Yessssssss …. I am through with all my exams and have completed all acads related requirements here. So god willing and profs and academic services office permitting, I should graduate next week. So what am I doing right now …. relaxing, writing this blog entry and exploring the Yahoo Mail Beta that has come out with this new outlook kind of look. I feel it is much better than the older interface.

I was thinking yesterday night about all the people who have made a difference to my life, if you could term it that way. Here are the names that came up immediately (apart from immediate family):

• Rajnish – my best friend who has always been there by my side. He was the one responsible for my applying to ISB and consequently spending this wonderful year of my life here.

• Shri T.R. Dhandapany – my mridangam guru. Though teaching the art of playing percussion instruments is the only means of earning livelihood for him and though he charges very modest fees, he has been kind enough to teach people who couldn’t afford even that much, for free. Whatever little I know about playing percussion instruments is primarily because of what I learnt from him.

• Mrs. Sophy Jacob – my biology teacher at school who has been a strong influence. I can never forget how much she helped all of her students. Had it not been for fate and my not meeting the minimum age requirements for medical entrance exams, my interest in biology and the way she taught the subject would have possibly taken me on to a career in medicine.

• ST2 gang @ ST Microelectronics (Anil, Lippika, Gurpreet, Sarika, Don, Rao & Jyoti) – These people changed my life completely (for the good). I would, in all probability, have been a different kind of a person, had I not met these people.

• Dr. Bhuwan Agrawal – my manager at Motorola/Freescale, a very frank person from whom I have learnt a lot in life. For the four years that I worked there before coming to ISB, he has mostly assigned me work that was at the cutting edge of technology and completely new or that was the “in thing” so to say, for the company and for the semiconductor industry. I have always enjoyed working with him and would have never left my group there had it not been for the urge to do an MBA, a lot of push from Rajnish and the desire to proceed ahead in a different track altogether in life.
• Dr. Vladimir Zolotov, Dr. Mahbub Rashed, Dr. Ertugrul Demircan & Dr. Rajendran Panda & his team – with whom I had the opportunity to work on a lot of the new stuff at Motorola/Freescale. Vladimir is probably the most intelligent and knowledgeable techie I have ever talked to. He has this knack of explaining complicated stuff in ‘a simple and easy to understand and appreciate’ kind of way.
• The “IN” gang (mainly Ritu, Jassu, Katya Bhai, Vutu & Amitabh) – with whom I have spent probably the happiest days of my life. We used to freak out like anything.

I have to also thank my quadmates Alok, KP and Vikram and the entire Class of 2006 with whom I spent my year at ISB. Having interacted at least once with almost everyone in the batch and having interacted regularly with so many people, I am sure there are a lot of batchmates who will continue to be my (good) friends for a long time to come, if not for life.