I was extremely busy in last one month in various activities. There are many important events to share. Let me start from the most recent one.

August 22, 2005

I donated blood today. I have always thought of donating once a year ever since Ma had been to hospital and she needed bottles of blood transfusion. But I could not keep my promise to myself for a very silly reason that I am afraid of seeing blood. But today was a day when we had blood donation camp in our building itself. Since morning, I was contemplating the idea of donating but my inner conflict did not let me go until 3:00 PM when I could generate enough courage and went for this. When I went for registration, perhaps I was the last one for the day as they were closing at 3:30 PM. There were series of questions to be answered. After a test for iron level in my blood, I was asked to wait in a line for my turn. I was pleasantly surprised to see couple of my office friends lying and donating blood.

I am so scared of blood that I asked them to hide it from me as I could not have seen that. During the process of donation, one of the nurses came to me and asked me whether I was alright because I was kind of nervous! When I told the reason she encouraged me and that helped me to continue further without much problems. Finally it was over in five and half minutes only! Then there was a wait and so on and finally I was offered a glass of juice and some snacks. I did not feel like eating anything and took juice instead and that was it! I did not realize how the whole process was over in less than an hour or so! The whole arrangement was very nicely done.

When I came back from office, Hursh, Yash and Seema were waiting to pick me up from GO station. Seema had dropped me in the morning at station as she wanted to keep the car for the day. Hursh was very excited to hear that I had donated blood. He was one who had encouraged me once after hearing an advertisement on blood donation on radio, which concluded saying that “… it is sad that only 3% of eligible Canadians donate blood considering that we all have that!” That line is very awakening and Hursh asked me immediately that “Dad have you ever donated blood?” I told him that I had donated couple of times when I was young but not in the recent time. Today I was a proud father before my sons!  I resolved to myself that I will donate once a year now on.

I started recalling my last blood donation which was in year 1995 and that was for Ma. She needed nearly 5-6 bottles of blood to be transfused before each chemotherapy! We did not have many people to donate blood so we had to depend on others for this. The blood bank in Jamshedpur had reserve of blood and we managed from that. But I thought of that very deeply and thanked many from the bigger family of humankind as a whole; where there are many noble members who work selflessly and stand for a cause. Thanks to their donation, and before donation their concern for people at large, that we could go ahead with Ma’s treatment. It was contribution of those people which enabled us to utilize when we needed it the most! I had promised to myself that beside repaying some of the debt by donating the blood for humankind I should be of some use to others as well. I had been dragging away from that and unfortunately it never materialized. That was then but I am proud to say I am on a different course now! I often ask myself, how much am I doing for others without any selfish desire? I don’t feel satisfied with the answer myself, a lot is desired to be done!

August 21, 2005

It was almost 3 years that I had spoken to Manikant Nana. And what an interesting conversation it turned out to be! Let me first elaborate as who he is. When I was in my youth, I used to hear about one gentleman who used to live in the USA and was originally from my mother’s village Hariharpur. This person had deep interest in the village and would visit once in a while and talk to every single person of the village in the most humble way.

As I was growing up, I saw a coloured photograph of Ma and few other family members taken by him. I would question myself that can there be a person so caring to bring happiness in everyone’s life, agreed momentarily only but every time he could. When I was in my teens, I heard that he came down all the way to Hariharpur to marry off his daughter. Also he would spend hours and hours with my Nanaji, whenever he visited Hariharpur. He would take photographs, take video recordings and kind of interviews of all the prominent people of the village and record in voice recorder. I was told that he is in the process of writing a book an that is what=y he was compiling everything. 

When I left India, Nanaji gave me his phone number and asked me to talk to him should I need any help. When I came to Canada my beginning was very shaky and I found people here very different in their attitude. As most of my friends who were here for years, I noticed that their was a very different attitude. Let us put in this way, people here are very objective and straightforward, they speak their minds. Back in those days I was not prepared for such conversation as people would ask me directly as what help did I need or some would say simply what kind of help he could provide. To me all these appeared as if people understood my calls as if I needed help from them. I was little taken by surprise and resolved to myself that until I stood on own feet, I would not bother calling anyone again.

