of us dont know where we are going. Taking time off for going back to the good old days really comes off as time well spent - you dont want your whole life to be just your life - you want your life to have made a difference in other people's lives - something like the lives of teachers! I miss my teachers :(

Live blogging - BASES Entrepreneurship KickOff at Stanford - 30th Oct, 2006

So a couple of weeks back, the student entrepreneurship club of Stanford(BASES) hosted a panel discussion on the current trends in entrepreneurship here in the valley. The discussion was moderated by Guy Kawasaki and the panel had as it members: Anand of Aerospace Corporation, Seth Godin of Meebo, Ann - big time VC here, Steve - big time VC here Erik And a couple of more people So here is what I could jot down (in a very news-reporter sorta way), I hope you enjoy it and benefit from it. I can also give you the link to the podcast of this - but u need to write comments for this blog first!GUY KAWASAKI A Stanford alum - law school and gsb reject Erik - active in spinning companies out of stan Ann - ... venture partners Steve - Meteor Network Seth on current state of high entrepreneurship people say its easy to get money this day and age...but this is not totally true - and with meeboe - just go do it forget abt business plan competitions dont spend months planning to execute - a lot of stuff is getting started right now meebo launched with a sum total with $6000Guy says: so what wrong with business competitions if u made a plan for meebo there would be a sum total of 50000 people in the world who wold use it if people are super passionate abt it and u think ut would work - as long as it doesnt take millions of dollars its seth's 8th attempt at a startup erik on the same its quite healthy here in the valley understand what ur competitors would be thinking or a project that u would be associated on campsas an entrepreneur - what risks u are takings fantastic time to be in ur seat be thoughtful abt building ur markets Ann - first round of capital - angel/venture is the most difficult round to raise we look for a lot of commitment its rare to see a business plan on 1 page paper the bar is high for that first round Anand hired a sales advisor - look in to the mobile enterprise not the tech behind it - but the fact that what does it do for the user how badly ur customers what ur product comes down to environment when customers are starting to trust the startups again get ur hands dirty with some basic sales, basic marketing techniques, Steve one thing that is different today is that there is a new thought - creating a new focuswe look at a few values - facilitating connection between users - connect to people's passions Seth on Web 2.0 ->next generation of websites - more of connect people less on the site owner and more on the people coming to it Tim O'rielly - Web 2.0� it was 2001 - business was low - worked very well for tim - my business model is open source - u have to be able to describe ur unique competitive model we cant invest in rear view mirrors rather than forward lookin Steve it doesn't mean a lot what ur marketing model whats the market looking like444i - Armando Fox - good course at Stanford Ann - brand advertisers are gonna come - google will need to run a lot of experiments to see how they can get more yahoo doesnt have the advertising dent that Google has� Between MySpace or YouTube - its myspace - which is a no brainer coz the demographics cross section which myspace caters to is huge some luck or some blinding insight - but when u r in the internet - when u r trying to predict the users - doing research is very diff than putting up a consumer internet incremental improvement on what u are already doing - watch videos after download - in youtube - watch in the browser without scrolling the bar - u have to know what is happening on this site from the main page target audience - potential advertisers How many power point slides would u see when u are looking at entrepreneurs doing their pitch - 0 slides 15 slides - if u go higher 20-25 slides u r it eligance and simplicity where u have 30 secs where u have 3 min gonna have to pitch to potential employers that u r gonna hire u r gonna pitch to ...Ann - less than 20 slides Steve - ~ 20

How to Get Into Stanford University For Dummies

Hi. This is Rahul Thathoo. I am a First year Masters student in the Computer Science Department here at Stanford University. I moved here on campus a couple of weeks back after completing my engineering in India and thought that I should pen down my take on how to get into a foreign university of the stature of Stanford. This is going to be a partwise blog, where I deal with certain issues in one part, and issues specific to the application process in another part and so on.Getting into Stanford is not that difficult as many of you may perseive. After all, they took me in! And if I can get into Stanford, then everyone and their grandmother can too! So let me start off by giving you a bit of my background information. Contrary to what many of you may have already pre-conceived, I did NOT go to IIT. I completed my Bachelors of Technology from the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad.

I cleared the IITJEE in 2002, and my interest at that time were subjects related to computer science and electronics. Since my rank couldnt get me into the IITs in the branch of my choice - I decided that i would go with my heart and ditched the idea of being an IIT-ian so as to be able to study what i really wanted to. This is another important aspect I want to underline here, always do what your heart says - ever heard of the term - 'put your heart and soul into it and you will succeed' - when you put your heart to something, your soul will follow and what you will have at the end of it is Success with a capital S! So if you want to come to Stanford just to get the big brand-name associated with it or just for the weather or the blond chics, I am afraid your application will not move ahead of the admission committee disposal bin. But if you want to come to Stanford to explore broader horizons of application(and research) in your area of interest, if you want to meet people with similar interests and similar zest as yours, and if you want to be something more than 'just another professional' - then it will reflect on your application material and you will be welcomed with open arms (Of course if you are Dhirubhai Ambani's son or Narayan Murthi's daughter then we need a whole new blog to discuss that!).

So the journey toward Stanford beings rather early. "How early?" - you ask. Well in this part I want to tell you what I did in the four years of college in India - which made the admission committee take a deeper look into my application and later, grant me the admission offer. What happens to people in India when they get into college is,after spending some gruelling year in the pressure of Class X boards, coaching for 1-2 years, Class XII boards and then enterance exams, they start telling themselves that after 4-5 years they will be professionals and as such college is gonna be a walk in the park - an excuse to live the good life! Well, the way I look at it is - this is time that actually goes into moulding yourself into what you want to be doing the rest of your life - this is where the action beings. So the manner in which you choose to spend you college days has a lot of bearing with what you are going to be doing after this. The choice is yours. By no means does this mean that total abstinance is required, and that its all work and no play. Well I'll tell you from my experience, in the second year, I spent more time on the football field that working on my class assignments! But I managed time so that I wouldnt have a late submission ever. Well actually, I lied, I did have a few(very few) late submissions, but I guess they didnt take it against me!

So when you enter college, take the first year to explore as much as possible - what your college has to offer - in terms of facilities, faculty, courses, books, projects, etc. Try to meet as many people as possible(especially seniors), but keep touch with only those with whom you think your frequency matches. Be regular with assignments and always work within deadlines. Try to read ahead about the cutting edge in your area so that it will whet you appetite for learning the basics better. Also, try your hand in the extra-curricular activities. First year is a time when you can afford to spend more time than in subsequent years on extra-curricular things, so get your ass moving - go down to the music room to play the guitar(if you dont have yours) - or go audition for the Drama Society membership - or go for the cricket team trials. Do you see my point here - explore all that your college has to offer. In my first year i got involved in the audio and lights jobs at college - we had some very heavy duty BOSE equipment for audio and equally good lights and camera equipment - I got in touch with the senior handling it then and after a few months of apprenticeship, he handed the entire thing over to me - imagine the fun of playing DOOM on a LCD projector with BOSE surround sound inside a 150 capacity auditorium! And yes, I was in the Football team too. By the time you leave college, it shouldnt be like that there was one thing you really wanted to do but you couldnt(of course this is bound to be but try not to have too many of those!).

Go out there, and like Nike says - Just Do it! You gotta be a really good time manager also - that is the thing to keep in mind. Time management is everything. I mentioned reading ahead on the cutting edge in your area of interest - what this also does is that it gives you ideas of what sort of projects you might want to work on later in your higher years. But the main focus still should be on reading your course material and getting good grades. Another issue here is your communication skills.You are in college now, learning in depth about various things. Later in your professional career, you are going to put that knowledge to use - BUT - if you cannot express your views clearly to others - what use is that knowledge! The idea is to start working on those softer skills that you need to build once you are out of college. You ask - "Hey wait a minute here, i have 4 years in college, I can do that anytime!" Well any-time never really comes in college, and believe me sometimes it takes a lot of doing to get to a certain level in improving your communication skills - both written and verbal. Start early, read books other than your course books, learn the meaning of new words. So by the time you leave college, you are one polished person articulately able to express what your thoughts and ideas - believe me the chics love that - well at least some do! After the end of the first year, try to take sometime off and be with your family. You could also try to do an internship but that probably wouldnt count as much after first year as it would after second or third year. This might be your last big holiday in a long time - so spend time at home, go places - visit tourist destinations - do some whacky stuff!In the second year things start getting more complex with the load of your courses increasing and you having to study some core concepts in your area.

