What gives me joy (Jul 2025)

Other Journaling Days

Illustration generated by Gemini 2.5

“What gives me joy?”

Let me try and recollect some joyous moments from past and try to answer this question for you and to understand myself for me.

Um… I thought hard for a couple of minutes but seems like I don’t have any particular recollections from my time in Tri Nagar as a child.
No, hold on… I remember we used to do activities like flying kites in August till Independence Day, playing games with neighbor’s kids during summer vacations, enjoying the company of the cousins (three buaji’s kids) when they would come on festive occasions or when Rekha buaji used to come and bring toys from US every 2-2.5 years.

:) These are really old memories when I was maybe 6-8 years old.

Post the time when I was in 5th to I guess 11th, I used to love playing outdoor games and spending time with friends. I think I enjoyed the tuition classes as well (as I recall today) because through tuition classes I was able to score good marks in whatever subject I took tuition for. As in Sanskrit and History in class 6th, Math in class 8th, overall good percentage in class X and XII. I think good academic results boosted my pride.
But I must say my English was particularly poor when I joined Ahlcon School in class 5th, till the time I was in tenth. In Xth CBSE boards, I had scored the lowest in English – 75.

College time was a mess (let’s be honest) but were there any moments of joy, little or large, here or there?

I think I enjoyed getting attention during those four years – like when I was made class representative by Tanuja Nautiyal mam in first semester. Or again by Prashant Gupta sir (who taught ADA) in 4th semester. I think I enjoyed the company of friends like Nishant Adhikari, Dinesh Goyal, Apurv Mridul, Faizan, Rizwan in one group and Abhishek Shukla and Love Gupta in another group. 

Moving on to the time at Mobileum:
Quarterly project parties! :D And the month end birthday celebration at Office.
Taking on challenging tasks – even if I would mess them up later for my own worse :D
I enjoyed conversations with Yajuvendra, Kapil Kumar and there was this guy (used to sit next to Yajuvendra in his bay and was in Kapil’s team) whose name I am forgetting… pardon my memory :| I think it was Kush Batra.
Then there were these two folks from BDA unit: Abhishek Saxena and Savita whom I used to hang out with sometimes (more often than ‘sometimes’).

After 3.5 years at Mobileum, I went to Infosys for 5.5 years – out of which first 4 years (2018-21) were in Chandigarh. Shall come to that later….
Calling it a piece and closing the chapter for now… Good day!

Illustration by ChatGPT