It’s been quite a while since I’ve been blogging – call it a bad case of writer’s block, or so much going on in life, that its overwhelming to sit down and write about it.

So what has been going on?

Transition to Facebook

I wouldn’t say I’m hooked to FB, but it’s the way to network now. I like Orkut more still for its simplicity, but I guess it is time to move on.

MBA Dreams

It was tough to finally realize it has happened, after 2 years of long waitlists and rejections. I’m super excited and happy to be going my top choice school and to be in a city as super as Chicago. It was one my favorite cities of all the intra-US traveling I did last winter. And I am totally in-sync with my school’s motto – “To be the best business school for the world, besides being the best business school in the world”

Sports

It’s been a real case of severe up and downs for Liverpool and Ferrari this year. More on that to follow in subsequent posts.

Here’s hoping I get into the flow of posting….

This fictional piece of writing is a supplement to http://amitdas.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/lalaji-ki-kahani-chotu-chaiwale-ki-jubani/

For those who don’t understand what we are saying – you were never meant to!

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Once upon a time there was an engineer , who went to work with the biggest snore in the Indian BPO dream (the same firm chotu chaiwala worked for once upon a time). Nobody knew him and nobody paid attention to him (infact it seemed nobody paid him as well!).

As it happens, he interviewed – he pleaded – he didn’t want to write or test codes – he wanted to deliver business impact – he wanted to work hard, he was creative, committed and passionate. Then one day it happened. He went to a state of the art chai shop at the very far end of the Millennium City. He met Chotu Chaiwala, and liked the cup of tea he was served. ChiMAN Sallu and ChoteLAL were next (somewhere in between was a old red mare..she’s long gone now though…replaced by Catbert). An offer was made, and the offer was accepted with joy.

The fairytale began. Chota Chotu liked it. Sardar khush hota tha, shabashi deta tha….kabhi kabhi gaali bhi deta tha…raat bhar chai ki recipes change karta tha….Chota Chotu didn’t mind – he just mined – data, text – he did them all. He kicked off his BOOTs, lived in the office like a CAMPer and soon he was termed as a good catch (PAKaDD) by his bosses. He felt loyal, and though offers were soon to start pouring in, there was no chance of inFIDELITY. There was an AMERIcan PRISE waiting for him.

While Chota Chotu was working hard, a Rashan ka dragon swallowed up Lalaji’s Chai Shop. Soon, Chota Chotu’s fellow helpers were leaving, and when Chotu Chaiwala himself left (due to bulls making MERRy while Chotu Chaiwala was getting ILL), Chota Chotu thought hard. He wanted to move with Chotu Chaiwala to the new chai shop, but somehow the other chai shop’s tea flavor promised to set in a year later. Chota Chotu stuck to his old chai shop, and got back to work. He served OUTSTANDING tea, but alas, there were no tips. He was promoted to Senior Chota Chotu (SCC), but he got paid as much as any other Chota Chotu. Meanwhile, the chai shop was no longer only a chai shop. FARMERS were producing grain day and night, and TRAVELERS were busy trying to sell it during the day. The mediators were getting all the pay hikes, while those who toiled and traveled got pay cuts. Somewhere along the way, the big lalas continued to visit the chai shop, and talked about integrating the chai shop into the rashan ka dragon – well they thought, rationed sugar would sure make the cost of the tea cup go down due to synergies!

Thats how it stands…the chai shop is still being integrated into the rashan ka dragon, and Chota Chotu (now Senior Chota Chotu) is still working hard….the number of chai shops in the vicinity is now in hundreds, and while Chota Chotu (now Senior Chota Chotu – he reminds himself very often – too often it seems) thinks about switching chai shops, the sands of time are flowing as before…

If you were looking for a fairytale ending to this story..I’m sorry it doesn’t exist (not for now anyways)

To my fellow Chota Chotus and ex-Chota Chotus – this story is dedicated to all of you. I’ve grown fat and bald in my times with you, and I hope sometime in the future our paths will cross again at other Chai Shops and Rashan ke dragons – and sometime I hope we can start our own Coffee shop, where the beans are always fresh, the coffee is always hot, and we have self-service instead of table service!

Updated (March 2008) :: Lalaji is now gone, ChoteLAL has become the new Lala, Singh is King (promoting his pawns), Bonus cuts, Catbert ignorance, ‘Father’ deserting his sons, and god knows what’s next! Sit tight!

True, it was unrealistic to expect a set of very average footballers to beat legends twice, but they were clearly the better side throughout the game – and they demonstrated their grit and dedication again.

What they lacked was inspiration – what they lacked was Steven at the top of his form – and lady luck deserting Rafa. They did it in 2005, and it would be very unfair to hold them responsible for the defeat – as I’m sure many Liverpool fans might be doing right now.

Milan had a minimal impact game from their star performers, and Inzaghi – I like to call him the “wild” card, scored each time he was not offside – intentionally or not, that is another issue! Not to be hypocritical, I would not have minded the ball hitting Crouch’s head twice and going through Dida’s fingers if it meant Liverpool would have been champions of Europe again.