Try to master as much as possible of what you are being taught. Try to take up good projects such that they will augument your understanding of the subject. These projects also come in handy when you apply for an internship/practical training outside of your campus. Try to talk to the faculty taking the course in which you are doing the project and try to get him involved. If you get stuck, seek his/her advice. Second year should be when you are concentrating in your courses, doing projects for extra credit or as part of course requirement and try to see what extra-curricular activities you want to remain involved in and which you want to give up. Your extra-curricular interests actually turn into necessary and good distractions from the daily chores of homeworks/assignments/tests. Although you should not over do anything, too much of anything is bad. So again, getting good grades in imperative! Toward the middle of the 4th semester, you should start applying for a possible summer internship at a research institute in India or in an industry. Internship is an important thing if what you want to do is get into a foreign university. You should try to work under a professor at a reputed research institute in India (or even abroad) - this is mostly in IITs, IISc, and other Centres of Excellence. This is because universities here appreciate someone who has taken initiative to work outside of his college on projects outside of his/her degree requirements. Also, if you end up impressing the professor under whom you are working, you can manage to get a very good recommendation from him and this would really put your application few notches ahead of others. So dont wake up one sunny summer morning and find yourself without an internship, apply before time, the professors also have limited places to fill. You could also work in the industry and get a recommendation from your mentor there - but the benefit of working in academia is that you get a chance to publish your research as a jouarnal/conference paper, and once you have a paper, your application carries a lot of weight than most of the other applications. More to come...

I am listed at Blogstreet!

Train travel and lots more

Hi Guys.
This blog is really different. In that it has been written on a train. I am writing this blog aboard Dehradun Express(9019A UP). I am on my way to Delhi to catch my flight to Stanford. Nice experience this. Of course it would have been much better had Wi-Fi been enabled on this train. Well India is a far cry from that affair as on present date. Was at Kota the last couple of days. It comes as no surprise that Rajasthan has the highest number of cattle heads in India. The streets of Kota are littred with stray cattle. Driving is next to impossible at speeds over 20kmph. I wished I could catch hold of some and sell them off for a handsome amount. But Ramraj told me that the government had banned selling so that they couldnt be killed for beef or something like that. That brings me to Ramraj. He is my dad's driver. Very sweet fellow. He taught me how to drive, initial lessons mostly and some tricks of the trade. I bade him a final goodbye at the station - will miss him. Hope he is still around when I come back.

The train has stopped in the middle of nowhere. Though we are no where near Hindon, the papers said that the Gujjars there has uprooted the tracks as they were protesting their community not being included in the reserved category class. Oh and they had broken all the signals also in that division. Well this is democrazy for you! We are moving again. This is a relatively low priority train, so lotsa stops ahead!! As I leave for the US, I will most definitely miss the 'apna-pan' of India. Its people. Its smell. Its air, water and sky! I will miss u the most. Anyways, am not very good with good byes.

Also in the news was that this year was the 10th time in 125 years that Rajasthan got surplus rain. It rained 125% already and with still around 20 days to go for the monsoon, looks like Gods were gracious in their offerning to the state this time. However, in some regions like Pali, Barmer, etc it was too much causing a lot of loss to both properties and lives.

Today I added my site to blogstreet.com. Lucky for me I am an Indian coz blogstreet only accepts blogs from Indians! It is a site which aims to become a direcory for blogs. People can rate other peoples' blogs. They comment, write reviews etc. which of course other people can read and find out about. It has it own list of the most influential blogs, most read blogs, etc. A good attempt. Another social networking site on the block is siliconindia.com. A real new concept in that it provides mentorship according to people's needs - registered people can write a Statement of Purpose and be mentored by people pertinent to their interests. For example, students, entrepreneurs and engineers, etc can ask to be mentored in their fields. This is new concept that I found. It also has a lot of news on it home page, quite different than other social networking softwares. Besides this it has a lot of other stuff that common social networking sites dont. But the most intreguing thing that I found was that it has got as its members corporate honchos like IBM VP(India) just to name one. There are other like him. Needs more time devotion. In case you havent checked it out, do create a login and find out more. Think will sign off now! See you in Delhi :-) Ciao

P.S. The above pic is of the Umed Bhavan Palace in Kota

Tenacity

Its sometimes amazing how we marvel at our little achievements. Sometimes we tend to pat ourselves too much or too early. But we forget that out there in the world people strive harder, under adversities far out-weighing our environment.
I saw a girl studying English on the footpath, trying to make money weighing people, in Kamla Nagar, New Delhi. This was something really inspirational. The girl seemed very smart and I and my friend accompanying gave her some money after getting ourselves weighed. Needless to say I was underweight yet again, but the girl, who read out my weight aloud in english, reminded me of a lot more than that - that even though we may have gone through a lot - our hardship is not more than (may be equal to) what a poor man on the streets has to go through.

