moving on

Finally I am moving out of this place. Working here was a dream for me... a dream i lived all these years to its fullest. This place will always be special for me , for here ive spent some of the most beautiful moments of my life and also some of the worst moments of my life. Taken up some of the toughest challenges, any passionate software engineer would die for. Will be leaving all this now.

This qualifies as one of the biggest and the toughest decision in my life. What started as a trivial thing done out of boredom on a lazy afternoon started a chain of events which changed my perception about my future. Mani had already warned me to be careful as many things started happening, many coincidences occured .. incidents which made me feel that these are signs using which Nature somehow is trying to convey to me a message. Now that I have taken this step .. all those signs seem to be immaterial and a fantasy. All that seemed to be a crossroad in life seems to be one of the many games mind plays with the heart.

A poem by Rumi which reflects my thoughts

Either this deep desire of mine

will be found on this journey,

or when I get back home!

It may be that the satisfaction I need

depends on my going away, so that when I've gone

and come back, I'll find it at home.

I will search for the Friend with all my passion

and all my energy, until I learn

that I don't need to search

You fear losing a certain eminent position.

You hope to gain something from that, but it comes

from elsewhere. Existence does this switching trick,

giving you hope from one source, then satisfaction

from another.

It keeps you bewildered

and wondering, and lets your trust in the Unseen grow.

I don't know whether the Union I want will come

through my effort, or my giving up effort,

or from something completely separate

from anything I do or don't do

(Interpretive version by Coleman Barks

Based on Reynold Nicholson's translation of

Rumi's Mathnawi, Volume VI

Verses 4167-4275, 4280,4302-19, 4324-26

"The Essential Rumi" Castle Books, 1997)

A month from now i will no longer be a Scientist by designation, although i plan to keep working on core computer science and related math problems.