The Ravi C Gems series - Part 1

This is a small compilation of some of the wittiest one-liners to have escaped the mouth of Professor Ravichandran (or RaviC as he is known in WIMWI circles), who is one of the sharpest profs I have ever met...He has a great philosophy to his life and work too. The following is a collection by some enthu faccha last year of some of the statements he made in Operations Management class. I will be following up this effort with some of the sparklers I remember from CCCS class this year as well...

On students pretending to go through their material to avoid being cold called:

“You people have a nice way of avoiding me. Whenever I ask a question ... you start looking in your books, as if you are very busy...!”

"Looking away..Like newly married brides"

"This is not your contention but confusion and at best you can have confusion coz it’s your birth right"

“I am stunned by your intellectual inferiority .....”

On the projector being out of focus:
"This is unfocussed...just like the PGP program"

On the Toyota case, workers apathy to the seat problem,

"Here you are jumping up and down like an intoxicated monkey, and you go to the workers and he shrugs and says,' is there a problem?'"

The one in which he explains cycle time:

"Cycle time does not mean that you take three women and expect to have a child in three months, it will still take nine months"

RC: What would you want? Freedom or Air-conditioned Buses?

StratStud Student: Both.

RC: You cannot get both. That would be like having a mistress and a wife. One in Manila and one in vanilla (some other place actually). Or one in Chennai and one in Delhi. That will be like Blitz Company. There will be special orders and large orders...

StratStud Student: That's a philosophical question.

RC: There is nothing philosophical about it. It is very materialistic.

On Foreign Students

"... They are real engineers....unlike the Indians!" (Referring to foreigners
In context of the exchange students I guess...)

On self:

"I am a sadistic monkey, u know"

" when my son was 3 years old... yes he actually once was even though he thinks he was born at 15"

“Have taken the responsibility of getting 2 sons into this world...Not that it takes much of an effort..... With some people it might be a problem. But with me.. It didn’t take much effort....... its not very difficult. Provided you get the chance”

In a session on scheduling:

RC: so what should blitz do to correct its schedule?

Student: Sir, it should improve its scheduling policy.

RC: You know, now that’s like going to a doctor and telling him "I'm not well" and asking him what should I do and the joker says "Get well".

On being distracted by a student chewing on his gold chain:
"You are the bottleneck of my attention.....You take my attention away from the class....I should really do something about this"

On a nervous student dropping things from his/her desk and not daring to move a muscle to avoid attracting attention:

“That’s why housekeeping is important in JIT. If your workspace is organized and things are running smoothly you don’t attract any attention..”

On feeding a bottleneck:

“like a pregnant woman constantly craving for something to eat before having a baby??”

Height of cold call: A poor classroom theatre attendant coming in to serve tea in the wrong CR:

RC: “Arre yeh kya humarey liye hai”?

RC helping himself to a cup of tea: “See that’s what happens when you outsource without proper information sharing.”

On averages/mean as a performance measure:

Student : Sir, the queue length is 2.25 people.

RC: 2.25 people? Doesn’t make sense does it?

Student : err…ummm…

RC: That’s like the census of India saying that the average family size is 3.2 people. That means a woman in the family is almost perpetually pregnant. Correct?

On asymptotes:

Student : “The function gradually approaches 0…”

RC: “that’s like saying that asymptotically we all die…”

“Isko koi samjhao bhai”

On a student missing from class and the class rep unable to locate him in the dorm:

“So what should we do now??.. Let’s organise a party with band-baaja and go find him…

…That’s ok, I’ll lead the party since I have nothing better to do. So who’s coming with me??

On the same AWOL student:

RC: “…WIP gone missing”

On scheduling conflicts:

Student: “It arises because of shared resources.”

RC: “You mean like Princess Diana or Draupadi..?”

On asking a student for an example and him/her giving an inappropriate one:

RC: "Which is your favorite LP problem?"

Student : "Adani Wilmar"

RC: "Adani Wilmar?!?!? Was it an LP problem or a transportation problem??"

