Now Its your turn!

"Education is the manifestation of perfection already in man" - Swami Vivekananda

An inspiring Tamil short film about helping a lesser privileged student's education.

 Let every lamp be lighted! Lets begin the Chain Reaction!!!

I dedicate this video to my Under Graduate lecturer VUP~

Life and Heart

I recently bought couple of posters for my room which I liked most. One is about life with a motivational quote which states 

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about Creating yourself

What is Life?

Another poster is about how the most beautiful things in life are a felt by heart. The touching lines are as below

Why do We close our eyes

When we pray,

When we cry,

When we kiss,

When we Dream

Because the most Beautiful things

in life are not Seen But felt only by Heart..

Feel it!

Needless to say, both are really nice quotes. Also, the background images are simply awesome and depicts the quotes very nicely. Hope you also like these.

Young buSINess MAN

Day before yesterday night, I saw a business man in-front of a restaurant in Connaught Place, New Delhi. He is young, really very young. Yes, he was around 4years old and selling different shaped balloons on road side.

I was just watching him for a while. The way he sold balloons stormed me. Yes, he just goes to kids and shakes his balloon stick very close to them. Once the kids started to pay attention he shows the balloons still closer to them. By seeing all these, a kid insisted her mom to buy a balloon. Then the mom asked the price of a balloon and our young business man replied its Rs 15. She gave Rs 20 to him and waiting to get Rs 5 balance. To all of our surprise, the young business man started to move on without giving the balance. When the mom asked him to give the balance, he simply replied that balloon cost is Rs 20 and asked her to return back the balloon if she doesn't want one for Rs 20! She argued him but, at last, she was not able to return the balloon back nor get the Rs 5 balance from the young business man.

What is so important to write about this incident? I looked this in two different angles. First, the mentality of the business man: cheating at young age, though its just for Rs 5. Second, the worst, is child labour. To me, the young boy is a business man. His balloons are colorful but I don't think his life is. By looking at both the kids (the above snap), I just asked myself, What did the wrong thing the young boy has done to work at night at the age of 4years itself? or What did the good thing the other kid, of same age, has blessed? This is just one incident I observed. And, of course, its not uncommon to see such a huge divergence among people around us in our country, India. What is the solution or what can we do? Simple! Let's raise our hands against child labour; Let's educate our uneducated friends; Let's extend our hands to lift underprivileged ones around us; Let's contribute and work towards India Vision 2020.

I faith, NO ONE will write a blog like this by year 2020~

How did I reach here...

Seems, I have taken quite long time to write my next post. Here I am sharing the wonderful moments happened to me in the past few months.

Well, I was seriously trying for July 2010 batch research(PhD) admission in reputed institutes in India. Even my GATE score was decent but not so great, I focused more on getting admission in IIT Bombay and IISc Bangalore. For IIT Bombay, it was my third attempt :) but I never gave up. I prepared well and the admission process, written test and interview, went so good than my earlier attempts. Later, interview panel people recommended me to join MTech and the reason told was my GATE performance. But, I was not interested doing MTech for various reasons.

Next, IISc and it was my second attempt. This time I got call letter from SERC department for PhD admission process. I attended the pre-interview familiarization program there and it helped me to prepare well focusing more on interview point of view. And the judgement day came, I did my best in written and interview. To my surprise, I was shortlisted not for PhD, but for MSc Engg by Research program.

Even the masters program in SERC is research oriented, I was thinking deeply whether to join MSc or not as I am a MCA graduate already. Moreover, I felt difficult to come out from IT industry job after three years of experience and also for various family reasons. But, at last, after analyzing all possibilities and having discussion with friends, I decided to accept the admission offer.

When I was counting down my days, a close friend of mine, shared link stating there is a 2nd round of PhD admission for Mobile and Ubiquitous computing group going in IIIT Delhi. Till that time I was not knowing about IIIT Delhi. So I went thru the institute website, got inspired, applied, got shortlisted and called for entrance test which was scheduled on Thursday 10th July 2010. Due to leave constraints I planned to travel by flight, rather my usual train journey. Of course, that was my first journey on flight on 9th July 2010!!!

The PhD admission process in IIIT Delhi had three components: Written test, Programming test and then Interview. I did well in Programming test and did my best in the other two, also I was very confident this time. And, finally, I got a call on the same day evening saying I was shortlisted for PhD admission. After returning back from Delhi, I had a discussion with my Manager explaining my wishes and to initiate the releasing formalities as soon as possible. Fortunately, all my exit formalities went smooth and my last working day was 23rd July 2010. Later, I joined IIIT Delhi on 26th July 2010 and then after I am called as PhD Scholar~