Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Should I change my name to 'C'eshava?


While working at Tata Elxsi, we had a client manager whose name is now Chris Malakapalli. He is basically an Indian who went to US for his higher studies and settled down there. His name was Krishnakanth which was later Americanized to Chris.
Now my reason for changing (just thinking ;-) from Keshava to Ceshava is somewhat different. My uncle (@gmsbhat) in one of our twitter conversations suggested this because I have a liking for things that start with letter ‘C’.

Cricket/Cricinfo – I am a diehard fan of cricket which for me is Test Cricket and First Class Cricket. I now read and comprehend all the articles written in cricinfo. I always used to start reading the newspaper from last page where the sports section is covered, unlike others who read the 1st page headlines, political news, Page 3 etc. I wouldn’t just read all the words, I would also read between the lines, analyse, interpret and think about them. I pride myself in remembering the various statistics, records and results. During my school days, I used to play underarm tennis ball cricket from dawn to dusk. In my bid to learn overarm leg spin bowling I developed a unique Paul Adams style of delivery.

Coconut/Cocoguru – The business that I am into is about Coconuts.  The brand and company name is Cocoguru. I entered this sector because of the value Coconut offers. Also it is made easy by the fact that my father has already started coconut oil manufacturing more than 30 years ago. Every part of Coconut tree is valuable and is called ‘Kalpavriksha’. Coconut oil is the most complete oil, edible, cosmetic, medicinal and industrial. In short it is simply nectar.

Computer/’C’ – I am a Computer Engineer by qualification. I used to enjoy the course because my creative juices found good opportunity while programming in it. I used to write simple game programmes, simply browse through linux source code appreciating its beauty. I used to program them in ‘C’ language though I had learnt a bit of C++, JAVA, PERL, Shell script, html etc. Somebody used to call me K&R (K&R stands for Kerninghan and Ritchie, the founders of ‘C’ language), my name being Keshava Ram also has K & R in it. People who were jealous of my programming skills used to criticise saying I was only good at ‘C’. They think it is just about knowing the language, but I think more about understanding the computer hardware, proficiency in mathematics and logic, efficient use of Data Structures and Algorithms and writing clean code using the principles of Software Engineering.

Cycling – I love cycling even if we ignore the fact that it is a good exercise, environment friendly and economical. I had written about it earlier in my blog post.

Chess – I also like Chess and I claim to be an above average chess player. It is a simple game (64 black and white squares, 6 types of pieces with simple movements) with infinite possibilities. It is a game that tests a players’ strategy, tactics and competitive/combative spirit. I pride myself at having those strengths. Game has no dependence on little externalities like weather, location, time of the day, toss etc. Luck has no role, it is all up to how one plays in the given game. My biggest moment in this game is winning the VTU championship for college in 2002 at Ranebennur. I couldn’t pursue this game deeply because of lack of partners, as it was perceived as a boring game. Now I keep getting addicted and withdraw from chess.com

CAT – Getting into business has been my dream career. Being from a Science/Engineering background, I wanted a formal education in business i.e. MBA. I always believed in studying at the best colleges hence wanted to have a shot at IIMs by appearing for CAT (Common Admission Test). CAT has 3 sections – Quantitative, Logic and English. I was very good at first two but equally poor at English. I used to prepare for 80% of the time on English, yet achieve poor results. This was because of my lack of aptitude for the subject. I had made 4 attempts at cracking CAT and failed each time. Though my score kept improving from 88 percentile in 2002 to 97.5 percentile in 2006, my below par score in English would prevent me from getting elusive IIM calls. Each year I used to prepare sincerely despite my day job. I had made a lot of sacrifices in those 4 years for this purpose. In the final year I decided that I am definitely going to do an MBA even if it is not from an IIM. Now, I have no regrets about the choices I made.

There will be many more 'C' words that I have been associated with, but the above mentioned words are the ones with which I have deepest association.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:01 pm

    Ha, Ha, saw this just now!
    Our twitter/SMS exchanges has led to a detailed, well written post.
    Why not 'Cash'ava?
    :)
    I am sure your family would 'Check' and stop you, anyway!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ha ha, smart use of 'C' and modes of payment. See my next article which is again the result of my 1089th tweet.

    ReplyDelete