Random Thoughts

it is one thing to get rich. even an illiterate politician does that. it is quite different to achieve greatness while doing that. today i watched the movie - pursuit of happyness. i couldn't help myself getting awed by Chris Gardner's determination. imagine a 30-yr single father taking his son daily from one homeless shelter to another, selling his blood to buy food while working in a firm where everybody is dressed in suits and most own Ferraris. most of the people will just jump in front of a moving train to end their misery. some, like Chris, will fight it. in words of 50 cent (american rapper, actual name Kurtis James Jackson III), they will either get rich or die trying. Chris fought to get on top of the firm, left it to open his own company, and sold a minority stake in 2006 for many millions of dollars.

i dont claim to have worked as hard as him, i leave it to others to decide. but yes, i also have had my own share of ups and downs. i spent my childhood at a place where english was considered an alien language. in my school all subjects were taught in hindi, and i still remember the day when i first picked up an english magazine and had 25 words in a single page which i didn't know anything about. in college, doing experiments meant giving 50 bucks to chaprasi to increase marks in the register. i didn't do any experiments in class XII for the simple reason that in government colleges of bihar, professors never come to class. and at those rare times when they do come and open the laboratory, no experiments are done because chemicals are not available. in engineering college, people used to mock me (in first year at least) because i came from a small city. fast forward the movie 5 years, and i was the last one to get summer internship. i had to walk 2 kms every day in the month of may in Delhi to the nearest metro station. my shirt used to get drenched with sweat, and since that was the only shirt i had i used to wash it every day in the night and then used to leave it to get dried so that i could wear it again next morning. i have slogged through the past two years, and have flipped pages of books in platforms of all major european cities, like Oslo, Copenhagen, Rome and Paris. imagine reading a 400-page thick book while standing in 100-strong queue outside Eiffel Tower. I have done that.

and today, i feel on top of the world. but it is not because of money. i feel proud because i have seen an investment bank's vice president calling me as the best mathematical brain on campus. i feel proud because i wasn't invited for a single interview last year and this time had 2 (well, almost 3) offers. i feel proud because i had the guts to go to an invesment bank's people and tell them that i didn't find their offer attractive enough. and i feel proud because i have seen that bank's biggest indian authority standing before me and pleading me to come to his firm.

the small boy has just found a treasure which will buy him a big castle one day. it will be filled with toys, and his sweetheart will not even look at others. it will be far, far away from all the bad things of the world. and that castle will be big enough for all his family members. this small boy has built many castles and has seen them getting destroyed by the cruel waves of the river. finally, a new morning has come. the sun has risen up in the sky, and this small boy has everything in this whole damn world.