Relish Waakmit

An Inspiring speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford Convocation Ceremony

2005-09-01T15:05:00.001+05:30

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.
There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now. This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much.

Desiderata

2005-07-29T17:34:00.000+05:30

Wholesome philosophy of life.

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what

peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the
dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession
in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive
for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity
and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering
the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in
sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding
as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion
of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
-- written by Max Ehrmann

A beatific experience with Indian Ocean !!

2005-07-28T13:00:00.001+05:30

Finally I made the long-awaited Delhi-trip with Dipanjan.The office schedule was hectic and i had to cook up a story to get my office accept my leave application.But it was worth it,seriously!The journey was fun with Dipanjan and I together for an entire day with us to discuss several issues of life with ease.In that process we ignored the "no smoking rule" of railways peacefully.
In Delhi I stayed with Vivek, my friend of those days when we were figuring out our paths in life after 12th.We went our separate ways from the counseling session at IIT Kanpur five years back and never got together all these years. I saw a subtle change in his personality, something appreciable only to those who saw him in his early formative years when he used to give tuition to finance his studies and how he dealt with contrasting issues with sheer equanimity. He has found his 'soulmate' too, that's how he puts it and he is happy pursuing his passions. I could not meet his soulmate "Shraddha"(such a beautiful name btw) for lack of time and promised to make up for this in near future.
Once in his flat, I had a long bath, got fresh and called Rahul and Nikhil. And I expected them to ask me about our last meeting this Spring Fest in KGP.They were surrounded by so many people and it was normal for them to confuse me for someone else. But they spoke on phone as if they had known me for years!! Immediately gave the whole schedule of the day and asked us to see them at 2 pm and we left for Karol Bagh accordingly.
In an old dilapidated building at Khajoor road,Karol Bagh which few people are aware of, their atelier is. When we reached there,those guys were having a normal discussion with their show management guys.
So with no chairs left ,Rahul(the bearded bass player),Dipanjan(our own bhor baba) and I sat on the floor,shared some jokes about some songs having hackneyed tunes till the guys got free from the official talk.
After that it was time for the corridor-cricket,with so many new confusing rules for us,the new entrants .But still I managed to touch the double-figure score in the end,bhor baba did much better though .It was an ecstatic session with them.
Afterwards when Rahul and Nikhil got busy with their jugalbandi on Saxophone and Guitar respectively,I got some time for a tete-a-tete with Asheem(the tabla player and vocalist),who was busy figuring out tunes for a commercial assignment.At that time I got a chance to listen to his thoughts about music,I asked him how he saw their music from a critical angle and he answered me with passion, telling me why he doesn't know which genre there music belongs to.He could give me the main attributes of a genre and then compared their own music with that and I could see his point clearly,layman as I am, so he had to come down to my level. Asheem became so engrossed when he started with his thoughts about music that I had to take a pen and a paper to take down the key ideas,which would be threaded separately sometime soon. When I asked -"why don't you bracket yourself into fusion genre?" he said " Look, normally If you take "Shakti" as the yard stick of a fusion band ,then you see that John Mclaughlin came from Jazz and blues field,Zakir Hussain and L Shankar from the Indian Classical gharana,so they had their different roots before they got together,but if we see ourselves ,all four of us are more or less influenced by the same form of music,we are born and brought up in the same setting. so we can't actually claim to blend two separate genre, hence we don't consider ourself into fusion.We do listen to many form of music and let the tunes appeal to us before we actaully embark upon creating something new on the same formation"
" In my opinion we never give it much thought as to which bracket we belong to,I do feel that talent plays its role in bringing out one's expressios and the more varied one's interests are, the more versatile s/he could be.
You keep lisening to different kinds of music,different tunes,different structures and the whole thing, be it Indian Classical,western classical,rock,celtic,jazz,
blues,oriental,occidental ,all will have its impression on your memory lane and then you take up your instrument and try to follow your instincts.
Later when you look back at some creation critically you would be surprised at the sheer beauty of it which came from amalgamation of various tunes and structures that happened inadvertently!!
Musicians normally don't choose a genre consciously,basically they let it happen on its own,when later the critics see an underlying pattern in the whole set of creation they try to link the fine aspects and try to give it a name which becomes a particular style of music to people" -excerpts from my notes that afternoon.
In the evening Asheem and Nikhil treated me with drinks subsequently we had a great musical session together.

