My Graduation

It was a very important day for me in my life - 21 November 2010. My Graduation day in college. I woke up unusually early by around 5:30 am and got ready to start from home by 6:45 am to head to college with my parents.

I would have traveled in that road nearly hundreds of times or may be even thousands in the last five years, but this time it all seemed so new. There are numerous memories of having traveled in the GST road in the last few years .. sometimes with the excitement of having a good time in college, tensed moments during the placement season .. journeys when I have just slept in the college bus .. great times with friends in bus chatting , playing a game or two, teasing .. eating ...

There have been times during exams when I have not taken even a moment to look out of the bus window while I was studying on my way to college (It was studying the few hours before exams that has helped me largely), I have traveled this road early in the morning once for the house warming ceremony of our home and it was in this road I had my first long drive when I learnt to drive a car 2 years ago.

However, this time it was so different, I had a sense of contentment and a feeling of having accomplished something that I wanted to quit mid way, a course of study I thought I just did not belong to during my initial years in college. But, I am jus so glad now that it all turned out to happen in a good way with the guidance and support of my parents, friends and God - that I have finally graduated an engineer with first class :) :)

On a more simple note - After hours of traveling(which includes in train, bus, auto, share auto et all) , hundreds of movies later, with a good amount of money spent on the course and an almost equal amount spent on the food courts in our college, learning 70 academic subjects and hundreds of other non - academic subjects , 100s of tests/ exams and a lot many re-tests later, meeting hundreds of people, being in a numerous situation and experiencing a plethora of emotions later ------ I am proudly a graduate of life .

This place - SRM University gave me friends who would be around for years to come, it made me realize what I am, it thought me lessons that no courses would have, it gave me experience and memories that I would cherish a life time through ...







I love my alma matter and all the people who have enriched my last five years by just being a part of this wonderful journey :)

Monday Morning Inspiration # 99

Brenda was a young woman who was invited to go rock climbing. Although she was scared to death, she went with her group to a tremendous granite cliff.


In spite of her fear, she put on the gear, took a hold on the rope, and started up the face of that rock. Well, she got to a ledge where she could take a breather. As she was hanging on there, the safety rope snapped against Brenda's eye and knocked out her contact lens. Well, here she is on a rock ledge, with hundreds of feet below her and hundreds of feet above her. Of course, she looked and looked and looked, hoping it had landed on the ledge, but it just wasn't there. Here she was, far from home, her sight now blurry. She was desperate and began to get upset, so she prayed to the Lord to help her to find it.

When she got to the top, a friend examined her eye and her clothing for the lens, but there was no contact lens to be found. She sat down, despondent, with the rest of the party, waiting for the rest of them to make it up the face of the cliff. She looked out across range after range of mountains, thinking of that Bible verse that says, "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth." She thought, "Lord, You can see all these mountains. You know every stone and leaf, and You know exactly where my contact lens is. Please help me."

Finally, they walked down the trail to the bottom. At the bottom there was a new party of climbers just starting up the face of the cliff. One of them shouted out, "Hey, you guys! Anybody lost a contact lens?" Well, that would be startling enough, but you know why the climber saw it? An ant was moving slowly across the face of the rock, carrying it.

Brenda told me that her father is a cartoonist. When he told him the incredible story of the ant, the prayer, and the contact lens, he drew a picture of an ant lugging that contact lens with the words, "Lord, I don't know why You want me to carry this thing. I can't eat it, and it's awfully heavy. But if this is what You want me to do, I'll carry it for You."

I think it would probably do some of us good to occasionally say, "God, I don't know why you want me to carry this load. I can see no good in it and it's awfully heavy. But if you want me to carry it, I will." God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called.

To read other Monday Morning Inspiration click here

Raining Memories

It always makes me smile when it rains and brings back fun memories from my childhood associated with this rainy weather in Chennai.

It was I believe when I was in my 9th grade and we were told the subsequent day to be our project sports day (On this day all the preliminary rounds for various events are held to decide on the finalists). My friends and I were super thrilled to go to school in our sports wear representing the different houses we belonged. More than the sports it is the fun of not having to learn in class rooms and chatting around with friends that makes us look forward to the day.

On one such project sports day, fortunately or unfortunately it started to rain at around 8:30 in the morning when most of us were assembled in our sports wear. The rain brought with it a sigh of gloom. Rain meaning no outdoor activity - so everyone into the class rooms listening to Math and Science lessons.

And since we were all completely drenched, we had asked permission to go home change and get back within a couple of hours.. that's when the fun started ..

