5 things that changed my life
5 things that changed my life 4/29/2006
I had a teacher in my village school that use to always tell me one thing. “If you dream to achieve something in life it is always possible. Whether you succeed or not is totally dependent on the intensity of desire you have in your heart for that goal. The ultimate source of the energy is within you itself. “
I though understood what it meant did not believe in it; however as I entered the higher secondary in the city of margao I got affected by a kind of inferiority complex. I saw smarter and smartest people around me and I saw them achieving what they wanted. How? I thought they were intelligent and smarter than me. I blamed myself for not being like them. Thankfully I did not try to become like them I knew each person is different and there is no point in imitating someone. But a person can change and I always tried to change myself. To day when I look behind the memory lane I see a tremendous change in my personality not exactly the way I wanted but certainly an acceptable change. I see 5 main reasons that made me change. There is a 6th reason also which should feature right before all of them but not all things can be mentioned to others.
1st
But somewhere deep in my heart there was a voice that told me that I just need a small impulse that can give back me my confidence and determination to achieve something significant in life. That was precisely the reason why I joined Information Technology engineering rather than computer or electronics which were supposed to have better scope. Instead of joining ETC or CS would have made me one of those students but I wanted to be one of kind.
In InfoTech I thought the students will be not so smart and hence I will be the smartest among them and that might help me to gain some confidence. Surely the decision was smart one. I wouldn’t say that I was the smartest but I was never a small fry out there in my class. I saw people appreciating my knowledge and skills which made me feel special. I never wanted to be proud of what I was good at but I wanted everyone to know that I am not one of those who just blindly follows trends. I wanted to be a trend setter. The day I joined IT in GEC I think was the most important day in my life. It was a new life for me.
Though GEC did not satisfy my expectations from an eng. college it gave me lot many things. There are so many things about GEC that I would rather love to forget but I can not deny that this institution was responsible for that great change in the personality of a small village boy suffering from some kind was infi. complex that he is not so smart.
2nd
To be honest with others is very difficult and to be honest to yourself is more difficult. Sometimes we know the wrong things in us but we do not admit them. One thing I have learnt from the autobiographies of great people is that they admitted their mistakes and incapability better than others not just that but they worked to improve on them.
Just after 2 sems in GEC I met a boy from my village who was doing eng. in some low reputed college somewhere in Maharashtra. He was rather surprised to hear that I did not get backlogs in my first 2 sems. He challenged me that eng. is not so easy and the studies will get difficult and more difficult for me in the higher sems and I won’t be able to pass eng. without backs.
That really hurt me. I was extremely good in computers and all that stuff. I could not imagine myself getting a back in any of the IT courses. How can I fail? It happened and it was very difficult for me to digest. I got an unexpected backlog in discrete math a subject I was by default good at and I loved that subject like anything. I didn’t know how come but I did not ask that question to myself. How come?
The day the results were out I faced every friend of mine. Mohnish, Sid, Ashish and all getting distinctions and very good marks and me getting a back and extremely pathetic score in all the subjects. What really hurt me was the score of 42 in Data structures a subject I was so good at. Things which looked so beautiful until yesterday looked very ugly today. It was one of the longest days in my life. Everybody showed their surprise at my results and I felt that they made fun of me. Some felt sorry but some looked very excited to say that he just mugs up the things and hence he couldn’t pass in mathematics.
As usual I never showed the emotional side of me. I kept a smiling face said that failures are just a part of my life and we should learn to live with it. That was my philosophy but I had lots of clouds gathering in mind. I went home put on my PC and started listening to one of the Gazals. 'Dil hi to hai Na samazega, Koi hume batayein kyon. Royenge hum hazar baar, koy hume sataye kyon..' Chitra Singhs voice gave my heart a way to express my emotions.
This incidence thought me two good lessons. First; I was not among those fortunate who get success without doing anything hard. Second, failures are just a part of life and they strengthen your character to make you a stronger man than before.
3rd
I don’t like people who act smarter than they are. Aniket was just one of those. The day he entered as a diplomat (students coming for degree after diploma) and spoke in such a way as if he was the king od our class. He entered and told our DSAC prof. that he was late because he was in toilet along with a raised finger. The class was laughing and I thought it was very unusual and this man was different from us. I saw that he had a very dominating nature, kind of people I don’t like to face. He was accompanied by two jumbo-sized students who looked just like the wrestlers in WWE. It seemed that they were very enthusiastic and were totally dependent on Aniket for the source of ideas. Any way I did not like that such people entered our peaceful class.