What was clearly evident was, Football lost and the better side did not win the game. I am a huge fan of Maldini, and am glad he won his 5th Champions League title, but his contribution was nowhere as significant as it was in the previous 4 winning campaigns. Kaka and Gattusso are the real champions of this Milan side of 2007, and full marks to them. Milan know in their hearts that they hold the trophy, but it is Liverpool’s name which is written on it.

What do I get by supporting Liverpool is a question many of my football crazy pals have asked me, and they support clubs where the weekly wages of one of the players make up for yearly wages of most of the Liverpool players put together. What I get is inspiration – what I know is that you are most valued where you make your bones, not where the fans of the very club you play for jeer you if you do not perform in one game, or the club does not get any silverware for one season, or where you are viewed as a business acquisition than a human being.

But above all, what I get is that feeling of ecstacy, maybe for once in my entire lifetime, when I did not switch off the television at half-time during the early hours of May 26, 2005, and saw my team achieve the impossible. What I saw was how one man galvanised 11 foot soldiers into fierce knights, and when Istanbul was painted Red.

Go Pool – You’ll never walk alone.

if you want to do something, here lies the trick – either do in full abandonment or do it with full passion..both are extremes…but if you notice carefully, both are same…both bring you closer to yourself..and both make you give your best for it..the closer you come to yourself, the more you start loving yourself….and thats what is important..to love yourself..try to love yourself more than anyone could love you….and you’ll feel happy and bliss every moment..

-Some inspiring lines from a soon to be famous author!

Music is food for the soul. I’m sure somebody famous has already said this, but I’m just gonna repeat is as I know its true.

There are some songs you feel are synonymous with how you live – and if I may dare to be presumptuous, I would say these songs describe how our generation lives and breathes:

18 till I die (Bryan Adams)
Just the pure energy this song exudes. Always a good refresher mid-day and when foot tapping.

Woh Pehli Baar (Shaan – from the OST of Pyar Mein Kabhi Kabhi)
I simply love the simplicity of this song. Being a huge fan of Kishore da as well, I think this song still takes the top slot among my favorite love songs.

In the end (Linkin Park)
The best of the heartbreak songs! I remember the pure despair and exhiliration one feels while standing in front of a 2500W speaker and singing with all the might you have in you. And then you feel you just want to drift away…

Roobaroo,Paathshaala (from the OST of Rang De Basanti)
One of the best movies of modern Bollywood – and its difficult not to feel inspired after watching the movie or listening to the music. Simply put – this movie would represent what most of us want out of college life, somethings we do and somethings we wish we had done….

Pehla Nasha (from the OST of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander)
This was the song and the movie that kickstarted the “college-love” movies concept. Again, an Aamir Khan gem, and this song, with Aamir throwing his jumper from the top of a cliff, probably remains one of the most remembered shots.

There will be many other favorites I’m sure – and this is just my list. Free feel to add.

India turns 59 today – and I muse over the word as I sit inside my rented home in Gurgaon and watch “Border”, “Khaki” and the numerous other “Patriotic” movies being played on the telly.

Thoughts invariably flow in & out – as I ponder how do I suddenly feel patriotic on 15 Aug and 26 Jan, and how a surge flows through my body when I sing “Jan Gana Man”. What used to be a regular feature in school days, became a bi-yearly festival.

As I see what is happening across the world – Americans & Europeans are shit scared of anything that sports a flowing beard or a turban, the Russians are still recovering from the shreds communism left their country in, China is moving too fast and is busy being the biggest economy, workforce etc., in Pakistan the Muslims are divided amongst themselves, the Middle-east is in shambles, Sri Lanka has a mini-civil war going on…..I feel a strange contentment in the way India is bracing up for the years ahead.

1. Our press is relatively free – we get to hear opinions from every nook and corner of the country, and every insignificant event gets TV Coverage. Irritating at times, but it does make a point of every caste/community/rich/poor getting their voices heard.
2. Our politicians are very motivated – for filling up their coffers as well as making sure they get what they want for their respective vote banks. This does lead of “Quota politics” once in a while – but oddly enough makes sure that nobody is totally ignored. The Left keeps the Progressive politicians in check – making sure our surrender to the dollar is not rapid – and at the same time we can reap benefits of global brands in India, global food and a healthy mix of the new and old in society.
3. The youth is indifferent – which is a bad thing. Most of the times we let things be, and dream of greener pastures abroad. Or at the least, we are content as our salaries rise from 20,000 a month to 30 and in a few years to 50. What this indifference leads to is obviously bad governance of India. Even if all of us take the pain to vote once in 5 years, with minimum research, I feel that would go a long way. Lets just vote for the least bad candidate, because most of the times we don’t vote as in our opinion “all are thieves”. I would actually not mind, if a minister took a 10% commission in every project he gets executed, provided the other 90% goes into the project, and somebody intelligent gets it executed.
4. Our entrepreneurs are top-notch – which to a great extent blunts out whatever bad the government does. The way the IT pioneers – Murthy, Nilekani, Shiv Nadar, the Tatas etc. have built empires – is a lesson for all. India has been growing at 8% over the last 3 years consecutively – and thats amazing.
5. The society is a great shock-absorber – Amazingly, no amount of terror or external influence has ever been close to influence a military coup or a nationwide unrest in India. And this I feel is the greatest factor in India’s favor. Resilience of the people, or sometimes plain silence – makes it much easier for the country to move forward, and discourage the terrorists from wasting their precious energy into these tasks.

