My Alma Mater recognizes my dream and passion

It gives me immense pleasure to tell you that my alma mater, ‘VIT University’ bestowed me with their Special Chancellor’s award for distinguished alumni who work towards growth of the university and the alumni association. This award gives me immense pride as I chose to follow my dream and passion and my alma mater recognized this dream of mine.


As you all know, I left a comfortable corporate career to follow my dream to travel, click pictures and explore different parts of our beautiful planet. And while doing so, I have gone from a pure play traveler to a freelancer to an entrepreneur, while consistently being on the move. And all this in the space of travel. All I wanted was to make ‘travel my career’ and so far it looks like I am on the right path and this award from my university bears testament to my belief and dream.


This award was given to me last Sunday at VIT university campus on the occasion of Republic day and our annual alumni day.I received this award from our beloved Chancellor, Dr. G Vishwanathan, who has been instrumental in the growth of VIT and Shri N, Murali, Co-Chairman of ‘The Hindu’.

And what made it even more special was the fact that I shared the dais with other award winners who were entrepreneurs, investors, successful corporate heads, specialists in academics, a film actress and an Indian Army Lieutenant Colonel. I was simply humbled to be in their company and I really would like to thank my university for allowing me to sit in the same row as them. Those moments were really special to me.

What I realized through this award is that it is not stupid to dream? The chancellor of VIT university dreamt of a successful educational institution 25 years back. From a simple hut to a world famous university, the journey of the chancellor and the university simply amazes one and all. I graduated from here in 2003 and it has grown so much in the last 11 years that I can’t believe that I studied in this very institution for 4 years. In fact, I was so astounded by its growth that I cheekily mentioned in my speech that there will come a day when the Vellore and Chennai campuses will join together.


What was once a desert is now a green oasis. What was once a small, but education friendly campus is today one of the top technical universities of the country and it gives stiff competition to some of the well entrenched names. If this place can dream, I am sure each one of us can dream and that is how I chose to dream.


Thank you VIT University! Thank you VIT Alumni Association! Thank you Chancellor! You have given me the belief that I should continue to dream and work hard towards fulfilling my dream. A big thank you to each one of you who have supported me reach so far.

Courtesy: The pictures in this post is courtesy of VIT University and VITAA.

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Ride down the memory lane with punjabi khana!

Indian Independence Day Dinner!! I was with my college (Vellore Institute of Technology) friends at Chennai and we had just finished watching the bollywood movie Kaminey starring Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra. As we were coming out, we were repenting our movie selection decision and decided to do something right for this evening.


Thus, with an unanimous decision, we landed at the Vellore's gyan vaishnav punjabi dhaba on Anna Salai as we used to regularly visit the vellore version of this restaurant during our college days. 

This restaurant, which serves vegetarian mouth-watering punjabi cuisine, brought back memories of good 'ol college days when this restaurant offered to fill our palate and minds irrespective of the moods we were in. It was a ride down the memory lane with each of us filling the group in with the latest happenings of our college gang. All this while we were served hot, spicy and sumptuous punjabi food that include makki di roti, onion kulchas, rajma masala, chana palak, butter naan, butter rotis, malai lassi, paneer butter masala and more.

A treat for one's palate!

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Kaminey - A different bollywood movie experience

It was Indian Independence day (August 15) and I was at Chennai with my college (Vellore Institute of Technology) friends when all of us decided to watch a movie. Thus began the last minute scramble of getting tickets for that evening. We wanted to get tickets for a good Tamil movie, but all theatres were sold out owing to the holiday weekend. After a lot of scramble and hunting, we decided to go for the only movie tickets we got, at the Woodlands theatre for the bollywood movie Kaminey. And, we bought these tickets in black :-)

Now, here I was going to see a movie whose review I had not read, whose plot I did not know and whose poster I had not seen. Keeping my fingers crossed, I went in with an open and un-opinionated mind.

The first half of the movie was a mystery. I did  not know what hit me coz I could not make head nor tail of the storyline. The only thing I could appreciate was the seriously good acting. To make matters worse, a baby nearby didn't allow me to sleep. Thankfully during the movie break, my friends who had read the review cared to explain the plot, which cleared some of the cobwebs in my head. The second half of the movie proved to be much better as the plot began to unfold and the story started to take shape. Net-net, I cursed my fate of having spent my money on a totally rubbish movie whose only saving grace was the good acting of Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra and that too in totally new roles for them. A very different movie experience for me!

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