Student: "sir there we had to find the optimal route from the ports to the factories by an LP formulation"

RC: "it's like I ask you for your favorite bird and u say mosquito....it has wings and it can fly....so it's technically correct!!!”

Dunno the context:

”Vishwamitra had zero WIP...he had compressed cycle time a long time back”

Ranga

Confluence of emotions...

Confluence 2005 the event is over. Done. Finished. Khallas. Khatam...whatever.

For me, being involved in an event of this scale and complexity was a first. It has taught me many lessons, brought me closer to many people and probably taught me more about management than the entire first year course. It has been a great journey so far and for me, as financial controller of Confluence 2005, a lot more work remains. But as of now, it is time to celebrate.

Confluence 2005 has also caused a few reflections in the muddied pools of my mind and played with a wide basket of emotions. I plan to put them on blogosphere later. But the most important takeaway from the event, I feel has been the extent of pride I have taken in my job as head of Finances and the co-coordinator of Corporate communications. This I believe will stand me in good stead wherever I go and whatever I take up.

Lesson for me: "Take pride in excellence and you will go a long way towards achieving it"

Ranga

Update

Not good, not bad. We did a decent job in our presentation today but probably failed to get the insights into the case that our prof would have liked us to have had. But still, I rest easy on the comfort that I had given a lot of thought to the case and was very thorough with the case facts.

Still, today's experience made me realise that there might be a lot of hard work that goes into some task but finally, the quality of the presentation may not have anything to do with the hours of work that goes behind its making. Our presentation reflected genuine effort, but probably clarity in terms of the course learning could have been better.

This also taught me another important lesson. Trying to second-guess questions might be a good defensive strategy but it will not help me achieve excellence. The true happiness from doing things well will arise when it is a path of self discovery. No amount of external teaching or argument will help me get the joy I derive from self learning.

Ranga

My day of shame...

I am feeling terrible today. One of our group work reports got trashed by the very professor who I regard as my role model for his philosophy regarding his life and work.

It is simply eating me up. But then, that is why I am writing this blog. I am not a student of IIMA for nothing. I have taken the pains to work hard to come into the best b-school in the country. I have pride in my work and that is the way it will stay.

I am reminded of a famous incident in Hindu mythology where Sage Vishwamitra persevered and persevered in his spiritual pursuits till Sage Vasishtha himself hailed him as "Brahmarishi" (Vasishtha was the sage who humiliated King Kaushika by proving that the might of the King's army is nothing before a sage's spiritual powers - for more details refer this link)- it is up to me to figure out how I am going to impress the professor again, but figure out I will.

Ranga

Of influences and writing styles

I recently got to know that one of my friends had started a blog. Now, this guy is one of the most well read people on campus and is the coordinator of the LSD (our literary activities club) as well. I came back to my room and immediately started going through this blog. It was amazingly crisp and coherent. Just reading it made me ponder over what I sought to achieve when I started off this blog.

My blog has seen varied phases - from severely emotional to contemplative to descriptive alternating in no particular order. But there was something about Shubhang's writing style that touched a chord in me. It made me get goosebumps all over. More importantly, it set me thinking...

There are a lot of things happening around us. It is up to us to assimilate their effects and use them for self improvement. The first step in that however, is reflection; reflection on what has shaped our lives so far and how each day is shaping our lives further. Reflection needs to be, but often is not, followed by resolution - resolution to make a difference to our lives and the lives of those around us. Often we are in a state of inertia, content with our humdrum daily lives unless something drastic happens to us. Resolution is something which has an unbelievable capability to stir us into action. What made me admire his blog the most was the way he managed to connect various incidents to some deep reflections he had been having or was spurred to have. It was also apparent that for him, the link between reflection and resolution was very clear.

Resolution is one thing, action is another. Neither can exist on a sustained basis without each other. Where I and many people fail is in converting resolution to action. Action generates consequences which tests resolution to the fullest and in turn, leads to further reflection. It is a fitting tribute to one's character if one manages this cycle with regularity throughout one's life and makes a difference to the lives of those around.

