Insead?! Now, isn't that great!! All the best, Sameer!

At Jisan Forest Skiing Resort, last Tuesday. What an experience! Oh, my right knee is still in pain!

Finally everything ended well. I took the flight back to Mumbai Sunday morning and reached home Sunday night. What were my feelings as I left Korea? There must have been a sense of achievement as I walked from SDI plant to SEC bus stand for the last time on Friday afternoon. There must have been a sense of satisfaction as I sent my last good-bye mail.

Surely there must have been nostalgia as I strolled in Namsangol, the most peaceful place in Seoul, for the last time. I remembered the time when I sat there several months ago on one of the rocks with some print-outs in my hand. I remembered the time I had seen traditional Korean dance during Choo Suk. My visit along with Adhip and Tarun. The frozen lake reminded me of something.

I wonder what were my feelings as I walked down the narrow lanes of Namdaemun market with Lalit, for last minute shopping on Saturday night. As I wished good-bye to the staff of Han Suites I must have felt a tinge of sadness. And as I travelled by the Subway, that I had fallen in love with, I don't know how much I thought I am going to miss it.

Because all nostalgia, sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, and every other feeling were eclipsed by a feeling of incomparable fatigue. It will take some more time to realise and analyse all the happenings of last four weeks. I want to sleep well for once and get rid of all the tiredness. I hope the long leave will help me back to normal.

Last week was one of worst weeks at work. Everything that could go wrong went wrong for me. Thankfully it has ended with a note of cautious optimism. I hope the next week doesn't turn out to be as bad as the last one. And importantly, my return schedule is not affected in any way.

I am tired.

Today I saw the movie Alexander. The battle scenes are shot well, especially the conquest of Babylon. However, it's a three-hour long movie that oftentimes seems like some documentry on Alexander's life rather than a movie. There are two things that one realizes on seeing the movie. First is Alexander's unprecedented military success. The second is his failure of conquest of India.

It was India that first broke the will of his army and then Alexander's own will to fight. For the first time Alexander's forces were opposed by armies mounted on twenty-feet tall elephants that instilled mortal fear in them. Alexander tried hard to motivate them, but after bloody battles in dense and trecherous forests, his own resolve weakened. He gave up his dream of conquering the world and declared, "We will not go futher. We will go back all the way to Macedonia".

The movie tells us that it was only India that he failed to conquer. Unfortunately we are not told the story this way. We are only taught about Alexander's victory over King Puru (or Porus as the Greeks called him). We consider Alexander as our conquerer. Because Indian history is written by people who have no pride in this great nation and her achievements. That is why we are not told to be proud of Alexander's failure to conquer India and Chandragupta Maurya's subsequent unification of our country from Khadahar to Bengal.