Category: experiences

Year 2017 End Post, or is it?
New Year Resolutions are something which I never pay attention to. They’re not for me. I stopped thinking long-term a while back and took life as it came. That worked most of the time but there are times for which one should also be prepared. But if I have to rate no-long-term-thinking-theory, it would still be one of the best decisions I made to stay happy. Fewer Expectations, Better Life.

This time, however, I am thinking of taking a Strong New Year Resolution which requires full-time dedication. We will come to that in a minute or so. The year 2016 was a fine year by the way. Although I changed my ‘status’ that year, still I lived alone for 8 months. The latter part of 2016 was not good though. I got to know that Depression was something real when it happened to one of my close ones. Also, I had a motorbike accident which left me with not being able to use my right hand for more than 2 weeks. Plus, in my journey to be a more confident speaker, I came across an obstacle which made me question my decision itself to become a more confident speaker. Long story short, as I was entering 2017, I was not in my best state of mind and body.

So, let’s have a thorough look back at the Year, Twenty Seventeen was. Did it turn out okay, did it turn out alright? Boom! Here we go…
- Firstly, I am very proud of this year. I learned a lot of things, both professionally and personally. The thing which was bothering me at the end of 2016, I took it head on and instead of running away from it (Public Speaking), I decided to confront it. I got my Competent Communication module of 10 Speeches done by May 10th. And that was the time (January-June) when I was peak busy at Work. This taught me a lesson that when one is super busy and focused at work, that is the time when the brain is at its optimum energy level to do things which can give you a break from work.
Lesson Learnt: If you’re busy with work, that is the best time to do things which are totally unrelated to work. Break the monotony

Break Monotony
- I also gained enough confidence to recite poems (in my case, these are just words put in an order to rhyme, after every line) in front of a live audience. Although, the audience was known me, reciting a rhyme, in public, is a feat.
Lesson Learnt: Let some skill, which you always have been shy about, come out in public. Some might like it. Overcome inhibitions!

overcome inhibitions
- For the first time, I traveled to Kerala i.e. Kochi, Alleppey, and Munnar. It was such a wonderful trip which left us wanting for more.
Of course, needless to say that the lesson here is travel more. Anyone has anything to say against travelling?

Some pics here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXuwwKzDHrj

https://www.instagram.com/p/BceviXVD0-3

https://www.instagram.com/p/BcKc35_DrwR

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYDIXZEjaPS

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYANGJdjZy_
- I took over as the President of a Toastmasters Club which had 31 people when I started and my term ended (will end on Dec 31) with 24 people. Heh! Now, have I failed? Have I embarrassed myself? Have I lost the cause? Well, actually no. This experience of serving so many people is a humbling experience. This isn’t managing people. This is more like leading people to something they want to do, but they probably aren’t as enthusiastic as you are. I would say, being a President of a corporate Toastmasters club is a difficult task. But I am proud to say that I didn’t give up at all. I didn’t fail because I kept at it. I, with the help of some other people, always kept my members on their toes. Surely, we could do a lot better but I hope the wheels of motion are now set. I was commended by few people for the job I was doing. I was also praised by some that there won’t be anyone like me in future. But I would like to believe that at least one a couple of people would have taken some inspiration and would continue to work for others. Working for others give a pleasure which is immeasurable.
Lesson Learnt: Experience Selflessness. Do something for others and enjoy their success.

experience selflessness
- Now some selfishness. I bought a new phone after 3 years. I was using Moto X2 since October 2014. The only issue with that phone was Battery. I had no issues otherwise and quite enjoyed the phone. But there was one caveat. The camera quality was not very exciting. So, I got myself a new One Plus 5t and since then, I am spamming Instagram almost daily. And I feel good about that kind of spamming!
- I read more numbers of books this year than I have ever read in my life. Isn’t that awesome? This number also included so many superb books. I have written some reviews of those too. Kindly check them out here.
read more
- One important thing also happened this year. I didn’t miss Twitter. I didn’t miss TV news. That reaffirmed my belief that most of the social media and other media I have been consuming is a farce. I deserve much better and my time deserves the much better use of media. I don’t even want to spend any of my words here about how Twitter and stuff are full of crap. I would rather suggest a Chrome Extensions here: Nudge. This extension helps you to unfollow everyone and everything on Facebook. And block Twitter and all addictive social media sites. I installed and did exactly what it was supposed to do. Unfollow everything. Now, that’s something you should try!
So that was mostly it! Enough about 2017. Now, it is time to share