I could clearly see the seeds of such a character in Shubhang's blog. Time will prove me right or wrong I guess, but whatever happens, I continue to read on and admire...

Ranga

Festival of lights - Part 3

In response to a request for Vix's rocket pics, here they are. A few more added too...

Heaven is green in colour - Part IV

It has been a very very long time since I updated my Blog with something written.... my previous post and the current post being two halves of the same literary effort - a direct result of the suppressed writer in me bursting at the seams, so here goes...

The Madgaon station was a modern station and was very elegantly designed - not like your usual early 1900's, about-to-collapse-at-any-time kind of station but large and imposing and most importantly, clean! We halted for nearly half an hour there but yours truly was disappointed to find that they sold absolutely no newspaper worth reading (for someone who has been brought up reading the Hindu, the TOI doesn't even remotely come into that category - I can write more about this but the transgression would be unwarranted).

Soon we were off again, chugging into the western ghats with only the grey of the clouds above and the green of the valleys and plains below to give the train company. Outside, not a soul could be seen for miles and miles. Not that we were looking out all the time though. We spent almost the whole of the morning, afternoon and evening playing cards, cards and more cards.

Ah the Game of Cards! There is an interesting topic if ever there was one... what is so fundamentally attractive about manipulating your fortunes against the laws of probability is something I am unable to figure out. Of course, not being good at playing any of these card games makes me unfit to comment on the charms of finding that one have a full hand or can go trumps or whatever. So I will leave that to the judgement of people more suited to the kind of mental make up that card games require.

I remember playing a game called 'Donkey' which required me to keep track of how many cards in each suit have been played. Shashu, our resident playing card expert and Suhas, another of our experts, could keep track of it with the most amazing ease... But I dont know why it was so difficult for me to have an abacus kind of setup in my mind that would increment the cards played of each suit as and when dealt with. Hmm...something worth pondering about. I need to have a more 'shoe-box' kind of mind that can compartmentalise information simultaneously and process them in parallel.

Bottom line is that I was absolutely hopeless at it and it was the most remarkable piece of luck that I was able to manage to avoid becoming Donkey all the time. To add to my already extant confusion, I was constantly distracted by the mind-numbing scenery that was whistling past my window pane - green here, green there, green everywhere; the only places on the ground that were not green were a muddy-red-brown -- pools or streams of water caused by the incessantly glorious rains that accompanied us throughout the journey.

Of course, the ghat section was another treat to the eyes. It was either raining or had just recently rained throughout the section. We were faced with majestically rising rock faces on one side coloured a deep, glistening grey and an undulating slope dying away into a river or a stream on the other... stunning to say the least. Of course there was the added attraction of seeing the train screech into a tunnel every few minutes.

There is something fascinating about trains entering and exiting tunnels which I am unable to put into words. I remember reading many Enid Blyton books in my childhood where she describes trains whistling and screeching their way through tunnels and, predictably enough, describing situations where kids get into and the most amazing tight spots imaginable! At the end of it all, I was thrilled every time we entered a tunnel and even more thrilled to look back and see the last bogies of the train trail us as we exited. I had taken a couple of pictures of the train coming out of the tunnel (posted them sometime back) and the pics looked ethereal to say the least!

Well, time progressed and we kept playing, eating and admiring the scenery over and over again. soon it was becoming dark and we finally broke off cards for the day, had dinner and settled down for a lazy night. Again, yours truly started nodding off by around 10 PM, much to the amusement of Kela and Shashu, who were actually talking to me about my phenomenal capacity to sleep off at a particular time irrespective of what was happening around me. There have been incidents of that sort in my first year here so far. But second year seems to have taken its toll on me. I find that I am able to stay awake easily till 12 -12.30 AM nowadays. After that it is a bit of a fight though :)

Again a strange thing regarding my sleep patterns is that I find it much easier to stay awake when I am amongst friends, chatting away on arbit things in life. I also find it easier to stay awake when there is a team deadline near at hand and I have to work under severe time pressure. There is an adrenaline rush to be had from trying to structure your thoughts quickly to meet the deadline! Nothing like having your favourite music playing in the background at that point of time either!

