Guruvandana - 1984-85 SSLC Batch

Recently I'd an opportunity to meet my school friends of 1984-85 batch SSLC as we arranged a Guruvandana for our teachers.I really had a very good time during this event and would like to share some of thoughts through this blog.

It all started when Vithal Sarnobat met Narayan Deshpande on March 7th and they were having a chat at second railway gate in Belgaum. One more school mate Ravi Inchal joined them and they were talking about arranging an alumni meet at the school so that we can give back to the great school in which our foundation was built. Chidamber Kulkarni also joined the group as they were at the second railway gate and the urge for alumni meet increased. Vithal,Narayan and Ravi (I'll call them NRV from now) took the initiative of contacting the school authorities and getting the list of students from our batch. School authorities were also excited to hear about such a meet and they shared all the information. The search for finding the classmates started.
With the list provided by school, NRV started contacting people to get the contact numbers, emails etc from the people they could contact. As there were lot of people who still live in Belgaum from our batch, localites met to discuss this idea of alumni meet. At the first meet most of the time was lost in remembering the good old school days, cricket, teachers, other classmates etc and laughing about it. Slowly and surely the vision of bringing the classmates together was taking shape. One more week gone and NRV could contact more people who had left Belgaum and most of them were happy to hear about such a meet.
To proceed further there was a meeting scheduled on March 16th in Belgaum and again as more people joined the group there was more fun and laughing all the way. The decision was to contribute Rs5000 at least. Some real good minds of our batch came out with the idea of not forcing people to contribute but whoever can afford could contribute and others can join if they can. There was no compulsion for the contribution but we as a team wanted to make this happen. We got an opportunity to meet Charantimath sir on this day and we discussed different options for the donation to school.
Some pictures from March 16th  meet below

Th Gang

In the classroom

Ladies

Mr Charantimath Sir providing guidance

One more meeting was planned on April 20th. That was the day of Vithal Sarnobat's marriage anniversary and we celebrated this in Paratha corner.This again was lot of fun and laughing all the way. Following decisions were made during the meeting
1. Donating 25 benches to school
2. Felicitating all the teachers and non teaching staff
Everybody agreed to this and the final date for the meet was decided as May 25th. NRV and other localites started the work on planning for the D day. Pictures from second meeting.

Vithal Sarnobat cutting the cake

I traveled to Belgaum on 24th May for the Guruvandana. Narayan (Narya),Ravi(Ravya),Vithal(Vithalya), Chidamber(Chidya) and Punajigouda were getting ready to receive the benches to be delivered. The benches were manufactured at Punajigouda's workshop. We, along with the SVM school staff placed the benches in a classroom. We planned to meet at 8.30 am on D day.

On the D day there was lot of preparations for welcoming our teachers and friends from different cities with their families. Mustaq Bhavikatti and Sharayu Potnis (now Dumbal) were the anchors of the day along with Amar Sadarjoshi. Everything was planned from breakfast,photo session,welcoming teachers,ribbon cutting etc to lunch..Hats off to NRV for the great plan.
Some pictures from the preparation and arriving guests

SVM School

The ladies gang: Sharayu,Rani,Surekha and Veena

Mrs. Dharmatti teacher enters and see the smiles all around

Chidamber and Sridhar

Madhwesh Kulkarni

B S Shahapeti was the pleasant surprise of this event as he traveled all the way from US

Group photo

SSLC Gang with teachers

Family members (photo courtesy Madhwesh)

Bhavikatti and Sharayu started the proceedings to welcome the teachers and all the family members. At the beginning there was lightening of the lamp by the teachers followed by the welcome song. Ribbon cutting of the classroom in which new benches were placed was done by Mrs Dharmatti teacher. All the guests occupied the seats in the classroom along with the teachers. 

 

Felicitation of the teachers as well as the non teaching staff was done and the floor was open to students of 1984-85 batch to share their experiences. Deepak Dhadothi,Madhwesh Kulkarni,Irshad Shaikh,Bhimsingh Olekar, B.S.Shahapeti and Mahesh Kulkarni shared their experiences. 

With a heavy heart we remembered the teachers and students who had left us for heavenly abode. May their soul rest in peace. 

 

The floor was open to teachers to provide the guidance. Mr Charantimath sir,Mr VG sir,Mr Punajigoud sir,Mrs Dharmatti teacher and Mr Ambedkar sir remebered the good old days and provided a great guidance through their speeches. 

At the end there was vote of thanks by Vithal Sarnobath and it was really entertaining way to thank all the people involved in this meet. Vithal was awarded PhD for the vote of thanks speech by Mr VG sir. What a great honor for Vithal. 

Lunch was served and the menu was too good. I thank all the family members for all the patience and interest shown in this event.

Then the time came for us to depart and no one in the group was ready to leave. With a heavy heart one by one left, hoping to meet again in the near future. 

I really have very fond memories of this meet and I thank once again to all the people involved to make this event a successful event.  