Lutyens' Delhi

Mostly, if you ask me about driving in Delhi/NCR, my answer would be - an absolute misery. But come what may, the drive down Rajpath, or for that matter anywhere in Central Delhi is really refreshing. The roads are international standard and the traffic is smooth(most of the times!). Plus the scenary/landscape is truly breathtaking with the exquisite designs of India Gate, Rashtrapati Bhavan, North/South Blocks, etc. I just love this part of Delhi. May be one day when I am rich and famous - will try to get a bunglow somewhere close to this place. Well even Vasant Vihar will do but nothing like having a bunglow overlooking India Gate - you know what I am talking about dont u!! Will miss Delhi. Though I hate it for its absolutely pathetic climate, but the buildings are good. And its one of the few planned cities in India. Wish there were more.

Back at Allahabad

It feels so nice to be back in allahabad. This time for recruitment at my undergrad school - IIIT Allahabad. They (iiita)have been such wonderful hosts that one feels amased at contrasting this picture with the one we had as a student. Anyways its always good to be back. The convocation was the other important reason that i had to come back to allahabad. It was great - with all its fan-fare! Prof S.K. Tripathi, Provost and Executive VP of SUNY, Buffalo gave the convocation address. On the stage while receiving the degree from the hands of Mr. F. C. Kohli, founder and former chairman of TCS, he joked asking me whether I was the same person whose photo was on the degree! I said 'yes'! Of course it is me! Coz of the recruitment thing, I am not able to spend much time time with family. I also wished I could go to Chitrakoot like mummy, mama ji and maami, anyways duty calls and as i say - 'Any thing for the company'. Missing my delhi friend/s as well! But IIITA is great. Wished we had come here earlier. Anyways, may be next year Tekriti will. Wont be able to show these guys much of Allahabad.

All day people kept bugging me about the T-shirts I had promised them. Gave one to Praneep, he helped a lot. Anyways, should wrap up now. And I must say, Ashish's has not got a pretty steamy new blog at : http://opera.latestinindia.com

See you in Delhi guys!

what VCs say

what VCs says:
1. hybrid teams of tech and consumer market people

2.
content that is useful to u

3. get that content to the user

4. complete end to end experience on a single machine

5. teams speak about technology but more important is the business model


more to come!

Update

Nice in fact very nice idea - KarPool - in fact if this thing takes off the world will surely be a better place to be! Definitely a thing anyone could have thought off, but no one did until these guys. Currently a talk on personalized mobiles and design of a mobile. Pretty Kewl!!

Mobile Monday @ Adobe Noida

Currenlty at Adobe's India Centre - attending a conference on Mobile bleeding edge technologies. Great!! Feels good to be part of this

crowd, met a couple of good people from around the world. Here is the link:



More later.

Justice for Priyadarshini

Are we still living in the medieval times. Because that is what it seems to me. How can a person, who is known to have committed a crime as heinous as rape and murder get away scotfree. Even the Hon'ble Judge in this case commented - "Though I know that he is the man who committed the crime, I acquit him, giving him benefit of doubt". I guess this must be the only case in history where the judge has made such a statement. Really whenever I think about the whole incident, I feel shaken, what a country we live in. We had died a thousands deaths since independence, Gandhi ji's India has been raped and murdered a thousands times over. Shame India Shame. Na samjho ge to mitt jaoge - E- Hindustan waalon, Daastan tak na rahegi tum haari dastanon mein. God give her soul peace and bring her cruel murder to justice.

A different Saturday

Hey you all. So another million dollar sturday comes and goes. So how did i spend this sat. Well not the conventional way, at least not what the people who know me would think I would like to spend the one sat I get in a week. I attended a conference on "Role of Lawyers in the Changing Global Scenario". Well I dont regret that I went. Met so many interesting people, I should rather say 'saw'. This guy from South Africa, Prof. Mason of the University of KwaZulu Natal was a very interesting guy. The conference was held at Indian Law Institute, New Delhi. A premier institute of Law in India. All this courtsy AM. Had a good time and was glad that I got to be part of something so international. There were people from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, US, South Africa, UK, etc. Reminded me of the times I used to attend conferences at IIITA. How we made PPTs. And how rushed we always used to be. May be those days will come back soon.

