Bring a ‘SMILE’ on someone’s face this New year!!

As someone rightly said “there is no biggest joy than giving joy to others”, let’s start our New year by bringing SMILE on someone’s face and let them feel special!!

Some of the ways which I feel we can do to get that SMILE;

1. Appreciate your dear one’s and Thank them for all they have contributed in your life and feel it from your heart (I will fall short of my words expressing my feelings to all…)

2. Just come out of your comfort level and do live a simple life atleast for a day and you will realize how lucky you are and you will surely do something for people are deprived of basic things…..

3. I know we all are very busy in our lives…..but do spare out some time with family/friends and see the effect, you will fell livelier and enjoy life differently.

4. Always help people in need in any form….believe me in some way or other you will get goodness back in some form.

5. Donate your old clothes regularly…there are many people who can’t survive in this extreme winters…..donate books, help a needy child got to school, etc.

6. When people ask us for some donations why do we think so much even to shell off 100 bucks and we feel the same is very less when we are at CCD……?? So true right, this happens….

So….simply cut off your unnecessary expenses and donate generously, even a penny will help a needy accomplish his dreams/needs.

7. Never the less, don’t forget to SMILE…to get a beautiful SMILE on someone’s face.... :)

There are tons of ways, we could get a SMILE….these are few I felt like sharing. I am going to do my bit throughout……

Let it be clothes/books donations…thanks to my office and the NGO.

Let me share something….i am a volunteer at Great Foundation NGO and we teach Maths/English to the municipal school kids on Saturday mornings. I don’t feel like getting up so early that on a Saturday that too after a very tiring week, but it is the kid’s smiling faces, appreciations that give me the driving force…. :)

I can’t get this joy anywhere. I know I can’t please all the students…but when atleast a child thanks me for what I have taught them and they tell me “mam you teach really well and you will come next week rgt?” nothing can beat this…..i feel more motivated.

So, always Thank and appreciate people for what they have done and keep spreading the SMILE :)

Do you use Incongnito Mode?

Most of the crowd today can’t survive without browsing. It’s become a day to day affair for us. But how safe is you data when it comes to data security? Especially, when you are doing some online banking transactions or checking personal mails on some stranger’s PC.

If you are not aware, Google Chrome/Firefox has provided a new feature called “Incognito Window” for such private browsing. If you don’t want your browsing history to be traced or any cookie to be preserved, then you should use this feature to save your data.

Instructions to access them:

1. Open Google Chrome.

2. Click on this icon at the end of the address bar.

3. Select “New Incognito Window” from the options.

So simple rgt?? So, whenever you are browsing on stranger’s PC and don’t want to leave any traces or cookies then go incognito…J

Incognito mode is a read-only mode which is a secure mode and does not preserve any data on the disk, except the files downloaded.

PS- Have a safe browsing !!

Learn to face problems bravely

A story, I wanted to share;
There was a mango tree in a forest and kids used to take away the mango which were easily pluckable. After some days, the tree had no mangoes left at the extremes and hence no more kids now took the risk of climbing high up to get them.
One day, a kid passed by the tree and wanted to have the mangoes. He was hungry and did not think much & climbed the tree. He did not realize the risk involved, until he slipped off the branch and was hanging on the tree. He was very scared and started crying for help.

Then, there was a sadhu (priest) passing by at the same time. He saw this kid crying for help. He started laughing at the kid loudly for few minutes. The kid asked him to stop laughing and help him get down safely. The sadhu then started throwing stones on him, which made the kid more furious. The kid started moving his leg and tried gripping the adjacent branch which was stronger.
As the sadhu observed this, he left the place and the kid alone. The kid got so angry; He wanted to get down quickly and catch hold of the sadhu in order to know the reason behind his abrupt conduct.
The kid got down safely and got hold of the sadhu. Arrogantly, the kid questioned him, “Who the hell are you to laugh and throw stones on me? If you can’t help me, you have no rights to trouble me in such a situation.” Smiling back to the kid, the sadhu replied calmly, “There were 2 reasons for laughing at you; One, you were so greedy of having the mangoes, you did’nt even realize the risk involved in climbing the tree. There is no harm in taking risk, but you should be confident enough to get yourself out, if your encounter some problem instead of crying, that was my 2nd reason for laughing. “

The kid then realized his mistake and asked the sadhu the reason of throwing stones on him. The sadhu replied, “It is not possible for anyone to climb the tree to save you since, the branch you were hanging was weak and it would have not tolerated any more weight. Only you could save your life!”
“You would try moving only if you were made to move; hence I started throwing the stones on you. I saw that you were trying to catch hold of another stronger branch in order to get down. I left the place that moment, since I knew you would get down safely now.”

