The Beginning

Hello Everyone,

Lemme introduce myself. I am Gautham Gopalakrishnan. A guy born and brought up in Kerala, who studied in a Kendriya Vidyalaya, only to let his family decide his future for him, which was ENGINEERING. During my years of education, becoming an engineer was the dream most of the well-to-do families had for their children. No wonder that my family too followed the crowd.

Even though engineering was a decision totally against my wish to study Literature, I will never regret it. And I will forever remain thankful to my Appa and Maa for deciding to send me for engineering. I am even more thankful to them for letting me select a stream of my choice. Hence I hold a degree of B.tech in IT.

Life has moved a lot from then on. Right now I am into my final semester of MBA (yet another trend that I decided to follow). I have been absorbed by one of the pioneers in the Indian IT industry as a Business Analyst. I will be joining the firm very soon.

During all these years I had heard of bloggers and their blogs and I have read a few myself. Never did I dream of writing a blog (even though it was a secret wish of mine). Here is what led me to write this blog.

In our college (SCMS School of Technology and Management), we had these sessions with some of the well known names in different industries would be arriving at our college to address the students. These sessions were fondly named 'III' (triple I). We had attended so many such sessions that many of us despised them. Some of my friends used to bunk them all together.

One day in November 2014, our beloved Poornima ma'm came and announced that we would be having one such session that evening. The entire class groaned in unison, for which her reply was "You will not be bored with this one". Well she was right.

That evening, we were gathered in our seminar hall, half of us awaiting our guest and other half preparing to doze off. Some of us chatting to each other and some others frowning. That's when he made the entry into the hall along with our Poornima ma'm.

A guy in his mid 20's, medium built, in a very normal attire similar to ours, a tie being the only exception. His appearance and spirit was totally in contradiction to what we expected. At least some of us guessed this session would not be boring after all.

He dint look like he was prepared for a speech. Yet he managed to speak for 1.5 hours without boring us. He was our predecessor in the college, who had gone through all that we were going through. And he was pretty much successful in his life till then. He was able to inspire us and motivate us through his talk but more than that he was successful in projecting himself as a friendly person.

I became his facebook friend and interacted with him. One big commonality we shared was our love for English Premier League. He loved Arsenal and for me it has always been Chelsea, this makes our rivals too. During those interactions, i found his blog and went through it. Today I am proud to say he has inspired me to write this blog. Joseph, This one is for you. Cheers !!

Dedication:

To my Appa, Maa and Varun (my younger one), you are my strength and happiness.

To all my teachers, I remember each and everyone of you. Thank you for educating me.

To Joseph, Bhai, I respect you for what you have achieved.