Year: 2003
Place: TCS Interview
Interviewer: The interview is over, do you have any questions?
Me: After i join TCS, if i like to go for trekking and see Mt.Everest, will you give me a month leave?
STOP, if you are looking for a motivation story, life lessons etc.. i suggest you not to read further. I only wanted to share my story as i thought it was interesting enough as a simple entertainer :) , if you still find it motivational or useful in anyway its purely unintentional.
Now Back to the story,
Needless to say i didnt clear the interview, also my dream back then was not just to visit Everest but to climb to top of Everest, also to win a Nobel prize.
Then life happened, reality took over, years went by and for the next 12 years I didnt go beyond deccan plateau and didnt go beyond an average Software Engineer.
In our generation and for an average conservative software engineer, its mostly beyond the age of 32+ and once your kids are grown, then we will start to talk about this term, 'bucketlist' as family.
In our new bucketlist, the first wish was to touch and feel the snow.. and thats when i get introduced to "Himalayas"
Kashmir:
And "kashmir" happened, and this itself is a blog worthy story, and I will write one and add the reference here.
"Kashmir" introduced me to the gigantic mesmerizing snow peaks, but i was on a tour, and i just got exactly 15 mins of lonely time to do a very short hike at 14000 ft. Its like getting a glimpse of your fav music concert ( illayaraja /Ar Rahman ) from the streets for few secs, you just feel that 'high' for that few moments and move on.
But kashmir gave a complete different experience for our family, we got stuck in srinagar for two days after some terrorist issues, and my friends had to create "Thiyaga meetpu kuzhu", it was sooo thrilling and somehow we reached chennai. ( More details in separate blog). The whole family wanted a relaxing time once we reached chennai and thats when the worst flood in chennai history happened 2015 :) ( Treat this as a teaser to my "kashmir story", to keep the context relevant, i am skipping details now )
Sandhakpu
Every gang has that one rugged girl, ava panra settai la partha, we really wish her to get married soon:)
Jayashree, everytime we meet she will talk about some of the trip she went or she is planning, and she is one of close friend for my wife too, more than a friend she call her "Mummy" ( again there is a back story for this, skipping it for now :) )
One day we are having a family dinner in a hotel, thats why Jayashree picked up this topic of trekking, she was talking about a 8 day trip to a place called "sandhakpu", and i was like
"Is this even possible?", Did you plan your office leaves, you told your mom?... a series of questions, (Remember 13 years i was the same person who planned to just go to himalayas for a month :) )
She started to explain one by one, i always get jealous when she talks about some trip, but this time i really got super jealous, this is something i wanted to do for long time and the sad thing is i totally forgot and dont even know if such a long trek can be done.
Jayashree asked, why cant you join, you can still plan, My wife clearly saw the disappointment in my face, and out of nowhere she said "You like it la, why cant you go", I couldnt believe why she said that, and she was telling in confidence just 8 days we can manage, enna mood la adha sonnalo therla.. the next moment i was soooo high.. before we get the bill for the dinner, i booked the flight tickets and booked the trip.