I felt that I had somehow established myself well in this country around 2000 and then I started calling all my friends in this part of the world. also by that time I had gone through a lot of transformation in my personality and what appeared to be very sharp in my early days they started blurring down to a large extent as I started understanding the intent of people. During those days I called Manikant Nana.He immediately recognized me though we have never met each other. We talked for over 2 hours in our first conversation. He talked about many things and we went over many topics. We have a few common interests such as Hariharpur, Mithila samaj and likes. We would correspond through e-mails and phones once in a while and it went on regularly for next couple of years. Then Nanaji died in year 2002. Manikant Nana is perhaps the biggest admirer of Nanaji’s contribution to the Hariharpur samaj and in general he admires his overall vision and achievements in life. He was saddened by his demise and we had few more correspondence and then somehow we did not talk or correspond for next almost 2 years. Mainly it was because of my mistake as I had changed my job and moved from my previous home to another one an all my co-ordinates had changed. Right from office e-mail to my phone numbers. when we were talking, I came to know that he had tried couple of times to reach to me but with no success.

Recently, I had started writing my memoirs of childhood and I was writing a lot about Hariharpur and therefore my memories were very fresh. I had to ask and verify many information as well. He seem to have so much information about Mithila and Hariharpur that we went on. He clarified many of my information and also told me so many interesting information about my Nanaji’s childhood. That has generated lots of work for me as I need to correct many of my blogs where I have put wrong information. He has amazing collection of stuff related to Hariharpur and I requested him to archive all those stuff on more modern media such as DVD or CDs. He needed some information from me and hopefully he will not find them so difficult as I am planning to send him all the details soon. He mentioned that he has video recordings, photographs and voice recorded of many people including my Nanaji with him. He has complete family trees of all the families of village. What a remarkable person he is! He told me that he was not sure who will benefit from that or who will carry them on but at least he has satisfaction that in next 200-300 years people of that village ever wanted to know more about their roots(which I am sure will happen), this will be a priceless contribution. I am very impressed by his passion for these. I was overjoyed when he shared so many interesting stories about Hariharpur and related ones. I have requested him to start a blog on that but if he does not, I will try to capture them as much as I would be able to. 

August 20, 2005

I became PMP certified. On Saturday I took the Project Management Professional examination at Prometric Centre at London, Ontario. Soon you would be able to see my name here. I am going through a very crucial juncture in my professional career. I started this mis-adventure in IT about 8 years back and now have started realizing that this was never my career goal. At the best it could have been a means to achieve my ultimate career goals but not something where I would have stuck, in a way! At this point I myself do not know as what are my goals and which way I want to go in my career path. Everything is very murky. I am trying to get some direction and so these certifications. Let us see how it shapes up in future.

I had missed my first PMP examination as I forgot to show up on that day. Let me explain further, as it sounds unbelievable but it is true! I had got “go ahead” from PMI in December 2004 itself and had registered for the examination somewhere that time. But I always found myself not ready yet, and kept on postponing. Finally, it happened a little too often and so the miss! I was shocked that I had lost nearly $500 as fee! But then next moment I determined that I have to conquer this in my next attempt, no matter how much efforts were needed! I contacted PMI and they did not even consider it as re-examination but as a new examination and I was again charged nearly $430 US, which roughly translates into $500 Cdn.

Meanwhile, my team lead Ron Naidoo cleared the examination. He had followed my advise, just like Manmeet Singh and Tunji Oreyingbo had. Everyone who took my advice had become PMP except me. Anyhow, the process to get a confirmation from PMI took a long time and finally I obtained confirmation on Wednesday, August 17th. I went to schedule the exam to Prometric site and it was all full. Since 2004 pattern is getting over by end of August, everyone wanted to take before that and so the rush! I was not sure what to do and suddenly I found slots available at London, Ontario centre. I immediately booked for Saturday at 1:00 PM.

I had now only over two days in my hand to prepare. But I was determined to clear this examination anyhow so started studying like crazy in my office and home. I was almost confident about the outcome a day before on Friday evening but as it was late in the evening on Friday, a day before the examination, my confidence started dimming. I had lot to complete but I did not have time! I finally resolved myself that I was not going to study a whole lot more but would rather focus on whatever I had covered until that point! I went to bed around 12:00 and next day morning I got up late around 8:30. I kept my cool and just focused on whatever I had studied so far. I had to drive a long distance, nearly 160 miles. Therefore, I took bath and was ready by 10:00 to start for London.

Initially, I had thought of taking everyone there as they could have enjoyed a new place but then I shot down that idea and went all alone. I had burnt a new music CD and the songs were very soothing and the driving was much relaxed and enjoyable. Half way through I had regained my confidence and started taking my own mock examination. I guess that made the whole difference. I learned a new technique now which works very well for me. I should stop my revision and studying book and other course materials at least by late evening before the day of examination. After that I should focus on something similar, like take my own mock examination. That way I could come to know more about my weaknesses and comfort level as well.