Thoughts on 2018

Day One

The above poster is inspired by this post by Ryder Carroll: https://www.instagram.com/p/BSeYbRPhDNs

There’s one thing I have been meaning to do for a long time. That is to write daily. There is also a HUGE GAP in my usage of Adobe Photoshop this year as my laptop had crashed. Plus, this year I discovered vlogging and scope of me learning video editing. Also, I also have started to indulge in jumping on to the bandwagon and sharing ‘Stories’ on Instagram. So, I am looking at following things this year:
1. Write daily. This is really important. Seth Godin, here I come.
2. Take more photographs. Edit them better. Make better stories. Be a better photographer, better editor.
3. Be a better storyteller. Better speaker. Better. And don’t let anything distract you from that.
4. Indulge in Video making and editing. Tough task but time is now! Casey Neistat and likes keeps inspiring and sharing new people to get motivated from.
5. Learn something new every week. New technology, science, history, word, technique, skills, something! And write about it.
6. I didn’t have an actual big cycle when I was a kid. I had a small kiddy bike till I was 13. But then my younger brother got a proper bike. So I used it. But not as much as I wanted. So, if all goes well, I will buy a Bicycle soon and just ride it.
7. Overhaul the overall brand. Come up as a person people should look up to. Learn from others. Teach what you know to others. Learn more, be more!
8. Basically, just do. Don’t complain. Don’t indulge in politics. Don’t share irrelevant details. Don’t consume bad stuff. Don’t intake negative vibes. Just do your thing and be better!
My Mantra for 2018 is going to be: JUST DO. If I get some more motivation, I will probably get a T-Shirt made out of this.

Just Do

On second thought, I think Nike has already done something similar. Nevertheless, I am going to follow-up on this motto and show up more often here.

I am psyched!
December 22, 2017
This time, last year, we all found eggs

It was around 6 PM in the evening. I was sitting in a park near my apartment, fully indulged in my phone. That park was special. Not because of it had a lot of greenery, birds and kids happily chirping away and playing, so many smiling people strolling-and-chit-chatting along their way to good health (who has time to see all that?), but where I was sitting, it had 2 PokéStops, equidistant. It was really fun… after every 5 minutes, I could use one of the stops and refill my PokéBalls and earn major XP without even walking. And then use another. On top of that, one could find many Pokémons there. And even better, within 50 m away, there was a Gym where I could battle with others.

Few more people like me, immersed into their phone screens, kept on walking around these Pokéstops to get as much as they could. But since I had grasped that middle seat, I could do all that just by sitting, and they had to keep walking. Mostly all strangers, but occasionally one would ask, so are you also playing ‘Pokémon GO’? Smiling, I would say, yeah, what all you have got till now?

This time, last year, in 2016, the middle part of July was really different. It was like a temporary cultural revolution of sorts. Whoever got to know about this game, downloaded apk files (where it wasn’t available yet) and jumped on to the roads and started playing. I had downloaded it, because that time I was living alone and since the monsoon-y weather was quite good to go around and walk. And also because I wanted to give my 2nd Speech in Toastmasters. Otherwise I had no interest in Pokémons at all. I didn’t watch their cartoons, as I though all of those Japanese cartoons look the same. 🙂

But for this game, I not only walked around kilometers during evening, but even in Night. Everytime I went out, I could notice people playing. Herds of youngsters, all looking into their phones and walking slowly and funnily. There was another Pokéstop near my place where I went to fetch some collectibles at 1.30 AM in the night. Only to return disappointed to see a group of girls, sitting under the tree there and guarding the place, figuratively, if not literally.