The worst thing happened and Aniket joined our practical batch. I was very apprehensive to face him and since I was the first bencher he probably took me as an ordinary studious boy who knew only but studying. Our first DSAC practs was a clash between us. He threatened to kill me in a very unusual style. Keeping a one rupee coin in my hand he said "Go call your mom and tell her that you are not going to come home today." I was not used to listen to this kind of dialogs and was not quit assertive about his capabilities to do so. Slowly he learnt about me and I learnt about him. His confidence was in the form of aggression. Probably he believed that, it was the best way to defend him. Also he was at least 6 years older than us and had seen lot more about life than any of us. He must have thought that these all are kids in front of him and tried to prove his superiority but eventually I guess he learnt that, the best strategy was to get mixed with everyone else and be one of them.
Certain things I learnt from him. To put it in better words, I envied him for certain skills he had. The way he spoke to people the way he buttered them and finally cooked his own KHICHADI. He even buttered me and took all my programs from me and just fooled around during practs. I do not regret this because I loved to do programs and helping others is in my blood. Though I felt that he utilized his time in studying more and that fetched more marks to him. Absolutely, no regrets about that. I too solved one of my problems through him. I use to write the programs and he use to take printouts for me. One of the lab assistants was his childhood friend.
I wondered how come he managed to put people in his pocket so easily. I learnt from him how to talk with people how to butter them and make them feel good to get your work done. Acting smarter than what you actually are works well sometimes. He showed me how easy life can be if you have better communication skills. Everybody found a friend in him, he was with everybody but I felt that he is different. He has purposefully maintained a distance from everyone else even with his two close diplomat friends.
Whatever it may be he was one of my closest friends and I found him very trustworthy. There were so many things that I learnt from him. Though he did not tell me anything about his personal life I could guess what all things must have made him this kind of person. Some said he was exploiting me but I never bothered. As long as I get my work done I need not bother about others. Now that’s what I had learnt from him.
4th
Not two many girls got opportunity to peek inside my life. Whatever stuff started between me and Neha was just because of phone calls. I had no attraction for her nor I found anything special in her. I thought she was very dumb. But no she was fairly smart. I don’t know what she felt about me but somewhere I thought she got emotionally involved in me. On my side I was just getting bored with my life and wanted some spice into it. Something other than my programming skills capable of attracting people’s attention to me. That was the only reason I guess I allowed her to come so close to me.
That was not a waste of time. I learnt a lot about female psychology from her. What I had learnt from my little experience with girls was that they have a habit of telling lies. And if the girl is very pretty then it is hard to disbelieve her. But when they tell you how smart they acted by telling lies to others you get a doubt in your mind that perhaps you too are forming a similar story for her to tell others. I was getting what I wanted from her and I was happy.
People started to talk about both of us and everybody was curious to know how such a quite boy got this girl and how come this girl managed to potofy him. Actually that was not the case. Some things never happen in reality its our perspective that make us feel that it happened. For example sun never disappears from sky not even during the eclipse; we are at the wrong position.
I will not like to admit it but she certainly attained some importance in my life. I don’t like to involve myself into things that I cant get off within 30 seconds. But whatever we had between us was not the typical girl-boy attraction at least not from my side.
One more quality that girls posses is to make fair comments in a nice way. They can nicely express whatever they feel. May be they think to much about people and relationships. When two guys come together they either talk about politics or girls or cricket. I liked all the comments Neha made about me. Some I know were true some I was aware of and in some case I could make out that she lied. She helped me to improve myself.
I can write more about her but I have some special dedicated blogs for the whole story.
5th
I came to know about my GATE results in the strangest way. A ETC guy was asking other students on bus stand about who is this ‘Akshar Prabhu Desai’ he told others that his All India Rank was 50. Unbelievable! I thought. I had worked hard for GATE and right from 1st year I had concentrated on it. But this amount of success was very surprising. This event brought a great change in me. Now I understood what my teacher in school use to say.
When I checked the results on net and very next day I saw so many guys and gals congratulating me for my success. There is no tonic like success. I use to tell others and now I was learning what it meant.
I understood that sky is the limit if you are set to conquer it. All the doubts in my mind are extinct. It is not my over confidance that I will succeed in whatever I do. No I don’t expect that I will succeed in everything I do but I do believe that I am capable of doing it. And when I am capable I don’t see any reason why I should not try for it.
My attitude towards people changed after this. The inferiority complex suddenly disappeared, my image in my own mind got improved. I wont mind now not getting into IITs but I ll never forget this achievement in my life. This achievement is unforgettable not because I was 50th and I was better than thousands. But because I understood that any ordinary person among lakhs can achieve something extraordinary if he has a burning desire for it. Friends, I am very sure now that my lfie is not going to be a waste. I would achieve something that will make a difference to this. I believe that I am a common man. I am not so intelligent etc. as my friends think of me but I am much focused. I know exactly how I am going to shape my life and I want this to happen with everybody around me. The day this will happen with the youth in this nation the face of this nation is going to change. I had read somewhere about Vivekananda saying “ give me 100 young people like me and I ll change the face of our nation.” I cant even compare me with him but I understood why he was so confident.
