Turning 23 and in sometime 24..

I have been writing this post about me turning 21. And then I turned 22, sadly 23 and now in sometime I will be 24. Looking back at my life, it has actually been great. The number of people I have met, the miseries and happiness and loads of other things have taught me great lessons. I am always thankful to my parents for being friendly and never conservative.

I wrote enough about my life at Trivandrum. I kinda found that place nice, and it has been a long 9 years since I have been there and I badly miss Trivandrum. I have reasons to go back there soon, hopefully I will. Need to walk along the streets I walked before. Those Hindi tuitions(for those of my friends in Mumbai, I was really bad in Hindi back then. Now I can clear your Hindi doubts :P ) and those really fast cycling I would do on my way to the tuition. And Sagara and City Chef, our favorite spots for Fish Curry meals and Porota and Chicken Fry. Trivandrum was a foodies haven back then, I believe it is even now.

And finally had to say a bid good-bye to that wonderful place, was I really happy to leave Trivandrum? I don't really know. But by the end of our times there we faced real serious issues with our house getting robbed and those incidents were never pleasant. And yeah that was the first place from where I tasted Beer and rakesh too tasted it.lol. We had been on this family trip to Kutraalam(water falls) and on our way back we went to a KTDC hotel and tried it. It tasted yuck for me and Rakesh since then found drinking beer awesome :P. Then one really nice thing that happened was joining the nature club there and we went on this trip to hmmm I forgot, but we went on a Butterfly observation trip along the forest. It was fun.

And Pappa got his transfer to Vadakkancherry branch I guess. It was not really great coming back, I didn't have any CBSE schools back then closeby other than Chinmaya and getting an admission was not so easy there. So I ended up getting into Gurukulam, another place which influenced me very much. A not-so-great school back then, with good enough infrastructure. Coming back from a great school in Kendriya Vidhyalaya,Pallipuram my expectations were high. But here I found this modest school nothing significant to boast about. But yeah, there was good enough education there. I went with mummy to finalize the admission and stuffs. The classes had begun there and so I was asked to study well and take down the previous classes notes and stuffs.

Everything was kinda fine but then here we had this sets and functions in Math, which I didn't know before and the classes on that topic was among the ones I missed, thanks to my late coming back and late admission. So I was quite weak in it. And yeah the class, I didn't see any known faces the first time I went inside. Then I met Govindan, he studied with me at Gangothri 3 years back before I left for Trivandrum. A thin fellow, not-so-tall and he was just the same. He had this unique way of running. And talking about Gangothri, I missed mentioning in detail about my life there. I need more time to recollect, so let me keep it in buffer for later. And yeah Govindan helped me make more friends I guess, I don't remember how I made friends there initially but I did make many friends.

Yeah yeah, got it. I made friends with students who came from Nemmara, there was quite a few of them in the class and so I started going back with them. We would at times walk till Trippalur, it was like 10-15 mins walk from school after crossing the High way. And we would even have some snacks there. It was fun studying in a school, not much problems and tension. Only thing you need to do is enjoy and study. How easy a life that was way back. And yeah the first unit test happened. I guess I failed in Math and biology. Maths exam was like full of questions from sets and functions which I was not good at. And this invigilator, she would keep looking at my answer sheet to see if I wrote anything. And I remember not writing anything good enough. And while the paper was being distributed, I had to go through a caning from Binil Sir. He kinda liked me and expected me to score well, I very much disappointed him.

Then it was not too long by the time I made good friends in the school. There was Manoj,Sandeep,Sooraj,Sarath,Jecin,Jayesh and a few others who became very good friends with me back then. Manoj was also a new joinee like me and I guess we sat together. State syllabus was easy and fun. But then you had to be good at mugging up and if possible some understanding. If you could do both then its like the easiest. And forgot to say, since I was no mug with Malayalam, not that I couldn't read or write but I didn't really want to learn Malayalam since I knew enough for my calling myself a Malayali, I took special and additional English. We had a teacher from near by college to take that subject. So everytime this class came, we would go out to attend it at one of the last class rooms by the right end of the school, it was a make shift class separated from the Malayalam medium class for 9th standard.

And yeah the first infactuation at Gurukulam, seriously not my mistake. Everytime I would go for this Special english class, there was this girl in the Malayalam medium class who would look at me at every opportunity. Am seriously not boasting, but back then I looked better :P. And we played this eye-to-eye game just looking at eachother and no talking. Lol it was one way to get over with the class without boring myself much. And it became a habit, she was kinda okay I guess I cant really recollect how she looked now. And that particular year the State Sports meet was scheduled at Palakkad, so being a known school there our school was to participate in a small parade kinda thing and so all of us were taken to the college where the meet was held. And there this girl was very close to me and still we would only look.lol. It was fun, thinking about it now. And my friends would make fun of me saying this and that.

And then I guess she changed the school and shifted to somewhere else. Later I heard from friends that her name was Athira, and she was kinda poor at studies, that could also be the reason for her parents deciding to change her school. And yeah the school cultural festival, I participated in Tamil poem recitation,english essay and I guess English poem recitation as well. I didn't do one of them well and that was when Haseena came over and was trying to console me, yeah yet another great friend I made over the years. She has always been a great friend, got married last year. I went for her wedding too:). Thanks to the recitation or me not doing it well I made a good friend. And I won th English essay, I don't know about the other things I won but I did win another event as well. Not sure which one. And we had this interesting activity at Gurukulam called Srishti(means creation). There was this board right at the entrance of the building and every class was assigned the task of decorating it and posting interesting articles or drawings on it. It was a fun activity.

