After I came to NITIE and saw how the alumni network is managed, I understood one of the major things lacking in BIT (my engg. school) was this. Serendipitously Sallu (Manish Saluja) one day called Shubham and told him about invisionfree forum that he had discovered and gave the idea to make it a discussion forum for their batchmates; when Shubham discussed the idea with me - we thought of extending it as a an Alumni Portal for all alumni of BIT and thus started BIT Alumni www.bitalumni.4t.com the (un)official portal for BITans. Today we have become a 500 member strong site and the largest online conglomeration of BITans. The next logical step to this venture was organizing Alumni meets in different cities. As a small beginning we organized a reunion of all BITans of our batch in Mumbai-Pune (15 turned up) but our meet has fired BITans in other cities as well for such ventures . . . its really been 'main chalta gay kaarwan bantaa gaya' for 4 of us founding members - myself, Sh

Hey Dudes!! I have found you a respite from the dreary reading of my blog .. guess what?? A whole constellation of blogs!! Its been compiled by Anita Bora, previously Asst. editor at Rediff, now a blog enthusiast . . . Mussay Indians have become global citizen really . . . and they are sure dominant on the net !! The List : A compilation of Indian blogs. Growing every day. The Ring : A web-ring of Indian bloggers. Feel free to join. Of course, Anita decides whether to let you in ;) Anita's Site : Let me spin the world wide web around you . . . I haven't yet decided myself whether to join the ring!! But for the rest of this post, here is some Q&A inspired by Anita's FAQ on blogging . . . Why do you blog? I discovered blogging when I visited Manish Saluja's blog (Manish is a close friend of Shubham -my NITIE pal) I then found many blogs of my friends and other known personalities. That's where I started in April 2004 and I just loved the concept. I was

I was in search of this poem since log .. so when I found it I coudn't resist psting it on my blog If If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings

um... the exam wasn't bad ..'twas good rather .. but am not feeling beat up ... again something happened ... its about a friend and I am feeling bad about it ... hey don't worry .. am not going to bore anyone with "how bad I feel?" type post .... Sometimes I wonder what friendship means... we might call all our acquaintances friends, we actually do - all classmates, all past and previous batchmates - everyone is a friend. But think, how many of these would really fall under the category of friends? Before that what is exactly a friend? Someone who will give his everything for you? C'mon that I believe is pretty subjective! It all depends on what you ask for. At times you may ask for trivial things and your friend might not be able to fulfill your expectation. And sometimes even strangers might give their life for you - it happens isn't it? Then how would you characterize a friend? There has to be another definition. So let me try - one who shares his/her

Well . . . World baad mein . . . I am sitting on a CGPA Time-Bomb. My exams start tomorrow; and am terribly short of reading . . so this post over I don' t hope to make any posts for the next 5 days (unless exams are that frustrating ki post maarna pade) :P OK now turning to the world . . as a part of Global Economics I learnt that a. International Trade is good for all countries and the world as a whole b. Any trade barrier may sound good for producers in an economy in the short run but is detrimental to the consumers always, and also harmful for growth of industry in the long run c. All countries need foreign capital for their progress and a trade deficit helps in increasing Current Account deficit of nations which in turn helps in faster rate of economic growth (now that's a bit tricky, won't dare to elaborate) d. The US dollar has become the world currency because US has a very very high trade deficit. US actually has been living off debt from other nations. The pu

He he ... I have been spending time visiting other blogs .. was kinda restless but wasn't able to concentrate on studies .. was wondering ki 'saala chakkar kya hai' - why aren't exams scaring hell outta me ... and why do small things (eh! thats a secret - something happened today that I didn't like) disturb me like this?? And suddenly like a message of god I read a line on a blog that I was visiting - "You are Human!" .. and really it was a relief! it helps sometimes to reaffirm your existence and your erroneous behaviour by simply accepting that you are human ... making this post to just document this reaffirmation :) "I am Human!!" Thank God I was reminded :)) I am a very typical example of what humas are called - 'social animals'. I usually dont enjoy things alone, always get everyone else involved - alone I only brood, dream and wonder; and then get everyone else into things. . . and so I feel bad when others don't inclu

I have been discussing ‘love’ with one of my friends for the past many days! Amazed? Well actually I am not the kinda person to even think of Love, but this other chap is . . and I enjoy discussing the subject with him. Probably my only experience of love is my love towards my family and my friends . . never loved a girl (even if I did, I am not sure of it). Anyway, the issue in this post isn’t whether I loved or he loved or anyone loved, its about the definition of love. Is love a one-sided feeling? Or does it have to be mutual? And even if it is mutual, does it have to be tied in the nuptial relationship? And does love require compatibility? If there seems to be a mismatch, should the relationship end? Reversing, if there seems to be a mismatch, should the relationship start at all (opposites attract!)? We debated on all these questions . . . I don’t think we still have any answers, but some things came out. Love may or may not be a one sided affair, but it is unconditional. Love h

This is a strange thing about life that I have been discovering since long . . . when you r young, your goals, what you want to be, what you will do etc seems very straight very clear. But as you grow up, the path becomes more and more misty. Today as I stand just 3 days from the last examination of my student life all set to launch myself into the world, I am thoroughly worried about how I will achieve the goals that I had set for myself when I was a child. Not that this feeling has dawned suddenly – it has come very very slowly, the mist spread gradually through my engineering days till here, and by now I can’t see even 2 months down the line about where the road to life is leading. I slept off thinking about all this and more and thought about why this happens when asleep. When you are young, you are made to learn logic. We learn all daily routine by logic – if X happens then do Y, or if A happens then B will follow. Something like if you got up from sleep, then go brush your teet

What prospect of winning the cricket tournament does a team, which had won just 1 out of 16 matches for the past 16 months, hold? Nil, I would have said just 8 hours ago . . . but today has been a lesson in my life . . . Grit, Determination and Passion always work, irrespective of what historical data suggests! The IM10 cricket team had been a losing team all through our NITIE life, so much so that ‘Did we win?’ had become more of a rhetorical question after every match. No-one . . . which includes me . . . believed that IM10 could win even a single match, leave alone wining the tournament. The junior teams of IM11 and IE34 had come up to be much better than ours which anyway hadn’t won last year itself. Then one day I heard something about George – our dear friend from ISEM3 being involved, I didn’t know where? I had thought they were talking on him to be an umpire or something. But soon I was to discover that he was taken in the team as a wicketkeeper . . dunno if that made any dif

Yesterday night (or rather early morning) we kicked off the El Dorado Film Festival with the screening of the classic 'Gandhi'. (btw El Dorado is the name of our hostel wing) I must be watching the movie the 3rd time but the last time I saw it was about 10 years ago, so yesterday's screening definitely gave me newer insights on the life and times of Gandhi. Also I have half read Gandhi's Autobiography - "My experiments with truth" about 2 months back and have just completed reading the life of 'New India's Mahatma' - dear APJ Abdul Kalam. All this combined gave me better understanding of lots of principles of leadership. (It isn't a coincidence that we watched the movie as an assignment from our Prof in the subject - Business Leadership) I had been an antagonist of Gandhian ideas of non-violence in my teens. But as I grew older I realised that principled differences apart, none could overlook the fact that Gandhi was probably the only man who