Earlier in the day when we asked them about their experience at KGP,they were all furious about the management people of Spring Fest-2005.They had some bad experience with the guest reception team especially Arindam.There was some misunderstanding I am sure but I guess the organising team members could deal with it in a better way.Initially they were promised that they would get AC sleeper ticket for the journey from Jamshedpur to Delhi(They had a show in Jamshedpur the following evening). Afterwards they were given some AC 3 Tier tickets. There was an unnecessary delay in giving them the cheque for the show fee too. Imagine them having to talk to a professor to get the whole issue sorted out!! I hope the new boys of KGP learn from this episode for good. It felt very shameful to know that they received this kind of treatment at IIT Kharagpur. Even an abecedarian of music would know, once s/he listens to Indian Ocean that these guys rank much above the run-of-the-mill bands- Euphoria,Strings and Silk route. Still you compare the difference in the show-prices,where Strings took Rs five lakhs for a show, IO took a paltry sum of Rs thirty thousand !!! Does that mean Strings is a better band? Only a mentally retarded will even dare compare the two.
Here the marketing theory comes into play which true musicians are pretty naive at.
The music illiterate fellows have to appreciate this very soon that Indian Ocean has its own image and they are going to define a new face of music in a few years.
Asheem says -"we come to college fests because we love playing before young and exuberant crowd and we consider the fact that the college students have to get sponsorship for their show,hence we try to strike a balance.For us a live show is the best time with music,it gives us utmost pleasure to be there and perform for a couple of hours unabated.So we happily relax on the rate-issue for the college fests.After Black Friday,now that people are getting to know us even in Bollywood circles,we are getting more stage show offers both in India as well as abroad but to us, college fests shows are still at top priority even at lesser emolument than a corporate show. "
And these guys had to face such a wrong treatment at IIT Kharagpur this year.Nothing could be worse than this. Rahul,who is an IIT Kanpur graduate himself, said they would never visit the campus again and I couldn't have agreed more with them.
I have never personally talked to Arindam but I presumed he was an affable character when I saw him winning the VP election in my last year.It still remains a mystery how he could behave in such an irresponsible way. Indian Ocean guys are extremely level-headed,down-to-earth musicians.Their simplicity shouldn't have been taken for a ride in that fashion. I tried my best to tell them not to generalise the KGP folks based on one exception and I hope they meant it when they said "we have nothing against KGP folks,please rest assured".
With this,I bade adieu to Asheem at 10 PM and promised to meet again in Calcutta in the last week of august.
Soon afterwards,I got into Nikhil's car and we set out for south Delhi.
Karol Bagh to Pushp Vihar is quite some distance(Some 15 kms). We chose Santana's music to give company to us and as the album started,I felt as if I was already thrown into complete bliss and the two of us didn't utter a single word for the whole journey which took about thirty minutes with us getting off route many a times. At times I got the presentiment of the notes coming from Santana in my mind.Such was the combined effect of music in a slightly inebrieted state of mind on a drive ! Seldom had I been so engrossed in music. I wished my destination never came,but It had to ; it did and when I asked him if he had listened to the new album of Santana in which the guy has played with different Gods of music across the globe, he said no and with the promise of sending Nikhil,the album "Santana Shaman" at his address,I hurriedly found my way to Vivek's flat at Metro Enclave and soon got lost in my dreams.
That day will forever remain in my memory lane as one of the best days of my life.
:) Thank you Indian Ocean for being Indian Ocean.

