A Good Experience

Recently, I had a very pleasant surprise when I had to go to a Quest Diagnostics Patient Service Center (PSC). My usual experience of these places is that you go there and wait and there is usually a long line of patients. Typically, it has taken at least 45 minutes to get done.

A couple of weeks ago, just the day before I planned to go to a PSC, I went to their website to check for locations. To my surprise, I found that I had the ability to schedule my appointment. I jumped on that immediately and set up an appointment. I didn't think that meant much and expected to go through my usual experience. I have been making appointments to see my doctor for years and that has never meant anything.

When I went to the PSC, I got there about five minutes prior to my appointment, signed in, and was immediately taken inside in a waiting room. In less than five minutes, a phlebotomist was with me and in another five minutes, I was all done. All in all, a great experience. If you are reading this, take advantage of this offering.

Me and My Tabla

Back when I was really young, my father asked me if I wanted to learn how to play the Tabla. The Tabla is a pair of drums, widely popular in the Indian subcontinent. I used to sing quite well since I was three, so it would have made sense to take vocal lessons. However, for reasons that I can’t recall any more (perhaps there weren’t any) I started taking Tabla lessons from Pandit Shambhunath Mishra. This was at a makeshift school operated by Prayag Sangeet Samiti (a music university) and I was the only Tabla student at the time.

I had one barrier to learning Tabla, namely that I was (and still am) bowlegged. This made it very difficult to sit with my legs crossed (the most comfortable and recommended position). So I had to first devise my own sitting posture, which, though slightly uncomfortable, worked for me. The classes with Shambhunathji went well, and I started learning how to play. The initial days of Tabla are the hardest, when you are learning to produce the most basic sounds. Over time (a few years), I was playing reasonably OK. I had a good work ethic, in that I used to spend a lot of time practicing. My prowess in Mathematics helped immensely, as a lot of Tabla playing is about understanding the Mathematics of the rhythm.

Over time though, the class schedule became somewhat erratic, as Shambhunathji wasn’t able to make it. After a few months of classes off and on, we decided that it was time to move on. I sought and got admission at the renowned Bhatkhande Music College (BMC) and joined the classroom of Pandit Sheetal Prasad Mishra, a very well-known Tabla player. He was a junior lecturer at the time. I had heard Sheetalji play several times and really liked his style so I was very pleased to be in his classroom. The college also boasted of highly renowned Tabla players like Pandit Ramkumar Sharma and Pandit Ranganath Mishra as faculty members.

The years at BMC were just wonderful. Sheetalji was a great teacher for me, and I learned a lot. I got to perform on TV and also won BMC’s annual open competition for my level. My learning was halted when I got admitted to the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. However, I never stopped playing and practicing and it has been 26 years since then. I am not a great Tabla player by any means, but I can play well enough to get by.

For the last couple of years, I felt that my knowledge was getting wasted as I was getting older, and I constantly thought about passing it on to others. Finally, this September, I started teaching Tabla. I have always been pretty bad when it comes to selling, and this was no exception. I did not try to advertise, other than telling a couple of people who are connected to the Indian music scene. Surprisingly, I now have five students, and a few others have also shown interest. Watching students learn makes the whole experience worthwhile, as does the challenge of teaching in a way that will hold their interest. Over the last couple of years, work has been particularly stressful, and this has helped a lot to relieve that stress. I hope to get a chance to visit Shambhunathji and Sheetalji one of these days and tell them what an honor it is to pass on the knowledge received from them to the next generation on the opposite side of the globe. I hope I will be a good teacher. I am not sure what to expect from this generation students who already have a lot of pressure on them with several organized activities. So the challenge in on!

Pan IIT Conference, Chicago, October 2009

Pan IIT 2009 was held in Chicago during October 2009. There were 1,500 to 2,000 people in attendance, most of them IIT graduates, some faculty members from the IITs including the directors and a few spouses and children. The conference was held in a nice convention center in Schaumberg in the suburbs of Chicago. The program was very impressive with speakers like Bill Clinton, Aneesh Chopra, Carl Schramm, James Lewin, Nathan Myrvhold and others. There were also some interesting panel discussions. The evening entertainment was also good with the most notable show being that by Kailash Kher’s band, Kailasa.

All the speakers were quite impressive and lived up to their expectations. Some of the panels on globalization and healthcare were also quite good. Of course, there were others that were not all that impressive. The award ceremony for Rajeev Motwani was very touching. It is a shame that the world lost him at such an early age to a freak accident.

