novemberrain

Books again..

2010-07-10T11:20:00.000-07:00

After a longish break -- again back to books and writing. Picked up "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" and it became yet another book which I could not keep down once I started reading it. Fast paced, with a monologue styled writing, concepts of ideologies, identity, strong undercurrent of nostalgia in the first half, this book for me rates better than "Moth Smoke", which incidentally is another on my favs list.

Finished "The Middlemen" by Sankar. A moving read in terms of a realistic portrayal of unemployment in Calcutta during the 70's. The author, in the epilogue also gives the inspiration that went into writing this book, his inner emotional dilemma of depicting the bleak situation pessimistically as is versus his duty as a writer to bring the reality to the public.

Have now picked up Chowringhee by the same Author. Next on my reading list!

Tall Claims?

2010-07-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

The Maharashtra FDA has taken a popular health drink maker to court over the advertisement for their health drink which claims that children who drink it grow taller by 2 inches than children who don't.

I have always been irritated by this advertisement and have often wondered why no rival company had created a ruckus over such an exaggerated advertisement and often wished someone would interfere to take these people to task for such baseless claims. If they indeed have "research reports" to back their claims I wonder what it would contain?!

Would they have had 2 identified groups of children one group who were regularly given the drink and the other one not, over a period of years? If yes, how did they neutralize any biases when selecting these groups? Did the children in the first group have tall parents compared to those in the second group, were they from any specific regions of the country, how was it known that they did not take any other health supplements etc etc...As much as I try I cannot conceptualize a bias-free study which could give this result...and hence my irritation at ads like these.....

It remains to be seen what the company's response in this case is.

Aside/Is it only me who feel that off late, all SRK ads are big disappointments? the bear one...the paste one...really really unoriginal and with no TOMR.

Loved the new NIIT ad though. Superb visuals.

Fav Ads

2010-01-30T06:24:00.000-08:00

I have always been interested in ads. When I was doing my ISB, although I was more inclined towards Finance, the thought of taking up a role in branding / advertising was always there at the back of my mind and this was one reason why I wanted a dual major in Marketing. Just to keep the options open :) but I landed in Finance nevertheless and so now I keep my interest in this area by closely following the ad scene in the visual media.
So on one particularly lazy day when I didn’t want to go play badminton and didn’t want to read any of the 3 half read books lying on my couch and didn’t want to write also ( :-( ), I decided to list down some of my favourite ads from the last year. And here they are…in no particular order!
1. Coke classic: Simply classic, one of those ads where there is no story/message/brand utility..nothing. It’s just cool! :)
2. Surf excel (The ‘Rosy Miss’ ad): For an ad for a detergent, it famously proclaimed “dirt is good” whereas the competitors was doing the age old formula of “removes dirt/makes perfect white/as good as new/etc etc”.
3. Mentos Dadhoo ad: Superb idea / graphics and very effective in TOMR for the viewers.
4. Limca Sushma Reddy ad: Very vibrant, playful & backed by an excellent jingle.
5. Tata tea (kyun ki hum khilate hain): Important message comes across superbly to the target audience.
6. Hindustan times (“Its time to stop” series): It’s so rare to find an ad which is message oriented and with a sense of humour!
7. Hero Honda ZMR: The Hrithik ad, just for the execution of the ad; superb and stylish.
8. Airtel (Abhay Deol & Raima Sen): Very cute & romantic! Was intended to connect at an emotional level with the audience and it hits the right spot!
9. Wild Stone aqua deo ad: Just for Sheetal Malhar :) I mean is there any other ad which is this sexy without being vulgar?!
10. Nescafe ads: Has a very feel good factor to them. You actually feel like having a Nescafe after seeing them!
11. Airtel (Kid with toy phone calling dad): Very endearing one and the kid does a really nice job!
12. Bingo ad (the chilli flavour): Too good an acting by the girl…and what an idea!!
13. Max New York life insurance ad: This ad makes you sit up and think “this could happen to me”.
14. Volkswagen beetle ad: Captures the desirability quotient superbly.
15. Zoozoo ads: Well what more can be told of these? :)

An "Idiot"ic Thought?

2009-12-30T06:13:00.000-08:00

So all of us saw ‘3 idiots’ and loved it! And I am no exception. If I enjoyed a movie, I don’t believe in sitting and trying to poke holes in it just for the sake of writing a review. It is after all a movie and not real life and there are bound to be creative liberties taken by the makers in the process of putting together something which enthrals millions of movie goers and behind which goes hell a lot of effort. A critic, on the other hand, has his job easy – watch the movie and tear it apart.
No. that would be quite harsh. And besides, all critics are not like that! That’s not the point of this post anyways.
It was heartening that one of the most important & concerning aspect of technical education in our engineering colleges was highlighted and articulated quite well in the movie. I consider myself lucky to be alumni of one such premier institute and even though I am proud of that fact, I have often felt that the way in which we were learning stuff there was not the best possible way. We used to cram up heat and mass transfer text books, vomit out whatever we learnt by rot in the answer paper and then forget about it. (I had cribbed about this in one of my earlier posts too). That message has been captured quite well in this movie and it helps in terms of reaching a larger audience when the same is an integral part of a super star’s movie.
But I felt that there was something else which bothered me about the movie. So here it is, trying to put that thought into words without really intending to “review” the movie.
It was another theme of the movie – the one on “Chasing your dreams”. On the silver screen, it looks good when the hero gets to follow his dream but the moot question here is, how many of us, at the age of 17 (when we are about to enter an engineering college) know what we really want to do in life? Do we have that much clarity at that age? And even if we have clarity, how many of us have the liberty and freedom to follow them? I might look stupid admitting this but if I had told my dad that I wanted to be an author and not an engineer after my class 12, he would have beat me with a cane to the engineering college door. (Ok..It was not that bad…but you get the point right?).
My view is that, at 17 years old, our idea of what we want to be in future is probably not the result of a well thought of and practical approach to life but considerably influenced by things like hero worship, peer pressure etc which often has a big role to play. It is the responsibility & prerogative of parents to guide us at that stage to equip ourselves with a basic degree which can then act as a backup plan in life if our dreams evade us and to that extent, R Madhavan’s (character’s) outburst of “I don’t want to do engineering …..because I know I won’t be a good engineer” did not cut slack with me. You get done with engineering and then pursue your passion but don’t say you are bad at engineering (and hence at clearing your exam papers) because your dream is something else. Doesn’t work in real life baby!
And again, on the other point of even if somebody is damn sure that his passion is X and not Y, how many can really afford to follow their passion in this country? I mean in the movie it was very convenient that Madhavan’s character who is from a fairly well to do middle class background wants to follow his passion of photography whereas Sharman Joshi’s character who is struggling hard to support his family is happy getting any job from the campus.
But what if it was the other way around? Would have been a tough (& probably implausible/impractical) situation if SJ’s character didn’t want to take up any job but instead wanted to take on photography?
Something worth thinking?

Rain, Music & a cup of hot Tea

2009-12-30T06:06:00.000-08:00

Imagine it’s a day off from work and you are lazing around at home…its raining heavily outside and its evening 3 pm. You are sitting by the window side looking at the heavy downpour coming down hard on the small tin roof over the window shades and the tiny drops trickling down through the perforations in the tin sheet. You see little kids on the road, wearing raincoats those colored ones with cure little cartoons on them, walking back from the bus stop after being dropped by school buses, splashing water on each other, their laughter and squeaks drowned out by the rains. Buses pass by splashing the water collected in the puddles on the road on to the passers by, whose response to the same varies depending on their age. The elderly ones continue walking without noticing it in their concentrated effort to hold on to their umbrellas which flay wildly in the windy rains. The young ones are delighted when water splashes at them and smile with genuine joy…and the middle agers, angry at impudence of the bus drivers, break into an abuse….
You take in the beauty of the rain…a new book by your favorite author is lying in front of you
, waiting to be picked up. But you think, not yet…you want to just sit there, look at the rains and be lost in their dance from the sky……there is a cup of piping hot tea in front of you and a plate of kela (banana) bajji (Samosas if you are a north Indian! Or Dhoklas if you please ;-) )
What would be some songs that you would like to play in the background in such a beautiful setting?
I asked some of my close friends to share what are the songs that come to their mind…and some of them did. Here is the list (incl. mine).
v Badi sooni sooni hai
v Tere bina zindagi mein koi
v Neele neele ambar par
v Zindagi ke safar mein guzar jaate hain
v Rim Jhim Gire Sawan
v Neele neele ambar par
v Ye ladka hai allah kaisa hai deewana
v Main zindagi ka saath nibhaata chala gaya
v Chura liya hai tumne jo dil ko
v Dekha ek khwab to yeh silsiley huve
v Mere naina saawan baadon
v Kabhie kabhie mere dil
v Chandan sa badhan
v Ik pal hai jeena umeed ke bina aao hum is pal mein kho jayen
v Raah pe chalte hain ratoin mein basar karte hain
v Us din ki baat hai ramayiaa naav leke sagar gaya
v Rajnigandha
v Yeh dil sun raha hai

ISB, IIM and More....!!

2009-12-29T06:43:00.000-08:00

Before you go ahead and read the “interesting” article (the link for which is given below in the post), I would like to submit the following.
1. I do not think ISB and IIM’s can be compared because they cater to different target segments (yikes! Why am I talking in marketing parlance?).
2. I have immense respect for IIM and their alumni. Many of my friends/batch mates from REC have gone to IIM’s and these are some of the smartest people I know.
3. IIM alumni should be (and are) proud of the fact that at least 9 of the top 10 corporates in this country would possibly have an IIM alumni in their Top Management.
4. ISB alumni should be (and are) proud of the fact that in a short span of 8 years, ISB has created a reputation for excellence and is recognized among the top b-schools worldwide by FT.

For me, everybody is free to have their personal view on which management institute is better than another and so I see this article as just another view...without any offence to anybody. Period.
Now, read this article.
http://www.merinews.com/article/arindam-chaudhuri-on-why-isb-is-better-than-the-iims/15789721.shtml
The article purportedly is about how ISB is better than IIM’s but after reading the article I felt (did you?) that the title should have been “Why IIPM is better than ISB and IIM?”!!!!!!!
One of the sentences goes like this.
Quote “.....fact that ISB got ranked at No.15 by FT ahead of the IIMs and that in the latest Zee Business B-school Ranking 2009, IIPM got ranked No.1 in ‘Global Exposure’ and No 5 in India overall, is only a sign of the times to come” Unquote.
I mean...really!? By speaking about both these incidents in the same breath, is it intended that both these events have the same significance? And if yes, the rankings of both these entities carry equal credibility? I don’t know and I don’t want to know!
Another one.
Quote “…in the case of a B-school professor who doesn’t have practical experience, the crowning grace then is about how much management consulting work he undertakes……. While IIM professors are, on an average, good……….” Unquote.
This point is justified by some research done among the alumni on how many professors they rate as very good/good etc and if there is some research on actual management consulting work undertaken by the professors from the IIM’s, the same is not shared.
Anyways….all said and done, read the comments at the end of the article. Some of them are absolute gems! Read on…have a laugh!

A beautiful Smile & X-mas Cheer

2009-12-26T01:09:00.000-08:00

The cheer was missing.
In spite of it being one of my favorite month (and week) of the year, in spite of having a 4 day weekend and in spite of finally getting back to my writing and blogging, the cheer was plainly missing. It did not help that my family was back in Kerala and the plane tickets were costing a bomb.Suddenly i was missing being back home at this time of the year.

On my way to office in the blue A/C bus (yeah..ok the 'purple' A/C bus!) yesterday, i tried hard to figure out my dipped enthusiasm. Yes, the happenings at office were..hmm to put it mildly, "unsettling"..and i didnt have a clue as to where my career was going in the next 6 months. There were things on which i was pinning my hopes on which were not working my way. The only relief was that i was now getting myself to write again..but not quite as much as i would have liked to and so even this was not able to bring a smile to my face.Watching 3 idiots with friends was fun, but somehow the smile was already gone by the time we came out of the theatre. On my way back home in the taxi, i suddenly had this scary thought "My god, why is nothing making me smile these days? Am i really becoming "Mr Grumpy"?

The roads were empty because of the holiday and this time the extravagant decorations were missing out from the malls, shops & the roads. The taxi came to a stop at a red signal. The window glass was down and i was listening to an ustad sultan khan song when there was a tap on the window. I looked out and saw first not the guys face, but the cover of a book which he was holding out to me"
"saab...dekhlo saab...accha book hai..ekdum bestsheller...". "The three states" the bright red pirated paperback proclaimed.
"yeah right" i thought. Already restless that i was, this unsolicited literary advice didnt go down well with me and i shooed the guy away.
I had just about sat back and closed my eyes, wanting to be soothed by the voices of the ustaad and KS Chitra when there was again a tap on my window.I opened my eyes irritated and angry for being again disturbed...and looked out. And saw her.

She was probably 6 years old. She was wearing a rag of a dress and was holding on to a bunch of threads from which rose a bunch of bright multicolored balloons.Her hair was matted and unkempt, the result of not being washed for probably days and she had a slight cleft lip. But what stuck me the most about her was her eyes. There were bright and round and i thought it was ironical that god had given her such a wretched life but inspite of it, her eyes were full of life. Or was this also a sleight of hand by that great magician?
"do gubbara lelo sahib...10 rupaya".
The signal had turned green and the taxi driver had shifted the gear and was about to move. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him for a minute and looked back at her.
"ek tho lelo sahib...bhook lagi hai...vada pav khane ka".
I felt a tug at my heart and without thinking anymore , took out a 100 rupee note from my purse and gave it to her and asked her for 1 balloon. She handed over the end of a thread from which a single red big balloon was suspended and looked at me with confusion, holding the 100 rupee note in her hand. I then told her gently that she should go and get a decent meal with the money.

Before my moved away from the signal, i saw the girl's face break into a smile. A beautiful perfect smile. A smile that seemed to light up the entire surrounding, a smile so genuine which you get to see ever so rarely these days. Suddenly that odd realization which often strikes us but then is lost in our busy day today came to me..that here was a 6 year old who was happy and smiling at the thought of a full meal where we, inspite of having so much in life, sometimes lose perpsective and despair over materialistic things. How childish were my worries compared to hers?
The taxi was now speeding and i put my hand out of the window and released the balloon into the wind.....along with my worries and smiled.

The cheer was back.

Music & ..growing up down south of Vindhyas

2009-12-26T01:01:00.001-08:00

It often amuses me when my north indian friends express amazement at my knowledge of hindi songs...particularly those old melodies..those ever green songs made immortal by starwalts like kishoreda, rafi, hemant kumar, mukesh, manna deyetc.For even though born and brought up south of the vindhyas, we had to learn during our growing up days in school,what was ostentiably the "national language" of india - Hindi.
When you are 6 years old and at an age when you dont rather like going to school at all, you dont really spare a moment to think what exactly are you taught at school. You just learn (or try to learn!) what they teach you at school. And so i learnt hindi (which was not my mothertongue) for a total of 6 years. Back then, it was just another "language subject" in which we had to get 35 marks to pass and that was it.Of course being in CBSE syllabus helped because we had an option to choose between hindi and sanskrit in class 5 and i happily chose sanskit. No, not because i didnt like hindi, but because supposedly it was easy to score marks in sanskrit for the board exams! (yes, this was indeed proved correct when i managed to get a 99 in sanskrit in my CBSE board exams - excruciatingly missing that magical number by 1 mark..losing that top honours to a pretty girl in my class who managed to score a full 100 in sanskrit and who got a special prize for the same whereas your truly, inspite of being the batch topper was not even awarded a plaque...sigh!)
Anyways..coming back to the point, we down south were blessed because we learnt not just our mothertongue, but also the language which is spoken by majority of our north indian brethren. Even today, this gives me a kick, a rather childish satisfaction, that i am comfortably able to have a conversation with my north indian friends in their language whereas they would never be able to claim the vice versa!
And for music lovers like me, this forced multi-linguism was a blessing. Becuase not only were we lucky to have grown up listening to the southern legends like yesudas, jayachandran, suseelamma and janakiamma, so were we swayed by the magical voices of legends of the north.
In fact some of my earliest memories from childhood of songs being hummed by my dad and mom were actually not malayalam songs, but hindi ones. Like "tere bina zindagi mein koyi" was/still is my mom's favorite whereas my dad was/is rather fond of "kabhie kabhie mere dil".And not just the popular ones, the tastes were eclectic...sample this - "badi sooni sooni hai". Where Rafisaab's voice tugs at and makes your heart ache when he sings an "ehsaan tera hoga", Kishoreda's voice gives you goosebumps and for those 5 minutes, you live a different life! I mean these were and still are some of the best songs ever writen and sung..evergreen in their appeal and expressions.
Not to say that malayalam classics were overlooked. An "alliyambal kadavil" was played as many times in my house as a "tum itna jo muskura rahe ho". Some of my really nice childhood memories include sitting on the porch at home watching my dad and uncle playing carroms and the radio playing "bina ka geetmaala / cibaca geetmala" in the background.
Those were the years....and sometimes when i am really down, playing one of those timeless classics brings about a serene calm and i am at peace again....

The New Coke Ad!

2009-12-22T02:31:00.000-08:00

I had been pretty dissapointed by the Coke ads that were being churned out for the last 1 or 2 years. In spite of having some of the most saleable stars of the bollywood industry under their contract, their ads were nothing but average. That is why i was floored by the new coke ad. Simple settings - a college library where a cool dude and a sexy chick is sitting across a table...hell i dont think i can write about it and do justice to it! ;-) It is one of those ads that cannot be explained but really artistically done...quite a classic...quite cool..!

The Girl with the Pink Umbrella

2009-12-22T02:24:00.000-08:00

I knew this would change everything but as I stood there transfixed, I felt helpless. Even the unpredictable mumbai rains which was now a drizzle but threatening to turn into a downpoar didn’t force me to move away from the open space to the shelter of the bus stop. I have replayed that moment a thousand times in my head since that day but never have been able to remember what was it about her that had me transfixed and reminded me of Riya. Was it that pretty scarf around her beautiful slender shoulders which seemed to have been casually worn but gave her a scottish village charm or was it the book that she was carrying in her hand (“The Fountainhead”) or was it the oversized goggles or was it the pink umbrella? Or was it the graceful ease with which she was able to give an impression of sophistication and innocence, of intellectual and feminine at the same time, something which was so typical of Riya?
All I knew was that the past was coming back to haunt me. Images of Riya flashed before me and I felt a strong feeling of déjà vu. Althought it was more than 2 years since I had lost my Riya, I had only recently come to terms with a life without her and would still often wake up with a start in the middle of the night, frantic on not finding her beside me and then cry throughout the night.
All I knew was that I wanted to befriend this girl, this stranger. She loves books and more importantly she loves reading Rand, I thought. That was a good enough omen for me. But the pain of loss had such a sordid grip on me that I was scared to fall in love again…scared to again lose a loved one.
---------------------
I regularly saw her for the next few weeks in the morning at the bus stop..from a distance, never exchaging a word. Unknown to her, she made my day cheerful, just the sight of her in the morning. I painfully realized that as much as I wanted to get to know her, the irrational fear of losing her meant that I would probably never even get to talk to her…..
Till one day…..she walked over to where I was standing, smiled at me and extended her hand of friendship…
“Hi!! You are also a regular at this bus stop like me…I am Riya..and you are?”…..
Everything changed after that..just as I had imagined when I first saw her!

there is still hope yet..

2009-07-22T08:10:00.000-07:00

It was about 11 o clock in the night and I was returning back home after watching a movie at phoenix. I was in a taxi and it was drizzling slighlty and the taxi was going at a slow pace. A few metres ahead of me, I saw a guy starting his motorcycle and coming out on to the road but to my alarm saw that he had not released the stand of the bike. Having seen an accident happen due to the same reason a couple of years earlier, I was suddenly scared for this guy. I knew that the road ahead had lot of potholes and the moment the guy goes past by a pothole, the stand was going to get stuck and he would fall.
My taxidriver was an old chap (who I am sure was suffering from nightblindness!) and in spite of my repeated requests to speed up and catch up with the guy on the bike, he could not drive fast enough to catch up. My repeated requests to go fast was no doubt making him upset. Ahead, a turning was coming up and I prepared myself to watch what I was dreading would come true….
Then I saw those 2 guys…they looked like your local ruffian sort of guys, whom you will identify as faces which you would see in every nook and corner of busy & crowded areas in any town; guys loitering around without having any work & sense of purpose, mostly drunk all the time, passing comments on women passing by – the standard rowdy acts. They were coming out from a paan shop and then looking to cross the road and saw the guy on the bike approaching…and as I watched, both of them gesticulated wildly with their hands to the biker signaling to him that he had not released the stand of the bike. As soon as they did this, the biker passed by these guys and then slowed down to release the stand and then (not looking back because the road ahead was dimly lit) raised his hand to wave in acknowledgement, in thanks, to these two guys. He waved once, then did a thumbs up and then waved again….and sitting in the car, seeing this scene being played out in front of me, a smile crossed my face & the thought crossed my mind “There is still hope yet….and there is a little bit of goodness in everybody!!”
And then I told my driver..”kaka, abhi aap slow chalao….chalega!”

Worst Ad of the Season!