The next day dawned bright and fine and we were nearing dear old Amdavad...we still had two plus hours of waking time to be spent inside the train and I will give you four options as to what we might have done
a) play cards
b) play cards
c) play cards
d) play cards

:D

Finally, we landed up at the station and after an uneventful but bone jarring journey in a mass of metal that the owner has the gall to call an 'autorickshaw' we made it in one piece to the campus and life in the fifth term was about to start in full swing for us...

I wrote something about wanting to avoid commenting more on the TOI for it being an unwarranted transgression....but as it panned out, the entire blog entry has been a series of such deviations. Can't help it though. I simply had to let myself go today....

Blogging off,
Ranga

Heaven is green in colour - Part III

This time round, my journey was well provided for in terms of home food. So was Kela's. Mothers are so optimistic about their children's eating capabilities! As a result, we knew that we did not have to worry about food till we reached Ahmedabad, a day and a half later.

Our train was supposed to start from Shoranur at 10.15 pm or so. Wonder of wonders, it managed to start from the station at 10.30! My first surprise came from knowing that a couple of our batchmates were also travelling in the same coach. The next day, I also came to know that the train was choc-a-bloc with my Mallu batchmates. Still, we sojourners in AS1 stuck together like glue for the rest of the journey.

As expected, there was no significant activity till next morning and yours truly had a dreamy night, filled with banana leaves, floating teacups and oddly enough, cell phones. The four of us got up next morning and decided we would pass time by playing cards. Now, I suck at card games but gamely decided to give them a try, for want of a better way of spending group time. Soon I realised that my self awareness was 100% accurate, as I kept dropping count of the cards that had done the rounds. Some memory trick is desperately needed, I think.

My concentration on the game in hand was no way helped by the stunning scenery that was on show through the window. Often, I used to let my jaw drop at the greenery outside and lost the trend even more easily. It was highly exasperating for my fellow players, but I could not help it. I was like a man in the desert who had just sighted an oasis. This was literally true in my case, with Trichy experiencing a tough couple of years monsoon-wise. The greenery was nothing new for my Mallu friends, but then, a fish doesn't know the value of water unless it is actually out of it!

It was quite early in the morning when we entered Goa and halted at a station called Madgaon. Very quaint location. I could see a few old buildings and a church as well on the other side. Goa is famous for its multitude of churches and I could see some of that famous charm in this one's architecture too. The best part about the trip was that we were travelling through some parts of the country that were pretty much devoid of even a remotely urban settlement. All we saw on our way were thatched / tiled roofs glistening wet in the drizzle that was our constant companion throughout.

Festival of lights - Part 2

More pics coming soon at a blog near your desktop! Please keep watching this space for more details...

Once again, Vix Rocks!!!!!

Festival of lights - Part 1

The other parts of my Kerala - Konkan - Ahmedabad Trip description are still in the WIP (Work in Process stage). But I simply could not help posting some pics of what has been the best Diwali I have ever celebrated!

The following is a fitting tribute to the festival of lights, celebrated Wimwi Ishtyle...
All Pics courtesy Vix - our resident photographer!

Heaven is green in colour - Part II

It was the 3rd of September and time had come for me to leave Trichy (ahh...dear old Trichy - my hometown! The best part of this visit was that I actually saw WATER flowing over the Cauvery riverbed probably for the second time in 5 years).

I was to board the Trivandrum-Jodhpur express at Shoranur (Kerala), for which I first needed to go to Coimbatore. I took the Jan Shatabdi express, which by the way, is one of the better trains running in Tamil Nadu, if not in India. The seats were extremely comfortable for one of my inconsiderable bulk, though I wonder whether some of my more dimensionally challenged acquaintances would have liked them. Still, the train took off and I was there, curled up with a nice book in hand, lazily reading through and also enjoying the greenery whooshing past me. In fact, a part of the journey was along the banks of the Cauvery and it was a very soothing experience, almost preparing me for the paradise that was about to invade my senses.