When so much was nearby, how could one stay at home?

I even walked around in office campus during lunch time (and sometimes just for a break, you know!) to get as many new Pokémons I could catch. And, as I was using a bike to go to office, I used all my time in the jams and traffic to collect many more Pokémons and refill my bag with Pokémon collectibles on the way.

When you could go no where, you could still catch some Pokémons

Best part about this was, that not everyone got it. But if you saw someone looking at their phones walking, and then suddenly stopping and doing incessant clicking, you could know that they were playing Pokémon GO!

Augmented Reality should have really taken off then. But probably, it would take some more time.

And these were the scenes all over the world. People played this in cemeteries, walked into other people’s properties and sometimes almost got them killed trespassing, just to get a rare Pokémon. They used bikes where they didn’t want to walk. They stayed hours near water bodies because there they could find, some Pokémons which were available only near lakes and ponds. It was indeed a fun time, last year in July.

This could have become a thing. Unfortunately, their servers kept crashing down due to huge surge in popularity in so little time. Hence, they disallowed people, at least in southern part of India, to play. So my pastime from July 14 – July 21 was short-lived. It was released later but then the enthusiasm had worn off and I got involved in other life related activities that I gave up.

When you think about it, rarely few things happen, which grab attention of everyone in the world. Games are like that. It had become a rage. In park, the roads, small town, big cities, every where, everyone who was playing that, had a sense of common aim and a feeling of family like animosity. Indeed a rare feat (apart from everyone throwing ice-bucket over each other). With this technology of augmented reality, surely, in future, we would do more such stuff when people would be more ready. The thing with games is that it connects everyone alike and makes them do things normally they won’t even team up for.

Watch this video about how can gamers help us to do bigger things:

I downloaded Pokémon GO today again. I can see few stops, gyms and available raids nearby. But then, who will walk now?

July 15, 2017
So I Worked in a Movie

I didn’t get a chance to say these lines…

https://giphy.com/gifs/C767ptzM7gdUc

but still, I got to work in a feature film.

Things happened in the following fashion:

Back in 2012, when I was getting fame ~~and money~~ for the minimal posters, film-maker Sandeep Mohan approached me to make official posters for his movie, Love Wrinkle-Free. So I made the posters and became friends with Sandeep.

He’s a full-fledged Indie Movie Maker so he usually also casts non-actors to do parts in his movies, in true Indie style. For more of his work, follow this.

For his new movie, “Shreelancer” he had come to Bengaluru sometime in 2016. He posted on his Facebook page that he wants to shoot a scene involving a Company’s Induction day. He invited his friends to be a part of the shoot, or if someone just wanted to see how a movie shooting’s done. I went there and then being his friend, I was asked to be a part of a couple of scenes. There was one more scene but unfortunately, the camera was slightly ahead of me so I couldn’t be seen there.

Nevertheless, I am there in 2 scenes and can brag about it to my grandkids.

Also, funnily, Shreelancer is a tight budget movie where they get things done via Jugaad if they run out of resources. For some reason, they couldn’t get a blue colored formal shirt. By chance, I had one. So they used my Shirt for a big portion of the movie.

Arjun Radhakrishnan, who’s the protagonist in the movie and does a fine job, wore my shirt and spoke many dialogues. So what if I didn’t get any dialogue, my shirt looked fab and played a major role in the movie.

Here’s the trailer for Shreelancer:

May 19, 2017
Toastmasters Speech # 6 ‘Stranger Things’

This is the script of my CC6 Vocal Variety Speech in Toastmasters:

Who all here believe in God?

And who all believe in the “other entity”?

Rest are atheists here or just shy so that ‘they’ don’t listen to you?

Fellow Toastmasters welcomed Guests and those “guests” who are not welcomed but are here anyway, silently observing us, Good Afternoon!

I personally don’t believe in any entity for that matter. However… sometimes, you may experience events which make you doubt your beliefs. Let me share with you, one such instance.

