Staring at the screen

I am staring at the screen and i don't know what to do.

Foreword

Its 3Am and i lay in my bed sleepless. I have been trying too hard for last 2 hours catch some sleep so that i can be up in time for the early morning flight i need to catch for Mumbai. I finally got restless & knowing not what to do i did the most obvious thing: switch on my computer once again which i had shutdown two hours ago after customarily checking my orkut profile & gmail for any traces of mail or messages that i might have received from poor restless souls like me across the globe.

It was a thought that was eating me for last 5 days; the thought occurred to me when i was flipping through the pictures of my school time on a friends profile as to how the bunch of small kids bound together by destiny for 7 years had transformed themselves into successful & seasoned professionals through the last 8 years since we left school.

Yes the time flies fast and how 15 seasons have passed no one can guess but i share a firm belief that, put the same set of 110 students who joined sainik school Bijapur on 2nd, 3rd & 19th July 1993 now in 2008 and they will all be the same; Set of chubby kids in which many of whom learnt to speak the first letters of English only after they entered this school. From the village bumpkins who were assembled in the conference hall of SSBJ through a tough entrance exam & selection interview (how we prepared for selection & exam is a different story altogether) to fine groomed young men (yes thats what we liked to call ourselves at 17 when we passed school) the transformation had begun on the fateful day of 2nd april 2000 when we crossed the gates of SSBJ one last time as the students only to return as alumni who can only try and relive the memories.


Its funny to see how memories begin to fade so early in life. Although i am in the prime of my youth i struggle to recall the entire stay at SSBJ and barely recollect & re construct my childhood.

It is because of this thought that i should not let go of these memories that i have decided to pen down those glorious 7 years of our lives. I dont think i can do complete justice it but will nevertheless try and our it in a form of a story that any of the Ajeet (students of SSBJ: Sainik School Bijapur call themself as Ajeets) can easily relate to. Its not a story of any particular individual(s) but the protagonists of this story is a mix and match of many a characters that enlivened the atmosphere.


All the characters in this story will be original and not a figment of imagination. Yes certain amount of creative liberty will be at use.

PURA a dream too far?

I have so far abstained form writing about public issues on this blog but however i am going to break this self imposed barricade and make an effort to look into the issues that is very close to my heart. The issue is of providing basic civic amenities not just to the rural folks but mor importantly to a very large chucnk of society that is neglected but today is growing at an alarming rate:- The URBAN POOR.
Increasing development has lead to people from villages migrating from villages to the ever expanding cities/towns. The rate of influx of these people has over shot the rate at which investments are being made to improve the civic infrastructues.

The reason i am writing this post is that i recently was in my home town for about 10 days during which i got an opportunity to walk around the city, explore all the neighbourhoods & speak to the residents so as to understand the problems that they face. The needs came across almost similar across localities.

The need for proper housing, drainage & lighting seem to be on top priority on every one's mind. Rains play havoc in the lives of these people as their houses are washed away and they are staranded without any help. This is mainly due to the lack of pukka housing & proper drainage system; more importantly - improper city planning. Agreed that most of the structures are illegal settlements/encrochments, the growing cities have just forced them to build tentative settlements.

The governments down south have come up with very good housing schemes for urban poor under the Ashraya Scheme, but alas the implementation gets very slow een with the availability of funds as the real estate prices have gone through the roof & no body is willing to sell it to the government as it would mean selling land at the existing government valued rates(rates that are always undercoated so as to evade stamp duty during transaction & muncipal taxes) which is less than the market rates. So the land owner delines to sell the land to goverment authorites. In that sense the program is postponed to the next yer

To Be or not to Be

Its been 4 months since i have taken over my role as as Area Sales Manager and i dont even realise how time has flew. However the last 30 days have brought back things the ideals that i cherished and wanted to practice in sales. These things that i always wanted to had somehow begun to disappear. Is it because i was getting caught in the perpetual web of number chasing without even taking a moment back to understand if the things that i am doing to achieve my targets is right. Or to put it simply, if it were my business would i be as lenient as i am now.

