Snapshots (क्षणचित्रें)

OrangeByte Team Award

One of the organizational activities that I have always loved to be a part of is publishing the company newsletter. In Infospectrum, as part of the newsletter team for five years, we published more than 50 editions of Pulse, as the newsletter was aptly called.

When Infospectrum India was acquired by Persistent Systems in 2011, I was invited to join the newsletter team that publishes Orange Byte: the quarterly newsletter published from Nagpur centre. Of course, I agreed immediately.

We have published five-six editions so far, and have tried to deliver a good quality package. Each edition comes packed with a rich mix of articles, poems, interviews, book reviews, paintings, sketches and drawings. We have also kept pace with the technology and upgraded the backend infrastructure with almost every alternate edition.
One notable thing is that our team handles all the aspects of newsletter end-to-end, right from conceptualization, content collection, graphic design, reviews, as well as server and database setup, deployment, publication and maintenance; without any involvement of IT team or graphic designers. This sometimes means a crashed server due to traffic overload or browser compatibility issues; but the team works on the warfront to fix these issues on the runtime.

In recognition of these efforts, the newsletter team won the Team Award in 2012, for "consistent and quality releases of the newsletter".

We celebrated it with a grand lunch at one of the premier restaurants in Nagpur.

The journey has been exciting so far. The team enjoys freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom from any form of censorship. The way entire team gels together and works hard to put together a collage of contributions is an award in itself!

महिला साहित्य संमेलन, फोंडा - गोवा

फोंडा-गोवा येथील शारदा वाचनालय व गोवा राज्य कला संचालनालय यांच्या संयुक्त विद्यमाने दरवर्षी फोंडा येथे अखिल गोमन्तक महिला साहित्य संमेलन आयोजित केले जाते. संमेलनात गोमंतकीय महिला लेखिका, कवयित्री यांना व्यासपीठ मिळवून देण्याबरोबरच निरनिराळ्या क्षेत्रांत नामांकीत महिलांशी सुसंवाद साधण्याची संधी दिली जाते.
आतापर्यंत स्मिता तळवलकर, मीना प्रभु, निशिगंधा वाड, माधुरी शानभाग, गिरीजा कीर, मंदाकिनी गोडसे, प्रिया तेंडुलकर, पुष्पा द्रविड यांसारख्या ख्यातनाम महिलांनी संमेलनाचे अध्यक्षपद भुषविले आहे.
या संमेलनाची काही छायाचित्रे...

ग्रंथदिंडीची पूजा करताना सौ. गीता सोमण

महिला फेर धरताना

संमेलनाचे ऊद्घाटन करताना श्रीमती माधवी देसाई

सौ. अमीता धोंड यांचे पुष्पगुच्छ देऊन स्वागत करताना सौ. गीता सोमण

सौ. देवबागकर यांची मुलाखत घेताना संगीता अभ्यंकर

संमेलनाला ऊपस्थित महिला समुदाय

Nagpur centre of Persistent Systems Ltd

The new twin towers of Nagpur centre Persistent Systems Ltd were inaugurated on 5th of November 2011. Keeping in line with Persistent Systems' tradition of naming the office premises after great Indian mathematicians and philosophers, the buildings have been named Gargi and Maitreyi. The 450-seater auditorium has been named Kavi Kulguru Kalidas Auditorium.

Nice names, and equally nice buildings.

Diwali Rangoli

दिवाळी म्हटलं की रांगोळी आलीच! या वर्षीच्या दिवाळीत आईने काढलेल्या काही रांगोळ्या...

Bachelor Days!

While cleaning up my hard-disk, I came across a photo from 2007. I lived as a bachelor then, and the photo makes it amply clear!

This was the only table in my spartan room, and it fulfilled a number of functions.. my study table, dining table, laptop table, bookshelf, place to keep the article of daily use... so on and so forth.

It may look like a mess, but it was a great place to keep things handy. I don't remember ever cleaning it up, except the time when my parents came to visit. And even then, all I did was to take all the stuff from the table- top and push it in the shelf below.

Here are Gautam's Three Laws of a Bachelor Room:

The useless stuff in a bachelor's room can neither be cleaned nor dumped; it can only be moved from one corner to the another.
Getting rid of one useless thing in a bachelor's room leads to addition of two even more useless things.
The amount of mess in a bachelor's room rises exponentially prior to a parent visit.

PS! Just in case you have some wrong ideas.... the bottle in the right-corner is that of Appy Fizz.

Birthday, 2010

Birthday Celebration at house of Deshpande aajoba
(Nagpur, 2010)

Diwali Delights

Diwali, also called as Deepawali, is the festival of lights celebrated across India.
Here are some photos of our Diwali in 2010...

Earthen diyas lit up the veranda.. More than the dazzling series of electric lights, it is more pleasing to see a row of these diyas burning steadily

Huge raangoLi drawn on the floor of Reception hall of our office

To add to the festive mood, our project client got some delicious goodies... an assortment of chocolates wrapped in a beautiful package!

Navratri in Goa

गोव्यातील प्रमुख हिंदू सण म्हणजे गणेश-उत्सव. परंतू नवरात्रीही तेवढ्याच जोमात साजर्या केल्या जातात.
गोव्यातील नवरात्री उत्सवाचं वैशिष्ट्य म्हणजे इथल्या मंदिरांमधील "मखरोत्सव."

माझं आजोळ असलेल्या शिरोडा येथील श्री शिवनाथ मंदिरातील मखरोत्सवाची काही क्षणचित्रें...

॥ श्री शिवनाथ ॥

मखर

Posing with Weapons!

खड्गनवमी अर्थात खंडेनवमी.. या दिवशी शस्त्र-पूजा करतात. कालमानानुसार हातातील कुदळ जाऊन कलमदान आले, किंबहुना तेही जाऊन Keyboard आला. तरी या ’शस्त्रांची" खुमारी काही निराळीच!

तळकट-सिंधुदुर्ग येथे अस्मादिक

Mahalaxmi

कोकणस्थांत महालक्ष्मीपूजन व जागरण करण्याची परंपरा आहे. या वर्षी आमच्याकडे हा योग आला.
तळकट-सिंधुदुर्ग इथे संपन्न झालेल्या महालक्ष्मी पूजेचे काही फोटो...