A tribute to Uncle Pai

Everyone who knows me, must have seen me at least once with my nose in book, lost in the world built by the author. I have been a voracious reader since I was kid and surprisingly never tried to think back to the time I started loving books. Now that I think back, I believe my mom is to blame for it as it all started when she bought me all the classics like 20,000 leagues under the sea, Moby dick, Heidi, Black Beauty, etc and at the same got me subscriptions to Chandamama, Champak and my favorite of them all Tinkle!

I remember checking the letter box everyday immediately after returning from school to check if the latest issue had been delivered. After a couple of years, I turned my attention to Enid Blyton and the Chandamama and Champak subscriptions were discarded but Tinkle continued on. The reason for this had less to do with the magazine itself and more to do with its editorAnant Pai, who was known to all children as Uncle Pai.

I had the pleasure of meeting him once, when he had come to Pune and I look back on it with a smile on my face. He was very kind to a little girl who had been in a tiny accident on route to the meeting and had a few scratches. He also ensured that her grandfather who had a cut on his arm received first aid and was offered refreshment. He did all this while handling some 30-40 kids who had come to attend the mythology quiz he was conducting. Last week I read that he had passed away and I felt sad. Sad that I didn't keep in touch with him as I went from a young reader to an adult, Sad that I didn't let him know, that when I travel in a train, I invariably buy a Tinkle Digest to read even now. I should have also told him, that my fascination of Hindu mythology began with tales heard from my great grandmother and watching Ramayana & Mahabharata on DoorDarshan but a lot of incidents that I can be heard quoting these days are sourced from Amar Chitra Katha. Most of all I felt sad for all Tinkle readers who will never again receive a letter signed "Uncle Pai".

And so based on a suggestion from my friend Suman, I am going to share letters from him, that I have kept for all these years. Rest In Peace Uncle Pai. You will be missed by readers all over!

My first rejection letter.

The second one!

My very first and only acceptance letter

The quiz invite where I met him

He remembered the greeting I gave him at the Quiz

One of the last letters we exchanged

The stickers that were always sent with his letters

30 Things to do before turning 30

Someone very close to me is turning 30 in a few months, and was regretting not making a list of 30 things to do before turning 30. So i thought I will learn from this and make my list while I still have some years to do them. On an offside, I love making lists, so the blog is going to have a lot of lists. :)

1. Get a bachelor's degree & at the very least start my master's
2. Buy a house
3. Get married
4. Watch a cricket match in a stadium
5. Go for a live concert
6. Reach a min 7 figure yearly salary
7. Go scuba diving
8. Try para-gliding
9. Visit at the very least 3 foreign countries
10. learn to play one musical instrument
11. visit 50 cities/towns in India
12. Meet Rahul Dravid!!!
13. Come up with a plan for my own startup (which will be up and running before I am 40)
14. Get sloshed!!!!
15. Kidnap my better half for a surprise vacation

Need 15 more to add... will add as I think of them... any pointers are appreciated :)

Status Update.. for my friends

This is a status update on my life for my friends

Its been a long time since I blogged and my life has changed a lot during that time! I have left my first love(my first job) and joined a new one. Basically I have switched from Infosys to Yahoo!. Before anyone comments about me being in Yahoo and using Google... I am just checking out the competition ;)

As Yahoo! development center is there in Bangalore, I have moved from Pune to Bangalore. So now I have 3 roommates whom I love and a rented house that I don't. Also a hole is appearing in my pocket due to all the money I spend on travelling home and back.

The silver lining is, I now have a lot of new friends and a job that pays me double the previous one. That's it from Kadambari Times. Goodbye for now!

Disappointments or Blessings???

I think most ppl r gonna find this post of mine overly philosophical...

Yesterday, I found out that my mgr had rejected some aspirations of mine. So i spent today in a total blue funk!!! didn't even go to work. But by the end of the day, i realised that this was not the end of the road... life is abt being flexible, rolling with the punches. I realised that till now i had been putting my further studies on hold, thinking that all the hard work i put in was noticed and appreciated, that opportunities would be made available from time to time.

Today i realised the importance of having a back-up plan. I believe that i am an overly ambitious person and so the rate at which i grow professionally
is as important to me as how much i grow. when i found this rate slowing down and could not understand the reason for it, i started getting frustrated with work, with family and friends, with life in general.

Today, i guess my mom was going through somethings similar, and she got irritated with me over a very trivial reason. I was going to fight with her about
it, when i realised that i had also been doing the same thing for the past month or so. That is when i realised that i needed to pull myself up by my boot straps and work out a plan by which i could either DEMAND for what i wanted or have a back up plan by which i could get what i wanted without needing my company to give it to me.

Now i have decided that i will always have a backup plan. No matter even if i am planning something very trivial, coz life is always gonna throw curve balls, the carpet is gonna get pulled out from under ur feet and so on.

Also i have learned that i must not let my professional life spill over into my personal life, or i will be unhappy 6 days out a week.

That's it...i am done "philosophising" for the day.... n i honestly hope that not many ppl read this..........