India is still just 59, and I’m sure by the time its 100, we’d be far ahead of other countries when they turned 100.

Incredible India…

“Terrorism” – would be among the three most frequently topics discussed in newspapers, on television, in cubicles, public debates, politician’s speeches – and maybe soon in nursery textbooks…..(a fairly innocent photo of a 3 year old trying to cross into a restricted area at Heathrow Airport, and being warned by the policeman brought this thought into my mind)…

Civilisations are clashing again – and I wonder what has really changed from the time of the crusades, European invasions into Africa and Asia, etc etc. The seeds of bitterness remain - the reasons are different in perception, though same in rationality.

1. Iraq vs. US/NATO/UK/etc – Fight for oil (read survival in global economy)
2. Israel/US vs. Lebanon/Palestine – age old clash of civilisations – no modern world objective at stake except indirect US control over West Asia and North Africa.
3. BinLaden/Taliban vs. Western World/India – something akin to the invasions of Afghan warlords like BinKhilji etc from the old times. They claim to act in interest of a oppressed Muslim world – but they kill more Muslims than they think they benefit.

There would be numerous points and counter-points in favor and against every side, but ultimately humanity as a whole suffers. I do not believe that terrorist actions benefit the people they claim to represent, and at the same time I do not believe that US actions are meant for World Peace or to create a safer world as claimed by George Bush and his deputy Tony Blair.

While the western world has been largely successful in creating fronts against China and Russia through the poor Afghans and Pakistanis, it is just beginning to see the reap of their harvests. On the other hand – if people like Bin Laden were to realise that the western world does not want to see a developed Afghanistan or Middle East – they would also probably realise that a better way of functioning would be to spend their vast fortune in procuring food and livelihood means for a battered people. Being a silent hero is certainly better than being a self-proclaimed one. It is due to a few people that a particular religious community is looked upon with such general hatred.

I claim to be a global citizen, and I refuse to look at anyone as a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew etc. I refuse to hate a normal Pakistani because his leader chose the wrong way for his people, and I refuse to agree with people who want to manage my world with their self-interests in mind.

National / religious boundaries do not matter anymore. It is a world where various civilisations have to co-exist and respect each others existence. That is the only way to end the conflict of civilisations.

At the same time, I do not see it ending soon……and it disgusts me.

Another fantastic speech – by Subroto Bagchi to IIM Bangalore students…

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Welcome Address by Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer, MindTree Consulting to the Class of 2006 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore on defining success. (July 2nd 2004)

” I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep – so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father. My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government – he reiterated to us that it was not ‘his jeep’ but the government’s jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep – we could sit in it only when it was stationary. That was our early childhood lesson in governance – a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father’s office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix ‘dada’ whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed – I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, ‘Raju Uncle’ – very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as ‘my driver’. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe. To me, the lesson was significant – you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother’s chulha – an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman’s ‘muffosil’ edition – delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson. He used to say, “You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it”. That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios – we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios – alluding to his five sons. We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, “We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses”. His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant. Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father’s transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, “I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited”. That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper – end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness.

Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term “Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan” and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University’s water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination. Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mother’s eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, “Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair”. I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, “No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed”. Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes. To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life’s own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life’s calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places – I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world. In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him – he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, “Why have you not gone home yet?” Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self. There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create. My father died the next day.

He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts – the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant’s world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions. In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said, “Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world.” Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity – was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world.”

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This is one of the most inspiring pieces I’ve ever read. One of those things that bring about a mini-paradigm change in life.

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This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered to MBA Students at Stanford University on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

—-

In the life of a typical Indian IT/ITES/BPO/KPO etc. etc. worker – probably the most discussed word.

I just finished a conversation with one of my friends who went on-site 6 months ago, and will be there for another year or so. Already, the signs of missing home were telling – not just family, but Delhi and India. The money is good he says, but not altogether convinced that for Rs. 10,000-20,000 a month extra, I want to break away from my life so far. Professionally, I could rise as much back home also, and money – well he says, I don’t want too much of it.

One of my mentors in life – who is among the most brilliant chaps and best people I have ever met, went to the top Tech-school in India – went to the US – worked, studied, started a business, made decent money and was living his dollar dreams – and decided to come back to where his heart was – barely 5 years after he left. No apparent reason.

The trigger which led to these musings – I was going through the blogs of one of my juniors in school. She went to US some years ago, in her teens, and her plan is to return to India when she gets the opportunity. She studies in a US university and is doing well I presume.

If I know these 3 people who want/wanted to come back, I know 100 people for every one of these three, who can’t wait to go abroad – sometimes, including me.

India…