|| Kyuki Gyan hi aapko apna asli hak dilata hai (Because only Knowledge can enlighten you) ||

Gyan - a four-letter word - your eternal voice.  Gyan or knowledge enables us to achieve something great. Gyan - to know where we want to go. Gyan - to communicate. Gyan - to achieve the highest abode. Gyan - to make ourselves feel confident. Gyan - to ease the hurdles of life.  With the help of Knowledge even the toughest challenge seems to be very easy, however, the process or journey of gaining Knowledge may be tough in its own.

For the folks who do not know - the punch line "kyuki Gyan hi aapko apna hak dilata hai" has been taken from the biggest Indian reality show named "Kaun banega crorepati" (the remake of - Who wants to be a millionare - an american series). The show is hosted by the biggest Indian superstar from the Indian film industry - Amitabh Bachchan. If I take the privilege to give a brief about him then I would say only one statement that even if he does not speak anything in his film, the expressions in his eyes would tell the entire story. He is a maestro.  If I talk more about his show then I can say that this is the show that puts your general knowledge to a tough test and awards you a big price money if you answer the questions correctly. Everyone loves him and his show, including me.  I watch the show almost regularly except for the instances when I need to stay late in the office to talk to my client to earn my bread-butter!  I miss the show because my TV is not yet equipped with the set-top box to record his shows. We all love him

Gyan - is not the modern word. Its definition has not changed since we have grown up hearing it. I am writing this blog to promote the acquisition of Gyan in my field of Software Engineering.  Software development or writing is amongst the top field that requires innovation and lots of knowledge of computers.  A field that creates a computer program to ease your day-to-day activities.  This blog post majorly deals with the importance of achieving the knowledge in software field and putting it to the real world.  I would be happy to site my personal experiences and the methodologies that I followed during my entire career to achieve the respectable knowledge in the software industry.

Starting with my college days, The first program that I wrote in C/C++ language (I guess that was the most recent programming language during the period of 2004-05) was to find the prime numbers between 1 to 10000.  Though this program does not make any sense in the contemporary real world and doesn't contain any business value, it was the opportunity for me to put my mind into words. The program had lot of defects which I couldn't foresee before writing it.  When I wrote it, I realized what went wrong where and how.  It gave me an opportunity to fix the defects which my brother already told me when he tested it!  Naah, nah.. and yeah yeh went for a very long time.  I really wanted myself to sustain the arguments which my BigB (elder brother) wanted me to get involved into but in vain.  Yes, it was almost in vain. I cannot sustain what he was expecting from me.  A good quality prime number finder??  I then worked very hard to get the things resolved.  Finally I saw him showing me his right hand thumb as a token of the success and I took a deep breath of relaxation.  Gyan enabled me to enrich my program. The knowledge of fixing defect in my 50-line program helped me to achieve what I was expecting. I sticked to the problem and I was able to put it to closure - happy ending!.  I was given flexibility to search google and find the answer and I could do it but unfortunately the code I found on G was in VB and I did not know VB that time.  I also did not know about the freely available code converters who could convert the ready-made VB code to C++.  I wrote it from scratch and published. While working on this program, I not only learnt how to find prime numbers but I could also achieve supplementary knowledge which can be applied to other programs if I happen to write at a later point of time.  Knowledge is about putting a lot of efforts to achieve great things.  I remember the words of my grandma saying "It might be very easy to appease Lakshmi (the goddess of Wealth) but very very difficult to appease Saraswati (the goddess of Knowledge)".  It requires perseverance, diligence and focus.

The process of writing C++ code was not enough and I faced a new challenge to writing the same program in assembly language (for the 8086 microprocessor). Oh God!  The instruction code does not fit my mind and I am fed up of all JC, JE, kind-of instructions.  Gyan - again pitched in. I was engrossed in learning the new (yet old) programming language for the sake of converting my program into assembly language. I am pleased to see that modern age compilers do it for free now!

Like others, I also wanted to reap the fruits of my knowledge almost instantly but it never happened.  It might be because the knowledge that I had was superficial or inaccurate initially.  Gradually when I progressed more on the path of life, I found the knowledge which I gained initially helped me to solve many questions/puzzles of my life. The only thing that I missed was to polish it.  I found it very interesting and started acquiring it more and more.  Really we never know when we will get chance to apply our knowledge that we acquired in the past.  The best way to retain this knowledge is to keep practicing it till it gets a comfortable seat in your mind. The knowledge in any form should be welcome without analyzing the degree of success we can achieve by using it. Sometimes we tend to put lot of efforts in gaining the knowledge but we get frustrated if we are not able to reap the fruits instantly.  Never mind!  The knowledge never goes in vain. It will be used somewhere at some point of time in rest of your life and can fetch you better fruits.  We all know the stories of two woodcutters who use to earn their livings by cutting the woods in the forest. The one of them was yielding better results because he use to sharpen his axe everyday.  It was the knowledge of how the axe works and what is needed to make it work better helped the woodcutter to get better results. 

The next question that comes to my mind is "how do I keep myself interested in gaining the knowledge"? The answer to this question is to keep craving to polish your knowledge.  It is quite true that there is always a scope to polish your knowledge in whatever form you have it. Studies have proven that a person may tend to stop acquiring knowledge when he gets bored. Similarly organizations may not succeed in its goals and vision if its employees complain that they are getting bored. The best way to keep ourselves motivated is to ask ourselves a question: "what did I learn today?"  The answers to this question will surely make ourselves more active and our attitude towards the journey of acquiring knowledge will change drastically.  Sometimes we get bored from our routine life because we fail to notice the interesting aspect of it.  When I wake up and realize it is the same Monday that comes every week and the same status update calls in the evening, I tend to loose the craving of reaching the office in enthusiasm.  The situation can tend to be different when I am successful in realizing that I am going to use new technology or a new algorithm today to solve the problem at hand.  This may also be explained in terms of science.  When we are excited our body tends to discharge more adrenalin which gives us a natural thrust in doing something creative.

These were few instances of Gyan playing important role in keeping ourselves motivated and free from bad happenings.  The process of achieving the great is very lengthy and may take considerable efforts as estimated by us. The process of acquiring Gyan never ends.  It keeps on growing. The modern world has been equipped with lots of technology stuff which may seem to be growing at the very rapid pace.  Gyan is the only mechanism which can lead us to explore every aspect of our day-to-day life.

I took a very fundamental examples of my life of learning.  I feel that learning never ends and I second many great learned spiritual preachers. We know that we need knowledge to unlock the miseries and mysteries of darkness of the life.  The enlightenment of life can happen only with the proper blend of knowledge and experiences.  The purpose of life tends to give you the best when we know the importance of knowledge and oppose ignorance.  The barriers of life and society can be eradicated only with the help of true knowledge.  Coming back to KBC - I heard Amitabh Bachchan saying that "Gyan kisi ki jaagir nahi hai.. woh to sirf bhatko ko raah dikhata hai" (meaning the Knowledge is not the property of anyone but it gives the proper direction to the ones who have lost their way) - Yes, kyuki Gyan hi aapko apna hak dilata hai!