September 12, 2007
"I have a dream, a dream in which I see the time and hours I gave. I feel the tiredness in my limbs, I feel my eyes burning because I haven’t slept in so long. But I see a successful me, a better person."
--- From my early notes about Q4R
I cant believe I predicted the effect of Q4R this accurately almost a year in advance. To Q4R! Here is a toast to the dead already and a hurrah for the next to die.
October 1, 2007
Every step I take!
Every step that I take
Leads me to a road unseen,
I follow it in my heart’s wake
Full of pits and false stones,
I follow it in my heart’s wake.
The road beckons to me,
Whispering words of promise,
And feigning glimpse of the key,
To what it is that my heart seek.
And I knew that even before,
I set my foot on this treacherous path,
It is as they say in lores of yore,
My soul shall walk this path.
It is not the dangers I must face
That makes my stout heart shrink,
But the ghosts of past I must chase
So I can crawl, walk or run the road.
And in the deepest core of my heart,
Where no shadows ever fall,
For the light no darkness can part,
I wish, dream and hope.
I hope not for the quest,
To go well, undoubtedly as it shall.
But for courage so I can jest,
At every demon that dare.
I dream not of a better day,
For a better day shall surely come.
But for tiring limbs so I can say,
My sleepless night were not in vain.
I wish not for easy roads,
For toiling hard makes roads easy.
But for friends to share my loads,
So I can laugh, sing and be free.
I care not whiter to the road leads,
Colorful success or blinding pain,
Either way it’s a dream that feeds,
My heart and soul, while my body moves on.
Luv and Luck
Void
Showing posts with label Q4R. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Q4R. Show all posts
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Monday, December 29, 2008
Goodbye, 2008: The Best Ever
20 years from now I will look back at the year 2008 and will say that was one of the best fucking years of my life. The same way I look back at 96-97 as the best period till now.
2008 brought back a lot of things I had lost in previous years. 2008 gave me back my confidence and my arrogant stride. 2008 returned to me the power of being good, it brought back old lost friends, and surprisingly a helluva lot stronger family bonds. It also brought back my self respect that was sometime ago flushed down a gutter. It gave me many new things like playing the role of an elder brother or mentor to some of my friends. I found the leader inside of me, reluctant at first but now in flow. And of course, the capability to love... that I had lost somewhere.
Life aint perfect, 2008 probably had more downs than I care to admit. But I dont count my life in terms of bad moments. Doing that is plain sad and waste of thought. I say this is the best, cuz I enjoyed it the most. I loved busting my ass to complete the project. I loved hanging out with the guys and getting drunk. I even enjoyed watching and handling Khurana-the drunk baby. I loved skipping lectures, getting on teacher's nerves. I loved plotting and strategising on the best course of actions. I loved studying, cuz the last semester was a hell lot interesting than study ever was. I loved how I was able to use, Satan's darkest tool-- manipulation for the good of Q4R.
To add to all that Indian cricket team has finished the year on a real high, winning T-20, getting to second pedastal in Test championship and all that. Liverpool is doing well too, my second favorite sporting team in the world, right now top of the table in BPL, top of the table in champions league group stage. Ferrari, my third favorite is also doing quite alright, winning the constructor's championship and all that. And of course, team India got like 3 medals at the Olympics!! That was the first!! So its been a good year overall, sportswise.
Now you will say 2008 might have been good for sports, but what about business.. recession and all that. But then you cant have all the things in life can you? If you do what will be left to fight for? And if there is nothing to achieve wont life be boring and everything? I say fight for things that are in our control rather than those that are not...
But a good year isnt just the one which gives enjoyable moments, I say this is the best because not onlyI enjoyed it but it also presented challenges and opportunities for the coming year. A lot has been achieved in 2008, the year that was the high waters of a truly entertaining voyage. 2009 is the year we reap the awards, reach the destination.. I hope it is as fun as this year has been...
luv n luck for '09
Void
Monday, September 22, 2008
The Year That Was
Yes, of course you got that right. That is the title of my unpublished abandoned first pathetic attempt at what even I couldnt categorize as a book... but yes it was a start and definitely one of the better titles I have invented over the years. Does that mean today I talk about my failed attempts at writing? definitely not.. thats a story for some other day. Today is the day for nostalgia.. and nostalgia is such an ugly word, the sound is all wrong, the spelling.. it reminds me of nausea and that sure is an ugly word.
