Chillout Lounge

Disclaimer: The book really allowed me to go down the memory lane and re-kindled my past and I’ve written everything that came to my mind without any censorship.. I’m writing this sitting at the London Airport while waiting for my flight… So if you find this crappy/boring in between, feel free to skip… I sure do encourage that

“… The Other day, I spoke to you about one of the great secrets of magic: the Soulmate. The whole of man’s life on the face of Earth can be summed up by that search for his Soulmate. He may pretend to be running after wisdom, money or power, but none of that matters. Whatever he achieves will be incomplete if he fails to find hi Soulmate…” {Excerpt from Brida, Paulo Coelho}

Yay Yay Yay…cut..cut… Sounds sweet isn’t it?! But… Let me be honest, Though I vouch this 100% today, I was in complete disagreement of such noxious statements for most of my life. I believed these were fairy tale flowery dialogues and not for real men! How could a Girl or a Women can make such a impact on Men’s life? For most of my life, I felt… No Way.. You don’t need a women to live the rest of the life..I could live as single till the end, and marriages are for people who are bound by social pressure. These were my true thoughts and argue with most of the people I see at that time!!

May be this could be because the way I started my life, I was on my own terms immediately after my high school, my dad had a great financial difficulty and his own reasons for not able to afford me a university education and he even suggested to stop dreaming of colleges and do some daily wage jobs. He said an astrologer said that only daily wage jobs will fit me and education is not written in my destiny, and I can never become SOMEONE… probably that was one of the devastating moments of my life, specially after being one of the school topper and scoring 100% in few of the subjects I took… after three month of depression and not speaking to my dad even after that [yeah! It sounds funny now ], I had to decide that I had to live life on my own terms, gained my courage and joined the university without even having a clue of how I would pay my fees! Well, I didn’t know anybody in this world except my mom and dad at that age! but few good souls on earth helped and I got a job with the computer programming skills I had (My Boss checked that I didn’t violate child labor laws by working at that age!). The Job helped me to pay only 1/2 of the monthly fees and I always had fee-arrears and my name was constantly on the fee defaulter notice board list. This is when Life started becoming very rigid with 18-20 Hrs of work + studies everyday. 5 years of life went like this without a holiday, good moments et al, per day expenses I allowed myself to spend was 1.25 rupees (3 cents!) for bus ticket and 1 banana for the dinner and sometimes without dinner. At that immature age, It was little difficult to admit that I had to work and slog, when rest of my friends were doing what someone would do in their childhood and teenage – a chilled out college life, frequent travel, riding expensive bikes, going behind girls… I didn’t have time for any of these.. First time in life, got the feeling that I’m cursed and lost the happy childhood and teenage life!!

But… I ensured my pay check is doubled every six months.. After graduation, the intensity just got increased and was on full swing in my career and all I wanted to prove was I could become SOMEONE, I can be educated, I can earn more money than my dad ever did in his entire lifetime. And I did earn and burned the money, and happened to buy my car when I was 24 years old, and the Honda showroom had a note displayed on their showroom with my name and photo as “The Youngest Owner of a Honda” !! for few days… It gave me a pride, because at 24 most of my friends were either searching for a job, scratching to buy a bike and still borrowing money from their dad for their daily expense! By gods grace… I grew up in career quite fast, travelled across the world almost every other month (travelled and worked at around 20 different places around the world – Coimbatore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Detroit, Redmond, Seattle, Dubai, Fujairah, Abudhabhi, Sharjah, Umm al-Quwain, Colombo, Kandy, Southfield, Farmington Hills, Detroit, Singapore) Also, got few honors and prestigious awards from Microsoft, and was invited to visit MSFT HQ at Redmond and meet with almost the most of the idols including Bill Gates and meet the product teams of MSFT, I wished my dad was there to see when I stood along side of Bill G… at work climbed the ladder very fast…

It’s been 10 years on this quest now, Though these days I earn x times more, even a single rupee was very valuable those days… and that’s when I learnt how one rupee can make a lot of difference. I also learnt that dinner could be finished in 1 rupee… And that’s when life taught me money definitely matters than human values!! And that’s the same time I started to disrespect money!!

Glory didn’t come without any side effects… over these periods I had become very opinionated, arrogant, complaining and speaking loud non-stop 24/7!! Speak very harsh to people and write harsh stinker emails.. I once wrote a stinker mail to one of my DBA in the team – which made him quit the next day! For which I feel bad now but did not care earlier. At that time, I think quite frankly I started feeling a sense of emptiness filled in my mind. Once my mom was very upset and she said its high time to start Living the Life… Start Living the Life? The sense of emptiness said my mom is correct and as a immediate step I thought of moving to a different place a different country perhaps and may be search for a GIRL!!

So, I Chose to move to London and started processing my Visa through Sunil, one of my good friend who lives there. I was at the end of official visa processing and about to pack my bags to London. Incidentally, at the same time Xavier got hold of my resume and forwarded to Bangalore based Aditi Technologies and was pushing me almost every night to attend the interview. One evening I thought what the heck let me do this and booked a return flight for same day and came to Bangalore. I happened to be in Bangalore for whole 1 day at interviews and when I was on my flight back to Chennai, I decided I’m not going to London instead move to Bangalore. My dad called me INSANE! Bang.. Dude I’m used to these now

Bangalore was 21st City I moved in to make the living, But I didn’t know that this is the city that would add meaning to my life!