2009-04-03T21:47:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a lot of ads on prime time television these days which are competing to be the worst ad of the season. Till now I had thought that the worst one of the lot was the ad for one of the cough candy products which shows a “cool” guy getting irritated with his fellow passenger for asking him about how cool the candy is breaking the window glass of the aeroplane and thrusting his fellow passengers head out. I mean, give me a break. The ad is poorly executed, there is no meaning whatsoever, is completely lacking in creativity and somebody should give a complaint against this one for portraying such irresponsible actions in an ad!
But then I got to see the ad for a leading mosquito repellent and this one has replaced the previous one as the worst ad of the season! It’s completely hilarious and shows the actors going around speaking in woof-tongue, a bark replacing all their conversations supposedly to portray the side effects of using a coil compared to a repellent machine. The presence of a leading-although-now-a-part-of-oldies Bollywood star doesn’t help and the ad comes across as a piece of juvenile piece of work. Maybe with all the recession happening, ad companies have started recruiting fresh interns to get their stuff done!

Vaaranam Aayiram

2009-02-25T21:41:00.000-08:00

I lost a bet about this movie! About a month before the release of this movie, I had a bet with my friend as to what the title of this movie meant…I had interpreted the title to mean “A thousand colours” and my friend (who incidentally has the advantage of being a tam-bram) had bet that it was actually “strength of 1000 elephants or something like that”!!. It turned out later that I lost the bet…but when I watched the movie, I realized that I didn’t lose the bet in all aspects…because the movie literally comes across as a thousand colours!
Surya, I believe, has given the best performance of his career (matching his pithamaghan performance) in a role which spans 4 decades. It can now safely be said that there are actors of the calibre of Kamal Hassan in the current generation of Tamil heroes. Surya’s performance reminds you of a young Kamal Hassan and he essays each stage of the character with utmost ease. When he plays a school kid, he looks that part and when he plays the old man, he looks that part too, which says a lot about his performance!
The story line is simple and is a tribute to a father figure in the hero’s life. Sameera Reddy passes muster, Divya gives a no-nonsense performance and Simran gives an excellent supporting performance to Surya’s father-role. The songs are beautiful and the visuals beautifully done. Surya seems to be maintaining a balance in his choice of movies alternating between the rustic village roles and the yankee metro crowd roles playing both with equal ease. Having watched the movie twice, I can vouch that this one doesn’t make a boring watch although you need to be a sensitive and/or romantic person to enjoy this one!

I wish: Aamir would remake the movie in Hindi (mama on his blog was hoping that SRK would not remake this one – I agree!!)

Smart Positioning

2009-02-18T20:22:00.001-08:00

The new entrant from M&M’s stable, Xylo seems to be a smart case of positioning by M&M. The ad for Xylo shows a huge container coming down crashing down on a dilapidated (?) sedan and then the Xylo rolling out from the container. Seems like M&M has depicted the positioning in the ad also! (With a VO of “Era of sedans is over”! like the ad!) Priced at around 6.5 lakhs (Base models E2 and E4) , not only they have ensured that it doesn’t cannibalize their Scorpio sales, but it would take heads on the fiestas, the SX-4, Dzire etc. and at 6.5 lakhs, with the features it provides, its truly value for money also. Although they could have done better with the looks, particularly the rear side which has a box like appearance. But in spite of this, Xylo looks to be a winner..lets wait and watch!

What's your contribution?!!

2008-12-26T22:17:00.000-08:00

An advertisement pamphlet which came with my newspaper today.. the caption ran like this..(or something similar)"We made the earth lighter by 57000 Kgs this month...what is your contribution?"
..and no..this is not an ad for any wastage disposal company or government agency...its the caption for a specialized beauty/slimming clinic!
Innovative advertising anyone?

It pays to be Process Oriented!

2008-09-19T07:42:00.000-07:00

One of the areas which most organizations talk about being important to their business but is relegated to being the pain point in their day to day operations is processes (the other close competitors would be compliance & technology, although the first one does manage to have considerable power). In spite of the initiative taken, once in a while, by a well meaning business unit head or a CEO, processes in any organization remains, unfortunately, something which is good to have – let’s have it, document it and forget about it. Why bother about it when the business is making money eh?

Well, with mammoth financial institutions having a history of more than a century folding up within just a week, people will now wake up to the importance of having a laid down process and following the process to a T.

How many times in our career have we come against an argument that we are losing business and so why don’t we tweak that process a little bit? Well it definitely works that way in most organizations but the perpetrators are too short sighted to see and understand that in the long term it ends up hurting the very business that they were clamouring to build.
Not that these venerable institutions didn’t have a risk management process. Assuming that would be a childish if not an imbecile thought. But the real question is how much of importance was given to the laid down processes in the mad run for generating business and making money.

Financial institutions which should worry about three different costs – cost of funds, cost of operations and cost of compliance, by ignoring to follow the processes unknowingly ends up adding to the cost of operations which ultimately adds to the cost of funds and when things get out of control, finally to cost of compliance!!

Split Generations

2008-06-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

I am not old. Ok, maybe i should say "I am not that old", yet i was appalled to see this one particulr program on MTV and was left wondering whether the cultural identities have shifted significantly even to vary within the same generation. In the "olden" days, we used to have the older generation (mostly your uncles, a bit older cousins etc) and you would often have these good natured disagreements about which generationhad the better songs and actors etc. But the age difference which separates these two different generations were quite considerable.But now, things seem to be changing. So now, to the topic.There is this new program which is being aired on channel V in which there are two guys and a group of girls, whose objective is to make sure that they get one of the guys to date them (something on these lines). And so we have "competitions" in each episode and then there are "elimination rounds" where girls are "Dumped" based on various "parameters". And its shocking to see these girls taking it so seriously!I mean, what kind of message are we sending to the millions of youngsters who are glued to these channels?That, being a girl, you are a loser if some &@#$!@&* doesnt want to take you for a date? That you need to "compete" and "prove yourself" inorder to be an object of affection? I mean, come one, gimme a break!Is this the definition of being "Cool" for the teenagers? Shouldnt this kind of competitive mentality be used to motivate them to take on better things, which could be cool too?

I wish i could know the opinions of teens on this!

Back to Books!

2008-04-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

So, after a long hiatus, i get back to what i love the most. Reading. Picked up a couple of books from the ISB library and got busy!

Midaq Alley (Naguib Mahfouz)
I picked this up from the ISB library only out of curiosity because this work had won the author the Nobel prize in literature. 30 Pages into the book and i was bored and decided to give it back and try my luck with some other book. But then met NM on the way and was told about how it gets interesting, so decided to give it a second shot and boy, was i surprised?This one starts slow but picks up pace towards the middle and then leads you into a vortex of emotions running through the mind of the central character of the book - Hamida. For me, she is one of the most strong-willed character that i have ever come across in all the works that i have read till now.Yes, she is enchanted by the pleasures in the world and doesnt consider the sanctity of means for her to achieve her ends. Yes, she chooses the lure of money over a committment of love. She gives in to the thinnest of possibilities which could get her out of Midaq Alley.But the way in which the author has been able to balance the extreme aspects of her character is mind blowing. It is almost like a Shakespearean play - whatthe audience sees and what the characters on the stage believe are totally different!So we have Hamida who thinks she is wielding power over Ibrahim when the latter was courting her, but it is so evident to the reader that, in her eagerness to extract herself from her pitiful existence in the alley, she was simply playing into the hands of the pimp.What strikes you about the book is the fact that you can imagine the street and visualize the characters taking shape, once you are through with the book and not many books are able to achieve this feat - at least in my experience.

Miguel Street (V S Naipaul)
Avoid.

Fasting Feasting (Anita Desai)
Started off well, but i lost interest towards the mid. Disjointed stories, it seemed, although the characters were part of the same story. One part ended rather abruptly and the other...well, what was the essence of it?

Riot (Shashi Tharoor)
Masterful. Shashi Tharoor weaves a story which captures your imagination for the way in which he blends it into the political backdrop of a village in India some years back and the happenings during that period. What stands out here is the way in which the author presents compelling arguments for opposing ideologies. From the perspective of a Hindu about the muslims, from the perspective of Muslims about the hindus, from the perspective of "real indians" about "spoilt, elitist and over-educated" indians who doesnt have a clue about the real india and then for the other side, etc. And if the book is able to convince you about each of these arguments when you are reading them one by one, then you know the mastery of the author on his material.Although i did feel that the romantic/sexual undertones could have been little lesser and more space was provided for the ideological debates and commentaries.

Definitely worth a read!

The five dollar smile (Shashi Tharoor)

These are short stories which was written by the author when he was in his late teens. Some of them are really nice and some of them, you could feel are amateurish.Good for a read though!

Journey to fulfillment

2008-04-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

Smiling, he met me at the doorstep,
“Welcome my child to your final destination”
My face was writ with trepidation
On seeing the lord himself at his step.

His face shone with radiance,
His eyes greeted me with understanding,
His smile was kind and assuring
And his words, devoid of pretence

“You look divine and beautiful
And make my heart fill up with joy
All the murals and paintings
Never did you any justice!”

"Thank you my child, come let's go"
"But god, there is something i want to know
how can you meet each and every person
when they leave the world after their season?"

"My dear child, this world doens't have time,
being here is being in eternity
when mortals leave their earthly belongings,
they become angels, join me for the final journey"

"Why do i feel peace and serenity,
when i have just separated from my loved ones?
and where are you taking me now,
to the heaven or to the hell?"

"You are at peace my dear child
because the time stands still here
and dont let your heart go wild
thinking of heaven and hell"

"For, there is no heaven or hell
all my children belong to one big world
your deeds and actions as a mortal
already took you through heaven/hell"

"You have played your part in my story
you cease being an actor henceforth
you will be with your loved ones here
from now on and till eternity"

Placement experiences & More

2008-03-14T17:41:00.000-07:00

I intend to pen down my thoughts on ISB in the next few weeks (the last term here!) and what I think are right and what I think are wrong. Some of it is not going to make some people happy, but I am going to do it anyways. I thought the first of these should be my interview experiences during the ISB placement week. So here we go. I am not posting the experience with the company with which I finally took up the offer (which is Barclays), but the other three which I had on day 1.

I think I should also express my thoughts about the placement week. Placement week at ISB creates an artificial job market which puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on people leading to a lot of well deserving candidates missing on jobs for which they have worked their **** off for the last one year. What happened in the Reliance power IPO where 100X people applied to X number of shares? Most people ended up not getting any shares at all (which, in hindsight was not a bad thing at all). The same applies here. The companies coming to the campus have the advantage of being selective because there are 420 students out here from which they can choose and so they get the upper hand. This makes the pressure levels go up and hence we need a system where the students have the upper hand. For this, the concept of the week long placement process should be removed and it should be spaced out. If the companies that are coming later complain about them being not able to get the crème de la crème, they have to be made understood that all the students in ISB are here because they were best in their previous jobs and hence focusing on the top of the batch of the “batch of extremely talented 400 odd people” is not the best approach to take. Instead they need to focus on whether the candidate who has applied to the job is interested and has done enough research on them (by reading the EOI and resume – please read them cause we take a long time to write them) and will fit their culture and see a long tem career in the company etc.
Most companies are not very hung up on grades (Except for the consultancy companies who anyway are not going to be a topic on my blog), and do look whether you have some transferable skills to bring from your previous work experience, which is where being in ISB makes a difference.

The ways in which the interviews are conducted by some of the firms are also abhorable. Having conducted a lot of interviews in my previous job, I believe that a good interviewer should take out time to read the resume before deciding whether they want to meet a candidate or not, otherwise it is simply a waste of time for both. Mechanically short-listing based on grades only or relevant experience only does not work here at ISB because ISB has a diverse talent pool, most of them who are here to shift domains. If they wanted to hire people with relevant experience only, then why not recruit directly from the industry and why come to b-school at all? Firms should have an open mind to take in people who might not have relevant experience, but have the passion to make a career in a new field and also bring to the table skills, which are not technical in nature (organizational) and which can be applied in any company.
Think about it. When a firm recruits a fresher from an engineering college, then she has to be put in an induction program, a big part of which will be on the organizational aspects like social skills, etiquettes etc. also, during the first few years, a new joiner learns a lot of things on the job in the organizational like how to conduct meetings, mentor and manage other people, network in the organization, leadership skills, how to make a different to the organization through non-core activities etc.
A company which recruits from ISB do not need to spend these efforts on the candidate and the only induction program needed would be with respect to the area of work. Does it really make sense to look at the previous relevant experience then? I think not.

Another aspect which I find despicable is the fact that some of these companies that come to ISB has the audacity to offer salaries which are less than offered to the students from the best engineering colleges in the country. What exactly do they think? Are we fools? I mean, don’t their HR departments have any self-respect?
In this respect, we need to put in place a policy which mandates that no company offering a salary less than X will be given a slot. It was heartwarming to see something similar happen last year at my undergraduate college (Regional engineering college Calicut) where the top IT Majors could not find a slot because they were giving salaries less than the institute cut-off!!!!

Interview experiences

Company: A Leading private sector bank in India
Role: Equity Sales & Trading
Duration: 35 minutes
Category: Genuine

There were two senior folks in the panel and an HR lady who walked in half-way. The table in front of them was a mess with lot of food stuff and water bottles. In between the interview, food was again bought over and he actually asked me whether I minded him having his food (Did he expect me to say Yes?!!!!!)
One person (more senior) was not interested at all and he was just sitting there looking down most of the time and lost in though. The whole interview was done by the second person except for some rare comments by the senior guy).

The interview was very technical. I had indicated in my resume my interest in tracking markets and so they started on that. First they asked what a carry trade is and I explained the Yen dollar carry trade and told them about the interest rate parity. Then they asked whether the GDP growth in India is sustainable and I told them yes. Then they asked why and I explained that the GDP growth in the recent years was mainly contributed by the investments that the private sector is making and not really driven by consumption as is the broadly believed perception.
The senior guy suddenly looks up and asks “How are you making all these inferences?” So I tell him that I had been reading research reports and this was based on one of the report in ICRA. Then he says “Yes, that is correct". He then goes back to his old pose of lost-in-thought (and checking blackberry in between).

Then I was asked what was the most important thing haunting the global markets at that point of time and I knew it was a bait for sub-prime and I gladly bit it because I could speak about it with authority. I gave the whole story right from pass-throughs to CDO's to CDS to monolines and they were very happy. The guy said "You have not covered some aspects of it, but you have covered most of them in detail".

I was, for a moment, happy!

Then they asked me which are my favorite sectors (I had written about tracking sectors in stock market) and I said PSU banks and power. He asked me why power? I gave the whole funda of the capacity addition (78000 MW) that is going to be done over the next 5 years and how this sector had to grow for the economy to sustain the high growth rate. I also talked about the proposed government spending on infrastructure in the 11th 5 year plan and how much of that is going to be in Power. He then asked me to name a specific stock in the power sector and I said I liked NTPC. He was not very convinced with my pick and asked me since NTPC has an annuity based stream of revenues, why are people so hung up on that. I told him that from the valuation front, NTPC is really attractive and gave him the info on the P/BV and the interest coverage ratio and the debt equity ratio.

The senior guy again looked up and asked me what is the cost per unit of electricity produced for NTPC and I said I don’t know but told him the unit rate at which they bid for projects.
“No, I want to know the cost per unit that it takes for them to produce a unit of electricity”
I said I don’t know.

He then told that equity sales and trading does not really come under them (wonder why it was then put on the JD!!!!!!) and they are more into derivatives and other stuff and asked me whether I was really ok about this or was I inflexible about the role. I said I am flexible about that but I don’t think he was convinced and he believed me to be very interested on the equities side.

He then asked me whether I had any questions and I asked about a recent article that I read regarding SME's sitting on huge MTM losses because of exposure to exotic forex derivatives which they didn’t understand. He then asked me to give examples and I gave examples of Hexaware. He said it is a very valid question and said that as long as there are controls in place, then this is a good business to be in.
I then asked him about a news-item in the press which mentioned about the top three private banks (including this particular bank) in India having a combined exposure to about 3 billion worth of sub-prime and asked him how much his bank’s exposure to this was. He expressed shock at this number and pushed it aside saying that press always exaggerates (Wonder what he has to say about it now that the news of this particular bank’s loss has come out in the press in public!)

I think the interview went well and I had a fair chance of getting an offer. Would have definitely liked to know whether I had an offer, but I never got to know because I went and signed Barclays offer in the night.

Company: Citibank
Role: Financial Analyst
Duration: 30 minutes
Category: Genuine

The interview was done by a senior person from HR and he came across as very friendly and amiable. It was more like a dialogue and never for a moment had it felt like sitting in an interview. It started with him asking me how I was doing and how was the week etc. then he asked me to tell him something about me and asked me why I wanted to do wealth management. So I explained him that I was on the technology side of wealth management industry at Goldman Sachs and wanted to move to the business side. He asked me to explain the wealth management flow how it worked in Goldman Sachs and I explained this to him He then asked me about my interest in capital markets that I had mentioned in my resume and asked me which sectors that i thought would do well. I told him that I was bullish on the public sector banks and the power industry and he asked me to justify why public sector banks. I rattled off the reasons on why public sector banks and then he asked me any stock picks. I gave Canara bank and PNB and then he asked me why specifically these. I told him about the reach of these banks and told him that I expected the growth to be driven by agriculture and SME's in the next few years and these banks were best positioned to ride on that. I also justified the attractive valuations for these banks and compared them with their private sector peers.

Interview went exceptionally well and I could see that the person was very happy with my knowledge of the markets and wealth management industry in general. He was mainly explaining how Citi smith Barney model was like and how it required entrepreneurship skills and networking skills etc. I could sense that maybe he had thoughts about me not fitting in with this aspect and whether I will stay there for long. He asked "You would be having more leverage in Kerala and contacts with HNI" and I said, yes, I would definitely be interested.
He then asked me whether I had any questions and I asked him about the career progression in the role and he explained it very frankly telling me that it would be entirely like running your own organization and how it would be a commission based model. I then asked him whether it would involve portfolio mining or acquisition and he replied that the focus would be more on acquiring new clients. I got the impression that he was trying to make me understand that it was a pure sales job that required sophistication to deal with rich and wealthy clients and the gab to get new clients.

Although the interview went quite well, I was not quite sure at the end of it. The conversation however was quite pleasant and being my first interview experience during the placement week, helped me to reinforce my belief that it was more of a conversation.

Company: a Leading private sector banking group in India
Role: AVP – Wealth management
Duration: 20 minutes
Category: Random!

I walk in and they don’t have my resume. They look at me questioningly.
“Are you carrying your resume with you?”
There were three members on the panel. 2 Ladies and one gentleman. One lady never spoke during the interview, so I imagine she was observing my behavioral skills.
“Yes, I do have”. I hand over the resume.
“Hmm…so you were working with Goldman Sachs Technology? What division?”
I tell him that I was with private wealth management technology.
“It looks like you were doing really well in your previous role. Why do you suddenly want to do a volte-face and move to business side?”
Volte-face?!! Told him the reason why I came to business school!!
“Can you describe to us the model followed by GS in their wealth management business?”
I explain the model. While I explain, he draws the model on the back of my resume.
“Hmm..ok..so that is the model”
He does not seem sure of it and had a facial expression as if I had conjured up the model from thin air. I sat wondering whether I was expected to explain more.
“So..do you have any questions for us?”
I was shocked. The interview had not even lasted 15 minutes. I was determined to waste some of their time. So I started off.
Asked them a couple of questions and they replied half-heartedly.
“It was good talking to you Vinod”
“Pleasure meeting you sir. Should I wait outside or would you be contacting us if needed?”
“We will contact you if needed”
Translated – we never had any intention of taking you!

I really don’t understand why these companies don’t read the resumes of the people they have short-listed. It saves them so much time and makes their job easier too!
And why short-list people you have no intention of taking at all?!!!!!!

Day 1

2008-02-16T12:44:00.000-08:00

So finally I land a job on Day 1. It is a role which I liked and I am happy with it, so I am signing out of the process even though I have 3 shortlists tomorrow (2 of them which I reeeeaaalllly would have liked to consider and had a good chance at!). I have always been a strong opponent of the “job losses” because of the “80-20 rule” (As one of my friends put it! :) ) and so decided to act according to my beliefs. So finally, weeks and weeks of pouring over research reports, tracking the markets and economy, cramming and revising the finance subjects, tracking specific sectors and basically doing everything possible to get a fin role (except for the obvious! :) ) finally culminate in a successful switch. Another vindication of my strong belief that, if you put in your part, god does the rest!
So from about 1 hour back, I am officially out of the ISB class of 2008 placement process.
Offers are pouring at ISB and we have seen some obscene amount of money dished out by some companies (We are not supposed to discuss them in public domain, so readers will have to wait till ISB comes out with the official numbers!). One person who got this particular offer is a good friend and I think he deserves it for the elaborate and voluminous notes he used to take in each and every subject! :)
There are some really good roles/salaries on offer and then there are some companies who have the audacity to offer salaries which are lesser than what undergrads make at IIT’s/REC’s. But it happens, I guess in every market!
It has been two days since the process started (Day 0 and Day 1) and the campus has seen misery, elation, surprise, relief, tension and all those emotions that you can think of. All I want to see is all my batch-mates to get placed as soon as possible. I have always maintained that this is just the beginning of our careers and so lets not get bogged down by the upper hand that the companies have when they come down to the campus. These companies want us as badly, if not more, than we want them! (This is by no means a “bhashan now that I have got placed”, but I have always believed that companies will always be under pressure from their management to hire talent from the best b-schools!

On a side note, I was pretty impressed with some of the articles posted by the class of 2009 on their blog. It is good to see some of them having clear views on the things happening around us!