Moral of the story: Never risk your life to fulfill your greedy needs. What is the point of losing your life for things which you can’t enjoy?
Even if you take risks, be confident enough to face any further good/bad consequences. Don’t regret the decision taken, once you are in trouble.
Only we can get out of any problem. We have the capability, it only needs to be recognized and used appropriately. Remember, we would not get people like the “sadhu” to guide us always, we only need the guiding light which is always enlightening within us, just need to recognize it.

Creators are now, Slaves of Technology

What made me think of this??
I was in a mall; a 60+aged uncle orally calculated the amount of his bill and pointed out some billing mistake to the cashier. That reminded me of my father who would calculate quickly (he is not an engineer) and our aged group people rely on calculator to calculate simple figures.

I thought over it, what is that these aged group people so smarter than our generation. The basic difference was “technology”. Technology has reached its peak now. In those days, all calculation was done manually, human brain was thoroughly processed and that is the reason, they can suggest quick and simple solutions than we can.

We rely on reminders to remind us of important meetings, birthdays of very close friends…… , social networks to remember our friends, details ,etc…….it’s so sad that we rely so much on computers, mobiles instead of our “brains” which will never get lost and betray us, but still we love such materialistic things more than natural gifts…..:-(

We don’t even remember places names, directions to reach them; we trust online maps for every direction …..and many such examples to quote.

Humans have the most unbeatable tool “Brain” which is not been used by us to the fullest. These days, we have become machines/technology dependent species. Agreed, it is these human brains which are the creators of technology, but we have become slaves of them.

Our day starts and ends with technology, Alarms to wake up and music or any entertainment media to go back to bed. By relying on these machines, we stop training our minds, stop doing physical activities which in turn affects our health. By doing so, I believe we don’t have the ability to solve life’s problem unaided. Though these machines give us answers, we seem to be smarter, but in reality we are dumber. I bet if anything could give us best solutions than our “Brain”.

A Smartphone in hand does make a person smarter, he has the entire book of knowledge in his hands, but when that same machine becomes useless, he too becomes useless, handicapped. A simple example, a person parked his car in a huge parking lot, after some hours, when he returns to the place, he gets frustrated when he does not find his car, he wishes if he could find his car on Google search engine tool, this is the extent to which we have now got addicted to technology.

Though we are the creators of these machines, I believe it is we, who are pushing our selves more into darker side and complicating our lives……

This does not mean stop being technical, but we should not get addicted to it, learn to use ‘Brain’ intellectually and make ourselves Brain dependent rather than Technology dependent.

An Angel in my life

God cannot be with you always, so he made angels for everyone in life.
He made such beautiful, lovely Angel for us ….
She has played different roles in my life; I owe my life to her.
She bought me in this world and gave me a lovely life.
She is my first teacher who showed me good and bad in life.
She is my best criticizer, never praised me on face, but has the pride in her heart.
She believes in simplicity and always lived a simple life.
She says, if u cant do good to others, but never think bad for/about others,
She never pushed her feelings on to me, but her advices always help me take right decisions,
She became a friend as I and my sis grew, and now we are very good friends.
She knew all our wishes, feelings, but never expressed her wishes.
She is an angel in our life who forwards our wishes to god…

Thank you god for gifting us ‘Ma’.

Pune was like almost like a foreign place to her when she first came here after marriage.
Being a south Indian, she was unknown of hindi and marathi…She never complained about it, instead fought with the situation. She showed true love, by sacrificing her wishes, lived for her family. According to her, your work, family is god, just devote yourself to it, it like worshiping god. She says, dedicate your time, soul to the work you do, you would find god in that only, and that is true worship of god.

She has faced ups and downs strongly and believes that the more you are in pain, the more value you get in life, like ornaments are made after melting gold. A true artist doesn’t complain of shortage of resources, he will show his skill with the limited tools, only if he has the talent and the will to do it. My mom has got the best out of the few things she has got, whether that is cooking or any creative stuff she has done. She has taught us to look at people who are less fortunate than you and you would get the encouragement to fight any situation.


It is little easier to get praised from closed friends, relatives, but difficult to get praised from strangers. I feel very proud when, my friends, my dad’s and my sis’s friends praise her. One of the recent incidents to be mentioned, usually children encourage their parents to dare to do something dangerous ,like climbing dangerous peaks, but in kodaikanal, it was my mom who bravely did it and encouraged me, it was one of the most memorable moment for me. She got uncountable compliments in the trip for being so young, so brave, courageous, proud of you mom. The guide tells me “Your mom’s very brave and strong, Take care of her and keep her always happy.” When you see and hear such things, you get encouraged naturally and I feel lucky for that. She must have grown by age, but by heart she still very brave, strong and very young.