2 of my friends Abhishek and Abhilash, along with myself, Abhinav were planning an all-night-out trip.

Abhishek suggested, “Why not Bhangarh?”. He was always the adventurous type. “Bhangarh? really?”, Abhilash said, who was not an outgoing person per se.“We can try..”, I added. 2 against 1, the majority won.

We decided to head over to a place called as Bhangarh, about 80 KM north of Jaipur, Rajasthan. Bhangarh is also known as ‘Bhooton ka Bhangarh’, which means, ‘Ghost Town of Bhangarh’. Google it for more information. It is mostly in ruins now. But once upon a time, it was a small prosperous town with a fort, few temples, and a bazaar. It is said that the place was “cursed” by some priest and since then it has been in shambles.

It is often said that one shouldn’t go there after sunset. So, we decided to reach there by 9 PM to see what the fuss was all about. Because we thought, why not!

It was May, Friday the 13th, 2011 and a full moon night.

We reached the entrance of the Place. It had an eerie silence which reminded you of a cemetery. Slowly we climbed the metal gate and entered the compound. It led to a pathway, which had another smaller metal gate which rotates when one enters. I entered it first, carefully, watching my steps. The rusted old gate rotated and made a weird sound. We all looked at each other. We entered eventually and walked towards the deserted fort.

Most of the place was dark but we could see a dimly lit window on 1st floor. “Should we go there?”, Abhishek asked. Abhilash said, “Let’s go back home”. With trembling voice, I swallowed and nodded, “No harm in trying”. With creaking steps and wide eyes, we found stairs to the 1st floor. The place had slight chill in the air, even though it was May in Rajasthan. We reached the 1st floor. The dimly lit room was about 50 ft away. We walked towards it. The room had a wooden door, slightly ajar and with cracks big enough to see that it was lit up from inside, probably it had a lantern or a fireplace. As we reached closer to it, I heard giggling sounds. Probably of a girl. Sweat rolled down my cheeks and I slowed down. My heart was pounding so heavily that I felt it would come out of the rib-cage. Abhilash also heard it but kept on walking just because of curiosity. Abhishek was beaming with excitement to see the inside of the room and had ignored the sound completely. When we were just about to reach the gate, the door slammed open! BAM !!! and then suddenly room’s lights went poof! Pitch dark! And then there was a sudden loud shriek. EEEEEEEE!!!

Just before it went dark, I am sure, I saw a glimpse of a young girl standing in the room with a doll with red hair.

We, turned and without wasting any time, we ran faster than Usain Bolt, and kept on running till we had reached the main gate. We jumped into our car and headed back towards Jaipur. Nobody said a word till we had reached the safe confines of the city which had proper lights and warmth. We promised each other to totally erase this cowardice from our memories and promised to never do this stupidity again or even discuss this anymore.

Phew! Days passed. Eventually we got busy in our daily routine and put this incident behind us.

I still don’t believe in ghosts. But that incident was strange, and weird, and scary. Maybe it was a prank by some people. May be I didn’t see properly in the dark. Or may be I was hallucinating. But my friends were there too and they also confirmed that someone was in that room.

Anyways, few days ago, I was returning from office, and it was late in night. When I reached my lane and was about 100 m from my apartment building, I saw one girl standing at road side. She was holding the same doll with red hair.

Back to Ghost-Master, I mean Toastmaster!

Rehearsal Audio

March 20, 2017
Toastmasters Speech # 5 ‘S.H.I.T. It’s about time!’

This is my 5th Speech in Toastmasters from CC manual:

After World War 2, when Japan was trying to rebuild their economy, THEY WERE BROKE, BUT NOT BROKEN. They wanted to make the best use of the resources they still had. So one of their industrialists, Toyota, devised a technique called as ‘Just-in-time’ or ‘JIT’ manufacturing. They used to order inventory, just in time, before it was put to use in the manufacturing process. With JIT, they saved a lot of space and money. Japanese could do it well because they are known to be culturally very punctual. After JIT became successful, other countries also started to implement it. In India, however, it never caught up, because, in India, we don’t follow Just in Time or JIT. We follow SOMEHOW IN TIME or S.H.I.T.