Fourand a half hours and a nice home-packed breakfast later, I was in Coimbatore waiting at the railway station waiting for my dormmate Kela (I really don't bother remembering his original name nowadays :-)) to come and pick me up. And come he did, and we zipped off to his home in his Dad's car. I was again treated to a nice lunch there...the pleasures of home-cooked food are beyond description. And, as befits a sumptuous lunch, I dozed off only to wake up an hour later, realising that we were late and had to rush to catch the passenger train from Coimbatore to Shoranur. However, we managed to reach there in time only to find that the all the available seating space was already occupied. We were optimistic about our chances of getting a seat and decided to rough it out initially by standing - not a big deal for people who have been in Mumbai Metros, but still wholly unexpected.

For those who haven't been to that side of the country, Tamil Nadu is by and large an arid region with little rainfall coming its way past the ghats of Kerala. And Kerala (it markets itself as "God's own Country" - I see very little reason to disagree :-)) is like the repository of all the greenery that iss missing in Tamil Nadu. During our train trip, we could literally see the physical disparity between the states materialising before our eyes. There we were, chugging along some plains with half-arid, bushy vegetation one minute and the next minute we were transported to another world where teak forests and eucalyptus trees ruled supreme. We were thinking that the person who drew the boundary sure had a good sense of humour. I think he must have been a Keralite. Even the rain gods seemed to recognise the divide. There was one bridge near which there was a board with the writing "Welcome to Kerala" on one side and "Welcome to Tamil Nadu" on the other. I swear only one side of that board was wet.

The journey into Kerala continued and we were admiring the scenery, and polishing off some groundnuts in the meantime. Finally, some benevolent souls alighted at some station and we managed to squeeze into a luggage rack on top of one of the seating areas. We even managed to get a couple of cups of tea on top. It was an awesome experience to sip tea, chat and chug along. Soon, Shoranur beckoned...

Heaven is green in colour!

I, along with some other batchmates, came back after the fourth term break by rail from Shoranur(in Kerala) to Ahmedababad. The journey was through the Konkan Railways route, which undoubtedly is the most scenic railway route I have had the fortune to travel by so far. I will attempt a description in words in my next post, but first I am posting some pics taken

Mean reversion

My previous two posts have been more like diary entries than anything else. Why did I get this urge to post these entries over the last few days? My feeling is that I needed to find an outlet to my 'misery' (only a comic misery mind you - exams don't really matter in the second year:-p).

Of course, other people are there in campus with whom I can share my experiences, but then during exam time, everyone is busy mugging away and there is a natural urge to cut to size something that is looming large over me. Writing provided a natural outlet for me. Once the exam fever has passed, I am back to wanting to write on things more abstract and not related to mundane day-to-day life. Still, I want to get back to writing on some things that I think about.

Once in a CRI (Careers, roles and identity is the actual expansion, though many people call it "Child Relief and I" :-)) Class, I professed a desire to be a writer of comic fiction a la my idol PG Wodehouse. Of course, any idea of comparison is blasphemous. But the thought that one could give happiness to others by providing them a world of fantasy and escape from the drudgery of life was an appealing one. Others soon asked me whether I really meant it as I often come across a person who is serious and incapable of cracking jokes.

My favourite means of expression is written and spoken english and my attempts at humour generally originate from the use of words in a rather literal sense. Still, people tend to label my attempts as Dry jokes or Poor jokes or, as one would put it concisely in Tamil, "Kadi" jokes. Well, I really can't help it. It makes me happy to keep cracking such jokes :-).

What is it about humour that is so appealing? Is it the escapism that it provides? Maybe yes. But fundamentally, it seems to stem from the need for humans to feel good about something. Also, there is nothing better than bringing smiles to people's faces and making jokes is one way of doing that. So what if my jokes are 'kadi' jokes?

