Summer of '99

‘If I don’t, who will save him?’ pondered Shershah amidst the chaos.

His mind buzzed with rapid-fire thoughts.

‘It’s not a choice really’ he reassured himself & jumped into the crossfire.

‘Get up, you have to make it’ Shershah yelled repeatedly from above.

For the first time in his life, the body disobeyed the mind.

Gyanban Thoughts – What were you doing in the summer of 99? Think about the time you were 24 years old. What fun were you having ? What pleasant memories you have about those delirious parties, innocent romances the thrill of your first salary check perhaps.

And then think about Captain Vikram Batra,24, died saving his men in the battlefield. Posthumously awarded Param Vir Chakra, nations highest military honour, while we hummed to the tune of Yeh Dil Maangey more( my heart wants more) the popular cola advert.! Ironically this became the war cry for Captain Vikram Batra.

Nick-named Sher Shah (King of Lions) for his unflinching courage, he was killed when he tried to rescue an injured officer in the battled field. Think about his mindset before he took that decision to jump into an obvious hazardous cross-fire.

And I think to myself - When was the last time you did something brave? Something selfless? Something that does not amount to any benefit to you ?

Captain Batra – True courage needs no adjectives. Salute.

Carpe Diem

If Albert Einstein just thought about the theory and never wrote it down,or never tried or tested or spoke about it...he would be a nobody today.take a pause and think about it.

Somebody else would have done that discovery or invention and history books would have been written differently.We all have these fleeting thoughts cross our minds every now and then, but we ignore them.We dismiss them off casually.We think they re not important till we see someone else take a similar thought and score big time.There s no point claiming later on...as by then there would be 300 "me-too's" already ahead of you and the world would obviously not care two hoots.

Early days of internet we had a plethora of search engines, Altavista,Metacrawler,dogpile,Lycos,Goto etc etc. Being extremely kicked about this new thing called internet,I went into an overdrive to search information and was fascinated every time I queried and got thousands of results. More information meant more hyperlinks on the home page...so much so that the whole page looked like an absolute mess, cluttered with hundreds of links and advertisements galore.

It is then I thought wouldn't it be nice to have one clean page without all this clutter? Maybe an interactive person, like a receptionist, where you can ask a question and get lots of answers.It would be cool to just have the search bar and nothing else.But I shrugged it off.

Almost a year and half later,I typed www.google.com


It is then I realized never to give up on your instincts.Back yourself.Believe in yourself,it is wise not over-estimate,but certainly foolish to under-estimate yourself.The world will always provide enough reasons to forget and shrug it off,but you have to persist and win. If you don't seize that moment....it will become someone's moment...and later your lament.