Good Afternoon fellow Toastmasters and Guests!!

Punctuality for Indians is just a word which exists only in Dictionaries. And there too, it comes after the word ‘Late’. We all get late regularly. We even start our Toastmasters meeting late. Because it is in our blood. It’s who we are!

Raise a hand if you have never been late?

I usually don’t get late. I reach early.

I reach early at parties where even hosts are late.
I reach early in the office.
I reach early in Movies so I get to watch Vicco Vajradanti ads multiple times over.

No idea why, but being late for me is like doing a crime. I just can’t make others wait. I hate to be late.

But being early has always costed me heart-ache because I have to wait for long durations of time. Not only it wastes my time but it has also resulted in weird situations. Let me share an instance when my punctuality gave me a memorable experience.

I had once gone to Coorg. My return bus was scheduled for 11:30 PM. So I reached the bus stop at 6 PM as I was staying far from bus stand. I knew I will have to spend 5-6 hours doing nothing. While I was sitting at the bus stand, it started to rain heavily. It became cold and chilly. The place deserted quickly as the evening turned into night. At the place where I was sitting, the roof started to leak. I switched to another vacant seat. The roof started to leak there too. Then I had to switch to another seat. I was trying hard to not to sleep but I did doze off for 20 minutes. When I woke up, a wet dog was sleeping next to me, probably trying to get a bit of heat from my body. I got startled and the dog also got up. Then it started shaking itself to throw off water from its body. While I was just 2 feet away!

The Wait

Then I continued to wait. The bus stand now was deserted. I was wet, alone and bored like a lone statue in a park on a rainy night. I kept on shivering like a wet chicken and it felt like I was waiting till eternity.

Somehow time passed and it became 11. I was hopeful that I will be able to board soon. Then it became 1130. I started getting worried. 1130 passed and now the time was 12. It was still raining cats and dogs and my bus was nowhere to be seen. I was now as scared as a person on a death sentence. To top that, the power went off and it became pitch dark.

Then from somewhere a guy came and sat next to me and he kept on crying. I gathered the courage to ask him the reason. He said he had eloped from his house as his father used to beat him. Now imagine someone telling you that at around 1230 AM in the night, in my situation, it only made things worse.

Then he also left and I was left waiting alone. It was beyond panicking now. I was now just regretting my life. I had almost lost all hopes by now and was about to cry.

Then somehow in time, a saw two lights shimmering at a distance. It was my bus. Which had somehow in time arrived just 2 hours late to pick me up.

Moral of the story my friends is that Time is a funny construct after all, isn’t it! It is something which moves at a different pace for everyone. You might be punctual but the world is not so. But remember, before you lose all hope, somehow in time or SHIT, things will happen. As they say, shit happens.

Audio Transcript:

Featured Photo by Jose Escobar on Unsplash

March 2, 2017
Hardly Surprising: Thoughts on Bengaluru's Apparent Night of Horror

What else do you expect to happen to a girl (or say girls) surrounded by 1000s of men on road at Midnight?

Do you expect grown up Indian men to behave well in Public? Haha. Seriously?

If you are reading this, and you are a girl, may I ask your expectations from Bangalore? (Or any other city in India for that matter) You thoughts things would be better after 2012 December? You must be living under a rock.

How can people even expect mobs in India to not indulge in unruly behavior? I mean, where were you all these years (since forever). When were we good to women, is all I want to ask? Was it during the time, some RSS folks might argue, before invaders came from up North/West/Central Asia? If yes, that time has passed long back. And I am pretty sure, that even then we were the same. If I can remember, I am sure that Indian men (#YesAllMen) have never sympathized nor empathized with what women face daily. Some people are tweeting incessantly sharing what their friends faces. As if that would help. Nopes. This is not cynical. This is real.

Just because TV News is paying attention to it for 3–4 days, doesn’t mean that it is going to get solved.