English, by the way, is a language which seems to be ideally suited for comic twisting of ordinary words and situations. Of course, I don't know the nuances of most other languages to say whether they are better or not. Still, it can be very elegantly used to represent many comic ideas.

Anyway, enough on language. Here is a line from one of PGW's books - "Ring for Jeeves", if I am not mistaken, that goes like this...

" It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A.B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't."

Can it get better than this?
PG Wodehouse rocks!

Blogging off,
Ranga

God save me!

One end term exam till date and this is without doubt the worst I have ever done inside an exam hall. I mean, this is even worse than some of the utterly miserable performances I put up in drawing class in school (not that I am bad at drawing, by the way. I can draw sketches and cartoons as good as if not better than the next man :-))
...the saddest part is that I can't even say I have learnt something from the course. Still, there are four more exams and three more submissions to go in the next three days. Time to pull up my socks and start fighting again!

After all, I would not have come to this place if I had not fought tooth and nail for the things that mattered to me the most. Guess this is one more time that I have to go to the trenches...

I really wish I were more mathematically oriented though...

Blogging off in a very very sombre mood...

Ranga

PS: I have deliberately omitted to mention the name of the course, though more than 2/3rd of the WIMWIans would know what I am talking about...

When will the term get over?

ugggggghhhhhh!

Life in the fourth term has been one never ending series of submissions. I remember reading somwhere that if one unravels the DNA o f one's body and lays it out end to end, it would be long enough to encircle the world thirty times or something. Well, if I started laying out all the waste paper I have churned out in the name of submissions, I am sure I can do the same thing as well!

Our seniors had warned us that 4th term is not as easy as it seems and that we may have to put in a lot of hard work. But we dismissed them thinking it was all bunkum... we were sadly mistaken.

Still, this term has provided some learning opportunities, for which I am grateful. What I am more grateful for, however is that the term is coming to an end in around 5 days and I will be seeing home sweet home again soon!

I pray to God to give me the strength to last out the last few days of this nightmare term...

Blogging off
Ranga

Infobranding

Time I got back to blogging :)
I have taken up this course called "Seminar on Brand Management" in the fourth term - a very very interesting course. We learn a lot about the core of a brand, positioning of a brand, a product etc. to ensure that it has the mindspace of the customer... I have been meaning to write on this topic ever since the term started, but never got the opportunity to put pen to paper, or, more appropriately, finger to keyboard!

So here goes..

The world around is is dominated by brands. Every item of consumption is branded in some way of another. Branding is an effort by economic agents to ensure that the customer has some way of identifying their products.
I wasnt too good at micro economics in my first term, but anyways, in my opinion, brands survive in an imperfect market. All real world markets are characterised by asymmetries, not only of information, but the ability of people to understand and interpret that information. That is why there is hardly anything like a 'perfect market'. I cannot categorically state that such markets do not exist, but logic tells me that humans are far from attaining 'perfection' :-).

To come back to the topic, brands are convenient and effective ways of exploiting asymmetries of information to make a consumer prefer one competing product/service over another. What is the objective of a brand? I would think it is to create a perception in the mind of the customer about various attributes of the product(s)/service(s) that the brand is representing. It is a symbol, a signal that hopes to either tear away the veil of asymmetry or profitably sustain that asymmetry to the advantage of the brand. Does the second option sound unethical? To my mind, the answer used to be a definite 'yes'. But then, I have come to realise that the value a person derives from consuming a product is actually a function of perception. If that person can be made to feel positive about using a particular brand, the brand should take all efforts to perpetuate that perception. The concept of value based pricing instead of cost plus pricing owes its origins to this sort of thinking in all probability.

