Ma, look that guy is making a pass at me !

I was at the beginning of my career those days - and I had just joined Wipro. You know when you are young , smart , and intelligent and 24, you have a lot of friends and have a lot of fun. I too was a typical 24 year old. I had various gangs of friends - a gang to hang out during lunch , one to hang out on weekends , so on and so forth.

Also , at 24, you are used to getting a lot of attention. Well, again I was a typical 24 year old :)

Ok, so back to my story on when I was 24 and working with Wipro - there was one particular day when I was waiting for the Wipro bus, when , I suddenly looked to my side -to my surprise, I caught a guy staring at me unabashedly :| Finding it a little weird , and thinking of it as no more than a co incidence, I boarded the bus. However, from that day onwards I caught this guy staring at me lot of times - when I would go to and come from the office canteen, when I would be in transit between the various Wipro buildings.

So much so , that if I saw him coming from one side, I would take another path to avoid him.

Once he happened to be in my office room i.e. the location where my cubicle was there. And as he passed by, he saw me and went. I was so disturbed - that I finally confided in my friend, a guy sitting next to me, about what I had noticed about this guy's behaviour - to which my friend laughs and says - 'Ignore him ' :(

I try ! honest !

Next week, I notice this guy again in the busstop , waiting for the Wipro bus . I ignore him. Finally the bus comes and I notice a two seater empty seat ! Wow ! I grab the window seat. Just as I was happily settling down, I notice this guy getting in to the bus. Horror of horrors ! My next seat was empty !! Before I could do anything about it, this guy comes and sits down next to me.

I breathe and relax and after some time he tries to start a conversation - I smilingly oblige. He says - Are you Veena - Veena Mithare ?( That he can obviously read from my Name Tag ) I say 'yes' with a smile. Then he says - Are you maharastrian then ?( My surname obviously is the give away ! ) I wonder - why does he want this information - but I nod and say 'yes' again- by marriage I add .

And then he says -So nice to meet a fellow maharastrian. I am from Kolhapur, Maharastra . I am new to this city and since we both are maharastrians, I have been wanting to talk to you for quite some time.

What !

That was all the reason for all that staring !!

And after that, ridiculously and funnily , the staring stopped :)

That day onwards whenever this guy went past me , he would give a nice smile.

So many times, we interpret a person's actions according to our perceptions. And so many times, we miss out on connecting to a person or getting connected to his greatness because we are so off in our interpretation of the person or the situation. People generally have their own intentions ( and most of the times, people have great intentions ) for doing an action. The restlessness in our life is what we bring to a situation.

As Randy Pauch in his 'The Last Lecture' says, quoting Jon Snoddy -
When you are pissed off at somebody, and you're angry at them, you just haven't given them enough time. Just give them a little more time — and they'll almost always impress you. And that really stuck with me. I think he's absolutely right on that one.

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Ignited minds - Getting the forces together

Here is an excerpt from Ignited Minds which talks about the various projects (involving integration of various fields) that Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam undertook while his tenure as a chairman of the TIFAC team.
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I held the position of Chairman of the Technology Information Forcasting and Assessment Council ( TIFAC ) under the Department of Science and Technology, for nearly two tenures ( about eight years ). This period saw the creation of Technology Vision 2020 based on the work of task teams consisting of 500 experts in all who had available to them inputs from 5000 scientists and technologists from different fields. Later, the Technology Vision document and the national security aspects got integrated and the India Millennium Missions ( IMM 2020 ) emerged. When I took over as Principal Scientific Advisor to the Govt. of India, in Nov 1999 , the task was to do detailing and evolve a aworking plan for IMM 2020. It is indeed a roadmap for transforming India into a developed country - the Second Vision of the Nation. Certain experimental work on education , agriculture and also development of a a number of villages in an integrated way is currently progressing.

I worked with the TIFAC teams in three areas - agriculture, advanced education and rural connectivity.