Anyhow, when I took the exit from 401 for London, Mapquest’s direction really let me down. It had shown Highbury N exit and then mentioned that take Highbury South, and when I continued on Highbury South for almost 15 minutes, I started realizing that I was crossing remote villages. I made a turn and went the other way and then reached the centre in next half an hour. I did a good thing by keeping nearly 1 hour margin.

The examination centre had many people waiting to take the examination like they had nearly 5 people. Finally my examination started at 1:00 PM. I did not even know how I had spent 3 hours without even realizing that! The questions were very straightforward but lengthy. Options for answer were very close and that used to take a lot of time as one had to read again and again the lengthy questions! There were words like Most, First, Except, Only etc., to make the things worse. As most of the options could be right, one had to apply his judgment to get the option which fitted well for adjectives First or Only and likes. I finished all my 200 questions in nearly 3.5 hours. But I had nearly 60 questions marked for review. I went over again and just clicked on Finish button around 5:00 PM and it took almost a minute to tell me “Pass” . I was very relaxed as my hard work had finally paid off!

I immediately called Seema after the exam and she was very happy to hear the outcome as well. Then I drove back very relaxed but was feeling very hungry as I had not taken any food since morning (did not feel like!). But Seema had planned to visit someone so wanted to reach home as soon as possible. Once I reached home, the best reaction was from Yash who sat on my lap and asked, “Papa exam pass kar liya?”  

August 17, 2005

Hursh’s playoff has started and he did not do very good in last game. Though his team tied with arguably the best team in his league but the goal tending by him was not that great. He was little shaky and may be pressure was telling on him. All though this season he had done very good goal tending and he became the first choice for his coach but perhaps he could not keep the tempo for the final playoff. Hopefully he will do better in the rest of playoff games and reach into semifinal stage. Here are comments from his coach about his goaltending from almost every game he has played:

….From what I saw last night during the practice and scrimmage(s) I think we’re ready for the play-offs, Hursh again was phenomenal while I was going over some drills with him and when I looked over to check on the other boys doing their drills they were almost flawlessly. …..I would like to have Hursh in net on Wednesday he is on a hot streak right now!!! 

We had outstanding goal-tending by Hursh in both the first and second half, Hursh caught so many high flying balls tonight I think he’ll have sore hands tomorrow!!! I have never seen so many incredible saves by one goal tender this season!!! great job guys!!!  Besides all of those great goals and great saves we had some fancy footwork out there tonight by Radi and Matthew and Adam, tons of pullbacks which led to at least 3 scoring chances and so much passing it was hard to follow the ball at times!!! 

We had stellar goal-tending in the first half by Nicholas and Hursh in the second between the two of them they only let in one goal the whole game way to go guys!!!

Just about everyone has had a chance to play in net this season and I have had some fantastic goal-tending that everyone should be very proud of, I would like to go into the playoffs with 4 goalies who will play in each of the games, the 4 players I have chosen are Hursh, Jason, Sean and Nicholas.  It was not an easy choice to make as we have also seen phenomenal goal-tending from Jordan, Reid, Raymond, Adam, Matthew and Ryan.  But I’m confident that with these players playing out and any one of either Hursh, Jason, Nicholas or Sean between the pipes we will do wonderfully in the playoffs!!! 

I have Hursh down as one of my goalies this week and hopefully I’ll see as many fantastic saves as I saw him make at practice last night, but I still need one more goalie for the game. 

…and I can’t forget the wonderful job the 2 goal tenders did tonight great job Jordan and again Hursh I saw you both make some great saves to keep us in the game!!! 

…and the second goal was scored by Matthew we also had fantastic goal-tending by Hursh in the first half and Raymond in the second…

He is perhaps shaping up very well as a goalie but he was not that sharp in the first playoff game. He is very exciting player though and would charge up the team quite well. He boosts up the team a lot and everyone is very friendly with him. But his interest is shifting more towards baseball now and he is requesting me to put him in baseball team next year and not soccer. We will see about that.

On other fronts Hursh is maturing very fast now. One of these days he called me directly on my office phone number and asked something like - ” Dad, I am at your canada.com site and how do I see the mails?”