     

 


     

India Political Ecosystem - Thodasa Humour Ho Jaye

India Political Ecosystem

I thought of putting together an India political ecosystem which is making so much noise in election time. This is all imaginary work. Any relevance to living or dead person is strictly coincidence.   

 

Pongress

Pongress is like a Lion where most of the hunting is done by females and males just watch :-).

Lions take rest for 20 hours per day which is so true for Pongress..resting most of the time out of 60 years they ruled :-).
Lions often steal kills from hyenas, wild dogs, cheetahs, leopards...different parties supporting UPA.

PJP

PJP is like Tiger which has an average hunt-to-kill ratio is 5-30%. This is proved by the fact they have hardly any time (about 5 years out of 67 years) ruled India.
Probably only one in about 15-20 attacks are successful. Hopefully this time it is successful J
Tigers are usually solitary in nature which is proved by the fact that many of the PJP leaders who are bachelors. :-). Also lot of parties do not want to join BJP in the name of secularism...:-)

RAP and BNS

RAP and BNS are like a Monkey which is always jumping from one branch to other without any goal in mind.

This is so true for the fact that they keep on bringing corruption/other issues to media but never know the end result...Bobert Badra is still roaming free...Many toll nakas are still operating....

Everybody is aware of the cap seller and monkeys story...Monkeys do not have any mind of their own... just imitate what others do.... :-)..Pejri imitating Tanna.... :-)...Taaj imitating Kaal...:-)

ThivTena

ThivTena is like a bear...which communicate with each other by establishing a hierarchy in situations where they encounter each other.One person ruled this party for so long.... :-)
Bears produce a variety of vocalizations such as
·         Moaning, produced mostly as mild warnings to potential threats or in fear,
·         Barking, produced during times of alarm, excitement or to give away the animal's position.
·         Huffing, made during courtship or between mother and cubs to warn of danger.
·         Growling, produced as strong warnings to potential threats or in anger.
·         Roaring, used much for the same reasons as growls and also to proclaim territory and for intimidation.
·         Humming, a loud monotonous buzzing sound, primarily employed by cubs.
So true for ThivTena always making some or the other sound.

Other Regional Parties

Capa is like a Fox always cunning, whose leader is supporting rapists.

BaCapa is like a Wolf, announcing taking out support but never take out support.

BMK and BIBMK are like a Hen always pecking for new alliance. One time Pongress one time PJP… J

BMC is like a…Jackal..always defending their territory. We will not leave Bangal….

BPI and BPIM are like .. Donkey..whichever party comes to power they will oppose…

Overall as we are living in the great democracy and all the animals are required to keep the political ecosystem at bay.

iOS - Exchange Contacts – Moving them to iCloud or Gmail Contacts for Free

iOS - Exchange Contacts – Moving them to iCloud or Gmail Contacts for Free

Recently I decided to move from iOS to Android and the search for moving the contacts from iOS to Android started.

First Challenge

I found my contacts in iPod were stored in 2 different groups.
1. My Exchange account (Company email account with 197 contacts)
2. iCloud account (73 contacts)
Most of my contacts were stored in exchange account and I do not know how to get them to iCloud. For moving contacts from iCloud which is easier of the 2 above, you can refer to the blog below. I used the option 2 in the link below to import my iCloud contacts (73 contacts) without any issues.

Transfer-iPhone-Contact-to-Android

I wanted to understand why my contacts were saved to Exchange account instead of iCloud account and I came to know about the following setting in iOS enables that.
Go to Setting>Mail,Contacts,Calendars> Scroll down to Contacts > You will see Default Account.
This was setup as exchange server in my case. So all the contacts were being saved to exchange server group. I changed it to iCloud as soon as I found the issue. Hopefully all the contacts saved in future will be stored to iCloud.

Second Challenge

There is no easy way to transfer Exchange contacts to iCloud :-( . I found the easier way and ton of thanks to Google search engine. Please refer to the steps below
1. Download free version of Easy Backup App from Appstore. Please do not go for any paid apps.
2. From within the Easy Backup App click on Backup button.
3. The system will ask for Full backup of all the contacts with options for Preview, Email and Save in.
4.  Select Email, system will open the email with backed up copy of all the contacts. Great thing about this app is, it actually creates the back up as per the mail groups’ setup.
In my case it created 2 backups, one for Exchange group and one for iCloud group.
5. I sent the email to my Gmail account.
6. I received the email with following files

7. I clicked on Import to Contacts link to import it to Gmail contacts. I did not import the iCloud contacts as they were already imported.
8. All the contacts were imported successfully to Gmail contacts.
9. Once I’ve all the contacts in Gmail I just followed the instructions to import them to Android as per the link provided above (Step 3 of the above link).

Third Challenge (Easy one)

Moving Gmail contacts to iCloud is very easy and you can find the steps in the link below.

Gmail Contacts to iCloud

This way I used a free app to import all the contacts to Android and back to iCloud. You do not need any paid apps to do this task.