With Prof. S.K.Sinha , a renowned agricultural scientist , TIFAC took up a project to enhance agricultural productivity in central Bihar and eastern India. Six villages in one and nine in another were selected during the kharif season of 1998. The system approach consisted of soil analysis , seed choice, cultivation season, fertilizer selection and training to the farmers. This intensive collaboration of scientists and farmers resulted in substantial increase in wheat yields, which rose from 2.5 tonnes per hectare to nearly 5 tonnes per hectare. When I and Y.S. Rajan visited a few villages where this system approach is used, we found the farmers showing an interest in new issues like equipment for faster harvesting, storage facilities and marketing and banking systems. It was clear that a small team, cutting across various departments could work wonders even in a difficult region , achieving results in a cost and time effective way.

Another experiment under way is REACH ( Relevance and Excellence ain ACHieving new heights in education institutions ). The purpose of this mission is to establish 80 to 100 centers that follow common academic programmes and share the commitment to achieve excellence. In this endeavour, they work together by interchange of faculty and joint research as need be. As part of this, Centers of Relevance and Excellence ( CORE) have been established in Patiala, Dibrugarh, Mumbai, Thanjavur and Surat in the area of agro and industrial biotechnology , advanced computing and information processing, petroleum reservoir engineering, industrial safety, environmental engineering and herbal drugs. Our experience in the REACH programme is that industries are willing to participate in the specialized areas of their interest and they are also willing to invest about 40 per cent of the total expenditure in establishing CORE. In return, they will benefit in terms of skilled manpower and access to the results of research. The willingness of industry to be partners in technology development and education has helped our confidence a great deal. It was also satisfying to see Dr M.S.Vijayaraghavan, Adviser in the office of the Principal Scientific Adviser, blossom into a leader in the integrated learning system. His innovation was to bring commitment of industry to the learning programme.

Another example relates to the programme for rural connectivity evolved under the leadership of Prof. P.V.Indiresan, who was formerly Director of IIT Madras. As mentioned earlier, the fact that there is net migration from villages to cities indicates that they offer more opportunities and the only way to equalize the flow is to develop the rural areas and bring life there on par with that in the cities. Once employment opportunities increase there, as do the amenities available, as per the model created by Prof. Indiresan, rural development may be expected to prevent, if not actually reverse the rural - urban migration. Presently, several technologies exist to make this possible, provided we use the connectivity approach in various areas.

For the rural development programme called PURA, we have introduced the concept of dynamic connectivity of four types called PEEK: Physics, Electronics, Economics and Knowledge connectivities.
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Nice projects na ! Will put up another post someday on the current state of these projects. This book was written in the 2002- 2003 period.

Meanwhile, I hope all the projects have achieved great success in the fields they embarked on.

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Makarasankranti - The festival of Kites !

Recently my friend Neelu (from my Baroda days) and her husband Amit had been to our place and I was telling Raghav and Amit that we should go to Baroda during the Navratri. The colourfulness , people dressing up in their traditional best and the garba dance -how a city can become alive in the night and how one gets transported to a almost different and a fantasy world is something that needs to be witnessed to be believed.

And as I was talking to him about Navratri, he says - Yes. And I also want to go to Baroda during that kite flying festival .

That touched a chord ! How could I have ever forgotten about the kite flying festival of Uttrayana or Makarasanktranti in Gujarat !

Sankranthi means transmigration of Sun from one Rāshi (zodiac in Indian astrology) to the other. Hence there are 12 such Sankrantis in all. However, the Sankranthi festival usually refers to Makara Sankaranti, or the transition of the Sun from Dhanu rashi (Sagittarius) to Makara rashi (Capricorn). This festival is also called Uttrayana which means- "Uttara( meaning North ) Ayana( Going )" - the start of the "northward journey of the sun ".

There is another significance of this day - after this day the days start becoming longer and warmer and thus the chill of winter declines.