Am running so low on cash had to take the public transport and leave the car at home. As luck would have it I got a cab at Kapashera. He initially decided to drop me at Moti Bagh Flyover but when i was about to get off I asked him to take me uptil India Gate. From India Gate I decided to walk to the Krishi Bhavan Metro Station(Central Secretariat). So I was backpacking across all of Central Delhi. But as lifts are natural to me, I got sweaty soon and decided to take a ride off someone's two wheeler! Lucky I got one again. All in all it was different baby. Thanks AM for making it possible. And yes, a great talk it was!! Keep it up and hope to see you at bigger and better conferences.

Trade Off

So I had to forgo a chance at visiting the best monuments of the Pink City Jaipur so that I would be able to go to my cousin sister's baby girl's function. Now I really did want to be able to go to Jaipur but then again sister is sister and Sanika is Sanika. At the end of the day I am glad that i did what i did coz i feel family should come first, not in all cases, but still one should think about the family from a various aspects. For one i rarely meet Meenu Didi and Maneesh Jiju and Sanika. So this was an opportunity to be able to visit them. I wanted to get the raport going with the office guys too...but I made it at 0600 hrs to the office just to see those guys off to Jaipur but then I guess not going is not going. Anyways there are trade offs to everything in this world. DSOI was good. Banu gave me a good tour of the whole campus. Meet pretty interesting people whom I usually dont bump into in such functions.

Anyhow had fun. Lets see tomorrow what happens.

Why I dont blog often

So often in the night I wanna blog, write about all the things i did since my last post, write about my views, write about how m heart grieves for the people who lost their lives and their loved ones alike in mumbai, how sad that i will be leaving delhi/gurgaon and Tekriti very soon, how dismayed I am coz i am not able to go to Jaipur, how happy I was to be able to go to a disc, how much fun it was to be able to party with friends all night and into early morn...a host of emotions and experiences, but alas at night when i come to my bed and fire up my laptop, there are thousands of other things at hand and when it is finally time I finish my stuff its already too late to write anything legible.
Anyways, so last weekend was great after one very hectic week. So much of partying that I feel I have one less thing on my to-do-before-I-die list. Anyways met couple of nice people like Shoikata Das from Pulsar Knowledge Centre. Nice chap and nice looks. The vanilla flavoured cigar...well I would have perferred a non-flavoured one hehe!! And boy is Le Meridian outta this world or what....one really has to visit the loos...a plasma TV...designer fittings...neon lights...damn good furniture. Coffee at 0445 hrs..u gotta love it.
Anyhow so I am moving along at a brisk pace on my ZEN when suddenly i feel my vehicle tending toward the right side of it own and then I figure out its a bloody puncture. Thankfully I was 100m from a petrol pump and was again underway in less than 10 minutes. I had hardly moved another Kilometre when i noticed the samething again, and this time it was the rear tire. Anyways i had to drive almost 5 KM before I could halt at a proper place. So 2 punctures in a day...not bad eh!
Some how these days i have been bitten by the entrepreneural bug..I keep thinking and searching about it...somehow I wished someone could guide me...well dont we all wish!! Actually working in a startup one gets it...may be its infectious! Well I really dont wanna lose Tekriti...wished I could do some productive work for it frmo Stanford...may be something like business development...but lets see...bhagwan ne chaha to kuch hoga!! Alrite so gotta make a move now..catchya all later...peace out

Hey folks!! So lotsa things been happening since the last time I wrote a blog. Been working on a few things on my laptop. hen my car came from Kota, dad was kind enough to send it though I am practically a beginner but I think I am getting the hang of it..driving I mean :) Met not so good people - the lady at BA are not too good...very doer..then people I thought were different are no different from the bad ones...anyways who am I to pass judgement but yaar SV this is not what i expected...

Anyways, this is what happened on Monday last, had to get a draft made for over 30K. Had to visit ICICI, SBI, HDFC and finally CitiBank to get my things in order. Travelled more than 70Km within Gurgaon in over 40 degrees without A/C (ok sometimes A/C!) to get it and took me till 4:30 in the evening starting from 10 in the morning. Anyways, I guess that is life, but it hurts that one has to do so much for a simple thing. Am too tired though its only 11:15 but still.

The train to Tibet - seems like a good thing. Bought a book today - freakonomics...dunno when I will get the time to read it - lekin khareed to li hai. This sector - 14 market is not a bad one. Tomorrow am off to mamu's place.