So I get nostalgic a lot, big deal. Nostalgia leads to great stories or memoirs or just plain simple blabbering. Which one is on for tonight is but obvious. Today we explore the year in which I found and lost friends, remade them and ended up in serious brotherhood than I expected. The year I went on my first overseas trip, and the year I did something to be proud of, and of course the year I fell in love! lol, kidding about the last part..
So the year (and I dont mean 2008, I mean the academic year meaning somewhere August 2007 to till now) started with an acquaintance falling on his head one fine evening and seriously injuring his head. Out of this trumultous experience bred out the single most dangerous plan I have heard in my entire life. And as the fate would have it, I had a similar accident the next day and the severe trauma of the accident led me to accept what the plan had to offer. Somewhere down the road, we named it Q4R and of course Torque India Racing Club. See the trouble with my group is we are all emotional fools. We deliberately avoid any path that rationality suggests and hence we end up in more than our share of troubles. And as I recall one fine day in the middle of all of this chaos, I was sane enough to consider walking out of this plan but then of course my besty, the evil sorceress, deluded me with talks of pain and blood and right and wrong. Of course, she is sitting somewhere right now laughing uncontrollably at my misery. And then we got our first success, a bright young lad joined our group and he brought smiles for all and also our first cash sponsor. And we all have our fingers crossed that someday he will take leadership burden. He is a good kid, and although he did cry twice in Japan without any reason I believe he is strong enough.
And the year moved on, new year arrived, bringing university exams along. I did well in most of that, passed everything, and then of course febuary came. And everybody knows that I hate febuary, also January but not so much. And as luck would have it, I saw death again and I lost again. But Febuary brought some happy news along, like a car on four wheels, that was Febuary, 14th. But moving on, it wasnt much later that we had our first grand success, we had a running car as on April, 4th and it was a success. It didnt abandon us during the launch on April,5th and ran smooth as a cucumber and we were all relieved. We did fuck up the launch seminar pretty badly as were grossly mismanaged and underprepared, but TI-07 ran smooth and that was all that mattered.
Barely after the euphoria of success settled down, we were faced with the impossible choice, either get the rest of the money or shut the project down. Somebody called 15 days to get the money or quit, we got money in 7. That was somewhere towards the end of April. And that was the start of it all. We planned and schemed and blueprinted what TI-08 would be like, we discussed argued and selected an engine and went on a shopping spree. Nothing did last, barely had we started with our chassis work, the Uni Exams came to haunt us. And this time I might have flunked a couple, I am not sure. The results aint out yet, but maybe I didnt cuz my first impression was I didnt, so well. Once the exams were over, it was sweat and blood and thats all it took really. Countless sleepless nights, countless 16 hour shifts and countless days spent in sun on a roadside pavement completing a dream. And we did, and we did go to Japan.. but
The engine blew up, and I am not the kind of guy who cry at movies or watching tv. I dont cry when people die. But for some reason tears came out. Maybe it was at my stupid fucked up life, or my enormously screwed up luck, or maybe it was just plain disbelief. Cuz I believed we were the good guys, and according to karma we should have got back what we gave. But damn it wasnt meant to be. And perhaps even with the engine, we wouldnt have one that comp but damn it I wanted TI-08 to show what it was truly capable of. And in Fukuroi city, that night I drank my brains out. I was so hammered, I couldnt have differentiated between people and I might have killed someone if the right moment presented. And at that moment I felt like it was the end of my motorsporting dreams.
But Tokyo happened. And I saw life again (there was this great Mexican Sports Bar, called Los Cabos and it was amazing. I had virtually every drink in there and every food! I even ate an Octopus, met with some hookers and other random chicks), and my brothers rallied around me once more, demanding whats their right, another shot at the competition. And yes I was initially very negative, very cynical of chances of survival of Torque India. I am even on a video stating Torque India should disband right now, but I was wrong. TIRC is not one man, its more than that, its heart and blood and sweat of at least seven good men if not more. And well I couldnt just give up, can I? I am in this too deep to quit. And I am glad I made that choice cuz TIRC really deserve another chance.
And as I say again and again, Life is but a matter of choice, this or that, yin or yang.
Hope still drives me...
So I get nostalgic a lot, big deal. Nostalgia leads to great stories or memoirs or just plain simple blabbering. Which one is on for tonight is but obvious. Today we explore the year in which I found and lost friends, remade them and ended up in serious brotherhood than I expected. The year I went on my first overseas trip, and the year I did something to be proud of, and of course the year I fell in love! lol, kidding about the last part..
