mere funde

Author: Amit Goyal

  • The Pilani Trip – Part I

    Be warned: This is one long post!!

    The adventure started on Thursday evening with a flat tyre. We had picked Jeete from the airport, and proceeded to pick Sudeep from Nizamuddin. After fighting through the intense traffic, we picked him up and headed to Flaming Mustard in Vasant Kunj for dinner. The dinner was good, and fun was had. When we walked out, we realized that we had to ourselves a flat tyre and a flat spare. We quickly called Tk and Bharathi, and they readily gave us their spare. What we did not realize, however, was that this was the beginning of a series of delays that would hit us.

    Next morning we picked up Ankit, a new spare, and headed off to Jhunjhunu in an Alto and an i10, accompanied by Kanika, Raheem, Aditi, and Pari in a Santro. The first quarter of the journey was pretty nice and we were driving along nicely when we had to stop at a railway crossing. Jeete and Bansal were in the i10, while me, Ankit, and Sudeep were in the Alto. Jeete got out to see what was up with the crossing while Bansal headed out to chit-chat with us. When the crossing opened, we realized to our utter horror, that the keys were inside and the car. Further, the Hyundai car can’t be opened as easily as the Maruti ones can. Anyway, after trying for an hour, we called the Hyundai dealership in Rewari. The chap arrived in an hour and half, and we started off in another half an hour.

    Since we were behind schedule, and tried to cover some time on the Narnaul-Chirawa stretch, which we were successful in. Just when it seemed that we might get to Dundlod (which is where Misra’s wedding party had halted), we lost transmission on the i10 and came to a slow halt. It was like a huge blow. Plus the knowledge that there was no Hyundai service station within a 100 kms. We started towing the i10 using the Alto, no minor task for newbies. After snapping the tug rope twice, we finally used our engineering heads, and used a thrown piece of tire tube to reduce the stress on the rope and reached Jhunjhunu at around 7:30PM in the evening. A drive that should have taken 5 hours had taken more than 8!!

    We started packing the gifts, and getting ready for the main event. It was funny to watch Misra in the sherwani, and that is when we realized (at least I did) that STAR-PLUS was a man down!! It was the wedding of two of my closest friends, and I like a smart guy, quickly jumped on the “ladke wale” bandwagon 😉 The rest of the evening was spent having a lot of fun. We danced a lot in the baaraat and tried to get everyone involved. But since we were slightly behind schedule, we had to let the baarat proceed without too much dancing. The customary Joey dance, the clothes washing, and cricket dance were still accomodated.

    Me and Joy, decided to lift Misra right before the varmala and poor Parul (who looked amazing) had no chance at the garland game till we had pity. I must mention here that she played hard ball and decided not even to try till we did not reduce Misra’s elevation to a competitive level. After that it was snap time. Parul had no difficulty in mantaining the Colgate smile, while Misra looked a little bored. Misra played the spoil sport and did not pose for even a single wedding snap. Parul was much more game – oh, and did I mention that she looked gorgeous 🙂 We spent a lot of time pulling their legs and chatting with them up on the stage.

    The food, to use Sudeep’s word, was “AWESOME”. It was a combination of good food, and Sudeep’s stay in US that the word was uttered with such regularity that we wondered if he was somehow related to Barney Stinson!!

    The pheras were fun, and there were a lot of comments when the pundit was explaining the meaning of the various vows exchanged invoked a lot of interest from old timers. It seems that you need to disclose all your earnings to your wife – there goes the entire confidentiality of salary thingie!! Another point to note here was that Parul seemed to be in a lot of hurry and was walking very quickly (through the evening), while Misra limbered on in his usual style.

    Anyhoo. After the wedding we headed back to Shalimar hotel and slept peacefully till eight in the morning. I was chatting with Misra, and Jeete and Bansal headed out to get the i10 fixed. It was then that Jeete and Bansal realized that the i10 needed to be sent to Sikar, 80 kms away, to be fixed. Misra by then had to go for the vidaai and we decided to skip it, mainly because we were too sleepy. Meanwhile, we also made a quick trip to Rani Sati temple in Jhunjhunu. Bansal asked the dealer to send a tow van, and headed off to Pilani with Kanika and company, while Jeete, Sudeep, Ankit and I stayed back.

    … To be continued …

  • Loving what you do

    I always believed that unless you are excited about doing something, you shouldn’t do it.

    I have seen souls at work, who come at work everyday, work hard, and yet do not enjoy what they do. Don’t get me wrong. These are brilliant people, who produce the best output and put in a hundred percent. But they could be better. They could be superstars. But they are holding it back. They seem to content with just doing what is asked from them and being done at that.

    For the past some time I have been trying to transfer some of what I have learnt during work to people who would be taking it forward in my absence. I am trying to do my best, and people are constantly bearing with me during the entire process. But not once could I feel their enthusiasm for it. They are doing it because they are required to do it, and not because they are interested in it. 

    I miss the times when people wanted to do more. When people were excited.

  • Random Post

    After slightly over a month, I will have come to the end of an amazing time at my current job, and start as a student at the Indian School of Business. Does that scare me? Yes. It’s natural. Not the best time to risk a stable job, and take on a lot of loan. But hey, I am up for it and hope it will be good. And hope, you know it’s a good thing.

    As with Rahul, enthu at work has been low for me too. I had started moving out of an active role on most projects for the past couple of months, and am now just picking up small duration projects which I want to complete before I leave. It is wierd to go to the office when everyone knows I will be leaving in a month’s time and gives you the wierd look.

    Most often people think you work hard because you like doing it, but that’s not entirely true. You do it because of the satisfaction a challenging project/task provides. I remember the feeling after the first good client feedback after I took up the challenge of building our Chem search team. That was something. Of course, I had some of the smartest people working with me and that made the task that much more enjoyable.

    I hope I still able to motivate myself during this last 5 weeks, and keep myself going.

  • Admitted to ISB

    Finally – the first admit!! Feels good. The smile hasn’t lessened since evening.

  • Quotes of the day

    From the world of cricket come the lines below. Talk about hitting below the belt!!

    It was in Jamaica that Mike Gatting became the first batsman, as opposed to bowler, to be accused of ball-tampering after being struck in the face by Malcolm Marshall. When they finally retrieved the ball, which had richocheted so far it was located somewhere around the mid-off region, they found, or so legend has it, a piece of Gatting’s nose embedded in it.

    Martin Johnson, Times Online

    The new age cricketing wife or girlfriend tends to be a brassy sort of gal who can’t wait to tell the Allan Border Medal interviewer who designed her dress and her hanky – both of which happened to be the same size.

    Robert Craddock, The Courier Mail