Yet again!

2008-02-06T14:43:00.001-08:00

The government’s proposal to have a minimum 25% public shareholding in all listed firms was welcomed from most quarters in the stock market, with analysts suggesting that it will lead to a higher float, more transparency and less chance of manipulative trading and better price discovery.
So it should not come as a surprise that which entity will come out against this. It has to the communist party of India.

“It is a manipulative work of the finance ministry to encourage privatization. We will oppose it” Quote-unquote D. Raja, national secretary, CPI.
They are “concerned” that this is a way of the government circumventing one of the CMP points of government maintaining 51% stake in the PSU’s. This comes into picture because the top 5 listed firms in terms of least amount of public holding are all PSU’s. (Hindustan copper, NMDC, HMT, FACT and MMTC).

“It is not a question of percentages. It’s a question of policy. This will weaken public sector undertakings (PSU’s) and make them vulnerable to creeping privatization,” claimed Raja

Weaken? Well, I was just wondering, how can you make organizations like HMT and FACT any more “vulnerable” as they have already been identified as “Sick” organizations?
A classic case of agency problem at work? After all, the “public” shareholding pattern in these companies is miniscule!

Whose interests are they trying to protect here, now?!!

ISB ranked 20 in FT global b-school rankings

2008-01-28T13:32:00.000-08:00

Alright! I had written a post some time back on how ISB has not taken part in any of the b-school surveys conducted in India and that the aspirations of this school were global in nature. So now, we have the results for the world to see!
ISB has been ranked at the 20th spot in the Financial Times global ranking of b-schools. While all of us here at ISb always believed in the brand and knew that we were one of the best schools in the world, it does help when this fact is upheld by an institution of FT's stature. FT rankings are one of the 3 best rankings in the world followed by recruiters and students all over the world.
A couple of things are noteworthy. ISB is the youngest school to have got into the top 20 ever. ISB is the only school to have straight shot into the top 20 ever.
The ranking was based on attributes like the research papers published by resident professors, the career growth of the batch of 2003, the placement statistics, diversity and a whole lot of other factors, which vindicates the fact that this is not a flash in the pan.
All of us here at ISB are celebrating, but with dignity, humility and sensitivity (In the words of our Dy. Dean).
Go here for the rankings.

Deliverance

2008-01-19T09:34:00.000-08:00

Sivaraman got off the bicycle and parked it against the village hotel/tea-shop, housed in a shed made of thatched roof covered with dried coconut leaves. He peeked into the hotel and placed the order to nair, who was the owner of the hotel and also doubled up as the cashier as well as the waiter.
“Oru meals nayare” (“One meals, nair!”)
Nair nodded and repeated the same directing it this time to the back of the shop, towards the kitchen. The response came back loud “One meals in the line”. This was the confirmation of the order.
Sivaraman walked towards the banyan tree where the white dilapidated premier padmini was parked. The car had long back given up hopes of being able to ply on the roads of mahadevapuram and now stood on just 3 wheels. Ismail, the lottery vendor, from inside the car, flashed his toothless smile at sivaraman.
“5 rupees one or 10 rupees one rama?”
Nair smiled back wistfully.
“smayile, you know I always take the 2 rupees one and can’t afford the others”
“there is no harm in trying aint it?” Quipped ismail.

This exchange happened at least once a month. Ismail was alarmingly old. Legend had it that, as a 17 year old, he had traveled to one of the eastern Arab countries in an illegal ship and had made tons of money over there. Some people even thought that ismail was a slave of one of the rich sheikh when he was there.
He had then come back to mahadevapuram after 15 long years as a rich man and had married 2 girls, both of them who where half his age at that time. He had started multiple businesses and was the first one in mahadevapuram to buy a car. A white gleaming premier padmini. Disaster stuck when his first wife ran away with an outcaste and ismail then took heavily to drinks. He was chastened by the elders from the mosque and his second wife tried, in her own ways, to lessen the grief that ismail felt, but it just got worse. Finally he lost all the wealth and soon began selling lottery tickets under the banyan tree, sitting in his premier padmini, which soon became more of an antique object than an object of use.

“Is there any chance this time?” asked sivaraman with no expression on his face.
“The coprah mothalali babu who took the bumper ticket last week got 50,000 rupees”
Ismail conveyed this information with a sense of pride which led others to think as if he had a personal role to play in babu’s luck!
“why does destiny always favor the rich ismail?”
“you keep faith sivarama…allah never gives up on decent people”

Sivaraman was 55 years old. He had started buying the 2 rupees lottery ticket almost right from the time ismail had started selling them. He had never won anything on the lottery but still religiously bought tickets on a regular basis. He worked in the brick factory from 6 in the morning till 3 in the afternoon. He would then cycle back from the factory and then stop in the village centre to have his meal. He would then get food for dinner packed for himself and his daughter and cycle back home. This was his routine for the past few years. The meals at nair’s shop came cheap at 8 rupees and was the only affordable option for sivaraman. His income from the brick factory was meager and he had to support himself and his daughter with his income.
Nair would once in a while chide sivaraman with “Shall I take something special to go with the rice?”
Sivaraman would wince at this question and then smile at nair.
“you know I cannot afford it nayare, then why ask?”
Nair was a short thickset sturdy man and was often the butt of jokes of the village folks for his lack of height. But if god didn’t make nair tall, he definitely made sure that he had a sharp tongue. No one escaped nair’s sadistic comments.

Nair recently had introduced chicken biriyani in his hotel. No other hotel or shop in the village served chicken biriyani and nairs biriyani got a lot of mileage and name. even ismail managed to have biriyani once in a week and would always tell nair after his meal “though not as good as my noor used to make, still mouth watering”
Noor was ismail’s first wife.
Sivaraman was a man who loved his food and he would always think for a moment before ordering the regular meals at nair’s shop. Nair would then come out with his sharp tongue “what rama, thinking of ordering biriyani?”

But, biriyani was out of reach of nairs pocket, costing 25 rupees. Sivaraman always dreamed of one day when he would walk into nair’s shop and bark at nair “One biriyani now and one parcel!”
Ah! When one dreams, you should do so unabashedly!

A few weeks later

Sivaraman parked the cycle at the same place that he had been doing for the last 20 years. He walked into nair’s shop and sat down wearily from the fatigue of the work. He called out to ismail.
“Has the results come yet?”
Ismail bobbed his head from behind the steering wheel of his padmini, nodding in affirmative.
Sivraman walked over to the bench where the day’s paper lay strewn and picked it up.
His shaky fingers went straight to that familiar page where the results of the lottery were always declared. Sivaraman’s fingers always shook during this ritual, even after 20 years of taking a lottery and not winning anything. He took the crumpled lottery ticket from his pocket and put on his soda glasses to read.
The miniature wordings were difficult to read, but this time, that didn’t explain why sivaraman stood staring at the paper and then at his ticket for what seemed like an eternity.
“what happened sivarama? Shall I take the usual?” nair asked.

Sivaraman removed his spectacles, folded the ticket and put it back in his pocket and placed the paper back on the wooden table. He then rubbed his eyes, looked up to the sky, his eyes closed and then smiled, as if saying a prayer of gratitude to the gods in heaven.
He then turned to nair, smiled and said “No nair, get me a chicken biriyani”…….and then, not forgetting to add “..and yes, please get one as parcel too!!!”

My town - voted one of the best places to live in India!

2007-12-25T10:09:00.000-08:00

My hometown Thrissur and Calicut (where I did my engineering) voted as two of the best towns to live in India (Note - Live, not earn!)

Courtesy Anoop's blog.

Of Xmas and more.

2007-12-25T09:44:00.000-08:00

The Xmas trees placed around the campus does little to make the heart fill with joy. There were some moments which did manage to transport me back around 15 years back in time.
We have a Christian family as our neighbors and there are 2 sisters and a brother in the family, all of them, around 10 years elder to me.
Xmas season would find us (me and my sister) eagerly waiting for the chettan ("bhaiyya") from the neighboring house to let us know when they will start working on the xmas tree. We would be in high spirits even before this, right from when the "stars" start to appear in the houses. Multicolored, multi-shaped with designs and proclaiming the arrival of the holy day! We would rush to jump across the wall when we saw chettan bring the tree and the assortment of decorations to adorn it. This would take around 4 hours to do. That careful cello tape cutting, putting up of the ribbons without tearing them, winding them on the slender barks of the tree and finally putting cotton at suitable locations to give the appearance of snow. Then, next phase would be the symbolic shed for baby Jesus and all the visitors who came to see him. The small wooden box was being used year after year and is specially stored for this occasion every year. This would be covered with hay, cut to a perfect size and then a small reddish bulb would be put inside this "shed", which gives it a heavenly and cozy feel, just right for the son of god. Then chettan would get all those miniature forms, with baby jesus lying in a cot and the others placed around the glowing baby. Finally once the lighting is turned on the tree, it is indeed a wonderful sight to behold. How i wish i had taken a picture of that!!

The Christians around the area would go to the church at the night and this would be in a procession at the night. We would wait to see this from the balcony. There will be a jeep which would be trailing the procession and there would be a couple of singers sitting in the jeep and singing the prayer out loud. They would recite out stanzas from the bible and the procession would pause to kneel on the ground once in a while, before resuming towards the church. The church was just 5 minutes from my house and I have had the chance to visit it for more than once.
It was recently brought down and a new church was built in its place. Although more grandiose than the old one, somehow, in my mind, it just does not have that feeling of being a place of serenity, which its predecessor had.

Xmas time in Kerala is an amazing feeling, the weather just perfect with the December wind blowing and the night chilly. We had a custom where our Christian neighbors would prepare what we call as "vatteppam" (A variery of "appam" but sweeter and heavier) and would gift us this, along with a Christmas cake (this was reciprocated by us during the Hindu festival of Onam where homemade chips was given to them).

Xmas was fun then, harmonious, everybody celebrating. Now, has it become just another day of meaningless programs on the television?

As for me, this Xmas - the worst ever.
Mind is restless. Depressed might be too strong a word, but close enough.
Pizza, coke, chips and reading Asterix didn’t help and neither did aimlessly watching television, hence this post.

Campus is abuzz with placement preparations. Some of them really serious (into their 50th case preparation (or more)) and some of them just starting off and steaming up. And yet another few who have not even thought about it (but still manage to get shortlists!). I belong to the middle category (no consulting for me, that much I know), with just about starting to get psyched about the process. No, I am not worried about the interview process (got good feedback for the mock interviews). Then what?
Well, to get into the interview room, you have to get a shortlist ain’t it?!
On that incredibly optimistic (!) note, let me end this post and go to sleep early. Tomorrow is a new day and who knows what is in store for us?

P.S As an after thought, my mindless rambling about being tensed about the placement might not be really true and might be an anchoring bias!

Present

2007-12-06T12:28:00.000-08:00

----- A few years back ------
“Come on, let us go to the EH. I need a smoke and have run out of it”
“No Sid, you had promised that you would start reducing and then stop. You have already smoked your quota of 5 today”
“Come onnn Ani. This stupid resume is not shaping up and I have not even started on my EOI. I have my stupid MVKS assignment to work on too. I NEED A SMOKE”. Are you coming or not?”
“You are impossible da. You are so badly addicted”
“Arre a man needs a smoke once in a while...what say?

--------------------------------------

“Hello, have I reached the residence of Mr. Sidharth?”
“Yes, Sidharth here”
“Hey Sid, Ani here. Long time”
“Ani? Ani from ISB? God. It HAS been long. What a pleasant surprise man? Where are you calling from?”
“I have been around Sid. Just another mortal with a normal existence….”
“Ok ok. Cut the crap. Tell me when we are meeting. Or why don’t you come over? I will tell Meera to cook a nice dinner and we can talk over some beer and reminisce about the good old ISB days”
“Yes Sid. That would be nice. I wanted to meet you anyways”.

---------The evening------------

“”Hi!!!”
“God Ani, you have changed a lot. I would not have recognized you if I didn’t know it was you”
“Are you going to invite me in or are we going to stand outside and speak?” Ani stood smiling with hands on his hips.
“Ha ha...come on in. You have not changed a bit. Ani and his sarcasm”.
“Wouldn’t quite agree with that Sid. Wouldn’t quite agree…”

-----Over the drinks-------
“Sid, your daughter is lovely. I feel happy for you. And Meera is just perfect for you”
“Thanks man. So what about your social life? Hame kuch bataoge ki nahi?”
Ani just laughed it off.
“Sid, do you smoke these days?”
“My god Ani. You are still on to it eh?”
“Tell me Sid, do you?”
“Ani, I smoke much more than what I used to at ISB. You know the grind right? Long hours, the stressful work…can’t help it da…”
“Sid. I am going to tell you something. You have to hear me out completely. Once I am done, I will ask you for a favor and I want you to do it for me and for yourself”
Ani kept quiet for 2 minutes.
“Ani….”
“Shhh….let me talk. Sid, I am dying. My doctor has given me max 6 months to live. But the fact is that time is running out for me and each and every moment that I have now is like the ticking of a clock. It is like being on a train that has lost control and you know that the gorge is only a small distance away”
Ani was quiet for some more time.
“My god Ani…..”
“No Sid. Let me speak. Do you know how I feel about dying? I feel at peace. I know that all of us have to die at some point or the other and it just so happened that he liked me so much that he wanted me to go back to him. I don’t feel afraid to die. But you know what pains the most? It is the though to getting separated from the people I love. The fact that I won’t get to see the face of the woman who would have been my wife if I had lived. The fact that I won’t get to hold my first baby I would have had if I had lived. The fact that I won’t get to see the first steps of my baby I would have had if I had lived. The fact that I won’t be able to play with my son I would have had if I had lived. The fact that I would need to leave my parents alone in this world. The fact that they will have to be torn apart to see their only son dying in front of them. It hurts Sid, it hurts. Not the thought of death, but the separation from my loved ones.”
“It also hurts to think that my only life as a human being needs to end before I got to do a lot of things in my life. That the sight of rain is a wonder which I will be able to behold for only a few more months, the sound of music is a feeling that I will be able to sense only for a few more months. The smell of coffee is a sensation I would be able to savor only for a few more months. The warmth of a hug from a friend I will be able to enjoy only for a few more months….”

“Do you know how important these remaining 6 months are to me? Do you know the value of this limited time I have Sid? Sid, I was so much in love with my life. So much in love……”
Ani’s voice trailed off…
“But I have no complaints. Sid, you have a wonderful family and touchwood, god has given you all that you wanted. The biggest gift that he has given you is health and you are hurting yourself by smoking it away. Do you understand the pain of separation from loved ones? You don’t need to go through it to feel it Sid. Just close your eyes and think for a minute. Would you want to see Meera and your daughter alone? Would you want to see them cry? I now know the value of life Sid. Each and every moment is valuable and is a gift. You are mocking the creator by smoking and throwing minutes of your life away. For me, yes, I didn’t smoke, but god had other plans. But you, why do you want to knowingly put your health at stake? Why do you want to tempt fate?”

“Sid, on the day I got to know about my illness, I thought of you. You were my best friend at ISB. I had decided that I will come and meet you. I just have one request from you. If not for my sake, for your sake and for the happiness of your family, give up smoking. Fate should never be tempted Sid. Do it for yourself. Give it up…………………”

Epilogue
Ani passed away 5 months from that date.
Sid gave up smoking from the day Ani visited him last and now actively works with an NGO to promote the message of anti-smoking.

The Pillars...

2007-11-22T15:06:00.000-08:00

Girish Gowda alias bunty exclaimed “O Fish!” and his facial expression expressed his sympathy towards the person whose angst he was sharing. She was inarguably the most beautiful girl in the batch and right now was sharing the misery of her exams with him. Bunty, with his shaved head, always-a-book-in-the-hand, doing his second MBA and being an ex-banker would have passed off as a nerdy type in any college setting except for his way with words and his ability to charm the girls. Simply put, bunty was a charmer. But more than that, he was an individual with certain principles in life, which is so rare to be found in these days from people of the same age as him. He believed in ideas, what he called as the 4 pillars of his philosophy…but, we are digressing!

Setting

An assignment meeting in the second term of the MBA, with heated conversation between bunty and Raj Tarun. Raj was junior to bunty and was as unique as bunty was. Some of his principles in life were almost antithetical to what bunty believed in, yet they managed to gel as a group. The topic of conversation right now was the situation which existed in the country right now and what the future of the country was.

“This country is never going to be a fair country to live in. All these politicians and the IAS officers are so corrupt that this country will never become prosperous. What we need is not democracy but dictatorship. Then only this country will learn”
Bunty, with his counter argument delivering in an amicable way “How can you say that? There are so many things that the government mechanism is doing. Even after everything is said about the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, there still are people in the system who really wants good things to happen to the citizens”
“That is absolute nonsense; I don’t think any of the politicians today even think about serving the needy in the country. All they want to do is to get power and money”
“Again, I beg to differ. There are lots of people, at least down south, who try to make a difference in the lives of millions of poor. True, their glory might not be sung by the media and they might be unsung heroes, but the fact is that there are millions of invisible hands with a noble heart who move the limbs of the huge machinery of this country. If we, the next generation, start losing faith in them, then what chance do we stand?”
“Do you think that one person thinking or two people thinking are going to make a difference? The system is so corrupt that, for every honest person, there will be at least 100 dishonest people! What do you think, we as a normal citizen of the country can do? Nothing! You might say that we can cast our votes? But does it really count? Fine, I think that party X or the candidate Y is an honest individual and the country needs people like that and I go and cast my vote? But does he win? No, of course not. The elections are won by people who have money and power and those people who have both in our country almost most certainly does not have the best interests of people in their mind. So the only way in which I could possibly make a contribution from my side has also been negated. I don’t see any scope and that is why I think a good 5 years of dictatorship is good for this country”

Bunty listens patiently to raj’s passionate argument and replies.
“If you and me and thousands of people like us, who have good education, who understand the problems of the country, who are empowered to a certain extent, and who would like to see our country prospering, start thinking like this, what is going to happen? Why don’t we try to make a difference? Yes, I do agree that the politics in India is driven by vote banks and caste politics and hegemony and “family” politics etc, but we need fresh blood and educated minds into these institutions”

“Yeah, sure, flesh blood. Look what happened to that much hyped about political party launched by students from one of the most premier colleges in the country. The last I heard, they had split into two. I tell you, no matter who tries, we are not going to get rid of dirty politics, corruption and nepotism. Hell, all these exists in our college also!!!”

“Sure, I do agree that elements of these are present in the college that we study, in our work place etc. but like all necessary evils, we have to accept that they are there and work towards removing it. If you and I and our friends raise our hand and say that we are not responsible and neither is empowered to do anything about it, then surely we will never reach where we want to reach. But at least we have to give it a try and give it a chance….”

And so on and so forth, the conversation continued then and then in some later meetings also…

Fast forward 10 years later

“Sir, the proposal has again been rejected by the tehesildar”
“What bloody reason does that idiot given now?”
“He says that we don’t have the license for the area adjoining the water tank and our contract specifies the boundary as the petrol pump and hence he cannot sign on the papers”
“The bloody &*#$#%%#%. I am sure he wants money from us and I am not going to give any”
“But saar…..”. Nair stammered, scratched his head and showed his toothless smile. He was in his fifties and had seen the ways of the world and how things worked in the south Indian city. He knew that if you were a multinational and wanted something to do with any of the government agencies, a lot of palms would have to be greased. He could not understand why his 35 year old general manager could not see the simple reasoning that the lowly bureaucrats expected some “benefits” from them. After all, they made the system and so you have to pay them their “dues” isn’t it?
“Nair, I tell you, I am not going to pay even a single paisa to this corrupt fool. Let me see if there are other ways for us to get this sanctioned or not”.

And so, the general manager of one of the biggest multinational real estate agencies drafts a letter to the local ministry for land reforms about the corruption he was facing from the municipal corporation bureaucrats and enlisting his difficulties in obtaining a sanction which was blocked for more than 3 months now and which should have taken them only 2 weeks to get.
“Nair, please make sure that this gets send to whoever is in charge as soon as possible. I don’t have much hope, but I don’t want to give in without knowing that I tried to beat the corrupt system”
Nair nodded and again gave a whimsical smile.

1 week later
“Sir, we have got the sanction. Your action has paid off. The municipal officer even called up and apologized profusely. He wanted to talk to you, but I figured…..”
“Nair, you are the best. You know me too well don’t you? Thanks for sparing me the trouble of speaking with that jerk. Please call the ministry official who helped us out here right now and I want to thank him and tell him that the efforts of the minority of honest people like him counts”

And so, Raj Tarun, the general manager of the real estate firm waits for the phone to be picked up from the other side. It does get picked up after 3 rings and the minister in charge for land development, Girish Gowda comes on line……….

MBA @ ISB - The first 5 Terms

2007-11-17T06:10:00.000-08:00

There I sat in my first MBA class
Dreaming of my brand equity one year hence
The liabilities (loan!) thought put me off
Relax, said the economics prof, MR = MC
Trust the normal curve, whispered my neighbor!

Acquaintances were made, and a few good friends
Fiscal deficits and money supply became the way of life
Kill the SAMA; create the VODITE; in my dreams too!
Learnt the art of being "hindsight clever" aka u-kno-wat!
And Monte Carlo ceased to be just a brand of sweaters!