And how come Bengaluru is treated as if this is some special part of the country where people are extra mannered and cultured. Hehe, no, Bangalore is same as rest of India. Now at least I can feel, how Delhi people must be feeling.

January 5, 2017
Year 2016 End Blog Post
2016 is almost about to end, finish, over, poooof!! YAY!

Now, for some reason, I don’t understand what the hoopla was about. Bad things happened this year, sure, but that happens every year and this is going to continue to happen next year as well. Probably, I don’t feel as impacted as supposed to, by most of the things which happened this year, as I transitioned from being, how to put it mildly, Sngl to Mrrd in January itself. Once you have made that change in your life, every other impact feels like falling of a 1 KG metal ball or a feather in space.

So, as goes the tradition, this is the year-end summary blog post for 2016. Some major things are summarized below so that I can read the same 10 years from now (if all goes well):
- January was something. Apart from the D-Day, I also stepped outside Indian soil. And landed on a semi-Indian soil. And it was fun.
And the events that followed after Jan’s main event, have been fun alright! For the first time in my life, I got to live alone. Like actually alone. Sounds very weird after the first 2 points but that is how it was. I lived alone for about 8 months, with occasional visits from friends and family. But living alone gives you some perspective in life which nothing else does. I recommend, everyone should live alone for a month of two, at least. I played a whole lot of Pokemon Go for 1 week, before those idiots took it down. Around mid-year, I joined Toastmasters. One, to slow myself down. Second, to become a better public speaker. The journey has been super exciting as having an aim in life, a purpose, gives you a lot to look forward to. Also, the club gives you an environment which one craves for in a job, that it is not just rewarding, but also competitive and that school-college-classroom feel is there. However, I don’t know how much have I improved as a public speaker, I surely have become more open to talking to any number of people. I would go in more confident now, as compared to past. There are still many glitches to overcome, but we shall do that in 2017. And yeah, I have completed the CL Manual, and very soon, I would be a Competent Leader officially. Yes!
I got the opportunity to visit Gokarna for the first time, and Ooty for the 2nd. But, I couldn’t give myself much time to click photographs, so there is one things I missed out on. I should have clicked more.
I moved to a new place. After spending full 6 years in the most North Indian part of Southern Bengaluru, I moved to Eastern Central Bengaluru. I am going to totally miss, Bun, Tea and Momos. And the people there which made the place worth living. Last but not the least, I had my first ever and the most severe, Bike accident. I had forgotten that Bengaluru’s roads have potholes and I drove in to one. Bike toppled, as did I. Luckily, only bike’s headlight got broken and my right hand got muscle sprained. Nothing bad happened. But my right hand is still recuperating. I got to wear that protective sling thingy for the first time ever. Hopefully, I will remember how to ride on roads in this country.

Have I changed? Yes, to a certain extent. I have realized that time doesn’t stay the same always even when it seems to have frozen for some time. And most importantly, life after marriage is fine. It only seems dangerous till you haven’t done that.

2017, bring it on!
December 30, 2016
Toastmasters Speech # 3 : Impact of Hobbies / Hobbies do wonders

Imagine this scene.

It is a usual Monday Morning and your mood is right up [gesture low hand pointing to the ground] here.

You come or rather drag yourself to your workplace and a Colleague asks “Hey man… how was the weekend? Anything interesting?”

Most of us just shrug and whimper with a dull reply, “The usual”.

Happens, right?

I’m sure that you wouldn’t have shrugged if you had spent your weekend doing something which you enjoy.

Mister / Madam Toastmaster Fellow Toastmasters Distinguished Guests

Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, once said,

“You never lose a dream , it just incubates as a hobby.”

Today I would talk about Hobbies. Hobbies are activities which you “USED” to enjoy doing in your leisure time. But now you are simply “BUSY”.

Most of us do have something or the other as our hobby. Everyone likes to do something when they have nothing else to do right?
Some like to solve puzzles or crosswords, some like to sing or dance , some like to read and some like to play. Some like to do Gardening. Some like to cook.