Every year 14th and 15th Jan is a holiday in Gujarat. The build up for the festival begins a good 2-3 months earlier to the actual festival. The Kite makers start making their kites and beautiful , colourful kites start hanging on the rims of the small shops.

Along with the kites , a critical part of the Kite flying is the string to which the kite is tied. These strings are themselves made of different colours and very importantly are mixed with "glass powder". This is so that, it can be used as an effective weapon in cutting other people's kite.

About a month before the actual festival, the kite flying begins. One can start seeing the highly enthusiastic kite flyers come out and enjoying themselves with the kite flying.

Though, nothing can prepare you for the josh, excitement, colourfulness, fun and gaeity of the 14th of Jan. Kite flying begins at sunrise for most of the gujratis. And Oh ! How beautiful the sky looks on that day. Check this out -



Along with the kite flying , comes a very intense competition among the kite flyers on how long does one's kite remain in the sky or who's kite is the strongest of all. Kite flyers challenge other kite flyers to get into a tussle with them . And the fight starts. Both the kite flyers manoeuvre and guide their kites to entangle the string of the other person's kite and eventually cut it. And after a small struggle, one kite starts flying off in the air aimlessly. There is jubiliation on the winning side, coz not only the kite flyers but the whole gang of people around them are having fun.

And do you think the game ends there. Hell no ! The next interesting part is to catch the orphaned kite that is now wandering aimlessly. Judging the direction of the wind , and predicting which way the kite will go and eventually fall, would be a bunch of young children - ever ready to pounce on the "fallen" kite ( pun intended ) :). And finally the caught kites would go back in to the kitty of their family or friends who would be using it for their next kite match.

Fun - colour and life is what you get to see on this festival.
If you ever get a chance to go to Baroda or Ahmedabad ( or any city of Gujarat for that matter ), dont ever miss to see the beauty of Uttarayan.

Happy Makarsankranti ! :)

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P.S. All the photoes used in this post are from the site - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Uttarayan-Festival-Kite-Flying-Day - I profoundly acknowledge and express my gratitude to those who have put up these pictures on this facebook group . These pictures brought out profound memories of the wonderful festival and these pictures were the only reason, that I could write this post.

Read about the complete article on MakaraSankranti on wikipedia over here.

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Have you ever forgotten your schoolbag to school ? :|

I was in my secondary school . The school was around 2 kms from our house . My brother and me used to bicycle to our school. I was in my 8th std and my brother in his 10th.


This must have been in the month of feb that year. The morning began as noisy and busy it can be for a teenager who is getting ready to go to school - Rushing to have a bath, grabbing a quick breakfast, last minute arranging of books , and run to the bicycle and rush to the school. Phew ! Reached the school just 10 mins before the prayer bell. Quickly I park my bicycle and do a quick U turn to pick my bag from the stand - when to my horror and disbelief there was no bag on the stand !! My mind did a quick calculation - did the bag fall off ? Hmm ! Improbable !

On second thoughts, the cycle did seem a little extra light and fast today :(
Hmm ! Have I forgotten my bag at home ? How embarassing !!!!

I quickly go to the school office - butter polish the clerk - and call up my home. My mom picks up the phone and I ask her, very hesitantly, if my bag is at home ? She does a "What !!" But then she checks and confirms that it is at home. Then I remember my brother had long study holidays since he was in his 10th std. What good luck ! I ask my brother if he could get my school bag to school. I get a good scolding from the other side of the phone but finally he agrees.

Somehow I sneak back in to the prayer line - all the time squirming and praying that nobody notices my bare back ! Phew ! Somehow I make it to the class without anyone noticing my faux pas. Period one begins- when suddenly someone interrupts the teacher at the door. Wow ! its my brother ! But wait! what is he doing ?!

Even as I am trying to hide behind all my classmates, my brother proudly holds up my bag and gives it to the teacher to give it to me in the full view of the class :| !!

So much for all the care I had taken the whole morning !! :)

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