He wanted to check the mail from his coach, which she sends normally after every game. I gave him the instructions over phone and he followed them exactly and he ends his conversation like this - ” OK, I am in now. Thanks. Bye Dad!”

How quickly this little sweet chubby boy has transformed and slowly entering in his youth slowly now! He is eight now! I know it is little far but he would be there sooner than that age, he is maturing much faster. He has a photographic memory and often he would ask very detailed question and his mom would become very irritated as she does not understand as what he is talking about! He would ask questions more for clarification purpose though, like ” Dad, you remember we had been to States last time and there was a shop with Dunkin and we stopped there and ….and so on ..!” I understand his problem, because I am exactly like him, I love discussion with no purpose, like I love recalling old days and just discuss about that in the same way! I am to be blamed for what has transfered in him through my genes! Seema would truncate his discussion by asking questions like ” OK, yes, then what…what is your question, I don’t remember, but you tell me what is your question?” thinking that he wanted to recall about that trip and some related question he wanted to ask. But he would end very quietly -” No, I was just asking about that because we had been to that place!” Seema would become completely frustrated and pull him up a lot. And he would be very irritated now. He loves when I support him saying something like -” Yes and do you remember that day we had some donuts there and Yash had to go to washroom…” etc. and he would become very delighted in going back in the time! He is so close to my personality! Strange! 

I remember he has been very creative since he was 5 years or so. Once he asked me that -”Dad you know in Thursday my name is there, kind of ..!” And he went on clarifying that, “ if you take out T and day from that it is my name!”  What can I say, I was little surprised to see his creativity! Then I took him once to baseball game last year as I had got a complimentary VIP pass from my office for two and I and Hursh went there. Of course it was embarrassing for both of us, particularly for me as I did not understand any bit of that game and he was asking me too may questions about game and I had no clues. All these were happening in the VIP row, where serious fans were seating! But that had its own impact and ever since that Hursh has been so engrossed in games, soccer, NHL, NBA, CFL and MLB that he knows everything about these leagues. He knows all the rules about theses games and all he has learned by himself. He knows their websites and it is amazing that he keeps latest information about the team rankings and what not. Once we were at Murali’s place and he was sharing with us about his recent visit to Air Canada centre to watch NBA game as he had also got a pass from his office. Before he could say anything, Hursh updated him with score breakups at each quarter and who all were top scorers! Murali could not believe that how Hursh could remember so much about once particular game! He has amazing memory and inclination to his interests.

Recently he has started developing interest in Mathematics and English. He has been doing better and better in Maths at Kumon. But he is not doing so well in English though. But I am sure that he would improve in that as well, once he develops interest in that!

August 16, 2005

I discovered on web one of my relatives. It is a very interesting story! Let me share with you. I was looking for some details on Hariharpur as I wanted to see that if someone else also has similar interest as mine. I used google and I checked out one of the links. It took me to a guest book of a site where one Pranav Shankar has mentioned that his village is Hariharpur and his family is in Bokaro, presently he is in Dubai. It immediately reminded me of Arun Mama and his son. I had heard about this boy that he is doing so well and has been living in Dubai for quite sometime. I took a chance and sent him a mail. I was pretty sure about him being Arun Mama’s son though I did not know his real name and if I remember well, he is more known by name Munna in his home. But perhaps I might be wrong on that name as well, for sure I did not know his real name. However, I was not sure about his e-mail.

It was Friday and when I came back on Monday there was a mail seating in my inbox from Pranav Shankar. I was very eager to read his reply. It was a very long e-mail and I could not believe the content of the mail. he wrote a very good English, almost flawless and more than his vocabulary and grammar, it was the content which touched me deep inside. I was not able to believe that someone of this young age could have so many brilliant ideas and determination to achieve so many goals in life. He is doing exceedingly well and he has transformed the whole family almost. I was very impressed by his reply and did not know how to reply. I took a print out of his e-mail and read again and again as it had touched my emotions. This boy had done something impossible for his family. He had helped his family to get his first sister married and for the other three sisters not only he is taking care of educational cost but even more importantly is giving a direction to the career. In such a competitive age in India, he has craved a career plan for each one of them. His dream to make his middle class family to a business class family really touched me to deep. I see a fire in him. He will do so many wonderful things in his life, I am sure. I was truly impressed, considering the kind of family background he has. I felt so good for Arun Mama as finally he must have some smile in his face! though he has been one person who always had smile at his face but deep inside he must have been a very devastated person. after all he had no life of his own for so many years, first he had to see all his four sisters married and then once he was over from that he had his own daughters growing up! Meanwhile the realities in Hariharpur have changed and his parents (Doodh Baba, as I used to call him when I was young!) could no longer live in village and depend on agriculture. I guess under all these odds Pranav did something extra ordinary and he has a long way to go, I am sure. He sent me his photograph, I am sharing that here.