And then there are some, who just like to eat and sleep or ‘Netflix and Chill’. And they’re , indeed, living the best life.

HASHTAG #SARCASM

Do anyone here like to share some of THEIR hobbies? Anything unique?

See, We all lead a very busy life. So we need something to unwind ourselves. To take us to back to our roots. To do things which makes us feel happier. Don’t we?

Today, I would share with you the impact of hobbies which I had on my own life.

I Like to indulge in visual arts. As in, I sometimes Draw Cartoons , Click Pictures , Spend Hours on Photoshopping them. Also I create Posters , Design Logos and so on on so forth.

5th Jan, 2012, a hindi movie “Mr. India”, was being shown on TV. I used to love that movie as a child. So I decided to create a small poster for the movie. Just as a tribute.

Mr. India Minimal Poster

This shows Anil Kapoor and Sridevi through a red glass. Those who have seen the movie would get it easily. Those who haven’t , just hold on. This is a Minimal Poster where very little or just the core of the story is shown.

What happened after, is that I shared this on my blog, Facebook and Twitter and got a very positive response. This prompted me to create some more posters for some more movies and TV shows. I enjoyed making them and my friends continued with the praise. I wasn’t doing anything special . I was just passing my time by creating minimalistic tributes to the movies I had enjoyed myself. Just to feel nostalgic .

Some of the posters

Then I created more posters . Now in non-Hindi languages as well. I’ve created close to 200 posters by now.

When the blog got popular, it finally got noticed by some movie makers and then some journalists. Then this started happening.

Newspapers and Magazines articles

I got popular.

I got interviewed many times. My posters have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines. I am not saying that I am very good at it. Far from it! Just that I kept pursuing my hobbies and others liked that. It made me famous and gave me something to brag about and encouraged me to keep doing it over and over again.

My point is , who knows where your hobbies could lead you to. You are doing it just for fun . But you never know , what impact could they have on you and people around you.

Thus, I would just encourage and request you all to take some time out and do what you like, other than usual working for 8 hours a day.

Take out that old guitar which you always wanted to play but never took time out. Go join some dance classes and start flying again. Lately, there has been no Philately but who is stopping you from collecting stamps again. You like to cook? Be better at it and who knows you could land into Masterchef one day?

Even if you don’t, at least you’d have spent your time in doing something you liked and enjoyed. Isn’t that good in itself?

I would depart with the following quote from Warren Buffett, often called the world’s richest man,

“Whatever YOU like to do , make it a hobby and
whatever the WORLD likes to do , make that a business.”

Here’s a rehearsal recording of the speech:

August 21, 2016
Today was the day I should write about in a blogpost

What a day!

Sine wave, would be apt to describe the day I had today. With only 1 cycle though. It was a day one should be blogging about because if we are looking for a reason to blog in this attention span absent world, this must be one of the reasons.

It started off badly with huge traffic on the way to office which could make anyone’s mood downbeat and morale absent. I somehow reached office in 1.5 hours battling a gruelling volume of cars, bikes, buses and truck on the road which usually takes me 25–30 minutes.

Anyways, today was a big day for me, as I had to give my Speech 3 of the Competent Communication manual of the Toastmasters Club. Since I joined the Toastmasters Club, I felt like I had found my calling. I am a terrible public speaker and speaker in general (as on the date of the writing of this blog). I want to and I HAVE TO get better at it. There have been so many things in the past which I gave up. This one I don’t want to give up on. I don’t fear the stage. I just mess up on it. Just that when I reach the stage and come down from it, I always end up feeling that I should have done this and I should have done that. And I could have been far far better than what I eventually ended up with. To top that, I speak very fast naturally. And this in turn makes other feel that I am nervous (which I do get but who doesn’t) and that I am skipping words. Which is mostly true. So the feedback I have received till now in my previous speeches is to slow down.