Once an association is created in the initial stages of a brand's life, it often tends to get associated with the product being endorsed by the brand. But as time goes by, the brand feels the need to outgrow the product or the category it belongs to. Then the brand managers try to change the public perception of the brand by dissociating it from the product or category to which it was wedded to initially, giving rise to the concept of brand extensions. But the effectiveness of an extension depends substantially on how the new message sought to be communicated is related to the original message. A radical deviation in all probability will bomb in the market place. This also offers interesting insights into how perception can be altered in increments.

Moreover, the kind of communication strategies followed by a brand varies across the life cycle of the brand ( which may be different from the life cycle of a product - in fact, a successful brand outgrows the lifecycle of the product which it started off with). I could start off again on this, but this blog is getting too long already. So, maybe I will keep this for a later post.

Blogging off
Sitan

Birthday Celebrations

Some photos of my birthday, which was on July 13 are attached...this post is going to be on the tradition of birthday celebrations at IIMA. It is one of the most memorable activities for an individual on campus. Traditions are mostly common across dorms, but each dorm has its own unique variation of the birthday tradition.

The common aspects to most of the birthdays are:
1 Birthday bumps
2 Blowing candles on the birthday cake
3 Having a "guest of honour"(from the opposite sex :-)) to smear birthday cake on the face of the birthday boy/girl
4 Shouting "Kat lo, Kat lo" to drive away invitees from other dorms to let the dorm birthday activities continue in secret ;-)
5. Some other activities inside the dorm which would be sacrilege to reveal :D


Our dorm (D 21) banned the concept of birthday bumps last year, after one guy got his posterior kicked black and blue and could not sit comfortably for days on end...
Instead, we have this habit of throwing the birthday boy high into the air three times. The old campus dorms are restrained from doing this because their birthday celebration zones have ceilings :-).
This is followed by the guys lifting the birthday boy bodily, make him spread out a la superman and rush towards the guest of honour...then they take him towards the cake and encourage him to blow the candles from as far off as possible.

Currently, my description is sounding more like an extract from a cookbook recipe, but I really can't find words to describe the feeling of celebrating a birthday here. I mean, how do I describe the feeling when I am thrown into the air? It was as if I had hit orbit and wouldl never see terra firma again :-).
How can I describe the feeling of being wished a happy birthday a hundred times over? Probably satisfies the third level need in Maslow's hierarchy and gives me a positive 'stroke'. It may sound childish, but I like it and that is all that matters :-). Being the centre of attention is something that most of people crave for and this offers ample opportunity for the same...

Enough now... am getting a bit boring.

Btw, My next post is again going to be on information asymmetry, this time in the context of marketing and brand management...

Till then, Bye
Ranga

Come to the Point

I have often been accused of sending the entire class (and sometimes the prof ;-)) to sleep with long CPs (for the uninitiated, CP means class participation). It is almost a natural urge in me to contribute in class, having done that all my student life. At that point of time, however, my contribution was not incentivised in terms of marks/grades being awarded for CP. In fact, it was a welcome relief for most of the class and a valuable learning opportunity for me.

But here, things change. The same activity carried out when there are incentives attracts a different response. Something which represents an intrinsic motivation to learn is sometimes construed as an attempt to gain better CP grades. Which is strange, to say the least. It is amazing how 'economic' incentives to an activity change people's perception of those indulging in it.

Anyways, a lesson I have had to learn from my first year here is to make my communication more precise and structured. Defining my context every time I speak may be useful for a layman, but I find that it is mostly redundant when I address such a bright gang as the one found here...

Whether I have fully achieved that objective is for other people to say, but from my side, the key learning I have had is regarding the "punch" I need to pack into my statements if I want an audience...

One more entry coming up soon :-)

Joys of Velladom...

Ages and ages since i visited my corner on the web for an update. But then, popular demand has shaken me out of my inertia :-). So, yours truly is back with a vengeance. Expect a series of posts in the next few days!

The first and most omnipresent fact of life in the second year is the arrival of the first year students a.k.a. facchas a.k.a the lowest form of life on earth. Mind you, having gone through the grind myself I pity those who have the (mis)fortune to become PGP 1's at IIMA and know that the pathetic creature called a faccha metamorphoses magically over the summer training period to become a butterfly-like tuccha :-D.