I had a teacher in my village school that use to always tell me one thing. “If you dream to achieve something in life it is always possible. Whether you succeed or not is totally dependent on the intensity of desire you have in your heart for that goal. The ultimate source of the energy is within you itself. “
I though understood what it meant did not believe in it; however as I entered the higher secondary in the city of margao I got affected by a kind of inferiority complex. I saw smarter and smartest people around me and I saw them achieving what they wanted. How? I thought they were intelligent and smarter than me. I blamed myself for not being like them. Thankfully I did not try to become like them I knew each person is different and there is no point in imitating someone. But a person can change and I always tried to change myself. To day when I look behind the memory lane I see a tremendous change in my personality not exactly the way I wanted but certainly an acceptable change. I see 5 main reasons that made me change. There is a 6th reason also which should feature right before all of them but not all things can be mentioned to others.
1st
But somewhere deep in my heart there was a voice that told me that I just need a small impulse that can give back me my confidence and determination to achieve something significant in life. That was precisely the reason why I joined Information Technology engineering rather than computer or electronics which were supposed to have better scope. Instead of joining ETC or CS would have made me one of those students but I wanted to be one of kind.
In InfoTech I thought the students will be not so smart and hence I will be the smartest among them and that might help me to gain some confidence. Surely the decision was smart one. I wouldn’t say that I was the smartest but I was never a small fry out there in my class. I saw people appreciating my knowledge and skills which made me feel special. I never wanted to be proud of what I was good at but I wanted everyone to know that I am not one of those who just blindly follows trends. I wanted to be a trend setter. The day I joined IT in GEC I think was the most important day in my life. It was a new life for me.
Though GEC did not satisfy my expectations from an eng. college it gave me lot many things. There are so many things about GEC that I would rather love to forget but I can not deny that this institution was responsible for that great change in the personality of a small village boy suffering from some kind was infi. complex that he is not so smart.
2nd
To be honest with others is very difficult and to be honest to yourself is more difficult. Sometimes we know the wrong things in us but we do not admit them. One thing I have learnt from the autobiographies of great people is that they admitted their mistakes and incapability better than others not just that but they worked to improve on them.
Just after 2 sems in GEC I met a boy from my village who was doing eng. in some low reputed college somewhere in Maharashtra. He was rather surprised to hear that I did not get backlogs in my first 2 sems. He challenged me that eng. is not so easy and the studies will get difficult and more difficult for me in the higher sems and I won’t be able to pass eng. without backs.
That really hurt me. I was extremely good in computers and all that stuff. I could not imagine myself getting a back in any of the IT courses. How can I fail? It happened and it was very difficult for me to digest. I got an unexpected backlog in discrete math a subject I was by default good at and I loved that subject like anything. I didn’t know how come but I did not ask that question to myself. How come?
The day the results were out I faced every friend of mine. Mohnish, Sid, Ashish and all getting distinctions and very good marks and me getting a back and extremely pathetic score in all the subjects. What really hurt me was the score of 42 in Data structures a subject I was so good at. Things which looked so beautiful until yesterday looked very ugly today. It was one of the longest days in my life. Everybody showed their surprise at my results and I felt that they made fun of me. Some felt sorry but some looked very excited to say that he just mugs up the things and hence he couldn’t pass in mathematics.
As usual I never showed the emotional side of me. I kept a smiling face said that failures are just a part of my life and we should learn to live with it. That was my philosophy but I had lots of clouds gathering in mind. I went home put on my PC and started listening to one of the Gazals. 'Dil hi to hai Na samazega, Koi hume batayein kyon. Royenge hum hazar baar, koy hume sataye kyon..' Chitra Singhs voice gave my heart a way to express my emotions.
This incidence thought me two good lessons. First; I was not among those fortunate who get success without doing anything hard. Second, failures are just a part of life and they strengthen your character to make you a stronger man than before.
3rd
I don’t like people who act smarter than they are. Aniket was just one of those. The day he entered as a diplomat (students coming for degree after diploma) and spoke in such a way as if he was the king od our class. He entered and told our DSAC prof. that he was late because he was in toilet along with a raised finger. The class was laughing and I thought it was very unusual and this man was different from us. I saw that he had a very dominating nature, kind of people I don’t like to face. He was accompanied by two jumbo-sized students who looked just like the wrestlers in WWE. It seemed that they were very enthusiastic and were totally dependent on Aniket for the source of ideas. Any way I did not like that such people entered our peaceful class.