So in order to get inspired and learn the tips and tricks of the game, I started watching YouTube videos of other clubs. And I have visited a community club nearby to see how they do that. And believe me, I have been ODing over YouTube lately. One speaker I would like to mention is Dr. Rajdeep Manwani. I watched couple of his videos and was amazed to see the brilliance and on the feet thinking of his while delivering any speech, even if it was impromptu. And the sense of humor was spellbinding for me. No wonder, he won so many awards in the District Championships. So in last few days, I ended up binging his youtube videos (mostly from Bangalore Toastmasters Club weekly meetings). I watched all his videos and rewatched them as they were not only entertaining, but highly inspiring. I wished if I could meet him someday, I would go gaga over him.

So in today’s speech, I bombed. I spoke so fast, that I forgot many things from my speech. I had to use 3 slides of MS PowerPoint and mid-way during the speech, the projector wire got disconnected which made me forget even more. This speech I had practiced at least 15–20 times. It had become etched on my memory but due to the nervousness and fast delivery, I screwed. This made me touch the trough of the sine wave of the day. I felt really bad, with myself. But, since I have decided not to give up, I am going to attempt the same speech again next week. But still I kept feeling bad till the time I reached home.

I reached home by 5 PM. And I had 2 chocolates, to celebrate my messed up day, as goes the tradition. I was checking Facebook and saw that today Bangalore Toastmasters Club and Beechi Club had linkers meet. And they had a speaker from Singapore, Hitesh Ramchandani and speeches from Dr. Rajdeep Manwani and their own club members.

Meeting was scheduled from 6.30 PM at Catholic Club, Bangalore which is 8.5 KM from my place. I was low. Normally, thanks to my never say no to procrastination attitude, I would have given it a pass. But, I registered for the event and eventually went to attend the meeting.

There, I had the privilege to hear Dr. Rajdeep Manwani live. And it was his CC10 (Which he was attempting 2nd time, after completing everything Toastmasters could offer). And it was brilliant and overwhelmingly inspiring. I am a person who is the last person to ever listen or read anything remotely inspiring. So when I am saying it was, believe me. To top that, Hitesh Ramchandani (motivational speaker who is suffering from Cerebral Palsy) gave such a superb speech that those who haven’t heard, are probably unlucky. I mean, his and Rajdeep’s speech were like eye openers for everyone who takes life for granted and give up easily. Like me.

Their speeches were so so brilliant, that I kept on grinning and laughing during their speeches and hoping that I won’t cry because that would be very very awkward. I got so much inspired that if you touch me now, I might give sparks and generate electricity. After that, I met Dr. Rajdeep and shook his hands. And that made me really really happy. Some people have no idea, what their actions inspire others to do and bring change in their lives.

I hope, I would make use of the inspiration and give my next speech in a much better way, that everyone would enjoy watching and listening to it. Sigh.

View from Catholic Club Bangalore

What a day!

August 10, 2016
First in life : An Eulogy

Just for a minute and a half though, but I had to give an eulogy for a colleague who passed away recently. I know, as we get older, the news of deaths keep on increasing. However, this was a shock as the colleague passed away due to strange case of Dengue which took the life away in mere 48 hours, probably in even lesser time. Dengue in 2016 Bengaluru should sound ridiculous. However, this is the world we live in. What’s going to happen next, nobody can know. To add to the misery, the departed was one of the most jovial natured person I had ever met, at least in office. It’s not that we used to hang out a lot, but when you see a happy face, in a sea of mostly dull faces, almost daily once, and then you get to know that now you won’t see that face ever, is a very weirdly awful feeling.

I just wish that the parents of the deceased come to terms with the reality and time heals this immeasurable loss.

Life is fragile. Nobody usually imagines the scenario when you won’t be there and there would be people left behind you. Who loved you and depended on you. Even if you lived away from them but at least they knew that you existed. If one spends time in thinking about that scenario, probably, that would give you an opportunity to consider the things which one is not doing right. And what could be done better. Which all relationships should be given more time. Which all activities one must do before the time comes. Because there might or might not be life beyond the death, but we could live a bit more in the present, happily, before getting done and dusted.

August 5, 2016