Life Stories

Campus hiring season is here, and like many organizations, mine has been busy conducting recruitment drives. I was part of an off-campus hiring event as a technical panelist, interviewing fresh graduates over video calls. As I joined my first interview of the day, the candidate was already waiting on the bridge. She looked visibly nervous. To make her comfortable, I asked if she would like to take a minute, have some water, or simply gather her thoughts before we began. She politely declined, but her anxiety was evident. Every answer came with hesitation. She doubted herself before she had even completed a sentence. Fresh graduates often walk into interviews carrying more than just their resumes. They carry expectations, comparisons, uncertainty, and the fear of making a mistake. This generation faces a very different world from the one many of us entered. When I graduated, our biggest strength was our understanding of concepts. The internet wasn't always within reach, ...

Wedding season brings with it a different kind of excitement. Families get busy with shopping, decorations, guest lists, and countless last-minute arrangements. One of my teammates was right in the middle of all this as his sister's wedding preparations were in full swing. One day, while we were on a work call, he mentioned that he wanted to hand me the wedding invitation personally in the office. It was a thoughtful gesture, and we continued discussing work as usual. Like many conversations with him, the discussion soon drifted beyond the agenda. He was at the beginning of his career—curious, energetic, and never short of questions or unusual ideas. That day, he came up with one that I had never heard before. "Ma'am," he said, "I want your name to appear on the invitation as Special Appearance." For a moment, I wasn't sure if I had heard him correctly. I laughed and explained, "That's something you usually see when celebrities or famous persona...

Guru Arjan Devji was the 5th sikh Guru. On their shaheedi diwas( Martyr's Day) which was observed on 18th June 2026 this year, the Sikh community sets up chabeels at various locations. A public place distributing free water/sweet drinks to the passers by as a sewa is called a chabeel. I recently interacted with a Sikh colleague and had our contacts exchanged. They put up a WhatsApp status for the chabeel and I happened to notice it. I checked with them and was warmly onboarded. I wanted to contribute and was also invited to join the sewa. Considering various factors I confirmed to join. Having been born and raised in northern part of India, this was a part of the memories while growing up. However, since I moved to Pune, had missed these events. When I saw this opportunity, I wanted to grab it with both my hands   I reached the location of the chabeel in the morning, the sewa was already on. I joined the group. The chabeel was at a round about with an auto riksha stand, a bus ...

Quite at the initial stage of my career, I was working with an amazing team. A geographically diverse but a very well bonded team. We used to brainstorm and work together through the day on voip calls and screen sharing through office communicator. Working on a product, it needed a lot of collaboration and thinking out of the box to make it a world class product. We were making something to overcome the challenges of an already established industry standard tool. The initial product was already there before I joined. However, it still needed a lot of work based on the user experience. Everyday we came in with a new challenge, understand what our users had challenges with and tried to resolve them one after the other. After a couple of months which spanned a few years, we had taken it to a level where it had not only overcome the challenges of the existing industry tool but had also come out better. The extra ordinary implementations we did were appreciated far and wide on various inter...

After a long wait, my brother finally agreed to get married. The final one from our generation!! The engagement ceremony took place in Delhi with happy faces from both the sides joining the fun and frolic.  My kids' school was ongoing but this was important too. We took a leave and flew to Delhi from Pune. Indigo was caught in an issue related to their staffing model which had badly impacted majority of flights. By the day my flight was scheduled, luckily the issues had resolved and operations were normalised. We reached my brother's place in Gurugram around noon on Thursday. My sister has already arrived with her family the previous day. We all met each other , more for the kids who were meeting after a gap of a few years now. Ma brewed some masala tea for me while we freshened up before settling down for a delicious lunch of kulche chhole. Some of us caught up on some sleep before the mehndi artists arrived.  3 artists took around 3 hours ...

We try to donate for prasad at Iskcon on the last day of pitr paksha. Following the donation, you are also welcome to serve on your own.  Of the few tens of donors , only a handful usually turn up to serve. Prasad time being between 6 and 8 pm, we reached the temple by 5:30pm. We had a lovely darshan in the temple and then came down to the prasad area. They have a dedicated shed where the entire prasad arrangements are done. From utensils to tables to mats for people to sit, water and soap to wash the utensils after eating prasad to drinking water. Everything is maintained and managed in that dedicated area. We got all the huge utensils filled with prasad - rice , sambhar , khichdi and sweet. They are carried in trolleys as they are very heavy. The utensils were taken out. Everything was arranged properly as the queue had already started building up by 5:45pm. At 6, there was a small prayer for the prasad and then the sevadars started distributing. Long mats were rolled out on the ...

While cruising through our daily routine, we tend to come across incidents/scenes/happenings that make us laugh/think/ learn. When such things happen, we generally share it amongst people around us. In this blog, I wish to reach out to a wider audience, to share such happenings and hence share the fun, humor, learnings