The worst thing happened and Aniket joined our practical batch. I was very apprehensive to face him and since I was the first bencher he probably took me as an ordinary studious boy who knew only but studying. Our first DSAC practs was a clash between us. He threatened to kill me in a very unusual style. Keeping a one rupee coin in my hand he said "Go call your mom and tell her that you are not going to come home today." I was not used to listen to this kind of dialogs and was not quit assertive about his capabilities to do so. Slowly he learnt about me and I learnt about him. His confidence was in the form of aggression. Probably he believed that, it was the best way to defend him. Also he was at least 6 years older than us and had seen lot more about life than any of us. He must have thought that these all are kids in front of him and tried to prove his superiority but eventually I guess he learnt that, the best strategy was to get mixed with everyone else and be one of them.
Certain things I learnt from him. To put it in better words, I envied him for certain skills he had. The way he spoke to people the way he buttered them and finally cooked his own KHICHADI. He even buttered me and took all my programs from me and just fooled around during practs. I do not regret this because I loved to do programs and helping others is in my blood. Though I felt that he utilized his time in studying more and that fetched more marks to him. Absolutely, no regrets about that. I too solved one of my problems through him. I use to write the programs and he use to take printouts for me. One of the lab assistants was his childhood friend.
I wondered how come he managed to put people in his pocket so easily. I learnt from him how to talk with people how to butter them and make them feel good to get your work done. Acting smarter than what you actually are works well sometimes. He showed me how easy life can be if you have better communication skills. Everybody found a friend in him, he was with everybody but I felt that he is different. He has purposefully maintained a distance from everyone else even with his two close diplomat friends.
Whatever it may be he was one of my closest friends and I found him very trustworthy. There were so many things that I learnt from him. Though he did not tell me anything about his personal life I could guess what all things must have made him this kind of person. Some said he was exploiting me but I never bothered. As long as I get my work done I need not bother about others. Now that’s what I had learnt from him.
4th
Not two many girls got opportunity to peek inside my life. Whatever stuff started between me and Neha was just because of phone calls. I had no attraction for her nor I found anything special in her. I thought she was very dumb. But no she was fairly smart. I don’t know what she felt about me but somewhere I thought she got emotionally involved in me. On my side I was just getting bored with my life and wanted some spice into it. Something other than my programming skills capable of attracting people’s attention to me. That was the only reason I guess I allowed her to come so close to me.
That was not a waste of time. I learnt a lot about female psychology from her. What I had learnt from my little experience with girls was that they have a habit of telling lies. And if the girl is very pretty then it is hard to disbelieve her. But when they tell you how smart they acted by telling lies to others you get a doubt in your mind that perhaps you too are forming a similar story for her to tell others. I was getting what I wanted from her and I was happy.
People started to talk about both of us and everybody was curious to know how such a quite boy got this girl and how come this girl managed to potofy him. Actually that was not the case. Some things never happen in reality its our perspective that make us feel that it happened. For example sun never disappears from sky not even during the eclipse; we are at the wrong position.
I will not like to admit it but she certainly attained some importance in my life. I don’t like to involve myself into things that I cant get off within 30 seconds. But whatever we had between us was not the typical girl-boy attraction at least not from my side.
One more quality that girls posses is to make fair comments in a nice way. They can nicely express whatever they feel. May be they think to much about people and relationships. When two guys come together they either talk about politics or girls or cricket. I liked all the comments Neha made about me. Some I know were true some I was aware of and in some case I could make out that she lied. She helped me to improve myself.
I can write more about her but I have some special dedicated blogs for the whole story.
5th
I came to know about my GATE results in the strangest way. A ETC guy was asking other students on bus stand about who is this ‘Akshar Prabhu Desai’ he told others that his All India Rank was 50. Unbelievable! I thought. I had worked hard for GATE and right from 1st year I had concentrated on it. But this amount of success was very surprising. This event brought a great change in me. Now I understood what my teacher in school use to say.
When I checked the results on net and very next day I saw so many guys and gals congratulating me for my success. There is no tonic like success. I use to tell others and now I was learning what it meant.
I understood that sky is the limit if you are set to conquer it. All the doubts in my mind are extinct. It is not my over confidance that I will succeed in whatever I do. No I don’t expect that I will succeed in everything I do but I do believe that I am capable of doing it. And when I am capable I don’t see any reason why I should not try for it.
My attitude towards people changed after this. The inferiority complex suddenly disappeared, my image in my own mind got improved. I wont mind now not getting into IITs but I ll never forget this achievement in my life. This achievement is unforgettable not because I was 50th and I was better than thousands. But because I understood that any ordinary person among lakhs can achieve something extraordinary if he has a burning desire for it. Friends, I am very sure now that my lfie is not going to be a waste. I would achieve something that will make a difference to this. I believe that I am a common man. I am not so intelligent etc. as my friends think of me but I am much focused. I know exactly how I am going to shape my life and I want this to happen with everybody around me. The day this will happen with the youth in this nation the face of this nation is going to change. I had read somewhere about Vivekananda saying “ give me 100 young people like me and I ll change the face of our nation.” I cant even compare me with him but I understood why he was so confident.
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