Easy, Nutritious, and Healthy Egg-Tofu Recipe
Hired!
I have seen a lot of people struggle at the interviews. Some of my friends too, have often approached me to assist them in clearing the interviews. With experience of clearing every interview that I have ever attended, I felt it was high time for me to pass on the ‘tricks of the trade’. Hence, I published – ‘Hired’, after having published my first book on Fitness Training.
‘Hired’ is a quick handbook that aims at helping aspiring graduates and post-graduates get their dream jobs. The competition is getting intense with every passing day, and there are several applicants for one job role. How does one ensure that they do not fall in the same league as others? How do they ensure that they stand out as unique compared to others at the interviews?
Being technically proficient is no longer the only aspect on which a candidate is judged in an interview. There is a lot more that is evaluated.
This book deals with those aspects which are not often talked about, but are highly important. Excerpts from the book introduction:
“It is not the technical proficiency that the candidates are often judged at. Surely, it is the key area, but not the only area. This is where most candidates fail to get their act together. They have sound knowledge in their field of study, and there are a few who study day-in and day-out before they head in to the interview. So, they do have the knowledge to clear the interview. What trick do they miss? It is safe to assume that all candidates who appear for the interview know all of this, and have studied the topics thoroughly. So, what exactly do the interviewers look out for?
They look out for the answers to the other questions they ask, and the way you handle those questions. If you master the art of answering those questions, you will ace every interview that you attend. This book helps you cover those questions.
It is a short handbook with no-non-sense, to-the-point answers. The first chapter describes how to use this book, and the subsequent chapters deal with specific questions, and the perfect way to handle them.”
Glad to have received the Foreword for the book from Mr. Ajinkya Chopade – the Director of Target Campus, one of the leading placement agencies.
Here is a link to the book:
And here is the Paperback version. The paperback version is available in international markets and ordering it in India might incur additional delivery charges. For any orders in India and to buy it at subsidised rates, please feel free to contact me.
Here is the link to the Paperback version:
Fitness Guide for the Absolute Beginner
After having waited for quite some time, I finally decided to pen down my first book. I have a lot ideas to write about, but before I jump to the fiction category, I believed writing a non-fiction book would be a better deal. This will help me understand how the markets work, and also give me an idea about publishing books. So here it is, my first book – Fitness Guide for the Absolute Beginner.
‘Fitness Guide for the Absolute Beginner’ is an ideal guide if you are just getting started with your workouts. The book covers almost every aspect that you should be aware of, when you start hitting the gym or start following a fitness routine. The hard-gainers, i.e. the people who find it tough to put on muscle and mass, will find this book very useful. The book has a lot in store for people looking for information on workouts, types of workouts, nutrition, diet, supplementation, and other daily habits that impact our fitness.
The book has tailored workouts listed as well, along with an appendix that has pictorial representations of every exercise mentioned in the workout.
Similarly, sample diets have also been included in this first edition of the book.
The book makes use of minimal number of jargons, i.e. the gym terminologies as it is intended to be used by the beginners.
The book covers the exercises you should start with, the different levels of workouts you must follow, the diet, the supplements, the extra shots, and much more. If you are already a pro in building mass and muscle, losing fats and chunks, this might not be the ideal book for you. However, in that case, you can feel free to gift this to someone who might need this. Surely, they would be thankful to you to the moon and beyond.
This book should ideally be a 5-hour read, but one to keep for quite some time. You can keep coming back to the book to refer the exercises, and the diet, and everything else that the book has to offer.
Here is the link to the book listed on Amazon:
Disclaimer: The cover of the original book is different to the image used in this post.
At first sight
You meet a lot of people in your life, but there are very few who catch your attention at first sight. ‘Love at first sight’ is a well-known adage. But does it really happen? Has it ever happened to you?
You meet someone, or perhaps just have a glimpse of them as they pass by, and your heart skips a beat. In no time, you start thinking about them. Despite repeated efforts, there is no control over your thoughts, and a seemingly random person becomes a top priority in your mind.
Wherever you go, you start looking out for them. You see perfection in them. In everything you see, or everyone that you meet, you try to find a shadow of that person in them. And when you finally meet that person again, even though they do not turn out to be like the one you had imagined them to be, you are ready to make every compromise possible only to accommodate them in your life.
First sight is quite impactful indeed.
Disclaimer: Re-created art.Â
Breathing distance
There will come a time in life when you will become infatuated with a single soul. For this person, you would do anything and not think twice about it, but when asked why, you will have no answer.
You will try your whole life to understand how a single person can affect you as much as they do, but you will never find out. And no matter how badly you hate it or how badly it hurts, you will love this person without regret for the rest of your life.
Breathing Distance
Disclaimer: Again, art recreated. Found it on the Internet.Â
A thing called ‘Love’
No, yes.
In your arms
Safest place
Just you
I see love
It was right then – when she asked a tough mathematics question, and all I did was stare at her. I had no clue about the answer because my mathematics knowledge had only dwindled to a dim verge after I left school.
She was expecting an answer from me – for the reason that I had actually approached her to teach me something as tricky as trigonometry. I knew it would be time consuming, and I would get my chances to be with her for a few extra minutes.