Mom, thank you for everything in life, I won’t be able to pay for that for sure.
We all really love you from our bottom of our hearts!
May you be as lively as you are forever, very young and beautiful!
May you live a healthy, happy life forever!

I dedicate this blog post to my sweet, loving mom on the Mother’s Day!
Love you Ma!!

Life: Treasure it for we get it only once

It is well said “Life is like an ice-cream, enjoy it before it melts.”
Many worry about their ice-cream, melting and don’t enjoy it, instead keep cribbing about being unlucky, and wish if I could get other person’s ice-cream. The grass seems to be always greener on the other end. We are never thankful for having an opportunity to enjoy it.
Why can’t we concentrate on our life and make it better than concentrating on others life and wish for more. We have started living others life….
Things which could be done by a simpler way, we opt to complicate it by blindly following others life. And blame them for things going wrong in our lives.
Some of the learning I would like to share:
• Life needs to be treasured, enjoy every moment as if it is the last moment of our life.
• Smile and appreciate good things around you.
• Never belittle others.
• Choose simpler ways of doing things.
• Spend time improving urself, than you will have no time to criticize.
Please add if you have something to add to it.

Rhyming words

I was going through my school magazines, its fun reading stuffs which we wrote those days and came across a poem written by me.
When I was in school, I was very much fascinated by these rhyming words, probably because the English poems rhymed….and felt inspiring.
I tried writing poems with rhyming words….
Have a look at the poem published in my school magazine:
Success
Success comes to those, who try for it,
It doesn’t come to those who pray for it.
Success comes to those, who go with the time,
It comes to those who try hard to shine,
Success doesn’t come to those who are lazy,
It doesn’t come to those who are money crazy.
It only comes to those who have a heart of winning spirit.

This inspires me to write some rhyming poems now…..but stuffs you write in your earlier age is not criticized much, as it would be criticized now…..

Wear “Tester’s hat” to be a good Developer

Developers cannot be good testers of the products they have created….so true
As, mothers know their baby well, and they will never put them into a test, where they know their baby is going to fail, so is true, with developers also. I believe we developers always want to see our code working properly, so we will test it to check if it’s working correctly as, designed by us and not as desired by the customer.
Testers will test it to fail it in any way. This is the difference between developer testing and a tester testing.
Developers are considered to be very lenient while testing their piece of development as they tend to skip the bugs.
We will always test it, such that it would work always…; whereas, testers would always query your product such that it will always break the functionality.
Hence, Developers are said to be creators and testers, the destroyers.
It’s always better to get it reviewed from others instead of analyzing it yourself. Try looking at it from customer point of view than from a Developers point of view; that would make your baby smarter. The more we ignore the know bugs, failures then we end up putting more efforts correcting them.
Correcting the bugs at an earlier stage is better than doing it later; we end up putting more efforts figuring out what needs to be fixed. If we face the obstacles at the earlier stage, helps us improve the quality of the code and its efficiency.

Just like a successful life cannot exist without failures, any code cannot be 100% error free without any bugs. It is those bugs which help us know more on the issue and improve our code quality. So, it is developer’s responsibility also to do proper unit testing, we should be good testers to develop good products……
I believe a Good developer should have good testing skills…..by wearing the ’tester’s hat’, he can not only improve the code quality, but also helps him satisfy the customers requirements.

Scientific temper

Today, we tend to complicate our lives, due to which we are feeling insecure, restless. I believe this is because we are not adopting ourselves to the changes, not willing to accept the changes. There fore, we end up believing in superstitions, rumors, myths, astrology and start believing them blindly.
Leading Big sessions at Avaya had Jayant Narlikar to speak about ‘Scientific Temper’. It was a great Experience to hear this great 72 yrs scientist. He said Scientific Temper was talked about by Jawaharlal Nehru in his Discovery of India book.
Scientific Temper is an attitude of looking at things from statistical point of view.
Every theory should be put to test before accepting them at their face value, and avoid simplistic reasoning. He gave examples that Newton’s theories were never accepted, they were analyzed through experiments and statistics….
But today, if someone proves it , we blindly start believing it …..the most proven example is Astrology. Many of us must be reading their horoscopes. Many of us still follow some superstitions even when we know that scientifically they are not true…..we are just fooling ourselves, slowing falling into pit of restlessness.
But, it is seen that people who don’t believe in such myths, etc benefit due to such superstition driven people. A classic example is of Solar Eclipse(SE) day. It is believed that on SE day, you are not supposed to go out of the house, not supposed to have food, and perform some poojas. We were in B’lore when there was SE , our relatives had told us to do all these things a day before. We treated the day as a normal day, we went out for somework….our work got over early….:),since there was no traffic that day, that too in a city like B’lore…;)…see that’s the benefit. One of my friends gave an example of the similar day. It was difficult to get train tickets for some place. She had decided to take a general ticket and travel through general boggy. When she reached the station, she was shocked to see that the whole train was running empty and she could easily travel through an AC couch…I wish there was Solar eclipse all those days ,I travel too….:)
So, the moral of the story is, don’t fear such myths, believes, fear our stupidity. Be analytic, always put things to test and believe in statistical results than mere facts. Critical thinking is not just for scientists, we all need to apply it. He said that IT has been a key factor in spreading such bias and illogical information….(mails such as ur wish would come true if u fwd them,..ganesha drinking milk mail, etc). Truly, we have grown so much in technology, but we are still behind in our thoughts…



