Life Stories

My Driving license was due for renewal. The earlier license was from Delhi and now I have been living in Pune so it needed an address change too. I searched the net and found the renewal could be done online through the parivahan site.  I filled the form online, uploaded the required documents - current licence and address proof in this case. The fees was also calculated by the same site and paid online. Next was the appointment booking again from the parivahan site. The appointment slots are from Monday to Friday only.  I booked the slot for 10am monday morning. The RTO office is in sector 6, Moshi. It was a 25-min drive from my place and I reached the RTO office at 10am. On the ground floor is a reception where no one sits. If you look at that you will probably keep waiting as rest of the activities happen on the floors above. First floor is dedicated to all the driving licence work. When I reached there the first time, the counters were all deserted. People were waiting in ...

After the pickleball tournament, next up was the Innovation Marathon 2.0 on emerging technology. I was one of the jury members. This was a part of the CSR that our organization conducts. The initial process started around 7 months back with over 600 teams registering for the Marathon. With internal evaluations 85 teams got to the mentoring phase where they got dedicated mentors to help them progress further on their journeys. 50 of those 85 teams made it to the final round where these teams presented their projects to a panel of jury members who would then evaluate each team based on defined parameters. This exercise went on for a few hours in different rooms and finally the students were relieved of the anxiety that was being built up for the past few months. Post the evaluation all of us went for lunch. There were chit chats , discussions and some laughter during the lunch time. We went back to the main hall for some vote of thanks, experiences shared by the jury , by the...

An e-mail popped up in my work mail to register for women's pickleball tournament. It specifically asked for a certain grade of employees. Given the eligibility I jumped in to register bearing in mind I knew nothing about the game. When it was time for actual teams to be formed, it was time to face the truth. Only 2 ladies had registered from entire service comprising of over 1000 employees. We needed 5 ladies to be able to compete. We started gathering eligible candidates from all over the service to complete the team. Then came the practice part or I would better say getting acquainted to the game. I had been away for 2 weeks for my brother's wedding when the phase of getting acquainted started. When I got back I could get 2 sessions for acquaintance/practice before the actual tournament which helped get a fair idea of the game , rules, etc.  On the day of the tournament, we reached well in time. There were total 4 women's teams playing. We won all 3 sets in the semi fina...