A few new friendships made, some grew apart!
Seinfeld and goal, Littlefield and queues,
Value the company, value the project; value my time puhleaze!
ABC is not just the first three alphabets, neither the channel,
VC is not just vice chancellor and Angel investors aren't pretty!

The last core term, step up the throttle!
Markowitz just sounds cool; term 'structure' ain't sexy!
More is to "bow tie" you see, dialectical inquiry, say what??!!
Errr...which is the favorite brand whiskey of amartya sen?
Need some 2-sided network externalities, or a beer will do!

Yippee core terms are over; the worst is just to begin!
Will I get a fixed income in the future?
Do I have an option on my future?
Will my moment of truth in February be invisible?
Don’t know friends, baithkar batcheet karenge!!!!

Postponing Happiness

2007-10-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

i have survived on the challenges that i had put on myself over the last 27 years of my life.Had them at each and every stage of my life and worked hard to get it. these have transcended from being things as silly as being the school topper to things as tough as getting into my dream company. and then even tougher ones, like getting into ISB.i am blessed to have been a self-motivated individual, i have always aimed for my dreams.and the realization of this also means, in some ways, i am an egotist. which is fine. in life, at some occassions, you need to be.but over the last few days, a few things have happened in my life which has led me to think a bit differently. i got bad grades in my first term at ISB. i worked hard in the next three terms and have managed to improve the grades and for this, there was a lot of hard work put in.but, then, what am i seeking to achieve here? another dream job? which i even dont know what it is, at this moment?things suddenly does not make as much sense as it had when i was 21 years old.or, when i had decided to quit and join the b-school.

alum wisdom tells us that the 2nd and the 3rd terms are the toughest at ISB.why do i feel that i feel more of the stress now, in the 5th term, than i had felt a few terms back? is it because something has changed?is it because of the thoughts which engulfed me in the last few weeks?
a couple of years back, in an 'art of living' session, we had this small exercise when we had to share the most important moments of our life with a stranger in just 5 minutes and this gentleman who i had got as a partner told me somethings on these lines.

"in life, i have always associated happiness with getting past some targets and i found that i was always postponing happiness. i had thought thati would be happy once i got good marks. when i got that, i thought i would be happy once i had a good job. once i had that, i thought i would be happy when i bought a car...etc...i was always postponing happiness......"
that sentence has stuck on to me and now, something has happened which brought back that sentence and i dont know what!
life is short and its only once. happiness should never be postponed.

B School Rankings

2007-10-18T00:43:00.000-07:00

Recently came across a B-school ranking (yet another) published in one of the leading business magazines and I found myself, yet again, thinking who the audience for these kinds of surveys really are?
The survey places the top three IIM’s and ISB among the top 5 institutes. One of the areas where ISB fell short was in the attribute of “faculty” and this, I found to be funny, if not ludicrous.
There are 420 students in my batch at ISB right now and ask then the reason for choosing ISB and 99% of them would say the reason was “world class faculty”.

Let me state on thing upfront loud and clear. The purpose of this post is not to compare IIM’s and ISB. This has been done in as many places on the blog world as there have been b-school surveys, if not more. And by no means am I saying that IIM’s are not the best educational institutions. I believe that these temples of learning have played a big part in the shaping of our country and have been a big reason for the status our country is enjoying today on the world’s centre stage. You just have to look at the best organizations of the country and you would find at least one visionary who boasts of one of the IIM’s as his alma mater. Plus my interactions with a lot of my close friends who have studied at these institutes makes me sure of the kind of caliber of the students over there and hence at the quality of the institutes.

So what is my point? The fact of the matter is that there can be no comparisons between an IIM and ISB and hence it does not make any sense to have a survey which club these institutes, which are different in their model, different in their pedagogy and different in the segment to which it caters to. And so is the case with a lot of other b-schools in the ranking. The difference between ISB and the IIM’s are starker because the underlying model itself is different.

So if people supporting the survey say that the attribute “Faculy” meant full time permanent faculty, then obviously ISB might score lower in comparison, but again it defeats the purpose of the survey. Why? Because the model of the ISB is that professors from all the world class institutes come and stay at the campus for 2 months, take classes and then leave. So, as I said earlier, the model is different and hence a comparison here is like comparing apples to oranges. So while not positively taking into factor the fact that the faculty is more world renowned, this very enviable aspect of ISB is taken as a weakness and the scores on that attribute dips. Fair?

Of course these surveys cleverly have trailing articles on each of these institutes (which fall in various broad categories) and here they talk about the different models of these institutions. But then, why club them in the same ranking?
ISB does not take part in the B-school rankings. ISB was conceived as a global school based in India and aims to be an internationally acclaimed institute. (Again, no need to read between lines here, with respect to the other institutes).

From the Dean’s message to the alumnus on the alumni portal.

In a recent Governing Board meeting, when we were sharing the ISB’s progress and the several challenges that lay ahead of us, the Dean of INSEAD, Professor Gabriel Hawawini, remarked: “You have achieved in five years what INSEAD took 30 years. Why are you in such a hurry?!”

What do these B-school rankings achieve?
Who is the intended audience for these surveys which are published by at least 4 different magazines in an year and continues to be published year after year? If the thinking is that this helps students choose an institute, then sadly this does not seem to be the case. Some years back when information was not widely available as it is now on the pros and cons of the various institutes, yes, these surveys would have been useful. But now? In this age when b-school aspirants can get the required information directly from the b-schools themselves and from various other reliable sources, what is the need to depend on a survey, the methods of conducting which varies between different magazines, and the authenticity of information of which is questionable (Case in point – BITS Pilani refusing to take part in a survey and going to the court on the basis of a survey publishing wrong information).

Of course, not all the surveys might be questionable and some of the methodologies might be sound enough.

For the b-school aspirants out there, no one can tell you which b-school is good for you. You have to decide that yourself by doing extensive research on your own. The decision to take an MBA is not a silly one and so there is no reason why you should not spend enough time scouting through the websites of the institutes which you are targeting. Find out alums from these institutes and reach out to them. Use your network, talk to friends of friends. In short, depend on feedback which are most closest to the real thing and is not just based on statistical samples (I hate statistics! :) )
I don’t see anything that you can gain from religiously following the rankings and being obsessed with it. Sure, I used to follow it during my pre-MBA days, but soon I realized that it is not going to help me in any way how I was going to choose to the institute where I wanted to study. That will depend on what stage of your career you are in, your personal constraints, what you consider to be the biggest takeaway from the MBA, what area of specialization you are looking for and a lot of other factors.

For me, these b-school ranking are simply an easy cover page item for these magazines, which they can repeat every year easily (the basic framework is in place) and count on thousands of star eyed b-school aspirants and their parents to buy them and push their sales up. (If only someone could give me the statistics of number of copies in circulation on average and in the months of these surveys……… )

Blog Action Day

2007-10-15T11:10:00.000-07:00

What does it take to switch off the lights when you leave the room?
What does it take to say no to plastic covers when you do shopping?
What does it take to give up standing for more than 5 minutes in the shower and wasting less water?
What does it take to have your vehicle conform to standards?
What does it take to not take your bike for that errand to the nearby shop?

Every action counts. Contribute. Participate. Benefit and gift the next generation.

Of "Accent" and more..

2007-09-28T14:43:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: The following is a fictional piece of work and any resemblance to anyone, living or dead, is purely coincidental and the exaggerations in the story, if the respected reader finds any, may be attributed to the writers artistic liberty!

Valiyakavil Raman Nair had a problem. Now before you think we are talking about an ageing old man in his 60’s, let me clarify. He was 12 years old. So in respect of his age and in the interest of an easy narration for this author, let us call the protagonist as rama. Interestingly this name had gotten stuck up on him throughout his educational life and he had come to absolutely detest it. but, we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Let us go chronologically!

Rama, as he was called by his primary school teacher and school mates, had an “accent” problem. Rama was a student of one of the top schools of Bombay, which was “graced” by the progenies of some of the most elite crowd of the financial capital. Rama was from a middle class family and his father worked with the Bombay electricity department and rode a lamby to office every day. His father owned exactly 4 pants and 6 shirts, each pant worn twice before being washed and each shirt for each day of the working week. The annual dress purchase happened only on the occasion of Diwali and Onam which the Nair family celebrated with fervor and for which they would save money up to spend lavishly for once and feel good about it.
In the words of the more cultured of rama’s classmates, he had a “regional acent” and in the words of some of the lesser polite of his classmates, he had a “madrasi accent”. What the hell, both meant the same.

Unlike his classmates, who were tutored by the best of English teachers outside of their normal school hours and who were used to butlers and servants who communicated in English, rama had been brought up in a “regional language medium school” someplace down south of the country – the place doesn’t have much relevance because everything south of Goa is more or less the same for them you see!! Indeed, rama was amused that 90% of his 40 strong class did not know on which side of the Indian map Trivandrum featured and there were 2 other “mallus” other than rama in his class. He was even more amused when he found out that, the girl who knew about Trivandrum, but was not a madrasi, knew it because her minister dad owned a couple of resorts out there.

Again, we are digressing.

So regional language medium schools, like one would expect them to be, conduct the classes in the regional language. Brilliant observation, isn’t it? So it happened that, other than the elementary English class each year, till his 6th standard, rama never got to converse in English. There simply was no reason to, you see. If fate had not intervened, rama would have continued in the same school, would have gone to some arts college, dabbled in a little politics, would have joined the SFI (students federation of India – that organization which creates a sense of power even in the most frail looking guy – but more on this in another post), would have spend most of his college days arranging or taking part in strikes, would have spend a good amount of nights enjoying the temple festivals and toddy bars, would have come under the football craze quite like thousands of his state mates and finally would have got into a government job through PSC, gotten married and led the blissful life of a malayalee – simbly reading newspaper, drinking tea and tying and untying his lungi. Of course, would have managed to save enough money to buy an elephant, rama was from an aristocratic family, you see!!

If fate had not intervened, that is.

But intervene it did and rama found himself in a surrounding which was the extreme opposite of what he had got used to till his last class. His father had got a good job in Mumbai. Now his elite classmates didn’t understand that not all schools in india had English as the medium of teaching. Of course, it should be English or maximum hindi, shouldn’t it be? After all, the first one was the language of the class and the second one, well, do you need a reason for that? Well, at least English was there and rama would, some time in the future, reflect back and would thank his neighboring state’s wisdom for that. What they didn’t know was that a big percentage of the country’s population had a different mother tongue. But rama did not have any issues with his classmates ignorance. But of their vile remarks on his “accent”, he had.
So when rama recited ogden nash, his classmates would giggle and his teacher would sigh.

It never stopped plaguing rama. This dreaded language disorder. He would practice in front of the mirror, would read the newspaper trying to imitate the newsreader on the DD channel, but every time when he said “every time” , it still came out as “yeverytime”. (Note the “y” in the beginning).

So this saga continue when he got into college too.
“I wanted to talk to you”. This was Rama, with a rose in his one hand and a card in the other, his palms sweating with nervousness of approaching his crush for the first time, to profess his love for her. Perfect, except that “wanted” came out as 3 syllables – “wan-ted-duh” when he stammered thinking what to say.
“duh”…said the girl too.

So when rama proposed to a girl for the first time, she squirmed at his “impropah queens language” and walked away.

The story continued in the engineering college too. Well, not very surprising is it?
So when rama finished his final year seminar presentation on “chaos theory”, a group of snooty backbenchers started off a impromptu presentation on “cow’s theory”, for reasons which would be quite evident to the reader now.

Rama, for all his limitations, was an ambitious student. So he found himself at the doors of the country’s most prestigious economics school some years later. Now, we had said that his high school was an extreme situation for him, but the economics school was even more extreme. Rama found out that there were many occasions when he had to submit himself to the mockery of those high-handed individuals (one thing to be noted though is that these people are always a minority, but with their vile nature, they spread more negativity than the combined good of the rest of the students), that he was ever accustomed to. Ogden nash now appeared to have been nothing short of a cake walk.

So when rama presented a paper on the economy, a couple of hands shot up and all of them had questions, which had the word “yeconomy” (Note the “y” in the beginning)

And so, life presented rama with numerous occasions when he was mandated to talk, and talk he did, but the audience never listened. When they listened, they giggled, smirked, dozed off or asked questions exaggerating his enunciations. This went on and rama built up on his ambitions, taking more degrees, building more knowledge, until he found himself in the corridors of power of his country, with the responsibility for the defense of the country.

But fate plays a unique game. It chooses on its whims and fancies, to whom to be cruel at different points of times. Rama was now going to be rewarded for all those years of agony.

And so, 20 years later, rama found himself addressing, not his peers, but the esteemed dignitaries of the United Assembly of the World Bodies (UAWB), representing his country, criticizing the super power and supporting and defending his country's stand on the hottest topic of the time. He talked for a record 6 hours continuously and how!

Rama talked and talked for hours and the world simply kept quiet and listened.
Yes, even his classmates from the ogden nash times.
Yes, even his first crush.
Yes, even his “cow’s theory” classmates.
Yes, even his “constant-smirk-on-the-face” classmates from the economics school.

Everybody just sat and listened. And rama talked, in the same way he always had, but you see, when he finished, the auditorium erupted in a thunderous applause and thus on that day, the world gave its due to rama.

Memories..Painful.

2007-09-06T13:12:00.000-07:00

It happened 6 years back.
I studied at REC Calicut which was about 4 hours from my house and being a residential college, I used to stay at the hostel. REC's generally have 50% of the students from the domicile state and the rest from the rest of the country. Since my house was only about 4 hours away, I used to go home most of the weekends and the train journey from Calicut to Thrissur used to be one of my favorite trips.
There used to be a specific part of the journey that I always used to look forward to and that was when the train used to reach a place called kadalundi. There was a long bridge immediately after the train had crossed the kadalundi railway station and from the train, from the top of the bridge, you could see the backwaters stretch out and join the Arabian sea in the distant past. Often, this sight would be presented to your eyes with the setting sun in the back ground and the wind in your hair when you looked out of the train compartment, coupled with this wonderful scenery used to make the moment seem special.
4 years of college. A job at the end of it from the campus. Friends from all over the country. Going back home after 4 years, parents waiting with anticipation and joy at their son coming home, making them proud. What more can make you happy at the age of 21?Only God just wasn't in a mood to agree.
Kadalundi. The same Kadalundi, the beautiful place where the waves grew from infancy to adulthood and embraced the ocean with fierceness, the same kadalundi where the winds used to whistle in the months of november as they flew between the narrow backwaters into the lap of the ocean, the same kadalundi acted to the whims of the creator and took away lives, which were precious, and which were the joy and happiness of their loved ones.
They were in my batch. I didnt know them both. But it pains me even now.The bridge gave away and the water swallowed the moving train and took with it some lives, among them, my nameless batchmates, my friends. I still feel awful when I think about it.

I hate Kadalundi now.

Life's like that

2007-08-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

To all my friends who read my blog - a request. This is silly, but I spent around 2 hours writing this post, but at the end of it, I was not able to think of a good title and had to settle with the current one. Would appreciate if you would leave your suggestions for the title!

Sanu felt a sense of déjà vu. The last time he had gotten down from the plane and set his foot in Kerala was 14 years back. He was a disgruntled boy at that time, forcefully packed off to Kerala from Dubai, where was studying in the IPS till then. His parents had wanted Sanu to complete his high school in Kerala and had wanted him to get into a good engineering college. Sanu had spent a good part of his life in Dubai, had grown to love the lights of the city, the fast life, the luxuries and had not wanted to go back. But his parent’s stubbornness had persisted against his and he had landed one Saturday early morning in the Calicut international airport. That was 14 years back. 14 long years. He still remembered achuammavan (Achu uncle) had come to the airport to receive him.
Would achuammavan be there to receive him today also?
Sanu collected his baggage and walked out to the arrival gate and stood for a moment, his eyes momentarily blinded by the harsh rays of the summer afternoon sun.
“Sir, taxi veno” (“sir, do you need a taxi?”)
“venda” (“No”)
The words felt strange coming out of his mouth. He was speaking in Malayalam and Sanu felt goose bumps on his arms. He had not conversed in Malayalam with a person for a long time except for those English mixed mallu short phone calls which he made from the US to his parents once in 2 weeks.
He looked around as if expecting to see a familiar face. He had told his parents that he would be coming today, but had not told them which flight or what time he would be arriving.
“Unnikutta”. He heard the voice calling out to him. Nobody had called him unnikutta (his childhood pet name) for a long time. Sanu knew whom that voiced belonged to without even looking at the source of it.
Achuammavan made his way through the crowd and came running and embraced him.
“Unnikutta……how have you been? I have not seen you for, now how many, 9 years?” the old man had tears in his eyes.
“Achumman……” words failed him…

……in a distant past……………………………………………………………………………………..
“Unnikutta, don’t. You will fall off. That cycle is too tall for you”. Sanu had taken achuamman’s cycle and was pedaling it by balancing on one side of the cycle, with one leg on a side and the other leg on the other pedal, his feet passing through the space under the bar. He was not tall enough to sit properly on the cycle as adults would.
“Illya achuammava, just watch unni go at full speed now” (“No achu uncle, just watch unni go at full speed now”)
“Unnikutta, that is very dangerous. You will lose balance and fall and your mom will scold me then”. Sanu didn’t listen.
He was in the hospital that night with 6 stitches.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“What are u thinking unnikutta?”
“Nothing achuammava, since when have you been waiting here?”
“Oh, I came at 4 in the morning”
“You have been waiting here for the last 14 hours?”
“Athinendha? Come, let’s go. Everybody will be waiting for you at home. Let me call them and tell them that you have landed” Achuammavan took a cell phone from his pocket and started to dial, eyes peering over his moon rimmed glasses. Sanu watched in amusement as the old man tediously dialed the number on his cell. Achuammavan had changed from the mundu-wearing, cycle riding simpleton. Looking around at the airport, he could see that god’s own country had changed too.
“Achuammava, I would like to have a cup of coffee before we leave, I didn’t eat anything on the flight”
“Ende unnikutta, you have not changed have you? Still don’t like to eat anything while flying, do you? Come lets go to the café coffee day”
“Achuammava, how do you know the shops inside the airport?”
“Oh, malathi oppol’s daughter regularly flies between Bangalore and Cochin and I come to pick her up and see her off. It is a regular monthly trip for me now!”

Achuammavan led the way and Sanu saw the distinctive red block of the café coffee day.
Memories flashed through his mind.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“These guys are a rip off man. I say, lets buy a bottle of boost, some cold milk and make our own cold coffee”.
“Sid, you stingy fckr, how many times I have to tell you that drinking cold coffee is the last reason why we come here. Sid, look around you. Where do you find so many hot babes at one location at Bandra, in such a relaxed environment?”
“Sanu pal, you are the most frustrated Casanova I have known till now. Give up man; I don’t see much hope for you”
“Fck you Sid, if you don’t keep quiet, I swear I won’t pay your bill”
Sid was always broke. But then he was spending all his money on his multiple girlfriends. Sid had had a way with girls whereas Sanu always had to try real hard.
“It’s because of your name man. Who in the world would have a name like Sanu? It sound like a short form for sinusitis! And your pet name is even worse! Unnikuttan!! Ha ha….”
“Sid, don’t start that again. Do you want me to tell all your girl friends that your real name is Sethurama iyer?”
That would keep Sid silent for some time.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Sid, the best friend he had ever had. Sid had been smart, handsome and popular.
Sid, his friend through high school and REC.
Sid, who had joined along with him on his first job at Mumbai.
Sid, his friend for 10 years.

He still remembered getting the call in NY, from Karan from Mumbai. “Sanu, our Sid…….”

Sid, with whom he had had countless beers at countless pubs in Mumbai.
Sid, with whom he had shared all his crushes and infatuations and the rejections!
Sid, with whom he had had his first go at grass.
Sid, with whom he had gone for countless double dates.
Sid, with whom he had argued about who was the best character in Atlas Shrugged.
Sid, with whom he had innumerable bike trips at 3 am in the night to fulfill their craving of sev puri.

He could not believe it first. How can it happen to Sid? Sid was so lively and he had spoken to him just 2 days back.
Sanu still remembered walking out of his 180 maiden lane office at 5 o clock in the evening after receiving the call, going to his apartment, locking up and crying. That was the first time in his grown up like Sanu had cried. He cried for hours. He had then taken a couple of sleeping pills and had gone to sleep.

He still remembered submitting the resignation the next week and catching a flight back to Mumbai.
His job in NY didn’t make any sense anymore to him and he didn’t know what he wanted to do in Mumbai. It was almost as if he was punishing himself for not being there at Mumbai when Sid took his last journey.
Later Sanu had come to know that it was a bike accident.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Sid, go slow, you are going too fast. This is a bloody crowded area man”
“Arre Sanu, you are always scared. What are you scared of? That you won’t find a girlfriend before you die?” That was Sid, he could crack a joke while going at 70 kmph on a busy Mumbai road.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Unnikutta.. Unnikutta!! What are u thinking? Here have this, I got cold coffee for you” Achuammavan’s voice brought back Sanu from his thoughts.
“Achuammava, I am suddenly not feeling like having it anymore, you have it and then let’s go home”

A Honda city had replaced the cranky old ambassador, which had come to collect Sanu 14 years back, at the airport.
“Achuammava, I am tired, do you mind if I doze off in the car”
“Unnikutta, why do you have to even ask, you take rest, I will call you once we are about to reach home. Anyway, it will take at least 2 hours from here. But at least it is much better than landing at Calicut airport; it would have been a tiring journey back home then. 4.5 hours by car, my back would have killed me”
The car snaked out of the airport and got on to the highway and within minutes they were speeding along the road, with huge trees on both sides of the road, greenery around.
They passed an elephant, carrying a bunch of coconut palm leaves between its tusks.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
“Is it true that people keep elephants as pets in Kerala?”
That was Maya, her eyes widened with disbelief.
“Of course Maya. Mallus love elephants. We even feed them with chicken and toddy everyday!”
“Is it? Wow….” Maya’s normally round eyes became even rounder with incredulous innocent disbelief.
And then seeing Sanu doubling over with uncontrollable laughter..”You rascal, don’t try to fool me”
“But Maya, we do keep elephants as pets, although I doubt whether “pet” is really the word!”