I uttered a rubbish answer which made no sense, and she smiled, and then guffawed. As I said, it was right then, just right then – that I realised the importance of curves, of the thousand places where girls’ bodies ease from one place to another, from the arc to the foot to ankle to calf, from calf to hip, to waist, to neck, to ski-slope nose to forehead, to shoulder, to the concave arch of the back… But out of the lot, the one on her face, the smile, catches your attention the most. And when that happens, you know it is love.
I had noticed curves before, of course, but I had never quite apprehended their significance until I had seen her smile that day.
And every time I have seen her since then, I have seen love.
A part of you fades away
As mortals, we have this tendency to put things on the pedestal. For the ones unaware about the word, to pedestalize (the word does not exist) someone or something refers to giving a person or a thing paramount importance in your life.
So who do you actually pedestalize? Usually, this thing called ‘love’ makes you pedestalize your lover. When it comes to the person you love, you just do not see anything else but them. Your thoughts towards the person become biased, you tend to show unconditional love towards everything that they do.
I have seen people go aww over ridiculous habits of their lovers. While I have found it uncool, I do agree that this is something that just happens to almost every person in love. This is because we make an image of our lover as the most perfect, i.e. ideal, one. Hence, no matter what they do, we do not see anything unusual in it. For us, all that matters is the person.
What happens when you pedestalize someone?
I am not stopping anyone from being in love. But one needs to know the value of oneself. Nothing is permanent. Apart from your parents, there is none who would unconditionally love you, and even this is not true in every case. So when you feel there is someone who has joined this list of people who love you dearly, you tend you give a part of your life to them.
And with chances of them leaving at some stage of life – not all people are fortunate enough and one has to accept the stark reality – this is very risky. I have seen a lot of people get depressed after their break up. The sudden absence of a person from your life will make you feel sad, because there is a void that gets created.
But more importantly, what a break-up essentially does to you is that you lose a part of yourself. How often have you quit doing something because you used to do it with your ex? I know people who have abandoned certain restaurants because those were the dinner date spots for them with their ex-lovers. Similarly, I have seen people not giving a second look to certain objects, be it certain flowers, certain movies, some songs, some ice-cream flavours, and what not – just because they remind them of their ex-lovers.
A part of you fades away.
I am not prophecising not loving anyone unconditionally. But the point here is that in life, you will meet a lot of people. If you let a part of you fade away with the departure of one soul, you are depriving people who are yet to come in your life from knowing that part of you. What if the one you meet next is the actual one for you? Aren’t you being unfair to them by not being your own self when you are with them?
Easier said than done, but try, just try, not letting a part of you fade away because of one person.
About the art – Recreated in 2015. Found it on Internet. With pens, and pencil colours.
Bitter-sweet fights
Have you ever liked someone to an extent that you cannot stay mad at them for too long? If yes, you are very fortunate.
We meet a lot of people in our life, but there are very few who stay close to our thoughts. Fights are inevitable, for the reason that argument and disagreement forms the base of human thought process. If we do not disagree with each other, the world surely will be a calmer place, but one with no scope of improvements.
I see arguments and disagreements as perfect forums for opinions to emerge. While a particular thought might seem outrightly incorrect to you, there are serious chances that you might change your perspective towards that thought later.
You argue with the one you love over an issue. Obviously, in the heat of the moment, you put in arguments to prove your point somehow. Later, when the tensions drain down, the entire argument keeps running in your head. And this is the time when you realise that maybe, maybe, maybe the other person was correct too – not to entirety, but to some extent.
You feel like approaching that person to talk again, because they mean to you. One odd heated discussion cannot take anything away from the fact that they actually hold a special position in your life. But then there is this thing called ego, which holds you back.
This feeling, this very feeling of wanting to talk to your loved one, but also not wanting to talk to them because you want them to talk to you first, is just amazing. I find it cute, and this is what makes the fights bitter-sweet.
About the art – Recreated in 2014. Found it on Internet. All blues, from pens to paint, to sketch pens, to markers.
The way you see it
This one is quite special for me. I created this quite some time ago, about a decade ago, to be precise. I made use of colour pencils only.
The picture is easy to comprehend. It depends on how the viewer sees it. From the outlook, it looks like a beautiful face of a lady. But when you take a closer look, you find nature in it.
Again, this is not something that I thought of. I found this on a social media page and felt like recreating this one.
So why is this special for me? Well, this very picture helped me crack a big interview. I had reached the final rounds of the interview process at an MNC. I had messed up the final Managerial round to quite an extent. It all boiled down to the final set of questions which turned things in my favour.
I was asked about my hobbies and I was quick to mention ‘sketching’. Without any delay, the interviewer handed me a marker and asked me to draw something. I had never expected this to happen. And for a fake artist like me, who can only recreate stuff, this looked like a tough nut. I could not think of anything to sketch. This image flashed in my mind and I drew it.
The Interviewer loved it so much that the interview started all over again. What seemed like ending in 5 minutes, lasted 45 minutes. And those additional minutes were good enough for me to leave a lasting positive impression on the interviewer.
Minute Musings 