So the year (and I dont mean 2008, I mean the academic year meaning somewhere August 2007 to till now) started with an acquaintance falling on his head one fine evening and seriously injuring his head. Out of this trumultous experience bred out the single most dangerous plan I have heard in my entire life. And as the fate would have it, I had a similar accident the next day and the severe trauma of the accident led me to accept what the plan had to offer. Somewhere down the road, we named it Q4R and of course Torque India Racing Club. See the trouble with my group is we are all emotional fools. We deliberately avoid any path that rationality suggests and hence we end up in more than our share of troubles. And as I recall one fine day in the middle of all of this chaos, I was sane enough to consider walking out of this plan but then of course my besty, the evil sorceress, deluded me with talks of pain and blood and right and wrong. Of course, she is sitting somewhere right now laughing uncontrollably at my misery. And then we got our first success, a bright young lad joined our group and he brought smiles for all and also our first cash sponsor. And we all have our fingers crossed that someday he will take leadership burden. He is a good kid, and although he did cry twice in Japan without any reason I believe he is strong enough.
And the year moved on, new year arrived, bringing university exams along. I did well in most of that, passed everything, and then of course febuary came. And everybody knows that I hate febuary, also January but not so much. And as luck would have it, I saw death again and I lost again. But Febuary brought some happy news along, like a car on four wheels, that was Febuary, 14th. But moving on, it wasnt much later that we had our first grand success, we had a running car as on April, 4th and it was a success. It didnt abandon us during the launch on April,5th and ran smooth as a cucumber and we were all relieved. We did fuck up the launch seminar pretty badly as were grossly mismanaged and underprepared, but TI-07 ran smooth and that was all that mattered.
Barely after the euphoria of success settled down, we were faced with the impossible choice, either get the rest of the money or shut the project down. Somebody called 15 days to get the money or quit, we got money in 7. That was somewhere towards the end of April. And that was the start of it all. We planned and schemed and blueprinted what TI-08 would be like, we discussed argued and selected an engine and went on a shopping spree. Nothing did last, barely had we started with our chassis work, the Uni Exams came to haunt us. And this time I might have flunked a couple, I am not sure. The results aint out yet, but maybe I didnt cuz my first impression was I didnt, so well. Once the exams were over, it was sweat and blood and thats all it took really. Countless sleepless nights, countless 16 hour shifts and countless days spent in sun on a roadside pavement completing a dream. And we did, and we did go to Japan.. but
The engine blew up, and I am not the kind of guy who cry at movies or watching tv. I dont cry when people die. But for some reason tears came out. Maybe it was at my stupid fucked up life, or my enormously screwed up luck, or maybe it was just plain disbelief. Cuz I believed we were the good guys, and according to karma we should have got back what we gave. But damn it wasnt meant to be. And perhaps even with the engine, we wouldnt have one that comp but damn it I wanted TI-08 to show what it was truly capable of. And in Fukuroi city, that night I drank my brains out. I was so hammered, I couldnt have differentiated between people and I might have killed someone if the right moment presented. And at that moment I felt like it was the end of my motorsporting dreams.
But Tokyo happened. And I saw life again (there was this great Mexican Sports Bar, called Los Cabos and it was amazing. I had virtually every drink in there and every food! I even ate an Octopus, met with some hookers and other random chicks), and my brothers rallied around me once more, demanding whats their right, another shot at the competition. And yes I was initially very negative, very cynical of chances of survival of Torque India. I am even on a video stating Torque India should disband right now, but I was wrong. TIRC is not one man, its more than that, its heart and blood and sweat of at least seven good men if not more. And well I couldnt just give up, can I? I am in this too deep to quit. And I am glad I made that choice cuz TIRC really deserve another chance.
And as I say again and again, Life is but a matter of choice, this or that, yin or yang.
Hope still drives me...
Saturday, September 8, 2007
The Quest for Redemption
This one goes out to my team....
You cant seriously expect me to publicly mention what exactly is the quest for redemption, but I will instead share two of the most memorable experiences of my life.
December 2005- January 2006
It was somewhere 28th or 29th, I received an email from IIT Bombay, they said that I have been shortlisted for a workshop and competition on Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD for short. As it happened I did not know anything about fluid dynamics, so through January I studied hard, put in a lot of effort and went for the workshop. On January the 20th, in a classroom full of people from top colleges of India, the NITS and Dr. Atul Sharma of Aerospace Department, IIT Bombay, a first year student of a virtually unknown college raised his hand to tell everyone that he is the only first year student, from a virtually unknown college. I further confirmed I have had no training in fluid mechanics, the 35 people in that room except for me laughed openly, including the professor. By the end of the day nobody was laughing, as I was among the ten students, who made it to the second round. By the end of the second day, people older than me and from better colleges came to me for advise, and by the end of the third day, at completion of the workshop, I had wrapped up the competition and praise from Mr. Sharad Purohit, the director of CDAC. I also got to use ParamPadma, India's fastest supercomputer, ranked just over 100th in all of the world!