When in Calcutta(this 27th august) few of us KGPians had yet another gala time with them in Hotel Park,see the pics below:

Sitting from left: Chirantan,Arya ,Rajarshi
Standing from left: Nikhil Dutt( gives lights in IO shows),Asheem Chakraborty(Tabla Player n Vocalist),myself ,Shubho,Susmit(the guitar player) and Amit Kalam(the drummer )

Rajarshi is substituted by Mouneesh( sitting rightmost) under Rings of smoke!!

And i thought i unerstood it right...

2005-04-30T02:54:00.001+05:30

I had been trying to do it for sometime now....wanted to devote some time to a particular number and try to understand the creative genius behind it.
It's one of the last fews days at kgp for me and when i came to bed tonight,as usual i started my playlist of music. Trying to get into the feeling of composer of a piece is nuisance for others at times...but to me it's been one of the most important aspect of a musical piece ..the moment some arrangement of frequencies qualify to be dubbed as music the challenge lies in conveying something which is the identity of the song....something which gives the whole composition its individuality in the vast plethora of different genres of music.When i was a child i would wonder at times about the possibility when there would be no canvas of life untouched by the colours of music. All scenes of life would be well portrayed through the same much to the dismay of the future musicians....who would then, just juggle around with the existing set of creations and lose their birthright to express themselves uniquely.
But with time it dawned on me that it was never to be....for the simple reason that this life surprises you with a new image every moment if you want to look at it right.
Tonight when i was listening to my playlist Clapton's "Bad love" struck me with its whole expression so deeply that i had to crop my playlist with this number alone in the list.....and i thought i saw the mood of clapton when he composed this song .
The song starts with 4 notes on guitar in two cycle....with bass joining in just at the ending of the second cycle..till then bass just follows the lead notes...and when the new lead starts, it joins the new cycle at the second lap...the bass has set up its tempo..and he starts maneuvering the lead. If the emotions of being in love have touched one's heart at any point of time, s/he would listen to this initial feeling of the song ,right then know what it has to offer ahead...and that's the genius of Clapton.
The loop of five notes following 28th second of the song evoke the emotions that are typical to clapton's way of touching your heart.
The wavering frequencies convey the message of hope to a young man ,whose soul has a yearning to find a companion in this journey called life ,the desire undercover most of the time.
About the wavering notes...it connects so well with the feeling of being in the journey having ups and downs galore where every turn of one lays the hope of rediscovering the other and this happens only when you have seen the pattern at least once..the first loop tells you the essence of the story.
On this pattern of notes,with a few new applications on lead guitar and simple drum sequence at the stopovers, starts the lyrics and you see the expression there!!.....then at 3 minutes you feel the song is over ...and just when you expect it to happen, the notes on lead in the combination of 5 & 3 give the new sensation wherein nothing else is required to say what it had been saying earlier.
This sets the tempo anew.

"I have had enough bad love
I need something I can be proud of;
I have had enough bad love "
No more bad love" is the new voice of conviction from now on.

And i thought what must have gone through his mind while conceiving this piece...

Had read a book called "Music and Mathematics" little while ago and the idea of creating the classical pieces on mathematical theory had never appealed to me until i listened to music with this idea behind my mind...and i saw that one way or the other every composition can be explained mathematically ...the relations between two consecutive notes(the relation of frequencies i mean to say) have a pattern chalked out by the musicians while composing the piece but the mystery is that they never followed this grammar consciously !!.They just follow their heart and go and express it aloud for the others to try to discover the underlying pattern and sometimes mathematics helps one in this.
This is what Susmit (the acoustic lead guitarist of the band Indian Ocean)told me when i asked him how he starts arriving at such creations,i mean what kinda grammar he follows? and he said he just lets his heart do it..The marvel of the instinctive response of the soul,seen later , is what gives him the utmost happiness .
The interesting part is that we have the whole lotta ground to explore before we would get to the root of the puzzle and it's precisely what makes life with music so much more fun to live.
A new Ghazal by Ghulam Ali "zehal-e-muskeen" would take another few days of my time and may be i would understand the soul of the composition .
I hope i have found the meaning right...