When we met Santa...

Lured by the glittering Christmas trees and streets in Leuven last year, I desperately wanted to spend (at least one) Christmas in Europe. With stunning white Christmas around the corner this very year has been an incredible experience. All throughout the year, I dreamt about Santa clause coming to the door step with a lot of goodiebags and gifts providing lots of support and strength. I always believed he must be just around the corner, just to the left or to the right or... Illusioned by his presence, I kept on venturing and exploring each and every activity eagerly looking for surprizes, half chances with the hope that someday I would catch him...I would talk to him...I would sing with him...I would clap with him. From Jan to Nov. passed without much luck but with Christmas around the corner on one rendezvous evening I could indeed meet Santa....We all met Santa....We all sang...We all clapped...We all cheered:

"Wish you a Merry Christmas
Wish you a Merry Christmas
Wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year"

Julienne playing Piano

Itziar on Piano was a marvel. Julienne, Tomas and Sandeep in the background

It's a pity that camera's can't capture sound

It's Jingle Bells time. Everybody joining the corus.
Have a look @ the instrument with Parvathi; Bells in Sandeep's hands are not visible.

What a fantastic evening it was!!! Tomas's aunt Julienne warmly welcomed us and within no time we were in their enthralling music room with Piano, Guitar, Violin, Bells and many more musical instruments I do not even know. All three sisters are heavily into music. They compose songs, melodies, compile lyrics and perform in Chruches mesmerizing the crowd. Make crowd sing with them, clap with them, dance with them. If we would have had other two sisters at the venue, we would have had a live performance for sure but the shear amount of energy and enthusiasm with which Julienne was singing, playing Piano and Violin was good enough to offer us some glimpses as to what these performances would be like. With the house packed crowd, what amount of energy levels these artists must be producing, Stupendous! simply Out-of-the-World!!!

Although this was not the only surprize in store for us. Itziar, one of the new IMEC interns from Spain accompanying us on the trip was an accomplished Piano player. Phew!!! Practicing Piano from the age of 5 (if my memory is sane), her fingers started dancing on Piano producing incredible symphonies. With Julian on Violin and Istiar on Piano, we were treated with plenty of Christmas tunes. Some familiar, some unknown and it was an evening none of us wanted to end. From Beethoven to Jingle Bells we kept on singing and clapping and cheering:

Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way...
What fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh...

If Santa greets me this way every time; I would love to spend Christmas in Europe year after year...

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File photo of Tomas with his parents taken last year
during the Leopoldsberg reenactment battle visit

Festivals and Nostalgia

True or false, Good or bad, fortunate or otherwise, while staying abroad I have always had a feeling that something is amiss. The feeling aggravates the most during the festive season back home. You dearly dearly miss it. Missing colors of Holi downs you. Ganapati comes and goes but hardly hear or sing/hum on the chorus of aarti/bhajans. Navaratri makes you nostalgic looking for the elusive Dandya-Rass. Diwali is probably the worst amongst all suggesting that probably, just probably, you are loosing a tad more than your gains.

This is not only about food as you can cook anything and everything here but probably it's about that vibrancy, that radiance which makes you most nervous, most nostalgic and most craving for the aroma of the land (read Mitti ki Khushboo). On a typical festival day, you end up cooking a delicious meal, catch up with friends and have a nice banter. Indian diaspora is also quite active the world over celebrating the key festivals. Be it Ganesh Chaturthy in Antwerp or Durga Puja in Brussels or Holi and Diwali by ISAL Leuven, they do their bit to bring the community together and attempt to rejoice a bit on the firangi land. But, for me it hardly appeases the solace of the thought that I could have been to the Ganapati Mandir (photo below) early morning for the darshan on a Ganapati day and for most of ten days would have ended up attending the music concerts and other recreational programs. The stroll on the crowded Phadke road early in the Diwali morning is no way near to any walk on the planet. Moreover, missing company of your family members is obviously irreplaceable and you certainly miss them a lot.