For me, the highlight, as usual, was meeting some of my best friends from IIT/K after many many years. [This includes the world famous Manindra Agrawal (who, with a couple of students, proved that for any number, whether the number is prime can be determined in polynomial time).] It is great to see that they have all done well in life as one would have expected. We re-lived our IIT/K days by hanging out in a hotel room telling jokes and reminiscing the good old days.

Other highlights included Bill Clinton (well, as I had never seen a US President before in person, and he is a damn good speaker), Aneesh Chopra (his meteoric rise to this position in the Obama administration is quite impressive given that he hails from a small village in India and grew up like any other village guy), Carl Schramm and Kailash Kher. I was also impressed with the panel discussion moderated by Mohanbir Sawhney.

An important point is the fact that the registration fee was just $200 (for early birds) which is an amazingly low price considering that I have been to conferences and workshops where I have paid $1,500 or more and come away fairly empty with nothing gained other than some networking opportunities.

There were some low-lights as well:

• I went to register on Day 1, only to find that they don’t have a badge for me even though I was probably one of the first few people to register and my name was on their participant list

• People at the registration booth were asking for IDs and business cards and still giving the wrong badges to people

• I was told that they would set up a printer and print out badges that were missing – after two hours they still could not set up a printer and basically abandoned the idea; one was forced to ask: how many organizers does it take to set up a printer? And shouldn’t they have had one there to begin with?

• On Day 1, while registering, no one was told that we were supposed to pick up a ticket with a table number in order to enter the hall for Clinton’s speech. On Day 2, I picked up a ticket for Table 181, which I guessed would be in the last row. When I went in the hall, there was no table numbered 181. The good part was that we were told to sit anywhere, and I was lucky to find a table in the front.

• Only the first session of each day probably started on time, for the rest of the day you had to guess the schedule.

• People mobbed Aneesh Chopra after his talk, and while I can understand people wanting to make quick conversation with him and handing him a business card, two of the folks handed me their cameras and asked me to take a picture of them with Aneesh. Why me? All I could do was be patient hoping that I could at least hand him a business card! Anyway, I did take the pictures and probably shouldn’t complain. Some folks get excited about having pictures taken with important people.

• The food was the worst part – on Day 1, there was no breakfast and lunch was served at 10:30, and most of the meals were bad, especially dinner on Day 2. Potato curry consisting of large cubes of mostly uncooked potato was the worst item of all. Naan (bread) was served at the very beginning with nothing else but pickle, and many people just ate that as the rest of the food came after quite a while. By the time the rest of the food came, people had already finished the Naan. I believe that charging people an extra $50 for registration might help to ensure better quality overall.

However, between the highlights and low-lights which are always there in any such event, I came away with a lot. Just being around such a talented bunch of people lifts your spirits, gives you new ideas and energizes you. These people (IIT graduates) are all over the place, doing really great things. I feel honored to have had the chance to study and spend a few years of my life with this bunch. I’ll be sure to attend as many of these conferences as I can.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

I recently read The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. It is a great work of fiction that exposes some of the worst aspects of life in rural and urban India. In particular, it describes what the author calls the “Rooster Co-op,” which is a trap in which you fall when you are born (you have no choice) and it is extremely hard to break free from it. The narrator of the story, a character called Balram Halwai, hails from a village somewhere in India referred to as Darkness and finds himself stuck in the rooster co-op. The only way he is able to break free is by committing murder.

It is a very interesting account of his journey from the rags of the village to the riches he enjoys as a successful entrepreneur in Bangalore, the hi-tech capital of India. Those of you who have seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire can easily relate to the accounts in this book. The book made me realize that there is a reality in India totally different from what I experienced in my middle class upbringing. I highly recommend it to everyone.

What makes you happy?

Several motivational books scream about the importance of being happy and tell you how to achieve happiness in life. Of course, all that is easier said than done. I always wonder what makes people happy. I know people who would do anything to earn lots of money or become famous or have a high standard of living. I know others whose mission in life is to be good and to help others and that gives them pleasure. They do not want to be in the limelight at all. Many others are interested in arts and music, and dedicate their lives to these pursuits simply because they give them happiness. Since I grew up in an environment that was extremely competitive, I have always had the mentality to do things in order to be recognized by others. Only peer recognition gives me happiness.

Over the last few years my father has been quite instrumental in making me understand how important it is to do things just for your own happiness without regard to anything else. He is an avid reader, writer and quite a poet. One is pleasantly surprised to find out how knowledgeable he is about a wide range of subjects like physics, genetics, philosophy, astronomy, Ayurveda (Indian herbal medicine) and the Sanskrit language. Most of his knowledge has been acquired by thousands of hours of reading and probably from his very early days as a translator (from Sanskrit to Hindi), after the untimely death of my grandfather forced him to do all sorts of odd jobs. I still remember my childhood when he used to read for hours and hours late into the night and whenever else he could steal a few minutes from life that generally revolved around a very demanding job, and a wife and two sons.