I could have not believed such a wonder through web ever in my life!

August 3, 2005

I had met a person called Piyush Jha accidentally.  It was day of BACA picnic and one of our friends Rajesh Jha’s car broke down. Initially we thought that it was battery problem and we arranged for a booster cable and his car started. everything seemed to be going well until at some point his car again broke down and for good this time. There wee some more members coming behind his car and they gave him and his family ride to Mississauga. I have CAA Plus membership and he contacted me as he wanted to tow the car to a garage in Mississauga. It was a very funny incident as he asked me to call CAA and say pretend that as if I was driving my friend’s car which has broken down and they would send the towing truck. But as I started so, the CAA person asked me too many details about the car and perhaps she became suspicious of some foul play and she asked me to be there at the site with a photo id. And so Rajesh had to come to my house to pick me up.

As we were driving to the spot Rajesh introduced me to a person seating in the rear seat. He was his cousin and I asked him after a while as what he does. He replied to me saying that he is movies. I was not that attentive and thought that may be he is in movie show business like involved in organizing film festival events and related activities. But on further inquiry he said that he directs movies.

Now I was a little serious and asked like which all movies he has directed in past. Rajesh interrupted in between and said that he was here for his movie’s North American premiere. The movie has Om Puri in lead role and the name of the move is King of Bollywood. I had heard about this movie sometime back as in one of the TV interviews Om Puri had mentioned about it. I could not believe that a simple looking guy has so many achievements under his belt. I felt very privileged and we went over many topics related to Indian Film industry in general and what kind of movies will work and under what circumstances and so on so forth. I was enjoying talks with him a lot.

Finally when we reached to the site where Rajesh’s car was waiting, we had a long wait there for CAA guys to come and tow it to a garage in Mississauga. During that long wait for nearly 2 hours I had opportunity to talk with him in great details. I came to know that Piyush is an MBA from Bajaj and he had worked with Mudra for many years. Also he had closely worked with Mukul Anand, a very famous Hindi film director. I came to know about his future plans. He invited me to his premiere to be held on August 5th.

I reached at Harbourfront around 6:00 PM, though the premiere was to begin at 7:30 or so. However there was one Indian cultural festival called Maehndi Masala Masti 2005 was in progress and I started enjoying that. There was a stall by Ikea and lucky spinning wheel won me a T-shirt. The T-shirt was specifically designed for Indian crowd as it had “Yeh Kea, Woh Kea and Ikea” printed on it. There was a big food corner with stalls from almost all the famous Indian restaurants in GTA.

We went early in the cinema hall and it was already full. With some introduction by Deepak Sachdeva, organizer of Film festival, the movie started. Movie was “jara leek se hatkar” and was a satire on Indian Film industry where superstars never want to give up and keep on dancing as main actor opposite girls of their great granddaughter’s age. The dig was made against NTR of south and few others in Hindi movie like Amitabh who kept on acting in lead roles until he was booted by public and he was out of movies fora decade or more and came back in more dignified roles which suit his personality. It is a different story that many say that he commands highest fee in the industry much to the disappointment of current “superstars”. But many say that he is a different class. But what about Devanand or Rishi Kappor. The former is not giving up even though he is in his late eighties now! There have been many such characters in Indian films who inspired Piyush to come out with this hilarious movie theme. Movie had many other issues running in parallel. The direction was good but at times it could not keep pace with the story. Also when the climax of the movie came he just let it take its own course of actions rather than converge all to build the climax. I compared his movie with a well set batsman in cricket like Sachin who builds the innings with discipline until late 30 overs and when he is about to change the gear and accelerate the run rate, he gets run out! It is not exactly anti-climax but kind of one feels in-satiated. Same kind of feeling I had when I was watching the climax of the movie. The portion of movie after the climax was definitely boring and completely unwanted. But overall movie is OK, I would not say great just because I happen to know him now.

There was a post movie interview and many people asked him questions. I was feeling very different as I had never been to any premiere before. I heard that Piyush is going to be in Toronto for his next project and hope to talk to him soon. It was a very great feeling to have interacted with someone so close to Bollywood ever in my life.