“Is it true that Kerala has 3 international airports Sanu?”
That was Maya again with one of her I-don’t-believe-this-fact expression.
Sanu had laughed at this and asked her “Why are you so surprised at that?”
“But it’s such a small state”!! Sanu had yet again fallen into uncontrollable laughter seeing Maya’s face writ with disbelief at the fact that such a small state could have 3 international airports, out of the 14 totally across the country.
He had met Maya shortly after he had come back to Mumbai through one of their common friends. Maya was recovering from a relationship which had not worked out and Sanu was recovering from the shock of Sid’s death. They had gotten along together and Maya had in a way filled some of the void that Sid had left behind.
It had taken Sanu a long time to accept the fact that no one could become as close a friend to him as Sid had been, but it had been harder to believe that Maya had come close to being what Sid was to him.

They had hung out at the same places where Sanu and Sid used to hang out and Sanu was scared when he had found out, during the course of their friendship, that some of Maya’s tastes were same as Sid’s.

“You know what Sanu; I bet I could make a better coffee than this. Why do you want to spend money on this costly place?”
That was Maya, sitting at café coffee day and asking him innocently. Sanu had almost spilt the coffee on his shirt then.
“You know Sanu; I think Hank Rearden should have been the real hero in Atlas Shrugged, rather than John Galt”
That was Maya at her pick-up-a-fight-with-me-mood at its best. “Maya, sometimes I wonder how you can say the same things to me, in a different form of course, that Sid used to say. He used to love the character of HR and used to think that Galt was over glorified”
Maya had just smiled her angelic smile then.

Maya had come into his life by chance, but Sanu had realized that, unspoken they had both come to realize a fact, which neither of them wanted to speak out loud.
“Sanu, will you take me to Kerala once?”
“Of course I will. Why? Do you want to feed toddy to an elephant?”
“Sanuuuu!!!”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Mayaaa”
“What happened unnikutta? Who is maya? You were calling out the name” Achuammavan from the front seat of the car.
“Oh…nothing Achuammava, I must have been dreaming. How much more to go?”
“Oh, about 45 more minutes”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Sanu, will you tell me the truth if I ask you something?”
“Yes Maya…” Sanu replied without taking my eyes off from the meeting brief he was reading.
“Sanu, look at me. This is important”
“Maya, ask! I am listening, but I need to go through this report before heading back after lunch.”
“Sanu, they are looking for a guy to marry me off to”
This had caught Sanu’s attention and the meeting was forgotten.
“Maya….”
“Sanu, we have something between us, don’t we?”
“Maya…..” words had failed him then too. He had always known that he was in love with Maya and she also felt the same for him, but he had always dreaded talking about it. He could still feel the pain of losing Sid and he didn’t want to lose Maya too. He had fought hard to keep an emotional barrier between them so that this question never came up, even though he was aware of the fact that they were more than close friends now.
“Maya…do we have to talk about it now?”
Maya was crying now.
“Maya, you know how I am scared to become close to a person now, u know why I am not even going back to my parents now…….”
“Sanu, please shut up and listen to me. I love you and I know you love me too. I see a future for us and I want you to tell me whether you want to share it with me or not. I don’t have much time Sanu”
“also, what has happened has happened, but that doesn’t mean that you can ignore other people who love you”
She had run off without waiting for Sanu to reply.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Is it Sanu?” The voice at the other end of the phone asked.
“Yes, Sanu here. Who is this?”
“This is Maya’s father”
There was a silence for about 5 seconds from both sides and before Sanu could regain his voice..
“Sanu, I would like to meet you and talk to you.”
“Of course uncle, I could come over in the evening”
“No Sanu, I would prefer if we meet somewhere outside. Let us meet at the Army canteen at 5 in the evening”
“Ok Uncle, is anything wrong?”
There was a pause at the other end.
“We will speak in the evening Sanu”

“Sanu, I am going to get straight into the matter without beating around the bush. We have been looking for a groom for Maya and she has been pretty distressed about the whole thing”
He looked uncomfortable, but managed to continue.
“Son, we know that you both have been close friends for a long time and we are not stupid enough not to realize that probably Maya thinks of you more than as a friend. We have not questioned her on this and nor would want to question you know about this because we have brought up Maya giving her full freedom in what she wants to do in life and have full trust on her.”
“Sanu, you are a very good boy and I am sure you are probably the best friend that Maya has ever had. But, she is our only daughter and we have raised her for the last 25 years. We have certain hopes and ambitions for her and we would ideally like to see her settled with somebody who is a little bit older than her. You are her best friend and hence I want to request you to make her understand the reasons why we want her to do as we would like her to do”
Another pause.
“I know you are mature for your age and I know about Sid and how you have become a recluse after he was gone. The only thing that I want to tell you and you can take it if you want to, is that you should probably consider taking a break and go and stay with your parents for some time. After all you are also their only child”
“Son, I am sorry I had to ask this from you, but you will understand when you become a parent some day”

He didn’t have the guts to call her. He took out a piece of paper and started writing.

“Maya, over the last 2 years you have come to mean to me more than any other friend I have ever had (including Sid and you would understand what writing this would mean to me). We were happy together but looking at our happiness alone and not caring about the wishes and hopes of our parents, who took care of us till we were able to stand up to life on our own, is selfishness.
All I want to tell you is that you will be my best friend forever and I want you to make your parents happy.
I realize that I have not been a good son to my parents in that aspect and have not bothered to spend a single day with them in the last 14 years. I am going to Kerala Maya. And sorry, I would not be able to take you with me. But I want you to visit Kerala some time, maybe once you are married, on your honeymoon! I will make sure that I arrange for a bottle of toddy and an elephant!

~Sanu

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

3 months later.

“Unni, come and have lunch” His mom called out. Sanu was sitting in the reclining chair in the Verandah, pouring over the day’s crossword.
“Am coming, let me just finish off this crossword”
“Ee kuttide oru karyam. Oonu kazhinjattu pore ithokke” (“What’s with this boy? Can’t you do it after lunch?”)
Sanu smiled and went back to his crossword.
His mom started with a different thread in the background “Sreeja teacher was telling about this relative of hers and there is this girl in that family. She has done her commerce and is working at Cochin. Good girl, good family..”
“Amma, I have told you, I don’t want to get married now”
His mom looked cross and Sanu smiled when he saw the look on her face. He knew that his mom would pick on this thread in another 6 hours!
“If you don’t want us to search a girl for you, then tell us that at least you will find a girl for yourself. We have no problems with that”
“Amma, can’t I enjoy my life, like achuammavan”(Achuammavan had never married)
“Shush…if that is your idea in life, I wont let it work” his mom in mock anger.

The gate creaked open and Sanu saw Achuammavan coming in with a telegram in his hand.
“Achuammava, we were just speaking about you”
“What my boy?”
“Amma is looking for a girl to marry you off achuammava”
“Hush you rascal. At my age and marry? Anyways, had gone by the post office and the post master gave me this letter, it’s for you”
Sanu opened the letter and began to read.

“Son, you and Maya have won. She told me that you have left for Kerala to be with your parents for some time.
Will you take my Maya and keep her happy for life? We think that both of you would be happy together.

I am happy for you, on your decision to spend time with your parents.
We are reaching Kerala next week. With Maya. So make arrangements for toddy and an elephant!”

Sanu smiled, closed the letter, kept it in his pocket and called out to his mom.
“amma…..”
“Enthada….?” (“What is it, my boy?”)
“Well, I have found a daughter-in-law for you…………….”

The expectations from expectation!

2007-07-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

Why do we expect so many things in life?
Why do we expect that we will get an A? Even if we have put in a lot of effort?
Why do we expect to get that dream job? Even If we have worked really hard for it?
Why do we expect to get a role? Even If we really believe we suit it to a T?
Why do we expect a friendship to be reciprocated? Even if we give it our best?
Why do we expect to be liked? Even if we are nice to everyone around us?
Why do we expect us to be heard? Even if we are saying the most logical of things?
Why do we expect to be rewarded? Even if there is nobody else who deserves it more than us? Right now?

“Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway”

A Day at Hogwar..err..ISB

2007-07-24T14:13:00.001-07:00

I get up to the sound of my alarm, snooze it and go back to sleep again. 10 minutes later the maid rings the bell and this drags me out of the bed. I open the door and hand over the clothes to be washed and then close the door and come back to the room. The bed looks inviting and I am about to crash again when the alaram wakes up from its snooze and makes that awful sound again!
I cut it off and stand there rubbing my eyes and look at my table. I see the latest edition of Harry Potter and wish for a moment that I had a time-turner which would allow me to go back a few hours in time, to sleep again!!
I make my way for the morning ablutions and dress up quickly and again, like so many previous occasions curse myself for not getting up early because I am going to miss the breakfast, you see! My eyes again fall on the HP book and this time I long for a portkey to get myself transported to the class room from the SV. But the reality is that we are “muggles” and so walk you will, from the SV to the class room.
As I lock the room and rush out I imagine ISB to be Hogwarts and smile to myself at the thought of apparating right in the middle of JR’s class.
I rush into the dining hall and gulp down a glass of juice and then grab a cup of coffee and then run towards the lift. There will always be people to give me company in this last minute rush and 5 minutes later, we are well into the first class of the day.
Classes in ISB are fun for multitudes of reasons. No, there are no star gazing sessions taught by Trelawney here, and lest I be mistaken to be a nerd, let me quickly clarify that the fun aspects come from not so much so the course in itself, but the behavior of the class.
There is no limit to the kind of innovative things you can do in the class – count the number of people who sleep, number of times the marathon sleepers’ fall down, struggle to wake up and then again fall down. Count the number of people chewing gum in the class (at least 1), count the number of people who listen to each and every word that the prof utters and then hastily write it down, time the entry of the last comer and see if he/she beats his/her earlier record. If you have a like minded person sitting next to you, then there is no concept of a boring class!
But all said and done, you do listen to the prof in between all these and try to absorb the pearls of wisdom (well most of them at least!)
If it is a class with CP and if it has weightage in excess of 10%, then you can be sure of some electrifying comments from the junta! There are people who makes points which are very relevant and if it from people with the relevant background and people of stature, then you shut up and listen to them – there is nothing which beats real life experience after all!!
There are also people who go on and on just for the sake of air time and makes you wish you had an invisibility cloak which you could have worn and gone over and clonked them on their heads!!
1 hour into the class and then the break – when the sleepy heads rush out for a coffee and the nicotine heads rush out for their “Breath of fresh air”!!!!!
The same story goes on and the classes for the day get over. The dedicated souls go back to their Quads/LRC for starting off the readings for the next day whereas the others hang around at the café for a cup of coffee and pakodas / samosas and make plans for badminton/booze!!
So you head off to the recreation centre and have a good 1 hour of badminton/gym/squash, you pick your choice! But hey, there are the club meetings and the speaker sessions to be attended, so you rush off to them one after the other! Lord Voldermort would have had it so easy, what with his 7 parts; he could have attended 7 different sessions/clubs at the same time!

You then trudge back to Goel for yet another mundane dinner (for lack of variety) and when you are in absolutely no mood to have another goel meal, you choose its cousin, the café!!
After the dinner, you get back to the room and start preparing for the “day”! Starting with the assignment and pre-reads, the google chats/blogging in between for the resourceful who are good at multi-tasking. Heinously long cases are skimmed with a speed which would have put the fire-bolt to shame! Speed reading is one talent which you pick up by the second term at ISB!
A welcome break in between this madness of reading at night is provided by the birthday celebrations at the pool. Ok, so who gets dunked? The birthday boy/girl and then the study group mates, then the quaddies, then the classmates. What?!! Did you say classmates?!! Yes!!! Whoever goes to the pool gets dunked, unless they keep a poker straight face and convey that they are suffering from some illness, which if one drop of water falls on their body will endanger them gravely!!
The dunk-mania ends with the cutting of the cake and the decorating of the birthday boy/girl’s face with the largest piece of cake!

And so the days overlap with each other and one class leads to an assignment to a meeting to a booze/party to a dunking to a badminton match to a mid term exam to another class and it goes on and on!!
Time flies here at ISB and once in a while that dreaded mail comes which says that XXX marks have been uploaded…..!
And then, when you go and look at your 6 weeks worth of cram results, you so wish you could have said “Repairo” and swhoosh, the marks changed to something less draconic!!
Much like the Hogwartz world, we come to love and hate ISB, with the former taking the upper hand!!
Sigh! I wish I had a wand!!

A "Term 2" Forget!

2007-07-09T04:48:00.000-07:00

I honestly cannot remember what date is it today unless I look at my inbox calendar or watch (yeah, note the order!). Seriously! The only way in which we realize that the dates are going past is the reduced redundant constraint of how many more weeks/days to the exam! So you may ask, if I know the exam date and number of days for the exam, cant I calculate the date?
That’s the whole point! I know that the exams are “next week”, but I don’t know which date!!! Unless of course I am planning to go home and have booked tickets for the next day!
So what’s the whole point?
Well, the point is that this place has a knack of making us lose sense of the time, the day, the month etc. there have been lot of occasions when I had to actually stop and think which month this is. Time flies so fast that you really never get an opportunity to savor a good meal or a good night’s sleep or a good couple of hours of game of badminton or good extended moments of chatting and time pass with your friends. (Well I said “Extended” because this activity happens anyways!).
Your whole life seems to be moving from one assignment to a case to an exam to a presentation to a meeting to another assignment to the class and so on…the link never breaks except for the parties once in a while. But even those have become monotonic now!
It’s almost like its one endless day with mini nights in between, for the entire week. There is no concept of weekends at ISB. These are the times when you are most loaded with work to do.
The second term has been particularly excruciating and most of the junta I know is waiting for the term to get over. On my part, Markstrat and Global Eco were the two topics which I enjoyed, one for its learning quotient and the other purely because of my interest in the topic.
Of course, being taught by Professor Jagmohan Raju was an experience in itself and I feel good about it. I am sure this would be an experience on which I would count back up on, some time in the future!

Thoughts at early morning!

2007-07-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

I don’t believe in being half-here-half-there. For me it is either the full way or nothing at all.
What you see is what you get. If I say something, I mean it. Good and bad, both.
I have little respect for people who are all talk and no action. Say it only if you mean it. Mean it when you say it.
I can’t be second fiddle at things and with people who mean something to me. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I never look forward to having a boss!
If I am an employee, I want to be the best. The best employee!
If I am a student, I want to be the best. The best student!
If I am a friend, I want to be the best. The best friend!
Of course chances are that I won’t be able to be perfect in everything.
But I do try, but hey, I am human too.
If someone hurts me, I never forget it. But forgive, yes I do.
I believe that some quality time alone, is the best gift that you can give yourself.
I believe that words need to be spoken when they should be. Otherwise, the moment is lost.
I believe that you earn more respect by giving it rather than demanding it.

Blunt? Well, at least I am honest enough to admit it!

An Ode

2007-07-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

I was blinded by my instinct
which, often was my best friend
to separate the best and worst of the lot
A trust broken, a promise not held
scars, deep engraved and unhealed
cautious, wary and scared of, encores
how easily someone comes once in a while
and crosses the self inflicted barriers
breaks into your personal space and
makes you feel worthy, of being important
breaking away the emotional fortress
which I thought was strong and
took pains to build, through indifference
keeping away possible acquaintances
for a life, maybe a little less mirthful
but a lot easy and un-hurtful
little did I realize that, sometimes
visitors, uninvited, who wander in
makes a difference, and how!

Tuesdays

2007-06-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

Tuesdays with Morrie.
no, this is not going to be a review of the book. i just have one thing to say.
read it. it is worth the 3 hours.

The Second Impression!

2007-06-25T03:24:00.000-07:00

I have always prided myself on being able to correctly “read” a person within my first few meetings with him/her. My reading of a person, the “gut” feeling I get, would invariably be correct, at least 95% of the times. There have been a lot of scenarios in my college life, my professional life, and now again in my college life that I had formed an opinion about a person, which was not shared by my friends, and then they have come back and expressed the same opinion, after they got to understand it through experience (some good, some bad!).

But ISB gave me a couple of cases where I have been wrong. Pleasantly wrong. Which means, a person who I thought was most “unfriendly”, actually turned out to be quite nice. Let’s call this person X (rule 1 on my blog – no names!). When I first met X for the first few times, I had thought that X was “one of those types” who was aloof, not-mingling-with-everybody types. Although this opinion was formed with very few interactions, my special ability to correctly read people, which I thought was nearly infallible, led me to believe that this indeed, was the case. But how I was pleasantly surprised!
Over a period of time, I got a chance to interact with X, not out of choice mind you, but out of compulsion. One of the first things X told me was this.

“I am a little bit weird. So you might need to get used to this.”
I told X “I don’t think you are weird” But then I didn’t complete my sentence and if I had, then I wouldn’t be writing this post! The part I didn’t complete was “But I think you are arrogant”! :)

But over the past few weeks I have realized that this was one of those rare occasions when I had made an error of judgment. X came out to be a real sport and is funny, whacky and sometimes weird (albeit in a nice manner!) too.
I was pleasantly surprised to realize that there were some common things in terms of obsessive compulsive disorders, finding-stuff-funny-which-others-don’t, finding-things-ridiculous-which-others-don’t etc.
And that dont-try-to-talk-to-me-i-am-not-interested attitude kind of slowly changes once you got to know X.
So X is not arrogant, but is cool! Period. :)
So I am going to be careful going forward to make sure that I have sufficient interactions before I conclusively decide about how people are! But no, that does not mean that I am going to give up my intuitive powers!! No way!
It still is statistically significant! :)

Why?

2007-06-21T11:59:00.000-07:00

What’s wrong with us, guys?
Why? Why do we always break out into a clap in the middle of the class, startling the professor, who looks absolutely astonished, startling those poor sleeping beauties, who try their best to fight against the sweet lullaby of sleep but fail miserably? This is probably the most visible form of mass mentality that I have seen at ISB. We seem to be waiting for some arbitrary spark somewhere to gleefully clap and thump our desks. Agreed that there are some absolute gem of comments passed by some of our professors which deserves a wide round of applause, but aren’t we taking it to the extreme?

And then the standing ovation. Well, I do not know whether it is politically correct to say this, but do we need a standard ovation at the end of each professor’s final class? I mean, I completely agree that all the professors have done and will do an absolutely terrific job in imparting the knowledge to us (whether we imbibe it or not is of course our prerogative) and in keeping the class lively and in their passion and exuberance to teach. But a standing ovation? Really?
If we do it at the end of each final class, doesn’t it lose its meaning and sanctity when we do it for a professor who probably is the best of the lot?
I am not passing nor want to pass a moral judgment, but to do this every time, in my opinion is an overkill.
Let me not be caught on the wrong foot here. The professors deserve each and every ounce of respect and adulation that we give/have for them, but let us not make a mockery of a tradition/practice which needs to be used with a little restrained alacrity.

And then the basic etiquettes. I am sure I am not going to earn a lot of popular brownie points by writing this, but hey, gimme a break.
When a person is speaking or about to ask a question in the class, how can you cut her/him off? There are something called soft skills and etiquettes. If you want to discount those, there is at least something called manners.
We pride ourselves by saying that the student body is rich with experience et al, but hey, if we don’t display the minimum levels of manners, then what is the point in glorifying the “rich experience”? Don’t we all learn some basic etiquette during our career? Why is that forgotten in the class?

And, last but not the least. Gross misuse of the e-mail form of communication to the point of being rude.
I mean, if I get a mail where the person has written “Please don’t reply to all”, I certainly wouldn’t want to hit the “Reply all” button, particularly so, if the mail is going into the mailboxes of 400 odd students. I can think of only two reasons for doing this.
One is that you are rude and attention seeking to the point of being obnoxious.
And the second one is too nasty to be put up on this public forum.
Come on guys, respect other people’s privacy and don’t intrude onto their personal space unnecessarily. If you think that you have lots of fans who are mad enough to wait for that next arbitrary mail of yours, please create a personal list of them and make use of it.
Of course, there are certain topics which would be beneficial to the entire student body and in that case each and every one of us should judiciously make use of it.
And of course, I am not a jerk to say that you should never send funny stuff or a forward or an arbit reply once in a while.
But doing a reply all just for the sake of it and doing it with regularity, particularly when the sender has requested not to do a reply all, well, not the most proper thing to do. Grow up!

The Transition

2007-06-17T06:20:00.000-07:00

It is one week of term 2 at ISB and I have slowly realized that I am almost done with the transition from being a techie to a cold blooded (read “competitive”) management student! It is really term 2 and its subjects that make us feel as of we are undergoing a management program. VV, one of my groupie could not have said it better when he commented that “It feels almost like as if we are playing the Age of Empires game”.
How true. I mean it is not just Markstrat, but the other subjects as well. Probably with the exception of Macro.

