Tag: Personal

Focus

Prasad Ajinkya10 Comments

Today, we received a query on our website from a 16 year old boy. It was about wanting more details about the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Program. I was absolutely stumped. This program is generally attempted by folks who are doing or have done their MBAs, or at least graduates. Of course, the CFA Institute has no qualms with an under-graduate talking the first exam, in fact the boy is completely eligible for giving the first level of the exam.

Now, go back 5-6 years (or in my case 15) … when you were in your 10th standard, did you have such clear aim in life?

I mean, its astounding.

I have nothing but respect for one so focused. When you know what you want, then getting it becomes easy. Kudos Kiddo! and God Bless!!

Life as a Lane

Prasad Ajinkya2 Comments
Fast lane

I have taken naturally to car philosophy. As I sat behind the wheel one fine evening, this thought came into my mind. That life could be interpreted as a long driving lane with a series of traffic signals, twists and turns, short cuts, the entire works.

  • Some people rest at traffic signals, while others seem impatient to move on
  • Some people jump signals while morality in the form of a khaaki policeman blows a shrill whistle
  • Some people just want to get ahead
  • … those that do, do not know what to do when they are ahead, so they keep on cruising
  • Some people do not want to take risks, so they go with the flow
  • Yes, there are beggars!

I think I can go on and on with this analogy … what do you think?

Crashed!

Prasad Ajinkya6 Comments

I generally leave for my office at 9am or 8.45am. Today, I got delayed … I left from my home at 9.30am. A matter of thirty minutes and the entire western express highway was swamped with traffic. One huge moving traffic jam from Andheri (my place) to Goregaon (my office). Thank my stars that my office is not any further!

Somewhere in the midst of this huge traffic jam, a street urchin rushed past my car … I had to immediately push the brakes in order to hit her. Stop I did, but the car stalled. In the middle of a traffic … on a slope.

With seconds ticking by … and what seemed like an eternity, try as I may, the car simply would not start (there is some problem with the starter in my car). So I relaxed, turned off the ignition, put the car in neutral … and hey!! I am moving back … (grrr … I had forgotten that I was on a slope!).

Thud!! I had slammed right into the vehicle behind me (an auto rickshaw carrier). The driver is boiling now, and his accomplice has gotten off to check the damage. At that point, the words of Baba dawned upon me –

  1. Relax and take it easy
  2. Let the traffic go and do not care about them
  3. Focus on getting the car started

So I switched on the hand brake, put the car in neutral and turned on the ignition. The car started!

Luckily, the auto was not even scratched (it was just a bumper to bumper bump). Also, the driver was now cooled down and we exchanged a few pleasantries (apologies from my side and advice from his) and I moved off.

Brand new day

Prasad Ajinkya11 Comments

I am not a job hopper (seriously, I do not switch jobs at a whim), but if you look at my resume, you will notice job hops every 2 years. First was eYantra Pvt Ltd, a start-up in Hyderabad, then Illumine Knowledge Resources Pvt Ltd and now I am joining Neev Knowledge Management as their Chief Technology Officer.

Reason for shifting

Making the decision to move on from Illumine was hard. The purpose for which the company worked was noble, and the fact that you are also working for such a cause was energizing. The pay was not bad as well (heck, it was great!!). The only difference was that there was an abject lack of achievable goals.

Yes, we did some cool stuff, but most of the times that never made it to the market. In fact there is a project that has been going for the past couple of years without seeing a long term market. Every time it goes to market, the feedback is used to change the very nature of the product itself … even the target segment. It takes a very dedicated team of individuals to sit through each cycle and look at the long term vision.

Going forward

At Neev, I hope to leverage my abilities as a techie manager to boost online sales and enable other initiatives through technology. Hoping to hone my skills as a web evangelist and to experiment some of my ideas. It’s a web firm, so I am back with unfettered net access :-), so I hope I will be able to keep a stream of posts and updates!