Generations

Cut to 3 days back -

So its just another hot summer morning and I am coming down from South Delhi to Gurgaon to go to office. I was lucky enough to get a ride in a call centre cab, nothing out of the ordinary about the car except after a while of sharp turns at over 40kmph I realized I would be lucky if I reached gurgaon in one piece - the driver was so sleepy I thought he would look in better shape after 6 pegs of vodka. Well anyways i reached gurgaon in a record 25 min from Hauz Khas...tell anyone from Delhi and he will look at you like you were some sort of superman - such times in today's day and age are impossible. Anyways I reached IFFCO Chowk and had to catch another bus for Sukhrali Chowk where Palm Court is located. I got into this DTC bus and immediately took out a Rs. 10 note to get the ticket. The conductor gave me a Rs 4 ticket and I enquired politely - "dont you think it should be the Rs 3 ticket till Sukhrali Chowk". And that was like the last straw - he started to yell at me like I was some kind rapist traveling in the bus - he told me to get out and get into a Rs 3 waala bus - I told him i dont mind Rs 4 tickets I was just enquiring, but he wouldnt hear any of it - he shouted out - 'I am not selling onions and potatoes this is a government bus and u can get ur ass out of here if you want to pay less'. I told him - 'sir I can pay u double the fare why are you getting so upset'. But I couldnt get anything across to him, he was so angry as if I had slapped his wife. But anyways, I made the rest of the journey in pain as I had been humiliated in public by a man who was half as educated as me and half as time for values/manners. When I got down, it hit me all the more. I was very upset. I though its things like this that make u think - to hell with everyone. I told myself that my grandfather surely must have experienced such things, I know for a fact that my father had to experience such things, and now its my turn. I mean where is the progress from one generation to the next. I thought there should be an uplift at each level - but where is it - who went wrong - who didnt do his/her part to the full?? Well I think its better to not look for someone to blame..rather try to be a better human being and not do such things which you wouldnt want people to do to you.

Sunrise at 6

Well I know one thing about myself and that is - I just love mornings...the gentle, light cold breeze against the backdrop of sweet sound of birds, with the sun not too harsh..juss perfect. In fact summer mornings are even better as the day just keeps on getting hotter and hotter and no relief till its late in the night. I especially like sleeping in a room where one is awaken by the sun in the morning. That is it (the room) has a window in the east. Boy that would be real nice to have!! Dolly didi, when she and Gaurav jiju used to stay in blore - they had such a room - it was one hell of a place!

Cell

Well one normal night, in a normal final year engg student's life, it hit me, it hit me real bad. How madly and badly I was dependent on my cell fone, as if without it i would suffocate. I came back from the canteen to get a Hutch Recharge card so that I could call up my bro in Delhi and wish him a Happy Birthday. After the call I couldnt see any signal on my cell. I switched if off and then on again, only to get a message - "SIM NOT VALID". I frantically changed the sim into another cell and found that it was working, and tried another sim in my cell, and still the same message - "SIM NOT VALID". It was shell shocked. The cell had not fallen, it hadnt ben accidentally dropped into an aquarium, or anything like that. But still. Anyways, I had to leave for New Delhi the next day for my cousin's marriage and so I took the 12:15 bus to (CL) Civil Lines go dump it at a Nokia Service Centre. But still I was like what the hell is happening. Thank Godness for Suchit letting me keep his cell for the night and much of next day, but without a cell I was a fish without water. I was literally going door to door in the hostel asking people if anyone of them had a spare cell, but no one had one. In the end someone told me that Loki(Lokendra Kaushik from Sirsa, Haryana) had a cell which he was not using. But it had a battery panga. But still i wanted a nokia cell, more reliable, or so i thought. I traded the Motorola set with Mayank's Nokia which was on roaming as Mayank was still using his Bangalore number, God knows for what!! When I came back from Delhi I missed an interview because of the cell-less being that I was, as Mayank took the cell back and left me with a defunct Motorola piece of sh**. I asked Awantika to call up the Nokia SS and they told her that it has gone to LKO for 'big-people' to look at. So it meant i was not getting my cell anytime soon. Today, even after 7 days now, I am without a proper cell...but "Ab to Aadat si hai mujh ko...". I guess people get used to what they get used to...if u have a cell, one gets used to talking much, if not then still one lives, but it is the transition period that creates the troubles.