We were four of us - Garima, Sindhu, Ramya and myself .. We initially decided on heading to my friend Garima's home which was the closest from school. The rain had subsidised and we decided to walk and half way through there was a sudden cloud burst and it started pouring and the closest place where we could get to hide ourselves from the rain was a small rickshaw, that took kids to school and that very moment all of us rushed to get into the rickshaw and that too all on the same side and the rickshaw collapsed .. All that we did was get up and laugh out loud ...

When we were almost near Garima's house her brother was on his way back and told us the house was locked and their mom had gone out.. After a bit of pondering over we headed to Ramya's place, had a fun time and got back to school by noon.

Every time it rains this incident pops up in my head and and so does the smile on my face thinking of the fun times we always had :)

Sweets, crackers fun and more ...

Diwali mood set in almost a week before the actual Deepavali day, when we had a pre diwali celebration in my flats with all of them getting together with lots of food, music, dance, fireworks and more ... This was the time I actually got to see many of my neighbours whom I haven't seen for months together ..

The Diwali celebration was later followed by distributions of sweets to family and friends - meaning we had to go sweet shopping a day or two and this had to happen a few days well before Diwali else you don't get anything except may be some mysore pak and laddu such was the demand for it in Chennai..

I along with mom and dad went sweet shopping at 11 pm around three to four days before Diwali to find sweet shops buzzling with activity and thankfully we also purchased crackers a few days in advance to avoid disappointment. The last year we went cracker shopping the day before Diwali to sadly find anything at all in racks.

The day before Diwali also happened to be my mom's bday and I gifted her a watch of her choice.. and my parents gave me a new Nokia E5 and I am in total love with it(review about it on a later post).

My Diwali day started on a slow pace.. After getting ready for the day had some delicious breakfast of melusu Dosai with onion and ginger chutney along with coconut chutney . This happens to be a Diwlai special item and I love it :) followed by lighting of some crackers and then off to distribute sweets to my friends and also had friends and relatives visiting home..

Evening couple of my friends came home and we bursted crackers for a while, just when we finished bursting our load of crackers I felt slight drizzles, which within few minutes turned to be a heavy down pour..

My weekend turned out to be fun as well..On Saturday evening, I had a lovely long walk around Anna nagar with friends and discovered a new place called The Soup and Salad Cafe which I am toally in love with. Great place and good food :). During this lovely long walk I actually came across a whole lot of new places in Anna nagar that I've never come across in my so many years of stay in the very place.

Sunday was lazy and the very thought of the long weekend coming to an end, made me do some useful work to avoid such thoughts hitting my head and evening had a fun time shopping in Express Avenue with parents ..

This long weekend also saw a couple of interesting activities happening in Chennai, one was the Beatles show and the other was the Extra Terrestrial show which more looked to be like a gymnastics/circus type of show I believe which I wanted to go to, but my weekend was already over packed.

Talking about the Beatles show, I remember my colleague at work Shyam who happens to be a die hard fan of the Beatlemania who was in total awe of the show. So, Shyam Adithya you've been mentioned in my blog :)

Two days into the week I am already looking forward to my weekend or rather Friday evening .. Have a happy week and a merrier weekend :)

Monday Morning Inspiration # 98

One day i was munching on delicious juicy apples and took a big bite and ended up with an apple seed in my mouth. I spat it out and wanted to throw it away.. I realized I was holding an apple tree in the palm of my hand. A little seed with the potential to become a beautiful huge tree.. A tree that could grow thousands of apples in its life time, each containing several more seeds which again giving the potential to growthousand other trees.

It is a rule of nature that only a few of these seeds grow. Most never do or are destroyed early on in their growth.

And it came to my mind it's quite often so with people's dreams also. Wonderful ideas come to our minds but they die too soon - we don't tend to the little saplings, we don't protect them as we should. And then one day we wonder what happened to our dreams - why did they never come true?

I put the apple seed on the table, and bent down to see how the light was reflected from it, this nature's tiny wonder. I wondered when someone was seriously growing apples, how many times they had to try to get a seed to germinate? How much work did it require?

Maybe it was like with our dreams: the seeds of your dreams did not automatically grow. Like planting an apple tree It might take many trys: like a hundred job applications to get that good job. You might send your manuscript out two hundred times before it was accepted. You might meet dozens of people until you met the true friend.

But if you kept on sowing the seeds of your dream, one day you would succeed. And after that others would comment you were lucky to be successful - when in fact you probably failed more often than you would like to count. But you were good at failing - you learned, you adapted, and then with your new knowlegde you tried again. And again. And again. And one day success was yours.

I picked up the apple seed again - but instead of throwing it away I took an empty flower pot, poured some earth into it and planted the seed. Maybe one day it would grown into a proud tree. I'd never knew if I didn't try.

Excerpts fromLeena Pekkalinen's story in Inspirational-short-stories . Loved the story when I came across it and thought how so true it is !!

To read other Monday Morning Inspirations click here.