We all need to adapt the attitude of Scientific Temper, make ourselves tolerant and break all those artificial barriers. We need to focus on our goals than focus on such artificial barriers. Jayant Narlikar’s talk has strengthen my believes of not following things like astrology, superstitions, vastushastra, etc. It was an enlightening session for all.

Follow your Passion

‘Leading Big’ is an initiative started by Avaya, wherein people from prominent fields share their thoughts for an hour with Employees of Avaya.
On 26th Feb, I was fortunate to attend the session. Aparna Phanshikar was gonna talk on ‘Follow your Passion’.
It was a Friday and wanted to spend some time away from work.
I had no clue, who she was, so visited her site—www.aparnapanshikar.com.
Aparna is a Hidustani Classical vocalist. Born to a family renowned for achievements in various forms of Art.



I was not sure, if I could attend 1 hr session, listening to such renowned persons, usually such talks don’t retain the crowd, so caught up with a last row seat…..(so that I can move out quietly if I cant resist it…)

The room got packed with people sooner and Aparna along with her Hubby (Nikhil Joshi) entered, and took their seats.
She being, a singer was feeling odd in between the crowd of geeks….

She started the session with a short, beautiful ‘Gurushakshat’ prayer based on some raga.
I loved it, this the first time, I was hearing a song live……
Sweet voice, reached all hearts seated there, no mike, but the song could be heard and felt, it was a lovely experience, wished the song didn’t stop for ever and felt like losing self in it.
Her husband is an Elex Engg and started unfolding her life, telling us about her famly background, and how she followed her passion..

Aparna’s uncle Prabhakar Panshikar is a renowned marathi actor, her mom Mira Panshikar is a famous Classical vocalist.
Though she belonged to such family, it came as a surprise to me that she did not start singing since 2 yrs, but it was after her SSC(10th Std) that she actually chose classical singing and followed it as a passion.

She told us about her various foreign tours and her unforgettable Kabul visit.
She enjoys spreading the joy, peace to people across world through her songs.
She feels spiritual, as though god sings and experienced the divine feeling, couple of times.
She concluded the session with the famous ghazal (Aaj jaane ki jidh na kara – Farida Khuyam). Lovely song and I was lucky to hear this song from Aparna.
I believe music relieves you from your stress, especially such soft, slow classical songs.
It was a memorable time for me.
I just did not realize how that 1 hr passed and it was time to leave.

Some of the thoughts that I could catch from her session/talks:
1. It is never late to attain your passion. You only require that will and love for it to follow it seamlessly.
2. There will be number of obstacles that you will face, but it is up to us, whether we fight it or fall prey to it and give up.
3. It requires years of hard work and patience to follow your passion.
Aparna’s voice was so sweet, sharpened, which was a result of years of daily riyaaz.

A person who lives with his/her passion is said to be the happiest person.
Aparna followed her passion and made a career out of what she likes to do best—Singing!!.....I could see the shine in her face, since she was living with her passion….grt 

I love creativity, either that is through programming (create an app) or showing creativity through collages, painting, sketching…..
I love learning new things…..
I enjoy doing such stuffs, they give me the pleasure, happiness and I don’t realize when I forget myself doing these things. This is, like following your passion for me.
I love teaching ,just enjoy the feeling when I teach Maths (my fav subject) to school students. I am fortunate to be a part of Great Foundation, where we teach 9th & 10th students Maths and English.

I am living the present, following my passion of learning, teaching and doing creative stuffs.