While reading has always been a favorite pastime of his, I did not know that he had dreams of writing poetry in Hindi and Sanskrit. A few years ago, I became aware of some of his poetry that was in the form of handwritten manuscripts. To my credit, I encouraged him to get published. I know his personality; he is not the kind who would ask for help from anyone to get something like this accomplished. I encouraged him to learn how to use computers and to use typesetting software to create publishable versions of his creations. To my great surprise, and despite many difficulties associated with old age that usually turn people off from computers and software, he learned it all and has become quite proficient at it.

I know that the Sanskrit language in itself excites him a lot. He derives a lot of happiness from writing poetry and that has made it possible for him to create four masterpieces in the last few years. One of them called Vyavahaarsookti (literal translation instructions to live/behave) is a great compilation of things one should do to live well. Another one called Kaligeeta is a satire. Based on the holy book of Hindus called the Bhagvad Geeta, this compilation talks about politics and politicians of the present day (Kaliyuga) and draws humorous parallels between the teachings of Lord Krishna (Hindu God) and the behavior of politicians.

His latest compilation is what is called a Mahakavya, or epic. He has created an epic about Aniruddha, the grandson of Lord Krishna. The epic consists of well over 1,500 shlokas (verses), written in several meters. This epic has received tremendous praise from eminent Sanskrit scholars. He is currently in the process of obtaining sponsorship to get it published.

Writing all this poetry, typesetting it, getting it reviewed and critiqued, and making the effort to publish it has taken thousands and thousands of hours. For someone who is now 72, it is quite an achievement to do all this after turning 65, by the time most people have already given up such pursuits for several years.
I am very proud of his accomplishments and have seriously started thinking about what it means to be happy. The glow in his eyes and excitement in his voice is unmistakable when he is talking about his creations. I can see how happy he is in doing this. There are very few people who care about the Sanskrit language and probably an equally small or smaller number of people who have heard of Aniruddha but as I said before, my father is not about doing things to appeal to the masses or become famous. He is doing this because this makes him happy. I hope that some day I can feel so good about doing something that I have always wanted to do. I am still trying to find the way to true happiness.

One Can Always Improve

This is an essay I submitted to "This I Believe" on NPR.

I believe in constant self-improvement. I believe in living the best life that I can live and I believe in being the best person that I can be. I have seen the power of constant self-improvement; not only has my life become happier, I have also helped other people become better.

This belief in constant self-improvement is somewhat recent, but I can see that it has been getting reinforced over my lifetime. I have learned the most from my parents, especially from my father. His constant desire to improve and learn has always inspired me. I always questioned some of his pursuits – you see, I could not see the value of pursuing something that was not sellable. I was also always annoyed by his humility; he would have a wealth of knowledge about a subject, yet he would let others teach him as if he knew nothing. While I failed to learn all the good virtues from him in my early years, I did learn one important thing from him which was the importance of prayer and faith. I learned to pray to God not to ask for something, but to thank Him for everything that’s going well. I have learned the importance of compromise from my mother. The ability to compromise is probably one thing that has helped me the most throughout my life.

I grew up living a rather easy life in many ways. I was always good on the academic front, and I also had the knack for picking up new things and doing well be it art and craft, singing, Scrabble, chess or ping pong. This naturally led to arrogance. I got used to this image of being naturally good. I was so arrogant that I was willing to lie about things just to project a better image of myself. This always made things difficult for me, as lies invariably lead to more lies and painful revelations.

My first inspiration to change my ways came after I read the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. I could not believe that there could be so much goodness in anyone. The Mahatma taught me the value of charity and the fact that self-help is the best help. What this frail frame was able to accomplish with just the goodness in his heart was nothing short of miraculous.

I have been very fortunate to have interacted with wonderful people; one who showed me the virtue of being humble and another who taught me that you can rise from a state of deep despair and turn failure into success.

Some great books written by H. Jackson Brown, Zig Ziglar, John Tesh and my dad that I read over the last few years have also changed my outlook quite a bit. They have convinced me that one can always improve and that constant self-improvement is the right path to happiness. I wish I had read these books when I was in my twenties but as they say, “Better late than never.”