Absolutes

Prasad Ajinkya1 Comment

When I was working as a programmer during my first job, I had a staunch position and strong opinion on certain issues, and would budge very little from my position. Even when I knew I was wrong (talk about escalation of commitment!). My family soon learnt that the best way to solve such issues was to let me on my own and let me figure out the answer.

As time went by, often I would be in a position where I was forced to re-examine the issues and take a different stance. At a philosophical level, it became easy to write-off such inconsistencies by simply saying that “there can be no absolutes” … “what is truth” … and so on of more such poppycock. In fact this was the subject of a discussion with a friend – the fact that there is no such thing as an absolute, and that the identity of a person is defined by the absolutes he chooses to stand by. These absolutes may not be universal in nature (as in, they may be subjective in nature), but they are absolutes for that person nonetheless.

A child’s mind is put in a mold through the use of such absolutes. “Don’t lie” … “Don’t cheat” … but over a course of time, the individual learns to define his own absolutes … “cheating is good as long as I am not hurting anyone” … “don’t give money to beggars” … “don’t enter the kitchen when the wife is cooking” … well not the last one (but hey, it might exist for you!!).

In short, if you want to develop your identity, develop your own opinion of things (in turn developing your own set of absolutes).

Religion: A waste of time

Prasad Ajinkya8 Comments
religion

The recent news of the Ayodhya verdict have started a spate of debates across all media (from NDTV to Facebook!).

That apart, so many discussions wherein people end up confusing religion and god. I thought it was high time I pen down my thoughts on the difference between the two and whenever such a discussion occurs, I’ll proceed to give the link instead of going into the details of explaining the difference (funda re-use!!).

All religions have been started by men in order to lay down a set of agreed upon rules and norms for their community. This community could be brought together through mutual agreement (pagans, hindus, etc) or by instilling fear. Fear of being a heretic (islam, christianity, etc). The details are irrelevant, since in either case one thing rings true – its a social construct.

A social construct which generally pre-supposes the presence of a superbeing to keep all the community within line of the norms. If you break the norms, your soul will rot in eternal hell/netherworld/underworld/etc. If you follow all the norms like a good little boy, then you have chance to enter heaven/valhalla/olympus/etc. All these created craftily to breed only one type of behavior from the masses –

Compliance.

Now this superbeing, is usually god (sometimes it is the devil), but most of the times; it is god.

You take away all these rules and faff (the stuff I generally call as कर्मकांड), and you are still left with god. So what good is god without religion.

A lot. The idea of god, gives us faith, the faith that even if one fails, by some miracle (and these do happen :)), the intended outcome will be met. God is faith, and that’s precisely why atheists and theists will keep on arguing about God … because each will not let go of their faith.

So for god’s sake don’t waste time on religion, but still keep the faith :)

Move on

Prasad Ajinkya6 Comments

I still remember that day in 2007. It was the 17th of September. It was evening and I was stuck at the airport, waiting for my delayed flight at Hyderabad; making one of the biggest decisions of my life.

I had been offered a meaty role in a start-up firm, and internally had decided to take the jump. However, the lizard brain was nagging me and urging me to not go ahead.

I made two phone calls. The first was to my parents, to let them know about the switch in my life. They accepted my decision and told me that I was going to rock :)

The second was to the only man approachable and who had operated in several organisations in that role. He was and is a role model; Thomas Sir. I had not spoken to him in the past three years, yet he immediately recognised me and asked me what he could do for me. I told him my background and told him that I was thinking about joining a start-up. Pat comes his reply, if you want to work in Cleartrip, I can see … all said and done, the amygdala was quietened.

At the end of the conversation, he told me one thing –

After this, there is no looking back

I did not fully understand the depth of this. I think after 3 years, I am getting it. After that jump from the corporate wagon, I don’t think I will be going back to a large corporate. Ever.

However I am only human and when I go through a rough patch in my life, I make the mistake of looking back to the day I made this jump. The moment I do this, I remember that one piece of advice … I move on.