A Facebook Friend Request!

Mindvoice...
I am telling with utmost certainty that you would have received uncountable friend requests in facebook, mostly from complete strangers. If at all you know half of them, let alone knowing them all, you are really lucky!
On the other side of the sea, have you ever made a New Friend and connected to him/her (her/him, sorry girls; don't go on a rally now!) in facebook, you will understand what I am saying after this! Until this happened, I've never had any prognosis that a thing so simple as a friend request would be so daunting, so painstaking!

True Story...
As a rank tyro in IT industry, it was hard enough to finally get a project. Now that, the offices are mostly located out of the city on the National and State Highways I had to opt for company transport services. I knew no one in the bus. Moreover, the difference in ages of "colleagues" makes it all the more difficult to strike conversations during travel. Been a frequent traveller and a gregarious person in recent years (SRM, what do you expect!), I found this situation absolutely antagonizing. Digital storage is not plenipotentiary! The gigabytes of songs saved in the gadget did not help the cause, for, 70km a day consumes the quantum of songs in less than a week!

Slowly I started finding people to talk to. Again, if at all we make it to the same bus in the same shift, well, yeah, some talking after an exhausting day. Otherwise, it's mostly sleeping and Radio!

I finally met a (newly-made) friend the other day on my return journey. We started having a pleasant conversation after an arduous day in the office. Office stuff only, can't help it! Eventually it came down to doing a facebook friend request on the go. We were both loaded with 3G internet connectivity, so that was not going to be a problem. Er... Issue (we are all IT!), or so I thought! She was magnanimous enough to login first; well, she was always online. I told my name with correct spelling. I missed the initials.

The search results did not match. I told to include the initial.
Now the output went haywire - Zuckerburg had designed his website in such a way that the initials are expanded to His will. Except me, we found many names.

A smart person, she intimated that we could search using the email id! "Of course", I thought! Elated with the turnaround of events, I gave my email.
Zuckerburg was smarter this time. His brainchild gave a 'No results found' reply. I was so distraught at this. The bus started moving faster too.
Thankfully, she was showing her customary patience, associated with most people from her region. "You are in any pages or something like that?"

"Yeah! Wait, let me log in". While she was searching something, I finally logged in. It happened quickly, thanks to Airtel 3G - no I am not advertising you Bharti, you still stink all the same! I thought I will give a query this time, as she was doing the harder stuff all the time.
"Tell me your name. I will search", I offered. She told her full name. I typed it super fast. The website has its habit of adding some letters to the beginning or the end of names at will. You just don't know how to control it. And even if it does display some thing, it's just not sane! She did not come up. All I found was a junk of unorganized data.
I repeated the ploy of email id. Didn't work.
"You are in any Confession pages?"
"No. You know anyone from this school (she mentioned some school name, not important for the story)?"
"No."
She again gave an inkling.
"We have no choice, tell me any page where you do some activity. May be, we could find your name!"
"Alright go to Chess Confessions page. I would have liked the first post or something!"
She went to that page. To my horror, there was a stupid post that time with no likes or comments!
"Scroll down" I said. She did it.
As events unfolded, there were so many jobless people in that page and hence so many posts. With no offense to the users of that page, you guys are not helping my cause here! My comments were no where to be found.

"O...kay, I will like something here!" (Eating up all my pride - the first post was totally horrible. No one would even man up to post that one liner)
She smiled and said, "You can unlike this after everything is done!"
"Amazing, their brains!" (mindvoice)
So I liked it. She clicked the item. My name came. She clicked on the link and went to my profile.

(The story is far from over!)
When my profile slowly loaded, I heaved a huge sigh of relief at the moment of triumph. However...
to my dismay, there was no 'Add Friend' button. Only 'follow' and 'subscribe'! No mutual friend it seems!
"You have strict security settings, it seems...!", she said.
"But we are sitting right here! Can't facebook see that!? I know this person! U stupid Markie!"
There were no mutual friends, only common pages, that too, a very few, not of any use. Now what?
"Alright, I will send you a message. That way, you can see me!"
I was out of my mind. Still, I parked myself well and sent out an "I am-cool-with-it" smile. She 'inboxed' me.
In my phone, I opened the links "chat" and "messages", but there was none. She hinted "Reload!" I did the same, no use! There was no message. Only notifications. Where's the message???
"Mark Sucker_burp!"

Plan A, Plan B, Plan C... thanks to Chennai traffic, the bus was still moving without reaching the destination!
My Cover Photos were public. She was a kind person - 'like'd a few of the photos and told me this was the photo she liked. I duly followed the instructions. Opened the EXACT photo and found her name. Meanwhile, she checked her security settings - "Any one can send friend requests"
>> I gave The Friend Request!

So much for the 'technology'! And yeah, I unliked the post, you can't find it now! It was just a temporary variable. Destroyed it after using.
"Software Engineer"
ak

The SRM phenomenon

It was a routine scooter ride in the morning when I chanced upon my SRM jersey the other day. Chancing upon it, I suddenly felt so POWERFUL! Why? It's not always that you get those "feeling of strength". May be, the SRM colors or something, I am not sure. There's got to be something after all.

Putting things in perspective, yes, my SRM life was actually SPECIAL - thanks to my teammates. It was a charmed existence! After a tumultuous beginning - convincing professors with my OD forms and then getting approval letters from HODs... it was hard at the start. But then, what isn't hard in the beginning?