Markstrat has been an amazing experience till now, although we are yet to see the repercussions of the decisions made by us as a team, I am sure the learning experience from this simulation game is going to stay with us forever. This will be the closest possible way to mimic the decision making process in an industry and I am so glad that ISB, like the other premier schools, provides us this opportunity. These are the benefits that come with studying in a school like ISB and the fact is that these kinds of advantages are not known to potential applicants and the general public. The professor for the subject is very soft spoken, which according to me is a rarity at ISB!

Then there is CompStrat. The best of the cases out there, explained to you by a professor who takes you through it in a thought provoking manner, covering the salient points and at the same time making us think beyond the surface to actually sitting and computing the monetary effect of a decision point in the case, what more do you need? When the prof makes a point in the case, which is as logical as it would get, it makes you wonder why the hell didn’t you think about it in the first place?

The Decision models class is yet another interesting topic and the MCS is something which I had always wanted to understand, right from when I had read about it when going through some readings on the options, purely out of my personal interest. Now that I know what MCS is, I should go back to start reading about options, which is my area of interest! Although the professor is really amazing, with his enthusiasm and energy levels in the class, I guess most of us are simply not able to catch up with his standards and are still not at the level he is assuming us to be at!

Then there is Macro, my favorite. This is one subject which is the closest to what has always interested me and we are lucky to get a professor who is so passionate about the subject and also of teaching at ISB. Here you can read about students (CO 05) voting him the professor of the year.
Overall term 2 makes the student body feel like they have finally left their baggage behind from their previous careers and now feel a major shift in their thought process. This change which was nascent in the first term has accentuated now and is only going to strengthen!

P.S All the professors mentioned here handle the first part of the term 2.

If you decide you don’t have to get A’s....

2007-06-13T04:56:00.000-07:00

“If you decide you don’t have to get A’s, you can learn an enormous amount in college”. Though I wouldn’t want to be inspired by this quote (From the book “My life as a Quant” by Emanuel derman and attributed to the legendary physicist I.I.Rabbi), I cannot but help wish that this was the philosophy followed by all the students in all the premier institutes of our country.

When I came to ISB, I had the notion of not wanting to repeat what we did in our undergraduate course at REC, which was to learn by rot and not understand the underlying principles. We have been, as a generation, lucky to have a booming economy waiting for us engineers to pass out of the college and embrace us in the folds of the IT and ITES sectors. But for these sectors, students passing out of the college without a firm understanding of their respective trades would have found it difficult to get a job.
In ISB, with all the world class professors, it would have been ideal for the students to try to understand the finer aspects of a subject and its application in the real world, rather than to cram for exams at the end of the short term.
Let me clarify. To a great extent, this does happen out here, the learning aspect does figure in the priorities of each and every student at ISB and the institute provides a conducive enviroment for the same, with all the world class faculties, state of the art facilities and an amazing library. The only thing that derails a student from the pursuit of knowledge is the over relevance of grades.
Yes, grades does matter and I don’t deny it. But if grades matter with respect to how it is going to help a student perform in the campus recruitment process, then the reason for securing the grades deviates from the ideal reason for which it should have been done.
I can sense that there are a lot of students in the batch who want to learn the subject rather than cram for the exams, but towards the end of the term, the pressure is so high that you tend to somehow master how to do the numericals rather than to understand why you are doing what you are doing. Trust me. I did the same for the term 1 eco paper.
Yes, this will help in scoring good marks, but I cannot help feeling that somehow I lost the essence of what the numericals were testing me on, even though I managed to get the answer correct.

The above observations might look weird or abstract to a lot of people, so let me change track and recommend the book by Emanuel Derman for everyone who is intellectually oriented and also to those who are aspiring to work in an investment bank! :)

I came across this book when it was recommended by one of my senior colleague when I was working with GS technology. I am an ardent admirer of the firm and try to read all possible material about the firm or books written by people who have worked with the firm.
The author of the above mentioed book is famous for the Black-Derman-Troy interest rate model in quantitative finance which he co-developed when he was at GS. In the book, he narrates his experiences as a physicist and then his stint at GS heading the quantitative strategy group.

Adi

2007-06-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

Adi walked home, his mind in a state of turmoil. He had got his mid term marks and he had yet again managed to score below 90 in Math. He could sense the look of rage and fury on his father’s face when he would break this news to him. He felt his legs go weak and throat go dry. It was a long walk from the school to his house and he enjoyed this daily trekking, sans on those days when he got his math marks.
Adi was bad with numbers and no amount of pleading about his indifference to this subject could make his dad understand. He simply could not conquer the notions of the elementary arithmetic and always was in a state of daze when kunjunni master went on droning about geometry, in his raucous phlegm cluttered voice.
His father was a mechanic and a god fearing, hard working person. Unlike his group of friends who wasted a good part of their earnings on the local arrack and toddy, adi’s father never dwindled away money. “Raman nair is a man of character” thus the village folks spoke of his father. Adi had lost his mother at a very small age and did not have any recollections of her.
The respect with which the village folks treated his father for his hard work, did not translate into love, which adi had for his dad. His dad was quite adamant about the fact that he wanted adi to do well in his studies, particularly math, and become a collector one day. During those times, this office represented one of the highest seats of achievements that parents would wish for their children. And his father had some notion in him, which was partially correct, that you needed good math marks to succeed in life.

And how he got angry when adi scored below 90. adi would never forget those days when he would have to break the news of getting low marks and the image that came to his mind was his father pushing his plate of porridge away and getting up from the floor in a fit of rage, reaching for the wooden cane and flagging him on his back, till it made red marks. He would then curse math, he would curse his father and for good measure, would curse his mother also, for not being there to take his side in this punishment.
He would cry to sleep on those days and would wake up the next day and take the report to his dad, to be signed for the school. He could never understand the look of sadness in his father’s eyes when he signed the report without muttering a word. Adi knew that his father would not go to work that day.
When his friends boasted about their dad’s job or how they were taken to the nearby pond to learn swimming, adi could not bear to think of his father. He hated him. He hated him because he could not imagine his father loving him. He hated him because he hated math. He hated him because of the marks on his back and thigh, which came from the flagging.

It was the monsoon season. Adi fell ill and could not get up in the morning. He called out to his dad “Accha..enikku schoolil pokan vayya” (“Dad, I am feeling ill to go to school”).
His dad barked back “you rascal, you don’t want to sit in the math class do you? Get ready quickly and scamper off”. This continued for 3 days and adi became weaker day by day. His appetite went out and he was scarcely eating now. He was running a high temperature and he never had the courage or the inclination to tell this to his father.
And then one day, he fainted in the middle of the class. In the math class.
Kunjunni master rushed to the principal’s room and told his about this. The principal, a man of wisdom, came to the class, shooed away the on-looking boys and girls, took a handful of water and poured it on adi’s face. He did not respond. He ran a hand over the boy’s forehead.
“This looks to be serious” he called out to the peon
“Babu, get sulaiman’s taxi and inform raman nair”.
Word was sent to raman nair and adi was taken to the local dispensary.

Adi could feel the principal keeping a wet cloth over his forehead, while the taxi was taking them to the dispensary. He could hear the words and feel their actions. He could not open his eyes. He felt as if he was losing his senses and he could just manage to breathe. He could sense the rancid smell of the dispensary and the hardness of the hospital bed. He could hear the principal enquiring of the peon
“Hasn’t raman nair been informed yet?”
“Yes master saab. He would be here soon”

And then, his father came into the room.
“What is this raman nair, this boy has been running a temperature for the last 3 days. Didn’t he complain of illness?”
“Principal saar, he had told me, I didn’t believe him”.
“You could have at least made sure. I am going back to the school. Let the boy rest for a couple of days. The doctor said he is lucky not to have died”

The door closed behind the principal and adi could feel his father come and sit beside him. He could feel the silence hanging there in the room. He could not open his eyes, still.
Then he heard it. He didn’t know what the sound was. It started as a stutter and then he heard a soft sob. Then the sobs became loud till he could not, but believe his ears, that his father was crying.
Adi was scared in his dazed state also. He had never heard or seen his father cry.
Then it dawned on him. His father was weeping for him. He loved him. It made him feel shameless about his hatred of his father. If only he could open his eyes and tell his dad that it was okay.
All those years of hatred dissolved within him and he could feel the fever draining out of his body, taking along with it, the hatred. He felt at peace and he felt his father’s hand on his forehead. He smiled.

Who are we kiddin!!

2007-06-08T12:39:00.000-07:00

A leading magazine comes out with “100 top engineering colleges” list.

Salient points to be noted.

Methodology
“a semi-structured questionnaire was designed and given to senior faculty members in various institutes who had more than ten years of teaching experience in different states.”

Quite innovative.

“In all, 208 faculty members participated in the survey”

Well, that does give us an indication of the standard error of this survey doesn’t it? Remember, the number of colleges being ranked - 100.

Here is the list. Happy bed time reading!

1 Down..7 to go.

2007-06-05T05:15:00.000-07:00

As I walked out of the exam room, finishing my last exam of the term and walked up the red bricks stairs towards the now all too familiar ISB main building, with its trademark brick patterns, the thought that was going on in my mind was not about the exam, was not about the relief, was not about the celebrations late in the day (irrespective of how one performed in the exam!), but was about what we had managed to learn in just 5.5 weeks here in the first term and which ones were most close to my heart.
Economics came out as my favorite, not surprising because I have always had flair of math and logic. And the fact that this will be in some way relevant in our career sometime down the future also adds to the likeability.
What surprised me was the choice that my subconscious mind came up with for the second favorite subject.

It was marketing.
Now let me tell you, the average number of hours the junta out here studied for the marketing exam will be 1.21 hours with a standard deviation of 2 minutes. Yes. That’s it. This is one subject that has a costly textbook, a fancy one too, and I can bet you for a 1000 bucks that not more than 1 out of 100 people have gone through all the relevant chapters in preparation for the exam. (400 guys in the batch, work out the math!!)
How do you study marketing? Can you study marketing at all?
I mean, yeah, you can learn all those brand resonance models and push-pull strategy and value based pricing and all. But then, how much of it does a marketing professional get to use in their day job? Isn’t it more of a real-world-constraint-driven game? Will all these perfect models and strategies work in the real bad world?
This might be a fallacious argument with a lot of pitfalls and might be because of my lack of knowledge of the job profiles.
Anyways, the point is, I realized in that flash of moment, that I actually liked the subject, even though I am pretty sure that I am not made for marketing.
Let me get this straight. I don’t like marketing as a subject for which I have to study. Period.
But I like marketing as a science which helps me understand a lot of things which happens around me, which I was not able to understand without my newly gained (limited though!) knowledge.

Accounting came a third because this was a subject which was entirely new to me and I do not foresee myself using this in my career a lot. Yeah, when I do become a CEO and when my CFO (probably one of the CA’s from my class!) gets caught for a fraud, I wont be able to tell that “I don’t know accounting and left it to these guys!”

Statistics – well, all I can say is that I don’t fancy fitting lines and trying to figure out shapes out of nothing! (I know, I am bad at this!)

So the first term finished before we could say “Heteroscedasticity”. Yeah, that’s from the stats class and kind of in one word, represents what I feel about the subject. Something which is huge and cannot be conquered and exotic. I love the word, but not where it came from.

And yes, it’s official now. The rat race has begun. And no. Sarovar is not involved in this.

The Journey

2007-05-25T15:07:00.000-07:00

Pavithra had never liked going to Kaikurissi. Her parents were from this place and although they had settled in Chennai, the invariable once-in-a-year vacation trip when the school closes down was the most excruciating time for her. She would, unlike other girls her age, wait for the vacation to get over so that she could escape from the orthodoxy of her parents village to the modernity of the Chennai city. She was never able to understand that this trip was one of the very few rejuvenating factors for her parents, to meet with their elders and recreate a sense of belonging to a big family, which they never get to do in their busy and rushed life in the metro. Her sister was just the opposite. She got to study her matriculation in the town nearest to kaikurissi and got to stay with their grandparents and would always want to go back to the village, whenever she visited Chennai. They were sisters separated by a couple of years, but their values had stark difference.
Years went past and now Pavithra was working in an MNC in the US and her parents were retired. The Kaikurissi trips had ceased when her father got retired and when Pavithra started earning. Each year in April, for Vishu, Pavithra’s mom would bring up the matter of a trip home, after gauging that Pavithra’s mood was at its best. Her father would not say anything; he would just wait in anticipation for a positive response from her side, with a melancholic gleam in his eye. She would dismiss the idea even before her mom could complete the sentence and would rudely get up and leave the table. This went on for 6 years, until a year, the trip had to be made and she didn’t have a choice.
She could not believe the childishness with which her parents went about preparing for the trip and kept telling them that they would return in 2 days, hearing which their enthusiasm would wane, but not for long.
And then the day came and they were in the flight and Pavithra prepared herself mentally to go back to the place she once used to hate.
The green fields before the house, through which they had to walk, the arched entrance to the house, the garden on both sides with the mango trees and the chrysanthemum flowers, the large pond in the backyard, the old motorcycle of her uncle, the sights rushed back memories which she had tried to stifle in her last 6 years.
Then it happened.
Her grandmother came out and called out to her dad and mom and they just stood there. With tears in their eyes, with happiness, unable to move. She saw the tear falling and she sensed that moment and felt it to be an eternity. Her sister coming out of the house and embracing dad and mom. It was as if they didn’t even recognize her presence. Then she realized how strong her hatred of the place had been and how the others had loved the place. She realized that home is not where you can revel in the modernities of life, but it is where your loved ones are. She realized that its not the material comforts, but the simplicities of life which makes a difference.
And on that day, Pavithra came home for ever.

mallu and the mush

2007-05-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

"You dont look like a mallu"
I really dont understand when people give me this line. I am often tempted to ask "So how do mallus look like?" and often end up asking this question to a lot of people too. But they immediately go on defensive and some of them think that I was offended by the statement.

It's not really that. Just how is a mallu supposed to look like?Are we supposed to sport a moustache and wear a "Lungi" and sport a gold chain and talk with an accent?
Now,just to clarify things, I am told about my non-mallu looks during the times when I have shaved off my mush. I never ceases to amaze me how removal of facial hair transforms me from having a hard-core mallu look to having a non-mallu look. This is probably the best example of stereotyping. That all mallu's should have a mush.

But then you cannot really blame them too. The typical image of a mallu, which is portrayed through the medium of movies shows all the popular actors in kerala sporting a thick moustache. I can confidently make the statement that no actor has succeeded in the malayalam movie industry by sporting a clean-shaven chocolate hero looks.

So probably it IS the mush! Rite?

This is probably the most cliched of my posts. Blame it on the pressures of assignments at ISB!

deal ya no deal!

2007-05-21T02:12:00.000-07:00

I guess the fact that we are going to become a management grad (with or without good grades) has started to dawn on the class of 2008 at ISB. In situations of normal life, we have started to identify with the concepts that we are being taught in the first term.
Pre-MBA: If your housing colony had only one eat-out place and if the guy charged abnormally high rates and gave you insipid food, you would crib about how mean he is and how he is taking advantage of us.
Now, after the first term, we talk of this as monopolistic behavior.
Pre-MBA: You spot your fav pair of jeans in that color that you always wanted, but find out that the price is more than your “budget”, but still dish out the money and get it and feel satisfied.
Now we know that the company managed to get the entire consumer surplus out of us!
Pre-MBA: You see an ad where you get an ipod free with a high end digital camera and say “wow, that’s a nice deal”
Well guess what, now we think of it as bundling and how the company would NOT want us to buy the products separately.

So you see, we have started thinking in terms of the concepts that we learn here and what more can be an indicative factor of the point that we have left the baggage of our previous career behind and have started to cross over to being a management grad.
Yeah, it is still a long way off, but surely the journey has really taken off!!

REC to ISB

2007-05-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

To compare an engineering college to a management institute is probably blasphemous, but that’s what I ended up doing on the day my first mid terms at ISB got over. Now that I have made it clear which management institute I am talking about, I might also put forth the engineering college I am talking about – REC Calicut. It has been 6 years since I graduated from this institution.
I am not insane to compare these institutions in terms of their infrastructure etc, but purely in terms of what I liked about each of them.
To see how they fare in their respective fields, you can go to the end of this post!

What I miss about REC
1) The MC – mini canteen for the uninitiated. This is the place which will be full at 2 am in the morning, with folks pouring in to buy “chotta pepsi”, “Chikki”,”Double attached”, “Kattan” (Black tea/coffee) and noodles. MC will be packed particularly during the exam season. Studying through the night, one of those hungry folks will come out and get everyone out of their rooms and then the group starts for MC.
I wish ISB had something like that.
2) Kattangal – this is another eating joint that was about 5 minutes walk from the men’s hostel. This place has a large number of small eating joints where the staple menu is a combination of noodles and one of the multi combination shakes. It started off with “Sharjah Shake” (a glorified name for banana milk shake) and apple shake. By the time we were in the final year, the shop keepers had become bolder and was trying out combinations like “Sharjah badam shake” and “Apple Date shake” !!! and these places used to be full at 12 0 clock in the night.
3) IF MC and Kattangal were the night time food joints, then mamachan and papachan were the noon time. A hearty meal of porotta and chicken at mamachans will fill your stomach and also not hurt your purse! If mamachan was the fav of non-veggies, then pappachan was for the veggies. This place was unique because they follow a “eat what we give” policy. So you go there, wash your hands and sit on the wooden bench. The guy will come and start serving the course of rice meal and the curries, what they have prepared for the day. They will also come for a second round and the meal ends with a sumptuous serving of pure home made curd. Mouth watering!
4) The Rajpath – this was the pathway leading to the main building of REC, with a separator in between, having those cute little pink and yellow flowers! I don’t know what was so special about Rajpath, but ask any CREC-ian and he will say that Rajpath was good!
5) The canteen and the fish biriyani! – need I say more?
6) The thanni parties in final year – these are not grand scale parties as they happen here at ISB and the booze does not flow! It rather trickles, more so because we had not started earning you see! The adventurous trips to Mukkam in the night to buy beer and then getting back to the room, lights off, metallica playing, gulping beer and getting ready to play Half-Life and NFS-111. that was final year and it was Awesome, with a capital A!!!
7) The scrabble sessions – man I used to love it! There was this time when we were mad about scrabbles and used to have these team names and would actually hunt around for the shortest word which had a “Z” in it. All the bitching about profs and exams used to happen around the scrabble board. Fights too!
8) The Jeep shows – this happens once in a while where a group of people rent a jeep and go for the night show in the city (REC too, like ISB is situated around 20 kms from the city, the only difference being that it was well connected). The jeep shows reach a peak during the placement seasons, as more and more people get placed, the trips will be made to “Calicut Taj” or “Malabar towers” for the treat.

It is really intriguing to compare the demographics of the student population in Both the places.
In REC, you had three categories of people – the guys who don’t study at all, the guys who study a little and enjoy a lot and the third group, who only study. The first group will be around 20 percent, the second 70 percent and the third, a measly 10 percent. Of course, all of these are relative!
In ISB, you again have three categories – the guys who study a lot and party a lot too, the guys who only study and the guys who study a little and party a lot. The first group constituting around 65 percent, the second group around 30 percent and the last with an abominable 5 percent.
So you see, things are almost the same only for the middle group. The other two groups are at the extreme.
But again, people don’t throw away lucrative jobs and precious time with their families and also pay an exhorbitant fee to come to ISB and Not study. And the course model at ISB does not render itself suitable for people who don’t want to study too. A class missed is an experice missed, because the professors are damn good. You have to listen to each and every word that comes out of the prof’s mouth. It really amazes me how I can sit through a lecture of 2 hours and not wander off into dreamland in between. I cant remember sitting with full attention for any of the lectures in REC, maybe except for the maths class which I used to enjoy.
And CP in REC is something I cant conjure in my wildest of dreams. Forget CP, I don’t even remember anyone asking doubts in any class. (CP, for those who are thinking what it is – class participation. This is a part of the grading for the marketing class in the first term and the students just LOVE the fact that this counts towards the grade!)

Although REC Calicut is one of the best engineering colleges in India, when I look back at the 4 years, I believe that the way of teaching over there was probably not the best. This is in no way an allusion to the kind of faculty there, but the fact that even an institute of such caliber could not keep the students from not learning by rote. I still remember me and my friends going through fluid mechanics and trying to remember the whole thing up till the exam, spit it out in the exam and then blissfully forget about it. The only interesting thing that I did, with a lot of analysis and study gone into it, was my seminar on chaos theory.
Again, this is not a generalization and there have been people who have actually worked on difficult topics like robotics and have gone to prestigious universities on the basis of that (this is not an REC for nothing!)
But the fact still remains that students are not incentivised to learn through application and not given the motivation to understand the topic, but to actually just cram for the exams. Maybe the age at which they come into an engineering college and the fact that being a residential college, this is the first taste of freedom for most of them, the current system is probably the best. Make them fear the grades and get them to study by hook or crook.
Maybe this is the way in which the IIT’s score over the REC’s. I need to ask an IIT-ian!!

REC Calicut ranked 14th best engineering college in India – Go here

Train Train..

