Nostalgia Personified ! (Return to Manipal - Part 1)

After a 9 hour bus journey (which I didn’t even know, coz I slept all through), I finally set foot in my favorite place in the world (after home…Of course), on the morning of 20th Jan 2006. My very own Manipal…

Manipal is where I learned the ‘tricks of the trade’, the place where I discovered my hidden passions and so called talents. A place I enjoy the most being in, a place where fun, frolic and work is like a package deal, under an umbrella called The Manipal Experience.

Not many places in India are blessed with what is called a University town, a concept well versed to the public elsewhere. Manipal is like a confluence of cultures, of youth, of ideas and the pros and cons that come with it. A place, that is so imperfect in the eyes of others, it seems perfect to me, a place where you can explore all alleys of life (I seriously mean all!). If you emerge unscathed from Manipal, you have a glorious and awesome future ahead as you have the “Been There, Done That” attitude in life.

Any way, it was a good digression from what I was gonna write. So I reached Manipal, this time as a guest of the college… an honor that not many can boast of (within 6 months of getting out of the place). I was there to give a presentation on the emerging topic of “Rich Internet Applications & Adobe Flex” as a representative of my company. An accommodation in an A/C room in the hostels was more than I could ask for and I was just too excited to be able to go up on stage again at my favorite Auditorium.

The presentation was at 3.00 pm but I reached the venue at 2.30 pm itself (which is so unusual for so called tech-talk celebrities, who follow the motto of ‘The later I come, the more people turn up’). I just wanted to soak up the experience of being there.

A dais that I have climbed up countless times, for participating and conducting quizzes, paper presentations, almost more than once in a month in all my stay in Manipal. But it felt different now… I was an Alumnus, returning to the Mother ship, but to leave again, just to share the corporate experience that I had had… Nostalgia Personified!