The first big assignment in my Chess life (from now on, "life" in this post always refers to SRM life) was the South West Inter Universities in Tumkur. Facing three PT sirs, (or Physical Education faculties, however you would call them - we liked them!) was not going to be an easy task. By nature's wish, I was fortunate enough to be the so-called Captain of the University team. If at all there was going to be an indication of what could be in store for the next three-and-a-half years or so, this tournament was going to be it! There was a good crowd - Deepan, Rohit, Prem, Aravind and Mohindhar. Watching 'desi girl' song on television in the early mornings before every single round was not at all in my books; however, this was precisely what happened... throughout the tournament.
Winning the event was not at all going to be a problem; yet, we did have some anxious moments. It was the aftermath of the tournament that I had to face the wrath of the 'sir's. It was then that I began to realize the intricacies of playing a college event.
"Why can't you score 32 on 36? It will be a record. You have to better the record set by Madras University!" No body yells at us for normal individual events, the regular classical events. Here, it's a different ball (okay no ball here) game altogether.
"There's always some special grudge or significance associated with every event that you will participate - be it the Inter Universities, the regular VIT Rivieras or the odd weekend inter-college event"
And then this happens if you are the one point of contact (yeah, the IT influence, basically the scape goat or the Captain) - You have to attend all the calls from PT sirs! There's no way your friends will attend those. There will more or less be the same advice over phone, this time, the only difference being, the words more close to your ears - "Arun ... You have to win 4-0!"

What???

 For us, friends for a long time - Prem, myself, Aravind, Mohindhar, Jammu, Vishnu and others, college tournaments could never be a serious thing. Even though we all wanted to win, the whole 'thing' of being serious (or appear to be serious) in these events appeared artificial. We did have some competition but it was always going to be a victory for SRM. I don't take away anything from other colleges for it, but I am certainly happy and proud about my team. Having said that, I made sure some basic team spirit was always followed. Let me narrate an interesting incident.

We were in St Joseph's for a team event for two days. On the Saturday night, we had  to stay in the hostel. There I met a team member friend of another college, a very strong team - I am not mentioning the name here, to avoid unnecessary disturbance (matter is more important). He asked me "Anna, do you know if _____ is playing tomorrow?" (yeah, that ____ is my friend, but how do I know? He's not in my team!)
I simply said "Call him and ask"
"I don't have his phone number", he said, nonchalantly.
"How long have you been in this team?"
"We have played four tournaments together"
That sums it all up. Good teams may not perform well in acrimonious circumstances like college tournaments. It's always important to have a "X-factor" in your team when you got to 'click'! You can't afford to have differences within the team!
There's also many other things that make SRM click. We watch the same movies, we see the same "persons", we travel together, we eat together, we bring the jerseys to the board every time, we are together in outings, more often than not! And then there is this 'SRM' spirit that is associated only with SRM - you got to be here to know!

Oh yeah!

There was always a discussion on board orders before the tournament - whatever tournament we were going to play. And then there was another discussion to finalize it just before or after the inauguration, if at all there was one! Usually jammu (when he was in the team, else it was just me doing this) and I connected with all the players to decide it, the night before the event. It never mattered if the tournament was big or small, it was always this way.
Every one of us gave unique replies and it would be the same every time.
Prem: "3 or 4. I don't know Arun, You put me in any board. See you tomorrow" (Usually I would be ready to play anywhere)
Vishnu: "Board 1 is fine with me."

jammu: "What's Prem saying?" (so here's the first deadlock)
Aravind: "Edho onnu machi. Reserve ah podu" (translation: anything dude, put me as reserve)
But then, all of this would come down to me and the PT sirs would be calling me in one end. It was hard, these times, but it was enjoyable. After all, who gets this 'problem of plenty' at the college level? :)

"When every one feels his/her importance in the team, the performance elevates to a different level!"
I had this as one of my core principles behind these entertaining discussions. There was never an instance of misunderstanding. It was all smooth sailing as far as the team was concerned!

There were times of enormous struggle on the academics side, even in the second year - low internals in the beginning, permissions, re-exams, record notebooks... the list is not exhaustive! I always believed time would tell
"Give time some time and everything will be fine!"
Come the third year, and there were fruits for our labour. The internal marks were not that difficult because my teachers were by now 'used' to our routines - something that was imminent. Life was easier in the third year - I just had to 'inform' them about my tournaments, and they would tell me a date for the re-tests (yeah, Indians coined this word). The internal marks were more generous because of this and I had increased my GPA from a paltry 6.1 in the first semester to around 7.8 in the fifth. Yeah, placements were nearing and I had to cross 7.5 with my Cumulative grades at the end of semester six, to attend the direct interview. Through some 'application', I managed to do just that!

Thanks to these companies! We are all corporates now! :) In the end, we did not miss out on academics either!
Yeah, Aravind was a 9 pointer - he lives in Bengaluru! Prem and I were 8 pointers, we live in Chennai.
Luckily, I had time to give some thing back some thing to SRM, this time as a guest...

We play different roles!

Finally I would like to thank a few good people, personally - Mohindhar, Aravind, Prem, Jammu, Vishnu, Deep, Deepan, Senthil sir, Rajasekar, Louis and the other PT sirs, all my teachers, for making our lives so easy in SRM!
It was a roller-coaster ride. I had done a few mistakes and a few good things. On paper, however, good things come! I am quite happy about that!

Live life!

ak