Today, I am trying my best to improve myself on all fronts. My relationships with everyone, near and far, my work ethic, my health, my charity and my faith are all getting better and stronger. In some cases it is trying to do more, in others it is trying to do less or stopping altogether. As a result, I am finding myself living a happier and more fruitful life. Psychology tells us that a personality is formed within the first ten years of life and it is very hard to change it. While a complete change may not be possible, it is always possible to become a better person and one should always look for opportunities to improve.

Double Standard or Negligence

I don't know if this is a case of double standard, or merely a negligent attitude when I see people behave in ways that I would not expect. I am talking about people's behavior in the workplace as opposed to what they might do at home. I sincerely believe that everyone likes to live in a home that is neat and clean, and I am sure that people try to do their best on that front.

It puzzles me that the same behavior is not seen in the workplace. Let me give you specific examples from where I work. People will not clean up if they make a mess in the microwave. I see folks putting sugar in their coffee and tea, and if they spill some of that sugar, it remains on the countertop well after they are gone unless someone else cleans that up. Empty containers typically suffer the same fate. In our office, we order boxes of Styrofoam cups. These cups come in bunches of about 25. Each bunch is contained in a plastic wrapper. When someone needs a cup, they will open up a bunch. However, when all the cups have been used up, the plastic wrapper just sits there. No one will throw it away in the trash can. You would think that this is a such a basic expectation, but it is not. Over the day, unless someone else is cleaning up, there could be as many as three or four of those on the countertop.

The worst example is how the trash cans are used. In our kitchen, which is probably about 30 feet by 15 feet, there are four large trash cans. Two of those that are close to coffee makers get used more often. One routinely finds those two cans to be full by about 1:00 in the afternoon. However, people will keep piling up trash within and then on top of those two, and not bother to walk a few feet to use another trash can that is not even a quarter full. After a while, it is an unbelievable mess but that doesn't deter these folks at all. Of course, on the other hand, you should see the care these people exercise in washing their own tupperware.

What bothers me most is that 90% or more of the people in the office portray this sort of behavior. How can so many people have an attitude issue? Perhaps I am wrong. Thankfully, our coffee makers only brew one "disposable" cup at a time.

There is a first time for everything

Most of the time, when one uses this expression, it is to signify something good. Sometimes though, it is very appropriate for silly and downright stupid things as well. I (actually a group of four of us) went through a really embarrassing experience recently which is worth sharing.

On a recent trip out of town, four of us were on the same flight. The flight was scheduled to leave at 12:30 pm. We reached the airport at 11:15 am and had plenty of time to check in our bags and get to the gate area. The flight was supposed to board at 12:10 and everything looked all set. at 12:10, the dreaded announcement came. The plane needed to be de-iced, so it would be delayed anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour. One of us went to the gate agent to confirm the period of delay and was told that it would be at least 45 minutes.

We were all hungry so we went to a small restaurant right next to our gate area and settled down to eat. There was a lively discussion about the American education system with comparisons to the rest of the world. At about 12:40, one of us went over to the gate area to check on the progress. Two minutes later, we saw him running back. I anticipated that perhaps they were ready to board the plane again. To everyone's utter shock, he announced that the plane had already left. It seems that they let it go without de-icing, and it left on time. I am sure that our names were called, but we didn't hear them even sitting so close to the gate area. Since the plane had left the gate, there was nothing that could be done.

We were fortunate to get on the next flight that left at 5:50 pm after spending almost four and half hours at an airport lounge. Our bags were waiting for us when we reached our destination.

Now tell me: how many times have you missed your flight after getting to the gate on time? For the four of us, this was the very first time.

This year and last

The new year starts with something very special in the history of United States, namely the inauguration of the first black president. It is indeed a moment to be remembered for ages, and represents a lot of struggle and dreams and hardship spanning several centuries. While it does not imply that the racial problem is solved, it does represent a big leap in that direction.

I also believe that this year will be very special for CNSI. There are two very large projects that will witness significant milestones, and will be very important events for the company. Many people have made sacrifices over the last several years, and it will be very special to see the fruits of those.

Last year, albeit difficult, was a very good year. I read a lot of good books, and learned a lot in the area of making self-improvements. I am quite certain that many of the things I learned will become parts of my life and will make me a better person. I also fulfilled one of my goals, which was to do a sky dive. I jumped out of an airplane from 18,000 feet high, and what an experience that was!

My daughter participated in an event that went into the Guinness book of world records, and that was very special for all of us. She danced the Kuchipudi dance form along with 331 other dancers from all over the world and this was the largest such performance in the world.

Hope that 2009 will be very special for everyone, and in particular I wish that we will come to some permanent resolution on all the war fronts, including Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan, now that we have new leadership.