On that day I decided I will return to IIT Bombay for the techfest every single year. I was determined to win the biggest competition of the fest. I did make a team and we did participate in Techfest 2007 but didnt win, performed well in our own eyes but not well enough to justify the expenditure.
Three Days ago
The three members from the old team were sitting in my room and discussing the current endeavor. I for the fun of it, found the old drawings that we made last year, for the 2007 Techfest, and seeing those drawing, reduced us to fits of laughter. They are such crap, seriously useless, yet back then those drawing made infinite sense to us. Same goes for a lot of other work. So listen to me, for what I have to say is very important, it was a learning curve. And it still is, we dont claim to know the answers, but we want to find them. Its not about knowing but finding out, and giving your best.
That is what every competition is all about. Setbacks and crappy work comes with being new to any project, and it will pass and hopefully you too like us will look back at these days and laugh about it. Believe me when I tell you that this is going to be the most rewarding experience of your lives. People are always going to tell you that you cant do it, because they didnt do it themselves. It is going to be tough, not all the answers that you want will be staring you in your face but buried beneath mounds of dirt, that you will have to dig. It will come down to commitment, how much time and energy you are going to put in it. Whether you will put it above everything else that you have in life, or will you give excuses of from the everything else in your life to not do your share of work. I know each and everyone of you, and I know you well, even if I never spoke to you before but I know that you are capable of doing whatever it is that is your work. Never lose hope, or the faith in yourself. Also remember, that one person alone can undo the good work of all the others, if one part fails the whole thing will fail. So just keep your head down, and keep working hard because like our Web Designer said The Worst is Yet to Come.
You cant seriously expect me to publicly mention what exactly is the quest for redemption, but I will instead share two of the most memorable experiences of my life.
December 2005- January 2006
It was somewhere 28th or 29th, I received an email from IIT Bombay, they said that I have been shortlisted for a workshop and competition on Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD for short. As it happened I did not know anything about fluid dynamics, so through January I studied hard, put in a lot of effort and went for the workshop. On January the 20th, in a classroom full of people from top colleges of India, the NITS and Dr. Atul Sharma of Aerospace Department, IIT Bombay, a first year student of a virtually unknown college raised his hand to tell everyone that he is the only first year student, from a virtually unknown college. I further confirmed I have had no training in fluid mechanics, the 35 people in that room except for me laughed openly, including the professor. By the end of the day nobody was laughing, as I was among the ten students, who made it to the second round. By the end of the second day, people older than me and from better colleges came to me for advise, and by the end of the third day, at completion of the workshop, I had wrapped up the competition and praise from Mr. Sharad Purohit, the director of CDAC. I also got to use ParamPadma, India's fastest supercomputer, ranked just over 100th in all of the world!
On that day I decided I will return to IIT Bombay for the techfest every single year. I was determined to win the biggest competition of the fest. I did make a team and we did participate in Techfest 2007 but didnt win, performed well in our own eyes but not well enough to justify the expenditure.
Three Days ago
The three members from the old team were sitting in my room and discussing the current endeavor. I for the fun of it, found the old drawings that we made last year, for the 2007 Techfest, and seeing those drawing, reduced us to fits of laughter. They are such crap, seriously useless, yet back then those drawing made infinite sense to us. Same goes for a lot of other work. So listen to me, for what I have to say is very important, it was a learning curve. And it still is, we dont claim to know the answers, but we want to find them. Its not about knowing but finding out, and giving your best.
That is what every competition is all about. Setbacks and crappy work comes with being new to any project, and it will pass and hopefully you too like us will look back at these days and laugh about it. Believe me when I tell you that this is going to be the most rewarding experience of your lives. People are always going to tell you that you cant do it, because they didnt do it themselves. It is going to be tough, not all the answers that you want will be staring you in your face but buried beneath mounds of dirt, that you will have to dig. It will come down to commitment, how much time and energy you are going to put in it. Whether you will put it above everything else that you have in life, or will you give excuses of from the everything else in your life to not do your share of work. I know each and everyone of you, and I know you well, even if I never spoke to you before but I know that you are capable of doing whatever it is that is your work. Never lose hope, or the faith in yourself. Also remember, that one person alone can undo the good work of all the others, if one part fails the whole thing will fail. So just keep your head down, and keep working hard because like our Web Designer said The Worst is Yet to Come.
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