Raigad Treking

I love travelling and exploring places. I love it if it is adventurous.I have not trekked lot of places, but wish to do so.
You cant enjoy alone, and moreover i was confident mom would love to come along,since she loves visiting different places. I told her about Raigad Fort. I had googled about this place before,so did not find it difficult to convince her for it.

Raigad fort is located in the Sahyadri mountain ranges and there are approximately 1400–1450 steps leading to the fort. Listening to this, my mom declined coming.
She does not fear climbing, she's the most active @home,but she knew the consequence, so refused coming.

But,there is rope-way that,exists to reach the top of the fort. I told her all my plans, and finally she agreed....(my sweet mom)
We left at 5.30am on Sat from Swargate busstand & reached Mahad vilage at 9.30am.
Raigad lies near Paachad village which is 20 kms away from Mahad.
For me,it was easy,wished i had my car/Activa, would have reached there in 1 hr, but we realized that there are very few vehicles that go there and the frequency is very less. So,I and mom had breakfast and waited for a jeep till 11.30am.
Finally,we met a familt from Ratnagiri, we reached the fort.
We took one - way Ropeway ticket & decided we would climb down the stairs for my satisfaction.




The Sahyadri mountains were lovely & pleasant.We reached the top just in 5 mins....
This fort was the capital of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
I and mom put our Caps & went around the fort exploring different places in the fort.
The fort was destroyed,but well maintained.





There was a Shiv temple which Shivaji and his mother would visit.
There only there is a statue of Shivaji's most favourite dog.
We had lunch there with the Ratnagiri fly, it was very sunny, but was enjoying it a lot.


Behind the temple is Shivaji's Samadhi.



There is a big ground called Bazaar peth, where articles were sold by sellers. And there is Shivaji's big statue with his throne.





The lovely and favorite place was the Tak Tok top.
Most Dangerous, very narrow,as you can the pic, but lovely Experience.
This was the place from where Shivaji would throw his enemies down from tops to death.
We could see the entire fort view from here.
We could see the steps, which we had climb down....1500 steps.





We clicked some pics ,had some local food there and were all set to climb the 1500 steps.Even the family were going to climb down with us, which made it more exciting.



It was very tiresome, but was trilling, mom is really great ,even at this age she was so active & supportive, did not complain at all.
Truely , loving, and great MOM.



The trip wouldn't have been so exciting without her.
We reached Pune back at 11pm. We were very tired, just had some food and hit the bed.
Off course next day, our bodies were aching ,but were satisfied of having a lovely trip, just me and mom together.....(An unforgettable trip)
And not to forget the Ratnagiri family,we got attached to them too...even they would always be with us in our memories an in our albums.




Thanks mom !! i cant think of any other words for her.

Waiting for more such exciting trips

Live the present

I was wondering if we were ever in tension free phase of our life, the only word that struck me is School days.

Its midnight and no wonder why, I am missing my school days a lot. All those good memories are flashing in front of my eyes and i am smiling, remembering of all those days.

I am fortunate to have experienced these days. I think every person who has gone to school would always cherish them as something special in their life.

Today, when I think of those days, I believe I took my schooling a bit seriously and could not enjoy it as I wish I could do it if given a change to go back.

Why is it, that we make our life so complicated, why is there gradings, comparisons, etc which restricts us and don’t let us live life the way we do. Life’s become a race; everyone wants to be ahead of the others, not thinking as to, where they want to head for.

We have forgotten to live the present, keep thinking, planning and worrying about our future.

I believe school days are the most important phase for every person.

We can enjoy things and learn maximum during this age only, if given a proper guidance.

I don’t say this because, I did not enjoy those days, but wish could make it better.

We have the best of our friends during that time, true friends, who would care for us forever. Friendships were not made for selfish reasons and which would last only for that period. I have very few, but true school friends, caring and loving once.

I believe as we grow, we tend to make friends for our need only….:-(

For that reason, I think we should make books, some creativity, etc, our friends, atleast they will be with us for ever and wont hurt our believes.

A few days back, we all school friends met and had lots of fun remembering those days.

I wish we have such meets ever. Or I wish I could go back to school …….back in that phase.

But, there’s lots of life and fulfillment ahead, just can’t stop/pause, thinking of those days………..need to go on.

I believe, Life is itself a school, the work, we do is our teachers, just keep learning and enjoy it to the fullest, and then I won’t miss those school days. Don’t complicate life, Accept things the way they come, don’t crib about its occurrence, instead accept it, as a new opportunity and make the best out of it.

As someone has said it correctly: Don’t fear pressure, for pressure is what turns rough stones into diamonds.

Good times, become good memories. Bad times, become good lessons.

Heal the past, Live the present and Dream the future.