Hey Professional world! I am coming.

Yeah! the first air-journey was more pleasant than what I thought of... The idea of getting in Kingfisher Airlines paid off fully ;) It was a bit more than 2 hours journey, with skies below me most of the time... And how true are all those guys who say, There are hindi oldies for every moment.. for this time, I had, "Aj main upar, asmaan niche.." Took rain along with me from bhopal to bangalore.. Reached bangalore at 8:10 pm... Then waited for baggage, and alas! the very bag I bought two days ago only for this journey got its trolley broken due to malhandling... I got 250 bucks as compensation from those guys... Bangalore was a new place for me before getting down two days back. The city has amazing weather, its like the whole city has been air conditioned. It has all the best features except the two things: 1. Traffic 2. Auto-richshaws... A friend of mine, Prashant, had come down to the airport. Went to his place which was a nice hotel bedroom. Next day, sunday, was free and I was planning to search for home, but planned a rest later, and then, successfully implemented the plan. Now, I was on the heels of Monday, a new and a big day for me.

oh! I woke up at 6 on the first day. Believe it or not, how far you try, you can't remove the eagerness part from the things you do for the first time in your life. Got a direct bus to the office (Thanks to Chandrashekhar!, He is a part of Capital One only and I found him residing very near to my place, so came with him only for the first day). I was the first one to reach the office among the new entrants. Office looks made me happy till the deep inside self. Oh yes! this seems a great place, and How lovely are the people? Can anyone ask better work environment? No doubt, why I don't have any single example of any student from my college who joined Capital One and left for some other company in the last 3 years... Mainly, that's because of the work environment and amazing people's interaction. We had a meeting with almost all of the office people.. There is this nice trend of 'meet and greet' here for every new entrant which is a meeting of every new person with all of the staff and a normal introduction is followed by variable length discussion depending on your mutual interests, or it may be anything.

I have met and greeted some of the people and many are due :) All these sessions are great and one can get a lot of things to learn from each individual. Anyways, next few weeks will be spent in training sessions and understanding basics, and then, a full fledged professional is coming. All earlier people, beware! :P

A small tribute to Prof. V.M. Gadre

Prof. V. M. Gadre

Though no amount of space will be enough for me to write about the person I am writing, but also, no language has words to express my gratitude for him (some apart from English, Hindi, Haryanvi, Sanskrit may have, I don't know others [:P]). From the very childhood of mine, I was imbibed with a teaching that teachers are a bit more than Gods, and I truly believed in it. I always experienced it, I didn't believe it simply because someone said so. I feel privileged to have been taught by some of the best teachers on this planet, and I attribute almost whole of my success to them (a part left for blessings of my parents, friends and other close ones [:)].) I never feel far from my teachers, and I always felt honored to be very close to everyone of my teachers. I left Halwasiya Vidya Vihar, Bhiwani after studying there for 11 long years. It was another family of mine. Similarly, 2 years at The Air Force School, New Delhi reserved a special place for it in me. After coming to IIT Bombay back in 2002, I felt that the above saying was true only for the case of teachers, not professors. The feeling was diminishing in magnitude and somewhere, I felt sad, but couldn't help it. And then, God realized that the importance of this saying is degrading, and so, I was made to meet Prof. V.M. Gadre, as a messenger of his. (He/she is somewhere, I am damn sure.)

He gave a course "Signals and Systems" in our second year, and one of the best ones I had in my whole curriculum. No doubt, he got "Teaching in Excellence" award many a times. This award is given to a faculty member teaching a course, and the importance attached to it increases manifold as it is decided by the students. Also, a person winning this award once is not eligible for the next year, and I understood the reason behind this after having taught by him.
The biggest incident occurred like this. After mid-semester examination of the course, when he distributed marks, he announced in the class, "You can come to me if you have any sort of problems, not necessarily in the course." Though I never went to any professor for discussing anything outside the scope of academics, this time was the first one. The course was over, and I did well there, with a special award for doing challenging problems. But, the bonding with him grew.

He was the Coordinator, NSS, IIT Bombay. And I was involved in GRA (Group of Rural Activities) at that time. And someone proposed an idea of combining various such activities under one umbrella. The organization was named Unnati, and I was appointed one of the 10 Teaching Associates. I worked with him in organization of 'Navchetna Shivirs', initally for mess workers of different hostels, then for students as well. These were, 5 day, one hour daily, shivirs for teaching basic Pranayama techniques. That also was a pleasant experience. The best decision by me at IIT, now I am sure I can say this, was when I chose him to guide me for my DDP (Dual Degre Project). I talked to him about this at the start of third year, around a year in advance as compared to other students. I got a nice internship also, courtesy Prof. Gadre.

The best part of my DDP (and for every student with him) is, he'll get work done from you and you won't know it [:)]. Yeah!! believe me, it's true. I can informally say that I didn't do anything in my project and if you believe me, I can change my statement and show you enough results to justify my grades. But the whole credit goes to this person. How many times I have met him just to say, "Sir! I didn't do anything." And I always wondered how can a person (specially guide!) always encouraged even in that situation. I have seen people with various problems (academic/non-academic) taking help from him. And even if you make him angry once (though you have to work really hard for this), he doesn't let that anger come in between your future interactions. He always start afresh, I simply was amazed by this quality. Almost all of us have a lot of prejudices and keep consistently making them. I have learnt many a things from him. Some gross things are: time management (you won't believe that he has a diary with all the appointments, lying always in his pocket), power of language and words, politeness and many more subtle things. Though I admit, I only have seen them and appreciated, but I wasn't able to incorporate many of them in me.

I'll be leaving this place in a few days and don't know when will I be back here, and seeing past memories, I am feeling very sad. I guess this is the first time, I am feeling so in my life. I hadn't this feeling to such an extent even when I left my home in 2002 for coming here. It must be quite similar to the one just before death, if there is any at that moment [:)]. I know that the time is very powerful and makes us adapt to all the situations, but i am sure, time, this time, has a difficult challenge ahead [:)].

A bit about myself and friends know better: I am a very critical person, and doesn't appreciate something very easily. And in the wake of this, the above said words gain more importance. I'll put a limit to my words now for the sake of readers.. There is a saying, "Iski jitni taarif karo, utni hi kam hai". I am sure that was made for people like him. My sincere warm regards for my true Guru, Prof. V.M. Gadre.