I moved to Bangalore with almost zero expectations, I said to myself I’m not here to Impress anyone nor to climb the corporate ladder or serve anyone’s ego – but just to live the life as it comes… and most importantly not to be arrogant and harsh but to achieve the tasks by understanding them and seeing through them and make cautious decisions. I started shedding out lots of unwanted friendships and people I know, and I wanted to choose the people I’m going to live with. I’m fine with living 10 people who love me, rather than 100 who stress me out. All I wanted is to identify few people and nurture & grow those relationships around me.. It’s more like building a beautiful garden around your own house.

Marriage – Well to be frank all along this journey, I happened to meet lots of girls, most of the girls I’ve met were very artificial to me. They were confused adolescents, I felt they didn’t know what they really want in life, but they were searching for something constantly. It was instantaneous, if I could speak to them for 10 minutes they spoke 3 Minute Sweet Talk + 3 Minute Complaints + 4 Minute just plain LIES!! I know I sound rude, but that’s the truth!! I used to think how women could think men are such a dumbos!! But yet men have to smile and listen and speak back. In middle of all this artificialness, I happened to see a girl who spoke just truth and a complete no-nonsense…

Ashwini joined the team I was leading, Initially I thought she must be one of those artificial types. But as I spoke to her, she was different – she was honest in most of the things she did and never tried to muffle up things. And infact during my birthday, whole of my team got together at 9th Mile dhaba and each were saying good things about me one by one… and Ashwini was the only one who started saying what was WRONG in me and how I should correct those behaviors! That was a head-turner for me… and I wanted to speak more to this girl..

And we started speaking more, incidentally one of my customer – Breanna came to Bangalore from Seattle. She wanted to go around and explore bangalore. So as a team we took her out for Indian cinemas, Restaurants et al.. One day she wanted to purchase Indian Sarees and explore Indian Street life, for which Me and Ashwini accompanied Breanna. This is when we spoke more and the more I spoke I was surprised to see that this girl was full of truth and honesty. That day after dropping Breanna, I offered her to go for a long drive to Mysore road (well, I wanted to speak my mind with someone who does not play mind games, who does not pull you down, who does not laugh at you, who does not want to spit on me when I turnaround… in essence I wanted to speak to someone who will be truthful and speak back honestly) All along the Mysore Road and we stopped at KAMAT for a coffee – we were speaking and was in silence both at the same time… While we were on our way back to Bangalore, something clicked and told the brain – MARRY HER!!

Yep, I’ve heard people saying you cannot make a decision on marrying someone within few days! I would like to strongly deny and this sounds like losers theory – who does NOT LISTEN TO THEIR OWN HEART but trying to compare all worldly materialistic similarities during their coaching periods. YOU DON’T NEED YEARS TO UNDERSTAND A WOMEN, even if this theory is true how would someone determine how many they need to understand a women? 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? My Nanny used to say that “Women are like the musical instrument Veenai, which would release its secrets to only those who know how to play its strings like a master” – I felt Ashwini was perfectly tuned for me and didn’t took much time or difficulty in understanding her.

Trust the Instinct… Instinct is nothing but your true self…

My dad used to pester me to give a specification of girl, so that he could search and find a girl for me! I never replied him and I always felt that he can never find a girl for me because he never know me fully!

But I had 3 things in my mind that I would expect from the girl I marry…
1. I should be able to speak my mind without hiding anything to her sitting across a table over a cup of coffee…
2. Should have Zero EGO in front of her, and I should be my true-self when I’m with her!
3. I must be comfortable and man enough, to cry in front of her when I’m grounded some times…

1 & 2 I was very comfortable with Ashwini even before marriage and on 3rd I thought its just matter of days after I get married and I was not wrong at all… !!

Very interestingly she also felt the same, and we got married in matter of few days and even before I could realize it’s our 1st Year Anniversary
Now I have 2 families, 2 mom and 2 dads and 2 sisters and a younger brother too!

Now the world seems more beautiful and very fulfilling… it’s difficult to express what she has done for me…
For almost an year now, I was not doing anything, I did not meet up with friends, did not keep up with the world, No Diet, probably this whole year has been laziest year of all these years, but I just wanted to laze around free my mind… Remove all the worldly toxins from the mind and trust me I feel I fresh than ever…

“There is something I had never told her, that she with her affection and her gaiety, had been largely responsible for me to have rediscovered the meaning of life, that her love had driven me to the far corners of the Earth, because I needed to be rich enough to buy some land and live in peace with her for the rest of my days, lay there in her arms and close the eyes and sleep like a child…”

In each life, we feel a mysterious obligation to find at least one of those Soul Mates. The Greater Love that separated them feels pleased with the Love that brings them together again. This is called Marriage”

{Excerpt from Brida, Paulo Coelho}

My mom is happy and very relaxed these days… but she has a question.. Of all the places how did you find a girl who is from a small town “Udupi” – which you have never visited in your entire life ? Destiny…

Bangalore has been a city that has added a lot of meaning to life. Let’s see what else Life has in store for me here..

Alrighty, the gate is announced and I got a flight to catch… ciao…