2007-05-16T12:25:00.000-07:00

I was trying to book tickets to go home during the term break and I felt bad about the fact that Cochin is 24 hours by train from Hyderabad and it makes absolutely no sense for me to take a train. Besides, the timings are also odd. If I need to take a train, I will need to bunk my accounting exam, a though which is utmost unsavory!
I have always like train journeys. They are always eventful in one way or another. You get to observe a plethora of personalities and get to really feel to be a part of the mass. A bus journey by comparison is mostly overnight and does not offer you any insights about peoples behaviors. A journey by flight is too short to elicit any special events and I do not think I want my flight to be eventful anyways! :)
One of my memorable train journeys have been from my hometown in Kerala to Delhi. This was about 10 years back and I can still remember my terror at night, at the sound of the train going over long bridges, making me feel that we were going to derail and crash any time. I still remember the red countryside when the train went through the Chambal forests. I still remember seeing the landscape change as and when we crossed states and my wonderment at how this can so starkly change within a few kilometers and by the virtue of being in a different state. I still remember not being able to contain my enthusiasm when the train pulled into the Delhi railway station.
Yet another series of journeys where the trips to/from my college REC. This often used to happen in groups and was very enjoyable, culminating in a visit to one of the shops in Calicut where we would gorge on shawarma!
The train journeys are really beautiful when it rains. It is an amazing feeling to look out of the window when the train is turning a curve and see the rain drops fly past and graze your face. To see the tail of the train, winding as though like a majestic snake.
The coffee and the vada/pazhampori bought in the train always taste the best when it rains outside.
Given a chance I will want to take a break from everything and travel a lot in train. I will….soon! :)

Technology...Ohh!

2007-05-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

Since this is the first month of being in ISB and since all the students in ISB have prior work ex, one of the typical questions that comes up in the first conversation with any stranger is, where you were working before coming to ISB. It’s amazing to see how bonds get created with this one piece of information.

Sample this.
A: Where were you working?
B: I was with XXX (for the sake of being politically correct!)
A: Oooh is it, I was also with XXX (You can almost imagine hearing a metallic sound in the background of the invisible friendship bond being created and sealed!)
B: Oooh is it, which client did you work for?
A: I worked for this beer manufacturing client on their SCM.
B: I worked for this underwear manufacturing client for their retail loan systems (Of course they wont say the word, they will say “Big retail house”!)

But my purpose is not to undermine the rich clientele of these software companies.

When somebody asks me this question, I say, I was working with “The Firm” (one of the best investment banks in the world)

Now there are three typical reactions to this answer.
1) The other person – “Technology?” with a frown on their face, as if saying “How could this guy have worked in the i-banking space?”
2) The other person – picture with an amazed and reverential expression, till I complete the sentence with “I used to work in their IMD technology division”. The moment I finish the sentence, the high opinion that they had formed about me would have come down more fast than the rate at which the quantity decreases with an increase in price in an elastic market (OK. I could not resist it, I was studying Economics ! :-) )
3) The other person – absolutely no clue and I have to explain to them that “The Firm” is one of the best investment banks in the world etc.. you get the drift right?

What I don’t understand is that, why working in the technology division of an IB makes you a less capable person as compared to an i-banker with the same firm. All I can say is that these people have no idea about what the technology folks in an i-bank do.
I do not want to rant and rave about the profile of a senior analyst in the tech department, but there are facts which should be understood.

Fact 1- It is as difficult to get into the tech division of an I-bank as to get into the business side.

Fact 2- The work you are doing is more techno-functional in nature than any other typical software company – tell me, if I am coding something which is related to how a reinvestment of a mutual fund should process, isn’t it far superior to say, converting oracle forms from one version to another? (Oh yes, been there, done that too)
If I am doing something related to how the original issue discount bonds amortization happens, isn’t is far superior to writing documentation for a loan originating system?

Fact 3- The professionalism and the culture in the technology division of an i-bank is as good as and comparable to their counterparts on the business side. Don’t believe it? Trust me, I have seen it.

Fact 4 -There are people in the technology divisions of an i-bank who actually write code for program trading and risk analytics – functionally rich things which you cant even imagine in a services company.
And more facts like these.

Just because you have worked in the technology side of an i-bank does not take away from you the fact that you were good enough to be recruited by them in the first place.
And getting in is not easy.

This post is not intended to be a self egoistic one, but just a reiteration of the fact that it does not matter which division you have worked, as long as you worked for The Firm (and no prices for guessing which “Firm” am I talking about)

A Month And Counting..

2007-05-14T04:34:00.000-07:00

Today, Its been exactly one month I have been at ISB. One month and how fast it went by.
On second thoughts, it actually feels more than one month!
This place has a knack of making you feel that you have been here for an eternity, at the same time the frequent reality checks (which is a euphemism for assignments/exams (at least for me!)) makes you feel that the time is running by. The mid terms are barely 4 days away and the preparation levels can be at best, described as pathetic.

Everybody is relying on the fact that the scores are relative, but tell me, if everybody thinks it is relative, isn’t it non-relative?

I don’t have high hopes of getting into the deans list and I have not come across people who are fanatical about that..well with the exception of a couple of them.

Isn’t it ironic that
economics (a subject that I hated in school),
statistics (a subject that I hated in college),
accounting (a subject that’s totally new to me, an engineer) and
marketing (a subject that I am not suitable for) is going to make me a 12.5 % MBA?
Well, if I don’t flunk them, that is.

I should say that there are a lot of exceptional guys in the batch and that getting to know them is one thing that I should be thankful to ISB for. I know around 120 odd people in the batch and intend to increase that number by the end of the first term. Well, at least I should be good at networking, if not in the studies right?

Two Sides To It

2007-05-12T13:16:00.000-07:00

There are people who are so friendly that you feel good.
There are people who are always willing to help – strangers, but ask for a favor and you get it presto.
There are people who extend the hand of friendship, even while you were contemplating it.

There are also people who don’t acknowledge your presence. They look through you and consider it beneath them to talk to the junta. Even if you had talked to them the previous day.
There are also people who don’t meet your eyes and say “Hello”. Their sense of superiority, which they have defined, does not allow them to do so.
There are people who have already formed the “mutual admiration and sycophancy” society. They are mostly beings of importance and don’t care for mere mortals.

From the Biriyani City !

2007-05-02T03:30:00.000-07:00

The heat. That’s the first thing that hits you when you come out of the comfort of your AC apartment in the campus. Not the imposing building, not the student village towers, not the lawns and gardens, not the occasional peacocks. But sweltering heat. That’s what you see and feel immediately. It scalds you and burns you and does not take pity on you and make you sweat! Being from gods own country, moi have been used to hot climate, but then god was good enough to give his subjects (!) the boon of humidity and make us sweat in the sun and relieve us from the agony of the sun god. But here, you walk under the scalding sun for an hour, you still don’t sweat. But you pant. But again, as they say, everything in this world is relative and my friends from the north western part of the country find this climate mild!! But, surprise, surprise, when they come to Kerala, they find the climate unbearable in the summer. Because they are not used to sweating you see!

My first impression of Hyderabad has been good. In fact I would even go to the extent of saying that I find it better than Bangalore in a lot of aspects. As one of my friends commented about the “new” Hyderabad – “the roads look like the F1 racing tracks, winding up and down and gives you a feeling of being inside the NFS game!” the rocky boulders spanning the sparse regions gives an impression of aridness which surprisingly does not displease the eye. The rickshaw drivers are courteous than their brethren in Bangalore and they are even interested in conversing with you. And the best thing being, they don’t believe in the vice of speeding dangerously down the highways, unlike, again, their Bangalore counterparts. In Bangalore, I would on an average, tell the driver to go slow, at least two times.

On my way from airport once, when I nudged the auto driver and asked him to go slow, he actually turned back and gave me a pitiful look and said “You just got down from a plane which was going n times faster than my auto !” (Well not exactly in those words, but close enough!).
I had half a mind to tell him that the traffic is not as bad up there as on a Bangalore road, but ended up telling him “Friend, you have not been involved in three accidents in your life, have you?”

Azhage Sugama

2007-04-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

Recently came across a Tamil song from a movie which was released a couple of years ago. The movie was an average one, but I cannot think of a reason why i never came across this song before. Pure soulful melody by the maestro ARR.
I wonder why this one didn’t make it to the top of the charts, if it did, then i missed it.
Beautiful and meaningful lyrics, soulful rendering and a subtle, yet touching background. This is music at its
best.

"Poetry in motion" as somebody who, while telling me about this song and forcing me to listen to this, described this.
I cannot agree more. This song transcends the surroundings and takes you to a totally different plane.
Go here for the sad version - Azhage Sugama

Spare IT !

2007-04-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

"This is an exciting concept in implementation phase. IT is a crucial element of the future, both in the private sector and as applied to Government. If Kerala can marshal its current advantages and market them successfully, the future shall be bright! "

Thus spoke Robert D. Blackwill, Former Ambassador to India, United States Embassy about the concept of Technopark Trivandrum.

Recently came across a proclamation by a state minister in my native state regarding his view on how IT sector and SEZ's should have trade unions. Maybe this kind of throught process in some of our leaders explains the reason why, in spite of getting a head start in terms of establishing one of the country's first technology park, the IT industry in Kerala has not really taken off.
We are lucky to have a couple of visionary leaders at the centre (From both the leading national parties) who understands the areas of expertise that India needs to harness and who, in spite of their political differences make it a point to hand out exemptions, which otherwise would have led to a hampered growtn of these sectors. It is the result of such a kind of exemption that the IT sector and the SEZ's now enjoy the freedom from the devil of the unions.

Which sector in india has a combination of an active trade union and a success rate, going hand-in-hand? Debatable.

"wanted the "eight-hour duty" norms to be upheld in all sectors of production and service as a matter of principle"
One of the primary reasons why India finds a place in the world map today can be fairly attributed to the success of the IT and the ITES sectors. Other than ignorance about the realities of how the industry works, i cannot think of another reason why someone would make a statement like this.
I have high hopes of having a career in my home state, in a good firm, in the next 5 years. I doubt whether that will happen.

The Great Indian Novel

2007-04-03T04:50:00.000-07:00

Recently read the book "The great Indian novel" by Shashi Tharoor and was blown away by it.
I had wanted to read this book for a long long time but this had got postponed every time for a different reason.
But ultimately the wait was worth it and I was rewarded with a reading that is a brief course on the pre independence and the immediate post independence era of our country - and of course a refresher of those stories from our great epic of the Mahabharata, woven into the fabric of the theme, which stands out not just in its uniqueness, but also by the authors command over the language, intricacies of the political history of the country and the scriptures.

Tharoor's dynamism stands out in his writing too and his satire pours eloquent in this exquisite piece of work. It is remarkable the way in which he has managed to superimpose the political history of the country (happening at a time that was when the country was coming off age, this has to be not just the history, but the evolution of the country according to the vision of the thought leaders of the time) on top of one of the richest mythical epic of the Hindu culture.

Of course, a book of the proportion of this cannot chart the course of events as it happened exactly and we do see instances where the author has taken the artistic privilege to introduce his own small plots to explain significant events in the course of the birth of the nation, which otherwise could not have been explained by a mere comparison to the epic. But this too, he does with aplomb.
The author might have meant the title of the book to be based on another epic, but true it its title, this book is, what its title proclaims – a great Indian novel.

It goes without saying that I have become an ardent fan of Mr. Tharoor, the writer.
I was already an ardent fan of Mr. Tharoor, the suave diplomat, the political commentator with his roots in my native state !!

Link to TGIN on Amazon - TGIN

YemBeeYaa

2007-04-02T07:24:00.000-07:00

As I prepare myself for the YemBeeYaa education which would commence from this
Malayalam new year, I have been doing some smart (?) ground work which I think will
come into use during my course.
I have been speaking with my friends who have gone through the grind!

And how they love to talk about their B-school days! Just throw a hint
of a question at them and they are all ready to give their suggestions
and advice on how to tackle the b-school life.

One common theme that stands out in their ramblings is the pressure. Cut-throat
competition and the high-stake rat race. As I see my would-be classmates already
establishing a "network" over the now very popular community engine, I ponder whether the peer-pressure and the rat-race, which even with all my friends’ warnings about it, I had managed not to believe, might actually be true?

Next month this time, I probably would be having blood-shot eyes due to lack of sleep..
Or..would I?

Relief.....at last.

2007-02-10T09:05:00.000-08:00

Relief.....
when you put your heart and soul into something and give your best....and then the period when you have to wait to get the result of your efforts - the agonizing period of waiting....
and it all ends when your destiny is unveiled and when you get your hard work's due.....you involuntarily let out a sigh of relief.....its a beautiful sensation...you feel light and suddenly even the ubiquitous yellow post-its on your and your colleagues comp appears to be cute !!

the best thing to happen is that you wait for the d-day and you get to know the result much before that and it takes you by surprise - a happy one !!!

Dil Se...fanaaa...!!

2006-08-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

Recently watched fanaa and felt a sense of deja vu and then realized that the experience of wathcing it was for me wathcing Dil Se yet again.
Dil Se was one movie i loved and I still remember coming out of the theatre after watching dil se with my friends and i was the only person in the group whi had liked the movie. While my friends were commenting about how it was very much a non-Maniratnam-style movie, i felt that it had all the elements that made it a vintage Mani Ratnam movie.
Fanaa brought back all those and even if we cannot compare Kunal Kohli to Mani Ratnam, you have to give credit to the director for making the movie watchable.Pitting fanaa against Dile Se is pitting 2 of the finest actors of our generation against yet another 2 exemplary actors.
The intensity of Manisha in Dil Se is matched by that of Aamir's performance and the playfulness and angst of Shahrukh is more than easily challenged by the superb performance of Kajol.
The youthful rendering of "Jiya Jale" fould a reflection in the equally captivating voice of Shaan in "Chaand sifarish" and The pathos of the song "Sat rangeere" and the yearnings of "Ae Ajnabi" have been tried to be matched by "Mere haath mein".
The background score for both the movies are haunting, yet another similarity between the two movies.You feel that the story kind of lost itself somewhere in the between in both the movies and they seem to have an abrupt ending.
All said and done, fanaa has become another of my favorite along with Dil Se....

5 Years...a long time!

2006-07-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

wow!!
Suddenly it has sunk in that I completed 5 years of my career!!!!
Feels.......special.

Subtle Beauty

2006-07-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

"Mun paniyaa"
The beauty of the song from the tamil movie Nandhaa is matched by the excellent picturization and makes us wonder how a song can be so romantically picturized when the hero and heroine does not even hold hands in them.
When you watch the visuals and immerse in the splendid vocals of SPB, you sense a feeling of nostalgia and find yourself falling in love all over again!!That is the power of subtlety and it describes how emotions can be shown in just a plain look.

This song needs to be seen by all those sleaze kings who fills the movies with vulgarity in the name of romance.

Thrissur Pooram Exhibition

2006-04-16T22:18:00.000-07:00

Oru kappu Kaaja Chhaya Kudikkoo
Kuthiraye pole kuthikkoo!!!

The above 2 lines in mallu would roughly translate into "Drink one cup of Kaaja Tea and trot like a horse!!"This is a sample of the innumerous advertisements which are belted over the loud speaker at the pooram exhibition. In the sweltering heat of Thrissur, who would want to have a glass of Tea?
I strongly suspect that the lead male and female announcers for these advertisements are always the same year after the year!But then exhibition would not be exhibitions without these back ground announcements.I went for the exhibition after a gap of 3 years and nothing much has changed.The same old Textile merchants with their collection of "bedsheets from Rajasthan" (Pooram exhibition used to be the annual bedsheet-upgrade time for my mom, till some time back! It also used to be the time to buy "Good Quality" knives etc for the kitchen, though i wonder how much of a quality instrumnet that had proved to be!!). Then there are the bangles/toys/fancy items shops which repeat themselves at almost surprisingly regular intervals.(The pooram exhibition would contain approximately 60 stalls in a big snake-like line).

At strategic positions, there will be the refreshment stalls and i can recollect that we used to put on our act of being tired/fatigued when we were about 2 stalls near to the refreshment stalls!!!. In those days, an outing like this was the only time when we got to drink aerated bottled drinks(Read "Limca"/"Thums UP").
I would be eagerly looking forward to visit the only book-store in the exhibition (excluding the other categories of bookstalls viz religious ones) and would have had already elicited a promise from my dad to get me a "Hardy Boys" or a "Three investigators"!!Often, re-freshments would be had from the stall nearby where they would be selling sugar-cane juice(simply mouth-watering!!). This time, however i was left wondering whether they would be using good water to prepare those drinks!!!
Then we have those "Bubble men"..these are the people who sell the soap bubbles for 5 bucks. They used to be a must-buy in any visit, although they never managed to reach home!!The last stop would be for the second round of refreshment at the last stall in the exhibition - the one run by the Indian coffee House. But i was saddened to find that space converted into an office, with the coffee-house shifted.

Pooram exhibitions is pretty much the same as i remember it to be 15 years ago...just hope that it remains the same...

Some things you would never have seen 10 years back in a pooram exhibition
TATA AIG insurance stall
Tread-mill stall

Another note: Aluva people might brag about their Aluva shivarathri mela and Cochin people about the ubiquitous carnivals, but there is nothing like the Thrissur Pooram Exhibition!!

The GOAL

2006-03-23T21:14:00.000-08:00

After a long time....finished a book on the same day as i bought it.
5 and a half hours nonstop from 11 30 in the night to 5 o clock in the morning.

The Book: The GOAL by Eliyahu Goldratt

Chandramukhi versus Nagavalli

2006-02-14T01:24:00.000-08:00

Was watching "Chandramukhi" the other day..and was stuck by the changes that were made to the movie from the original mallu version, just so as to appeal to the type of audience the tamil audience are..no offence meant of course!For instance, there is the famous "Vidamatte" scene done by Shobana where, at the end of the dialogue, she lifts a double-cot bed in fury (posesses by Nagavalli) with her single hand and the scene is conveyed so powerful, albeit in a subtle way.

The same scene in Tamil version, in order to convey the power of the character, they had to have a scnene in the beginning of the movie where 4 people are shown carrying the cot and the heroine asking the hero why 4 people are required to carry a cot and the hero saying that it was a very heavy one and 2 people cannot carry it!! That way, people would be able to understand the power of Chandramukhi when she lifts the cot up with her hand!!

Another instance is when Thilakan (the famous astrologer in the movie whom the elderly folks trust more than the psychiatrist-protagonist) makes his entry and the way in which he recognizes Mohanlal. It was done in an almost natural way!Here, the parallel character had to be shown as having hatred of Rajni and then he had to be convinced of Rajani's power (seeing a "Jyothi" on his face) before he could do some research and be aware of Rajni's powers!!
And what has Jyothika done? maybe she should watch the original..but then she is going to get so depressed when she comapres her performance to Shobana's that she might just decide to quit acting!
We had started watching the movie with the mindset that its going to be a combination of the mallu movies "Manichitrathazhu" and 'Aaram thamburan".But then it turned out to be a mix of the one's above plus ..........The Anaconda, Crouching Tiger...etc!!!

Mirajkar Selected!!

2006-01-05T12:10:00.000-08:00

I just loved the new ad of "Times of India".It is yet again a theme which we have seen in one flavour or the other before, but what stands out here is the characters chosen for the ad. All of them have done a terric job, the best part being that the characters are sooooo natural.The old man's action, after looking at the news of his grand son getting selected into the team and the old clipping about him being dropped from the team, was so endearing.It kind of symbolizes the fact that newspapers are with us during our times of misery and happiness and it does not differentiate between the emotions when reporting the truth..be it sweet ....or bitter!!Amazing ad..

Hectic!!!! and loving it!!!

2005-12-24T07:12:00.000-08:00

They say that working in one of the best IB in the world prepares you to handle anything in your career!!
Thought that held true only for traders...!!
But....working for 16 hours every day has made me believe that its true for techies too!!

but, the best part of it is that...........
I am loving it!!!!

AK,
Was Tagged by GWBE and my list is the last post...its not complete, so i might oblige you by putting down what i was able to squeeze in my reading schedule after the last post!!!
:-)

hmm.....

2005-11-12T21:45:00.000-08:00

First of all.....our bundle of joy came into this world on Oct 4th!!! :-)

Was Tagged (a loooong while ago!!) by GWBE.
wokey!!

Last 5 books read

English August upamanyu chaterjee
Brave new world aldous huxley
Catcher in the Rye j d salinger
To kill a mockingbird harper lee
We, the living ayn rand

Currently reading..

Sidhartha
Geeta and the art of successful management

Planning to read..

1984
Catch 22
and a whole lot of 'em!!!

All time Favs
Diary of Anne Frank
Fountainhead
Atlas Shrugged
To kill a mockingbird
English August
No Comebacks (A collection of short stories by Frederick Forsyth)

luv these too...
Erich Segal books
John Grisham books
Kane and Abel
The Day of the Jackal

hmm..well...my list of "bloggers i visit" have been subjected to this ritual of tagging.....so me kind of not excercising my option (call or put?!!! lol)

Do you play International Cricket...

2005-07-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

Location: Duane Reade Pharmacy Store
I am standing at the pay-counter waiting to get my bill so that i can pay for it and hurry to catch a metro to finish off my shopping. The guy behind the counter is looking at me in a strange manner.
"Say, can i ask you a question" he questions.
"Sure ..yeah" i said.
"Hmm..dya play cricket?"
I was caught by surprise by this question of his because cricket does not happen to be one of the most popular games out here.
"Yeah..i do"..i said.
"Are you from Pakistan?"
"India" i said a little miffed..
"Dya play international Cricket" the next question.