Ganesh Puja in Antwerp. Quorum must have been around 1000 and the slogans of "Ganapati Bappa Morya!!!" filled the air. Photo Courtesy: Ajay

Durga Puja @ Brussels. Photo Courtesy: Sagnik babu. I personally was engrossed in an India-Pak Cricket match and decided not to go. If Dandya would have been there...

Ganash Mandir Sansthan, Dombivli. The place I miss the most every Ganapati. Phadke Road next to it is what I miss every Diwali :-(

Unfortunately, this is the 4th Diwali I am missing (3 abroad and one during the first year @ IIT-M) so far and this one being special it hurts the most. This is the first after Rucha's (my sister's) marriage last year and the home should be abuzz with all the relatives and friends enjoying festivities. They say they are going to miss me. But in reality I am going to miss them the most. The truth is with flesh and blood I am in Leuven, but with heart and sole I am in India, with them @ home...

Papa Kehate hein (or evolving dreamz) ...

As a kid, one often confronts this question. What would you like to be when you are grown up? Uncles and Aunties coming to your home offer you a special Candy, mostly a Cadbury (Is there only one special chocolate?) and flabbergast you with a query: "Qu Beta, bade hoke tum kya banoge?" The unfortunate part is you have to answer the question before you can launch on the chocolate. As a kid you obviously do not care if you ever become big or not. Keeping eyes on chocolate with a shy glare on the face you mutter some foolish words. If you answer I wish to be a "Doctor or an engineer", then you are binned into an erudite category. A wanna be lawyer is considered as shrewd and probably wanna be politician (dunno if anybody has answered this) had the danger of being treated as an outcast. The most ludicrous response I have heard is "Bada hoke muze papa banana hein..."-"I wanna be dad when I grow up..." Wanna be Dara singh comes close but wanna be Papa is not only funny but the most honest and innocent answer ever produced. The kid must have had his dad as his role model and hence the answer.

My childhood dreams were also funny and I do remember the way they transcended from one profession to the other. It all started with a bus journey. I happened to notice that not only the bus conductor has a lot of money after the ticket sales but he is really in control of the navigation as well. The driver and conductor form a team and the driver stops the bus whenever conductor rings "Ting" and starts upon "Ting Ting". Driver-Conductor pair was one of the most influential professionals I had spotted initially and were obviously my initial wanna bees. Later, I developed a strong respect for drivers and conductors for the hard work they have to go through…especially the State Transport drivers. I believe they have magical skills to take any bus in any condition to the destination. I am sure they could have been a part of "Chandrayan" and taken the satellite to the moon in their bus…

Then came a moment, at one of the cross road junctions I happen to notice a "Traffic Policeman" controlling the entire traffic on a busy junction. "Ting Ting" of the bus conductor was of no use here and the driver had no power to overrule his orders. Moreover his prim and proper, starched uniform, a white shirt with star badges on a khaki pant had its own appeal. The bus conductor and driver were never so neat and clean. In fact, many of them used handkerchief so that they could use the same shirt time and again. I had to reevaluate my dream job and as the most powerful person in the town, I had my eyes set on the Traffic Policeman's job.

As I went to high school television took the center stage. I typically liked TV serial "Nukkad" a lot. The characters Khopadi and Guru were my favorites and I was attracted to the acting world. Inspired by their performance on the small screen, I was very much keen to take part in the school drama and went to Mrs. Dalvi requesting a role. Mrs. Dalvi was a new teacher in our school and was very active in directing dramas and coaching Kabbadi teams for inter school competitions. Contrary to other teachers, she was very passionate about extra curricular activities. One of my classmates Snehal had recently won the prize for her acting under her tutelage and that was a motivation too. I was all game to show my skills on stage...to be the next star on the horizon. When I asked for a role in the drama, the be-spectacled teacher looked at me with an unlikely derogatory look. The look that repeated "Jane kaha kaha se aate hein...." word by word, time and again. The answer was all over her face. This feeling of apathy brings dejection, often leaving you in a despondent stage. I was no different. I do not know if bollywood lost another Bacchan at that very moment (hahaha) or not but my dreams to perform on stage were shattered forever and my acting we restricted to perform when I was caught stealing Besan laddoos from grandmas Tiffin box.