By this time I made friends with everyone in the class, the list is big. It was a nice class to be in and my place was always at the back. A back-bencher who would keep murmuring all through every class. There is lot more to write about this school, will be continued.

A post after sooo long!!

Am employed now. Boring life. But yeah Mumbai is a great city to be in, no doubts. It has been like a smooth job, nothing really interesting though. 4 hours of travel everyday makes me regret a lot thinking about the amount of time I waste travelling everyday. Enough of my current life, nothing great. I would rather write from where I stopped last year. I cross my fingers, hoping it wont be too big a post.

Life is always like a roller-coaster they say. And it truly is. It was fun studying, or the fun was that there was not much studying in college. My part time event management jobs were good enough. I worked with the IPL at Chennai, it was fun but it really showed me the other side of a this big event. Which I dare not speak about. I learnt a lot of things there, and the funniest things that happened there was that cause of my sincerity to what I did there, I ended up in real deep shit trying to stop the then city asst. police commissioner and he wanted me to be put in jail right away. I somehow escaped, I can never forget those 10 mins in my life. You shouldn't be the bad man doing the good job with the big guy!!

After ILP I did few other small stuffs, and then bid a big bye to events. I don't think I did the wrong thing. It was good to move on. And now Rakesh does events, he is happy with it and wants to keep doing it. And by the end of my 4 years of college, I found the love of my life. More about her later lol :)

And then life went pretty fast, it still is going fast. My results came and I cleared and became an engineer. I was never proud, I was just another of the lakhs of engineers this country produces, not good in what I learnt. No regrets though. That was when Pappa got transferred, he got Delhi first, with some force we changed it to Mumbai. The big Indian city, it was like a dream to be here. I followed Pappa to Mumbai, I was slow to follow him here, and he would pester me with messages saying time once lost doesn't come back..do something and don't waster your time doing nothing there..learn some Java or some programming, it will help..You haven't decided what you want to do next..and finally I booked my ticket to Mumbai. I had registered in TCS website a day before I booked the ticket and on the day I went to take printout of my ticket I got this hall ticket for a campus program scheduled at Mumbai right on the day I would reach Mumbai. Coincidence, is the term they coined for such an occurrence. And yeah while I was at Chennai, I used to majestically waste time doing nothing. Everyone kinda joined somewhere either an IT company or some BPO for the time being. I was almost a loner then, atleast for the better part where I wasted time.

Then I came to Mumbai one fine morning, got ready and went for the placement drive. I didn't want to inform Pappa, mummy or any of my friends about this but had to tell Pappa since I didn't know about Mumbai. I was of the impression that, if at all I get in then they would want me to work in an IT company, I was not very keen about it. I didn't come to Mumbai to work in an IT firm. But life goes the way it wants to, not listening to us. I got selected, thanks to that cool guy who interviewed me. Pappa called up mummy, she also came to know. lol. She wasn't surprised. Getting a job made me lazier, I became more lazy thinking I have a job and I don't need to find a new one anymore. That I believe is one of the biggest mistake I did my whole life. No regrets now, that stage again passed the test of time.

And I did attend 3 interviews after that, one was for a sales company. I kinda felt bad, cause that job would have taught me few things I am not so great at now. I should have taken it up atleast for a few months. Then the next one was another IT company, if I were in the interviewers shoes I wouldn't have picked myself then. I was bad at answering their questions, but they said they got what they looked for in me since I asked them why. I feel they had to meet target.. :P Another interview was the one I wanted to be through, but I couldn't, not having been rejected before it was not a good feeling. But again time makes you forget atleast a few things in life. And coming to Mumbai meant, I could meet many of my relatives I only heard about. And having met them made me feel I have company here. Thanks to my cousins here, last Diwali I had Pani puri for dinner :D. Thanks to Prashanth etta and Shefali Chechi. It is always good to have someone we can gel with easily at a new place, and here it turned out to be my cousins since I didn't have any friend in Mumbai initially.

Then my passion for finance and enough research made sure I would write CFA exam. I started studying and after a long wait TCS call came. I was just about to register for the exams then, but decided against it till my training got over. I went for the training and I can say it was once of the best times. I was like a single mallu in a group of nearly 190 students, there were no Tamilians and there were a few Telugu people who were born and bought up in Mumbai. So I was the only certified South Indian there in my batch. I made friends there, they had a difficult time coping up with my broken Hindi. It was really fun time at the training. One thing I really thank TCS for. It is not always easy to gel with different people, but it was great there. I could learn about the different states in India and know about its people.

We went on a lot of tours and stuffs during training, the Northest I have been in India. And I learnt there are a lot of places to be seen. I wanna visit the whole of this country, with such rich diversity. I am happy to have met some really great people during my training time in TCS. And thanks to all of them, I have a better Hindi now, though Java still remains bad. :) I would like to mention a few names here, but the list can actually go on. And yeah my birthday, not always anyone would have such a birthday like the one I had. Thanks to the guys for all the fun we had there. I can't say more about my b'day in here :P

Then I was deployed at Mumbai, an office 2 hours from where I live. I had no other options. But its good, I kinda work with a good team. I have learnt a lot of things. And yeah I had enrolled for my CFA Level I exam, it got over and am waiting for the result. I have done pretty well, the most effort I have ever put whole my life for any exam. Lets see what the result would be. I want to continue blogging, this is just an effort to kick start my writing habit again. A deliberate effort. But yes, I would be updating my blog regularly from now on, I at least want to do so. And its already too big.


Rahul