Suddenly i was confused. Was he asking me whether India has an international cricket team? well if he knew about cricket, then he wouldnt be that stupid not to know about Sachin, would he?
"Err...Do i play international cricket" I asked for confirmation, stressing on the "I"
"Yes, yes" came the eager reply.
"No" i said.
"Oh man, O man..you look so much like one guy i say playing in the West Indies. Cant remember his name, but i swear you look like him. When you walked in, i was like..Hey this is that cricket star..."
I was shocked. People have told me that i look like X or Y, but this was the first time that a comparison was made to a cricket player.
Needless to say, on the metro, i was thinking about which cricket player he would have meant, but sadly have not been able to figure that one out!!!!
Well..they say that there are 7 people in this world who looks like you...and one of my look alikes happens to be a cricket star!!!!

2005-07-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

Disturbing..

2005-07-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

Got this from the postsecret blogspot and it was disturbing...
whoever it was, please realize that the very fact that u have posted it shows your remorse for what u have done...so u can start feeling less guilty..
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/296/2612/1024/sooner.jpg

With Honors..

2005-07-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

A beautiful movie which tells the tale of how a "bum" can make a difference to the lives of four Harvard students...
Old one, just came across it and watched it twice already.
http://www.mooviees.com/1190-with-honors/movie

Fire God Angry...

2005-07-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

One of the most luxurious hotels in the world..the Ritz Carlton...as seen from my apartment!!

november rain

2005-07-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

'Cause nothin' lasts forever
And we both know hearts can change
And it's hard to hold a candle
In the cold November rain

Don't ya think that you need somebody
Don't ya think that you need someone
Everybody needs somebody
You're not the only one
You're not the only one

Why dont we have these kind of good music not created these days???

My first attempt at cooking

2005-06-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

"I will teach you cooking". This came from my senior colleague who had travelled with me to the US for a training stint. I looked at him with amusement and told him "My wife has been trying to teach me cooking for the last 2 years and has not succeeded. Now you think that you can do it in 1 month(duration for which we are here in US)!!!!He laughs and takes it up as a challenge.I think about it and work out the economical gains of cooking for myself. A proper dinner in US costs you around 8 Dollars (Big Mac or a tandoor restaurant run by a sardarji - choose for yourself) and if i were to cook, then not only it will save me some real dough, but i could also make the food according to the likings of my palate. Got excited about it and wanted to start cooking immediately (I am like that. If i get excited about something, i immediately want to start it off. Guess its like that with most of the Aquarians!!).So the next day, i go and get chicken, oil, tomatoes, chillies, chilli powder and sauce. And then i start my experiments with cooking. End result - amazingly tasty chicken fry which i very magnanimously shared with my colleague who was shocked to find out that i could cook really nice. "This is really good" were his words and i was left thinking how i could achieve this feat when i hadnt even made an omlette before in my life.Guess the reason has to be that of being tired with the angrezi food and wanting to eat something really spicy.Well whatever the reason is, i have decided that i love cooking and am gonna make fish fry tomorrow!!

Called up my wife and told her that i cooked a real cool chicken dish and that my friend liked it and she responds "Well. Good. Once you come back, you can take over that job!!":-)

I Love.....

2005-06-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

My new NIKE Shoes!!!! :-) :-)
Its soooooooooooooooo comfy...

Wow!!!

2005-06-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

I am in awe. Found out that the project that i am working onright now used to have a member who went by the name of Anna Hahn who incidentally is the US womens chess champion (http://www.uschess.org/news/bio/hahn.php) and another parallel system used to be headed by none other than Fischer Black(http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah/MEDIA/1995/black.html

Wow.

And there is a sybase guru in my same department who has written books on sybase and who is one of the people who were actually involved in writing sybase!!!!

True Friendship - Myth or Reality?

2005-06-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

Is there something called as true friendship? If it exists, then what is the criteria for a person to be your true friend?
If he helps you with money when you are in desperate need, then is he your true friend? If he helps you to finish off your deliverables when you need to rush off to meet your spouse for an emergency, then is he your true friend? If he offers to cover up for you when u need to take a vacation, then is he your true friend? If he offers you free advice when you are down, is he your true friend?
Doesnt true friendship mean that we accept the other person as he is? If i expect him to act in a certain way and if he doesnt and if i say that i no longer want to be a friend of his, then arent i being a bad friend? Shouldnt i go back to him and ask him why he acted in the manner he did?
I can say that, he didnt do this, so he is not my true friend. He can say that, i didnt bother to find out why he acted in the way he did, so i am not his true friend.
Friendship is complicated. Or is it?

From New York.....

2005-05-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

My first trip outside my india and i should say that the experience has been rather nice till now, except for the fact that i really miss my better half (particularly during this phase) and my near and dear ones.
I had always maintaned that americans were those egoistic ones, but then, i am slowly in the process of changing that opinion. Hey come one, aren't we indians also a little too much proud of our country? Same applies to all people.
but what stuck me so different over here is the general friendliness of the people. Stangers in lifts greet you with a bright good morning or how-are-u-doing. At least a nod of the head is granted for sure. If you are crossing the road and if there is a taxi speeding down on you, the guy actually stops for you and then puts out his hand and waves to you to cross the road and waits till we do that. I was just thinking if the same sitatuion had happened back in india, the taxi driver would have speeded up and made sure that he went first and then probably would have put out his head and spit out some abuses for trying to get him into trouble.
Well, its only been one week, so its not enought time for me to pass a judgement that americans are more courteous than indians......surely time will tell....

While it's raining hard

2005-04-23T08:57:00.000-07:00

Perumazhakkalam (While it's raining hard).
The most striking feature of this beautiful film(mallu) by kamal is that the central character of the story is not a human being , but its the rain. Not the light and soft rain, but fierce and powerful one. Its there when tragedy strikes and its there when the characters in the movie are having a happy time too(althogh this is very less).
It takes guts to make a movie in which the lead hero appears in a song and probably some 20 other shots and the second lead hero has only a song to appear in. We have had lots of heroine oriented movies till date in malayalam, but even in those, hero will definitely feature throughout the movie. Perumazhakkalam differs from these and stands out as a beautiful and sad poem.
Two strong female leads played by the most talented heroines currently present in the malayalam film industry. The film is a full emotions film. The anguish and fear for one lady at one end of a river(kallayi) and the loss and pain for the other at the other end of the same river (kalpathi). Two people on two different banks of the same river, tied to each other by destiny. One of them at the mercy of the other for getting her husband pardoned and the other silently asking god why she had to lose her husband at such a young age and at the same time burdened by god with the responsibilty of making a decision to spare a life. To giver her pardon for the man who killed her husband.
Taking another man's life is not going to get her husband back and so ganga does the god's work for raziya and we end up having that feeling of heaviness in the heart at the end of the movie, that which we get when we see a movie which moves us. Not by gory scenes and wailing heroines, but by the play of emotions from the lead pair. And when i say lead pair, here, unlike other typical mallu movies, its meera jasmine and kavya madhavan (In that order!!!!!!!)

Moving from the first job - painful

2005-04-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

Its always a painful process when you move from your first job..well at least for me it is!! 4 years in the same company for my first job had made me helplessly loyal to it. Stuck on even though the pay was atrocious and the work was not cutting edge. Me being sentimental didnt help. After all, this is the company that took me straight from campus and then moulded a raw engineering mind into a tough(?!) software professional. So i should be loyal right?
Threw this one to a friend and pat came the reply "Arre yaar, if u have got something from the company, then they would have made the most use of you too and would have got more that that from you". Probably true. I was not lazy and was dedicated througout and i dont think i have even one supervisor who would tell me that my work used to stink.
But still, moving after 4 years feels like u are cutting something away from yourself and going to a new place feels like walking into a room and knocking on a door, without knowing what is inside there. The friends you have made over the years are not going to be there. The comfort zone is not there. The easy access to HR and Admin is not there. Being known as on of the "old" (as in, around for while) employees is not there. And the most important thing is that you need to prove yourself at the new place!!
Its going to be a whole new process again. Making friends (I am very poor at this cause i take a looooooooooong time to be friends with someone!), getting into the flow of the place, proving your mettle and in the whole process learning a lot of things. Its going to be a change and hopefully for the better.

Impact of Change Of Job!!

2005-04-18T23:46:00.000-07:00

Came across this one ....and though as not dramatic as this(!!), i was left wondering what impact, the change of job (which is going to be next week) is going to have on me.....

A taxi passenger tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him a question.
The driver screamed, lost control of the car, nearly hit a bus, went up on the footpath,and stopped centimeters from a shop window.
For a second everything went quiet in the cab,then the driver said:
"Look
mate, don't ever do that again.
You scared the daylights out of me! "The passenger apologized and said, "I didn't realize that a little tap would scare you so much."
The driver replied, "Sorry, it's not really your fault.
Today is my first day as a cab driver - I've been driving a van carrying dead bodies for the last 25 years."

There is something about sabarimala!!

2005-04-08T16:24:00.000-07:00

There is something about sabarimala that makes us want to go back there again and again. Other than the fact that we get to see ayyappaswami only once an year, he seems to have a magnetic influence on the devotees. After the difficult climb and the darshan for a few seconds in the jostling crowd, when you climb down the hill and reach pampa, the feeling in your mind is NOT "Whew, i need to get back home as soon as possible", BUT, "Swamiye, i will come back to see you next year" and THAT is the magnetic appeal of the manikandan.For me, ayyappaswami is the embodiment of all the good things in the world. He is the god that i can relate to and who gives me a sense of being "real". A god, who did not perform miracles which cannot be fathomed by human beings, but again was not a mere mortal.His life had a meaning, to destroy an embodiment of an evil and he had as a friend, a muslim, which was a strong social message during the old times. Thousands and thousands of disciples go to sabarimala every year and on the way they visit the curch of "Vavar" who was ayyapas close muslim friend. The famous playback singer yesudas is an ardent disciple of lord ayyappa and everyday night at the sannidhanam, lord ayyappa is put to sleep by singing "Harivarasanam", which is the recorded song of yesudas. Where else can we see such a strong sense of unity of all the relegions? This is one of the things that make sabarimala a unique experience.http://www.manoramaonline.com/advt/sabarimala2004/index.htm

Dan Brown and Google!!

2005-04-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

There is something about Dan Brown books that makes you want to run to google. Facts and figments waiting to be run through that great search engine. DVC and A&D dishes out a lot of things which can drive a believer into frenzy and a book lover like me thrilled. I have visited the google at least 10 times during the read of DVC and right now with A&D, being an online copy, the other page i always have open is the google.
The books are an interesting read, but then once you are through with it, it does not stick to you and grow on you like an ayn rand or even a good grisham or one of those terrific short stories of Forsyth. Its more like a refined version of hardy boys with some history and facts thrown in and a narration akin to a sheldon book.
Well, i am not a critic, but opinions - to each their own!!

Books!!!

2005-04-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

Books. What better friend can a person have? You can turn to it when u are happy, when u are sad, when u feel lonely and when u feel tensed. Well, maybe when u have a headache, it wouldn’t be too good an idea!! Lol!!
I love books and they have been an important part of my growing up. When I used to be asked what I wanted as a birthday present, I would immediately come up with the name of the latest hardy boys or three investigators!!!
Like a lot of people, my transition followed this path.
The five find outers, Famous Five
The Three investigators
Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew (This was a craze)
Perry Mason
Agatha Christies (yeah, I know Sherlock Holmes is missing….it didn’t happen to me!! L )
Doctor Whos (this was a craze)
James hardly chases (I wish I could go back and un-read ‘em!!)
Sidney Sheldons
Jeffrey Archers
Frederick Forsyths
John Grishams
Erich Segals
Ayn Rands
Richard bachs
Mario Puzos
Rushdhies
Harry Potters
And the list goes on…..and in between these, the odd ones which would touch your heart like Anne frank….and yet others like god of small things which was so much hyped and well…no comments…I guess I have not yet become an intellectual giant to comment up on this one!! And those satirical ones – Heller….u are great!!

And of course those Archies and Tintins (was not very fond of asterix).
And even before that there was this small magazine called wisdom which was nice…..and then another Russian one called Misha of which I have fond memories!!!
Gimme a book anytime and leave me alone, I will be happy!!!

Chatting with absolute strangers?

2005-03-31T17:45:00.000-08:00

I have this feeling of pity for people who logon to chat networks and starts chatting with absolute strangers. What exactly do you get from it? I mean, there might be some common interests for a guy from some rural district of India and some stressed out babe in some Cosmo city of the US, but then how does it make sense to exchange pleasantries for some time, over a thing as vast and "virtual" as the net?(Excuse the really bad cliché).
If chatting is used to communicate with people you know, then it makes sense and is probably the cheapest way to keep in touch.
But hooking on to strangers and bantering?
Well, this sums it up!!

An employee was chatting on the web seriously with a lady called "Amy".
Manager walks into his cube and asks.
Manager : Can you write me a program for sorting the float values.
Employee(Steve) : I am kind of busy with another job. I will be able
to give you the complete program by tomorrow.
.......Back to chat......
Steve : Sorry for late reply!!! My stupid boss was here.
Amy : Bosses are really pain right ?
Steve : Yep!! They are pain in ...
Amy : Can you do me a favor darling.
Steve : I am for you honey.
Amy : Can you write me a program to sort float.
Steve : Oh honey!! It's on my finger tips....Here you go.
Amy : Dude!!! that is what I asked you at your cube

A change in the offering - this was during the triggering days

2005-03-31T17:30:00.000-08:00

This was written some 8 months back, at a time when i was not yet initialized into the blog world..
So now its clear as to why i am making a move...

I really really dont know what i am doing here. Do i feel nice to work here?. "No", my inner voice answered. Do i feel happy about the work i am doing here?. Again the same two letter answer. Do i feel happy about my supervisors attitude here?. Again the same two letter answer.Strange. Just one year back, i was the most happiest working in this very same organisation and under the very same supervisor. Has things changed so much in one year?This makes me think that maybe, just maybe, its not really the organisation or the work or the supervisor that is the real problem. Maybe its MY outlook that is blurred. But, is it?I am not a egotistical moron to think that, if something is wrong, then its with those around me, and never with me. This self-introspective character, inculcated in me by my parents have held me in good stead in my life till now."If you are not happy with your current state of affairs, look around you and then look within you. Decide what needs to be changed and then act. Most probably, it will be your outlook which you will need to widen", my parents had taught me.No wonder, they say that wisdom comes mostly from experience.so let me put that into practise.What is that in my behavior, what prompts my supervisor to think that i crib a lot about my work?Two minutes, five minutes gone by. My creative and imaginary mind fails to come up with a reasoning. So does that mean that i am not in fact cribbing and just that my supervisor does not like me?Well, again NO!! Because often, we are not very good assessors of our own behavior. Right. So i go on about talking to my friends about my "crisis" (For lack of a better word). Surpise, surprise!!. This time i found out that my vision window did not need any widening. It was not narrow! So, i was not wrong in feeling "sick"!.Time to make a decision. "What's so difficult about this? Just change job!!". This, from my wife who has simple solutions to all complex problems.I wouldn't be honest with myself if i profess that, that particular thought has never crossed my mind. But, why was it that i was so reluctant to consider switching jobs, when all my friends were so comfortable with contributing to the attrition rate of their companies?Well, this question, i had asked myself several times and found the answer too. Its just that, this was the company, which had taken me fresh from college and made me the person i am today."So what? This is what happens to everybody. Why do you have to be so sentimental", asks my inner voice.(this one is the bad one. Yes, we have two inner voices, the good one and the bad one!.)Well, "why am i so sentimental?", this is one of the questions, which i plan to ask my maker, when i get to meet him. Or is it a her? Hmm, interesting thing to debate, but later!So, whats the next available solution? "Talk with your supervisor about your problems". That was my logical analytical software-engineer's mind speaking.Hey, but thats the problem. Whatever i speak with my supervisor, it is taken as cribbing. If i have any personal problems and speak it out,then i have "too many constraints". If i am not happy with the duration of my project (which i had every reason not to be happy), then i was "not flexible".All these, i agree, are problems which, every software engineer has to face at some point in their careers.So, i come to the conclusion that there are only two ways infront of me. These two ways,albeit difficlut for me to tread, i had, but no choice.First one was to follow my wife's method. I swear to myself that this will be my last option.The second one is so vey easy to say and so much difficult to put in practise. To do my work, without actually enjoying it, to do whatever is expected out of me, without putting even the least effort to find joy in what i am doing. Becasue, if i try to find joy in the work i am doing, then i will start hating myself.So, this is what i have to offer. Lets see how long i last here.

An article from sometime back

2005-03-31T16:00:00.000-08:00

March 18th 2003
yesterday was my first train journey in 3 tier ac and it was certainly memorable in more than one ways...i had a motley of companions..first there was this foreign couple(?) students..who were playing chess and minding their own business.then there was this old man who initiated talking to me where as i was rather in a pensive mood..due to personal reasons..this old man introduced himself as Mr nair and on his way to meet his daughter settled in bangalore..he certainly didnt seem to be refined enough to be travelling in an a.c coach,a thought which later changed after he told me something,and my habit of always not trusting strangers made me wary of speaking out..still conversation came in pieces...he complained about the facilities or rather the lack of it being provided even after paying so much money for an a.c coach..he did get senior citizens rebate though..and well the ticket was send to him from his daughter...he generally used to come by a.c sleeper or by flight of 45 minutes..what?? flight from cochin to bangalore..ok....looks could be deceptive....
then came a cocky businessman and his two directors..but he could be justified in being cocky because his two 'directors' were probably younger than me..so he needed to flaunt his knowledge of anything ranging from the pros/cons of reliance versus restofem,to the cities of kerala,to the kerala political situation and an utter disregard for other peoples sensitiveness...his comments like "we give the foreigners undue importance...." " they manage with 2 pants and 2 underwears for 2 months" etc when he very well knew that the foreign couple could speak and understand english,did not go down well with the other people i can be sure of..
well the foreign couple were sure minding their own business...and i am sure someone somewhere will make sure that that cocky businessman eat his words...
but the journey presented me with a beautiful moment in the end..when we got down at bangalore that old mans daughter,son in law and grandchildren came running towards him and the grandchildren were hugging that old man and calling him muthacha..a scene of happy welcoming which u get to see so much in movies but so rarely in real world..hope that showing of love was for ever and not menat for a visitor who comes and stays for 2 weeks and then automatically becomes an unwanted hindrance in their homes...anyways that moment will always be etched in my mind..that smile on that old mans face...

A Second look

2005-03-31T09:30:00.000-08:00

Second day into my blog life and looking through my page, i suddenly wonder why i had i written "Decent looking fellow" in my intro. Do we indians have a fixation with our looks? I have been through enough indian blogs to realize that there seems to be at least a slight indication of "looks" given by the blogger. Is is something that is unconsciously inherent in us? The desire to let the unseen world know that we are not bad looking? Strange. Have half a mind to go and edit it.

Happiness...(One of my wanderings into the philosophical realms)

2005-03-30T16:45:00.000-08:00

What is happiness?
“Man, it’s such a simple question”, you say.
Oh yeah? Just try figuring out the answer. How much time you want? 5 minutes? 1 hour? 1 day? 1 year?
Let’s not go further. By this time, if you have really whirled and twirled the question in your head, you would have come to realize that happiness is something which cannot be pinpointed.
So, if i give you a million dollars, would you be happy. Probably or probably not. Why so? Well, the million dollars wouldn’t do too much good if u had a terminal illness will it?
Aha..i can hear you saying "that’s not fair".
"Assuming i have a healthy life AND if u give me a million dollars, i would be happy", you say.
Right, so u have a healthy life and a million dollars, BUT have some relationships that are "disturbing"(for lack of a better word). Probably you are one of those self-made people who were blessed (quite deservingly) with the knack of getting ahead in the world, but the maker was not quite generous when it came to the relations that he(or is it a she? good topic for a debate, lets do it later!!) gave you.
So will you be happy?
So, there is no such thing in life that once we get it, we will be happy.
I had a talk with a person once and he told me "When i stopped for a moment and looked back at my life, i realized that i was always postponing the happiness by saying that i will become happy once i have this. Later when i achieved it, i would yet again tell myself "I would be happy when i get this" and then again postpone it". So i decided that this was not taking me anywhere and decided to do something about this" (What he did regarding this is not relevant to the topic).
This was something which every one of us does without really being aware of it.
When i was doing my 10th standard, i thought i would be happy if i scored a good percentage. Later i thought i would be happy if i managed to get into one of the best engineering colleges in the country. Later, i thought i will be happy if i managed to get placed from my college in a good firm. Later, i thought i will be happy if i got married to my girlfriend. Later i thought i will be happy if i managed to move into my dream company.
The fact of the matter is that, all these above things did happen, but the question remains "Am i happy?"
I NOW realize that happiness is a state of mind. Its up to me to decide whether i want to be happy or not. If i choose to be a brooding person, whatever good things comes my way, i am not destined to be happy. But if i tend to look at the positive side of life and make up my mind to be happy RIGHT NOW, then, life becomes so uncomplicated and light.
Trust me. Its a choice really, whether to be happy or not.

2005-03-30T12:30:00.000-08:00

I had a friend in my school,
Whom i thought to be the best.
We used to share secrets and
Were not concerned about the rest.

When i became a little older,
I came across a new group.
My old friend faded out,
An occassional mail or a call.

Friends come and friends go,
Some of them stay for a while.
Some of them stay forever and
Fills your life with sunshine.

Yours Truly

Havent we all felt this at least once in our life?

2005-03-30T11:45:00.000-08:00

One of my favs!!

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.