I’ve never had so many wishes on any of my birthdays before ( I was born on August 4th). Thanks to everyone who remembered and wished me, special thanks to social media sites like facebook, orkut, etc. for making my friends remember it. Usually it is a good checkpoint for me to look back at the events which happened in my life and decide where I’m heading.
Almighty has given me the best opportunities in the world that most of us can rarely imagine. My parents have been amazingly supportive since the beginning. Dad has been living abroad since my young age thus mom was always the one who took care of me and my siblings, rather all house hold. She always protected me from everyone’s eyes and always understood my feelings. A wonderful creature, I am truly thankful to Almighty for such a wonderful gift. The whole credit goes to her for what I am now. Dad has always been a sea of inspiration and guidance to me. He is the most intelligent and dedicated man I have ever seen in my life. Today, if I work over 16 hrs a day, it’s because he made me ambitious with his lengthy (over 20 pages) hand written mails till I finished my M.Tech and few during PhD too. I need a book to write about them and you need a month to read it. So I will postpone it till I go to Harvard :D.
Instead of going into details I will try to sketch the events that have had a significant impact on my life. One more thing to add, its not a self promotional post or a self created profile. I wrote it to give a message at the end and hope that is what matters more. I want my reader to understand the transformation of life from a confused to a more focused stage in life.
- 1992–> Moved to a boarding school at the age of 12
- 1995–> Finished 10th and joined +2 in a Govt. college (one of the big mistakes in life)
- 1997–> Finished +2, lucky to finish an exam called instant and joined engineering on a payment seat. I was trying hard to convince dad to allow me to take entrance exam again and get an open seat. But he forced me to go ahead and not to waste a year. Later I realized that was the best decision.
- 2001–> Finished Engineering and joined M.Tech. I did engineering in the same city as where my parents live. When friends started leaving my heart and eyes were filled with tears and I was saying I wish Allah would have allowed me to stay with them forever. Later on, I realized it was truly emotional and things changed within months. I moved to Karnataka for M.Tech. My first long journey started here over 400 KM away from my home. A good decision was to avoid all mistakes I did in B.Tech and secure really high marks.
- 2003–> Did internship at DRDO and finished M.Tech with distinction missed 80% with 1 mark. I started crying when I saw the marks sheets, my Prof. asked me about what happened. I told about the 1 mark. He was shouting at me and told he wished I would have told him that before. I decided to give another fight for that 1 mark.
- 2003–> In the mid of 2003 I finished M.Tech and then instead of sitting at home or searching for job I joined a top engineering college in Hyderabad as faculty. That is still one of the best colleges in city and in very posh area. This gave me hell lot of confidence, and a good library really added an advantage for giving enough resources to prepare for PhD interviews. During this time I attend two interviews for PhD admission at IISc. I could not make it 🙁 After a failure at IISc, decided to go to all IITs for spring season. Saved all salary for the coming admission season, I had a great passion for PhD and IIT brand. In December I applied for all IITs and BITS Pilani. Dates of interview at various IITs clashed therefore I could not attend all interviews. I got admission letters from IITR and BITS Pilani.
- 2004–>Joined IITR as PhD student. This was one of the best decisions of life and I took it at last moment and rest you can read at “how do you feel to be at IIT” ^O^. I was named by seniors as two and half. As told then that I will finish PhD in two and half years. 😉
- 2005–>Received NDF (National Doctoral Fellowship) given to 50 students all over India for all streams and branches of Engineering and science. This was a great success and boosted confidence. Competition was too high and I struggled a lot that day, will write about that soon 😀
- 2005–>Visited Singapore for an international conference. It was my first visit aboard, and I went on my support.
- 2006–>Finished PhD and was awarded IBM Best PhD Student for 2006 year. The award news was covered in all news papers in India and interestingly the award function was at IISc. I got a chance to sit next to the director and told him that I attended IISc interview twice B-) He told we missed a good student but wished me a wonderful luck ahead.
- 2007–>Samsung Korea summer internship and also worked as Assistant professor at IISc for 6 months around.
- 2008–> Since then working for Samsung electronics in Korea.
- 2009–> 12th March 2009 got the name Inspire n Ignite and started writing after May 2009. I stared writing because of false information on engineering college rankings and misleading content by top magazine and few worst maintained websites in India.
- 2010–> Inspire n Ignite reached 6000 + email readers. I added counter only in August 2009 to check visitors on website. Since August, 24, 2009 till August 4, 2010 Inspire n Ignite have over 600,755 visitors reading over 2,404,347 and every visitor spending 05:16 minutes on average. This all total to 50062.91 (~ fifty thousand and sixty three hours = 2085.95 full days = 5.71 full years) human hours spend on reading content at Inspire n Ignite. Also, receive over 8,410 comments on all posts and answered over 1000 email questions by readers during last one year. The mission statement of Inspire n Ignite became to reach every engineering student in India knowingly or unknowingly at least once in his/her life time. Immense love from readers and well wishers always helped, supported, encouraged and corrected me. I am really thankful to all of them.
Don’t you think its only Almighty that made an unbelievable target possible? Everything right from search engine to readers and well wishers are favoring the blog. My beloved readers corrected me and gave their valuable inputs for improving content and make it useful for all engineering students.
The bottom line about the post is, “Rome is not built in a day”. For achieving great things in life one need to be patient, work consistently towards ones goals without being distracted. When I finished B.Tech, I was frustrated as I was not able to do anything and everything looked blank. Wanted to help many people but don’t know how and was thinking, is it even possible for me? But with time and experience you will get know how you can reach your dream. If your dream is to make money you will do it, and if your dream is to help other selflessly you will find a way even from your busiest days. I have a full time job at Samsung Electronics in Korea and work around 12 hrs a day, which is very normal here. I maintain and write for Inspire n Ignite at least 3 hrs a day. Will write about it soon and hope you will enjoy reading that. (looool one more blog post 😉 )
In plans ahead, I am looking for marriage, MBA from top Business School, Small animation start-up, writing few books and some research on a corruption free system and its implementation for developing nations. And of course, the goal of helping the biggest student community of planet with right information will be among top priorities.
I will end this long post with a famous quote from Alchemist, that always inspired me a lot and made be believe in it.
“When you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true”. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho).