Sipping a cup of hot ginger chai and watching the raindrops on my window, I am catching up on my review of 2010 even as 2011 compels me to look ahead.
Looking at my year end posts from past years, it appears that most of what i wrote for 2009 held true for 2010. I savored every minute of 2010, and it was indeed a year of much learning and focus on what mattered the most. The year began in India with the whole family around a New Year's cake after many years. It was however time to return to home turf and plunge back into the madness of business school. Over the year, my brain trained on Macroeconomics, Finance, Brand Management, Negotiations, Marketing Engineering, Operations and Entrepreneurship amongst other things... gosh, no wonder it feels quite muddled! 2010 was a year when I felt humbled to have been given the opportunity to meet Coach John Wooden (just months before his passing) and receive the John Wooden Leadership Fellowship award. A year when I finally stopped turning a blind eye to the homeless situation in Los Angeles and participated in the 1000 Homes Competition as Team Pasadena with classmates Nancy Sagar, Ujjal Ghoshtagore and three other domain experts - Colleen Edwards, Tish Glaser, Jimmy Miyoshi. A year I got back to my wacky creativity and entered the UCLA Suberbowl Ad Contestwith teammates Rutul Dave, Paul Ghetto and Bryan Miller and much support and love from my classmates - especially Erik Welch and his son Wyatt Welch who modeled for the video! We won an honorable mention, not bad for an overnight video editing effort.
With seemingly too much time on my hands over the summer break, I volunteered for a business plan research with The Children's Partnership and worked alongside Wendy Lazaurus, Cofounder of TCP to research the business aspect of one of my favorite subjects - 3D Virtual Worlds. I was blown away to learn that virtual goods was a multi-billion dollar business in China and with the US hitting around $1.6 Billion in 2010 - much potential for growth in this space. The Children's Partnership was kind enough to make a donation to CRY (Child Rights and You) as a return gesture. Talking about CRY, CRY SoCal reached new heights under the able leadership of Payal Shah, our new Action Center Leader. CRY SoCal conducted many successful events including A Bollywood Fling,My Vision Campaign for Children at the Artwallah Festival, the annual CRY Walk as well as an ongoing runners meetup group called CRY Couch to Ouch. CRY SoCal was awarded the NET IP 2010 Community Service Award. Really proud of Team CRY SoCal for making 2010 such a great year!
Another notable event in 2010 was my desire to contribute tangibly to world harmony finally coming to fruition. In January 2010, I came across The GandhiServe Foundation and a wonderful global community called Gandhitopia created by Peter RΓΌhe. With encouragement and guidance from Peter I embarked on an attempt to bring the principles of Nonviolence to the forefront through a global campaign to observe UN declaration of the International Day of Nonviolence (IDNV) on October 2nd 2010. What started initially as an online drive to take The Pledge of Nonviolence turned into an event with IDNV meetups around the globe. The first Nonviolence Newsletter has pictures from the October 2nd events. This effort inadvertently lead to the creation of www.PeaceTroops.org that will have a life of its own in the coming years. I met many compassionate people through this endeavor who have devoted their lives to develop peace and harmony and for that I am thankful. I am especially thankful to Anna, the artist of the Peace Here and Now video, Vishal Changrani, developer of the Pledge of Nonviolence Android App, Veronica Valles, chair of a “Season for Peace and Nonviolence” (www.64-days.org) for posting wonderful peace messages on the IDNV Facebook page and Susan Derby of The Self Realization Fellowship for helping plan and organize the Los Angeles event atthe beautiful Lake Shrine.
At work, the Security Technology now called “Ubiquity” that the team I am a part of works on won the Wall Street Journal Innovation award. Yay for that! Personally, it was a year of a loss of a dear classmate Stacey Bryant who touched me with her compassionate ways in the few months I had known her. It was also a year of getting back in touch with many long lost friends and family, thanks to facebook. I even sorted out an unsettled squabble with a classmate from second grade.. Fancy that! 2010 was a year when my nephew Saurabh went to college, making me feel really young! A year when my neice Dhwani was allowed to join facebook, and the first thing she did was to create a page called “The Greener World” to raise awareness about global warming and green living. A year my cousin Lata started the USA wing of Akshaya Trust to take CNN Hero Narayanan Krishnan’s work forward. Proud of all of them for dedicating their time and energy for good causes. I guess you could say that nonprofit runs in our blood as a family J. 2010 was also a year for a reunion with my wonderful virtual friends from Lively – the Livelyzens as we call ourselves. We met in another virtual world called IMVU and it was like homecoming – so amazing that people from different corners of the world can feel like one family in a virtual world.If that is possible in a virtual world, why not in the real world eh.
Boy that certainly has been a busy year. On to 2011… while I know school is going to consume me for the first half of the year, I plan to dedicate some time to develop some of my hobbies – learning to play the guitar and dslr photography. 2011 will be a year when my entrepreneurial endeavors will move forward – atleast by a few inches! Continuous progress will be the name of the game. CRY SoCal and PeaceTroops will inevitably be a part of my year’s activities. I have also come across a few wonderful initiatives called Schools for India and Gandhi for Children, and I have a compelling urge to contribute to them if I can. While facebook has its place, I shall strive to reconnect more personally with friends and family, an art that seems to be getting lost in this new media age. While I am looking forward to graduating this year, I know I will miss it all when its done - I hope to make the best of the six months ahead and enjoy the time with my classmates. I am looking forward to spending time with my parents after my graduation in July. I am starting the year with a Clay Cooker J with a goal of of eating healthier this year! But in the corner of my head, I am wondering if I can bake a cake in the clay pot haha! I don’t know if I looked at 2001 as a start of a decade, 2011 definitely feels like the start of one and it will be 2020 before we know it!The world has certainly changed in front of eyes over the last decade, and I look forward to a decade when people come together in harmony and work together as a human race.
Alright, time for some more chai and to gear up for the work week ahead – which starts at school with a class on “Disruptive Technologies of Tomorrow”, seems like a fitting topic to kick off the decade don’t you think?! (scene closes with humming... "I here raindrops on my window, joy is like the rain..." J )
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