If there are certain things are to be done in some way then thats the way it should be. Howeve i somewhere begun to feel that being in the system i needed to adapt myself. But had i failed to understand that "I WAS THE SYSTEM" and system would be the way i drive it. Agreed that there is a legacy that is built in, but its always my repsonbility now to relook at things that are being done. Having a respect and thinking that being new in the system i had to learn the trics of the trade, i forgot that i dont have to wait inordinately long.

But alas, i had a eureka moment after my review, as to how i had begun to change myself in the last 4 months despite being unwilling to do these thinsg. I was wondering how can i sales when it is so big & mighty; but i forgot that " Why should sales change me?" Am i wrong or the ideals that i hold about it are wrong. When i was made to realise that the beliefs that i hold about sales are right, i need to go ahead and implenet them. I realised that we are all working towards it and what was missing was the speed of execution.

Its been a good month thereafter as i have begun chasing my ideals which do match with the things that my company wants me to. Wow i must tell you, i am having a ball doing the work. The kind of energy that it has brought in me is tremendous.

However, what i have also realised is that to change a system or a particular way of working is very difficult. To change mindsets is a crazy task. One is met with so many obstacles. But i ask myself if i am ready to take on that challenge? Am i willing to take the pain and set things right. Am i ready to do the right things? This is what i had been debating over the last full week.

But after my initial forays in changing attitudes, i have realised that, i might not be able to change everything, but atleast i an influence thinsg to some extent & make a difference. In the process, the good people in the system will benift & the ones who are not in the system will loose out.

How much is enough?

I always felt why on earth does he indian middle classs suffer so much? why is it not possible for many to complete their aspirations? With the recent pay commission hike in salaries and people in the private sector(including me) waiting with bated breath for our salary hikes, i was just doing some back of the envelope calculations about what can a middle class employee do with his astronomical salary

Long time no see

Lots of water has flown down the subarnarekha river(Jamshedpur is on the banks of this river) and along with it has time which i think was where i spent one of the most crucial years of my academic life. Its been almost 6 months that i have finished my MBA and graduated from XLRI Jamshedpur. I have since then moved on in life (have I?) to join the big world of Corporates. Wheather its good or bad as they say is still to be decided.

Life has taken a different but a curious turn after i finished my MBA. With all the tensions of moving from one exam to another where each exam decided where i stand in the college / academic hierarchy which ultimately (so did they say) would determine my future life (does it mean the job i take up?) gone i have moved onto a field where i get a good salary at the end of each month and my parents do not have to worry as to how their son would perform in the next year or what would happen to his future.

They are quite happy with the fact that their son's hard work through his academic life has paid good dividends as he is now well settled in a job.

But the point i wish to explore here is not about my past and certainly not the future but about the most neglected part of our lives "PRESENT".

Of what i have experienced in the last 25 years of my life is that we always run and think about mostly whats happened in our past and worrying about the future. Seldom we realize that in the process we are loosing that time where we can make a difference to our future. Because it is these actions that we take in the present that determine our future past & the future future.

It was not easy for me to do this specially after coming out of the humdrum of school/college life. It was all very difficult. It would be something that each one of us experience and long for once we finish our college days. When i did my MBA and then joined Cadbury's in their Sales & Mktg dept

What did our School teach US?

We all sing kudos to our almamter standing here among the group of friends who go a long way back in our existance. We cherish the days we spent in the school, in our barracks, in our houses. The cross country races that we ran, remembering the blocks which we belonged to. Its a place where we still remember each others roll numbers and the personality of a student depends on the house he belonged to.

But i would like to take some time here and reflect on what is that Sainik School Bijapur really taught us? Was that the CBSE level education? Was it playing sports? Was it swimming, horse riding, debating quizzing or what is it? What is the learnings that binds us together, what makes us different from others in the society?

1. Entrance Exam
Situated in an area where quality education was absent and unaffordable to most of us, SSBJ's entrance examination and the subsequent selection process gave us the confidence that we can crack competative examinations. So the victory was not in cracking the exam in itself but the SELF-Confidence that this process gave us has i think taken all of us this far in our life for all of us have faced multiple exams after this but with a confidence that we can crack it.