HRI

When is in Allahabad, the starting point of great Indian UP East, HRI means the nearest thing to Albert Einstein, Nobel Prizes in Physics, and things in that genre. Anyways, for footballers of IIIT Allahabad, HRI is a place with an awesome outfield, just perfect to play football 8 a-side types!! So yesterday using the contacts of Balwant sir of the Maintenance Cell of IIITA, the 9 of us chugged along to the greens of HRI. The thing is that its damn far off, in Jhunsi, in no man's land. In fact people say that IIITA is in some village, which is a fact, but then HRI is in a no-man's land, there is no one around. Anyways, I started off Left-Back, imagine that, left back, u think I would ever play Back....this is what is called Politics. Anyways, for me it has always been that team comes first. So if the team needed me at the left-back position then I will be at the left-back position. However, I would rather have put Khullar at that position, he has better defence sense. Anyways, in the first have we took 2 goals, one was a penalty from a handball by Suttu. The second was an own-goal from IK. Both goals were a bit disappointing, but there was very little Naman could do, Naman really kept us in the game, with all his acrobat saves. In the mean time I was having a terrible game, with very little support from my skills, which, somehow i found a bit erroded. Arjun, the one HERO of their team, well I started off with a bit of a body game against him, and he kinda got the message. After am illegal push, he said to me - "Thats technically a foul...but the point is how long can you keep this up". Anyways, the game ended with a 0-2 defeat for us, but we were happy with the way we played, at least as compated to the 4-0 route at their hands last time around.

I went to HRI risking missing an interview from a "not-so-bad" company based in Gurgaon. I missed a project meeting as we guys had to wait for Mayank and company to arrive in the auto(we arrived earlier at Kam Dhenu as we were in the HRI Ambulance). I guess its like what people say, one cannot ride on 2 boats simultaneously, if one attempts he is sure to drown. Anyways, lets see if we can have a re-match on Sunday.

The Orthopaedic Surgeon

Well it just so happened that in the first 5 minutes of the soccer game against MNNIT, Allahabad, I injured my ankle bad. But since the adrenalin was pumping, I could continue with the game till the end of the half. But when it was over, the pain brought me down on my knees, i was almost screaming out loud. Screaming and shouting I reached back to campus from the grounds of Allahabad University. I went to see the campus doc at her home as she had already left her office, she prescribed rest. I was trying to be fine with it and thought it would become better as the days went by but after 2 days I found a huge amount of blood collected at the place i had taken the hit (of course the blood had collected behind the skin) and the next day it turned to black. I was shocked at the sight of my foot, the pain was not as much but it was not less significantly. Awantika forced me to show myself to the real doc and so I went to this doc who is largely considered to be the best in the business in Allahabad. She had told me to speak in a good English to him as he had a gr8 diction, well she somehow wanted me to impress him (dunno why, but she knew him..,may be thats why).

I went to him and he seemed nothing like what Awantika had told me, a bit curt and spoke very little. On top of that he ordered an X-Ray and this place called Kriti Labs, the costliest X-Ray dukaan in Alld. Anyways, after he scared the living shit out of me by the xray order, i went to the bank first to get the money for the 400 bucks worth xray and then after 40 min, i was ready with the xray, and awantika, who was juss short of hysterical by now, i all ready to call up amit bhaiya to have me dropped back to campus in case my leg needed to be plastered. Anyways, I went back to the doc with the xray and he said all was well much to my relief. He prescribed something for the swelling and then asked his attendent to tie the crappe bandage around me.

All the while I tried to make some conversation, told him I was from IIIT A, he asked me where i lived coz at present iiit operated from more than one place in the city, all the time keeping my English flawless. Anyways, when it came to making him the payment, I handed him 2 hundred rupee notes and he promptly returned the 1 hundred rupee note, a discount of 50%.

So this is why she wanted me to be good, I had made a good impression on him by my english. Anyways, about 3-4 weeks later, Naman, guy in my batch (who is our goalie and also a member of the basketball team) hurt his thumb in the court. He turned to me to find out which doc to visit. Fresh from my visit, I recommended the same guy. And also told him that he should try to speak to him in English only. That evening I met Naman in the mess and I asked him about the visit and the doc, he told me, "Man that guy sucks, he is curt he is rude, etc etc". I was like, how much did he charge? Teo hundred Naman said. And then Naman promptly added, " I think I need to work on my English!!"