But, I continued playing, playing and playing. The same Mrs. Dalvi came to our home and gifted me Rs. 10/- for my performance when our team beat a team of hunks in an inter class Kabbadi match. Our team members were very small in size compared to the opponents and they had beaten us quite convincingly in the yester year. This year though things were different. The strategy we had plotted to nab those big fellows had worked enabling us to pose an unexpected win in school competition, shattering all big egos. We all were heros. Although, I managed to play Kabbadi and basketball a bit, I liked Kho-Kho by heart. Agradneya Vyayamshala (AVS) provided an excellent platform to excel. We had an excellent team and we were performing quite well in the Bombay circuit. Looking back, I seriously think that if most of us had continued playing further, AVS would certainly have been a top (promisingly No. 1) team in Bombay circuit. Some of us would have had an opportunity to grab jobs in banks and other government offices and who knows I would have been living my life as head peon or clerk spending evenings on the play ground. And I would have been happy as well. I envy and have all the respect for those who make their living on sport (or Art)...those who live sport (or Art). I know for sure it's quite hard, certainly strenuous and at times extremely difficult but I dream it to be joyous, triumphant and full of excitement.

During adolescent college days, administrative jobs lured me. So much so that I became a regular reader of Competition Success Review. TN Sheshan, set out to clean the electoral system had to be an idol. Kiran Bedi and Meera Borgaonkar were not behind to reinforce the impression. Opportunity to create a lasting impact on the society, challenging job profile, not to mention the social status were predominant attractions. And the day came when my dad retired from the Central Government job after 40 yrs of service. A glance on his career highlighted the fact that he was not promoted for about 16-18 yrs. Central Excise officers are well known for all notorious reasons and my father’s stubbornness would have formed an obstacle in his career. Not a while ago, I had seen him ignoring an illustrious customs job shift to take up a quiet teaching position during his job and I found him relatively happy at that peaceful place. Probably he really liked teaching^# (He says he would have loved to be a professor) or he was at peace with himself for not having to make more compromises with his conscience. Whatever the reason, I came to conclusion that this is not the way forward for me and had to look for an alternative.

After burning productive years, engineering in Bombay University had left us where we all started. At the end of BE I did not know what I want to do but knew for sure that I was not inclined to be a software engineer* to ride on the boom. Uncertain about the future, I was happy spending evenings at Deepak’s transformer workshop, making a few transformers but predominantly playing Chess. One evening a TIFR scientist Chandorkar came to workshop to collect his order and Deepak introduced me with my predicament to him. Chandorkar talked about the problem of making white LEDs quite charismatically and I knew for sure that Microelectronics is the way to light the lamp for me. When I reached IITM for MS in Microelectronics, all I wanted to do was to build a white LED and resolve an impending problem forever. We were three students joining MS by Research program in electrical engineering on the same day and there were three professors (Prof. Bhat and my eventual guides Prof. DasGuptas’) to guide us through our research. They informed us about the research they do and I was very much disappointed to find that they were ignoring the most vital problem in the world. The most important query they made was would we like to continue for a PhD? Chandana and Koti were as usual smarter than me and were affirmative. I kept mum. Semiconductor Devices Lab environment at IITM was very lively, a very conducive for carrying out mathematical modeling work and I could assimilate very seamlessly. IIT education was also a bit different from university pattern. It was more cerebral and you could gain more with less effort. I found the exams more enjoyable, more like a tonic to strengthen brain and less of stress. I liked (and still do like) to research and explore, particularly mathematical modeling a lot and hope to enhance and apply my skills to develop better and better models that aid deciphering the mystery of mysterious science and technology…

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# My father also tells me that our surname Katti does not mean negation but has its origin to the profession. Our ancestors were known for preaching sitting on a platform, a Katta producing the surname Katti….No Wonder!!!

* when I was joining CAD Software Group in National Semiconductor, I suggested my manager and HR that I won’t like calling myself as software engineer and (looking at my software skills) calling me software engineer is probably an insult of true software professional and it was indeed true.