Most of a tuccha's initial time after coming back from summers is taken by giving gyaan to the facchas, encouraging them with blood-curdling shouts of "Muggo facchon muggo" and making them yearn for tucchadom with idyllic songs such as .. "Aish karne walon toh aish hi karenge, PGP 1 saare mug mug marenge.." ;-).

But then, there is more to life than that... a tuccha's happiness just begins when he sees an over-enthusiastic faccha scurrying back to his dorm after a lighthing quick lunch to prepare for one of the seemingly endless array of quizzes in the first year. His life is also about movies, music, food and more importantly, friends! He socialises like never before and finds himself spending inordinate amounts of time in pure hedonism. "How can he spend so much time doing timepass?", one might wonder...

To start with, class preparation is quite different from the first year, where he had to mug all sorts of subjects - liked or disliked - because he needed to participate in class discussions. In the second year, he takes electives of his choice and prepares for class if he really thinks it fit... this frees up his time like nothing else. Moreover, it is more of a 'spiritual' liberation for the tuccha from the harassments of erstwhile facchadom. When freedom exists in spirit, time is but a relative concept :-))))).

Extracurricular activities also gain more importance and prominence and it is a major task to coordinate participation in various such activities. Basically, life in the second year is more balanced and eminently more enjoyable than the first year.

Sleep, however, is something that is often compromised... I guess I have mentioned something on sleep in another earlier entry. One of my friends has rather appropriately described sleep as Stress Level Elimination Exercise Plan :-)... couldn't agree with him more. Lack of sleep is a terrible thing after a while. I really wonder how many I-bankers manage to do with so little sleep in their lives ...

I have rather let myself go in this blog. I really don't wish the reader to get bored of my endless ranting on this topic...so I'll stop

Bloggin' off
Ranga

Zen and the Art of Strategy

Ufff! It has been one boring week at work here... All I have had to do is to wait for people to meet me so that I can get my project going once more. Here the people are willing to talk to me, but only when they get time, which is rarer than my getting my full 8 hours of sleep at IIMA. In the meanwhile I keep thinking of ways to pass time.

One common way of doing that is introspection. I have learnt many new things during my summer stint here and the free time I get allows me the opportunity to reflect on my experiences here. I want to put them down, but am unable to assemble a cogent paragraph now. Maybe my philosopher's block will be removed soon in another entry.

Another excellent way of passing time is for me to read books once I get back to the hostel. I am currently reading a book called "Alexander the Great's Art of Strategy" by Partha Bose (formerly of McKinsey and Co.)... a very interesting read...however the author does sort of spoil the excellent historical parallels he draws and the effect he creates by summarising key learnings from each chapter towards its end. Overall, though, It is well researched, well written and offers some memorable and interesting insights into the minds of various characters from history and politics. As always, the foundation of a good strategy is a clarity in terms of goals and the key to good execution of a strategy lies in thinking through the pros and cons of the decisions and, like a good chess player, playing out the consequences of each decision under various circumstances in order to achieve the desired effect during execution.

Talking about decisions, if there is one thing that is absolutely critical for arriving at an 'informed' decision, it is the avaiability of relevant and reliable information. Often we are faced with either an overload or a sickening lack of information. But in today's world, the former case is more common. This is where a clarity of goals helps bring clarity of thought, which is so crucial to separate the chaff of data from the wheat of useful information. I have mentioned clarity of thought in some earlier posts as well, I guess, but probably this context is different. There are interesting parallels between the strategies of Alexander and Lord Hanuman in the Ramayana-Sundara Kanda. Both people had admirable clarity of thought. Both had amazing presence of mind and the ability to convert thought into action and the enviable ability to foresee what exactly the enemy would do/feel. A difference, however, lies in the fact that Alexander had to communicate his ideas to his army and commanders whereas Lord Hanuman had no such requirement. hmmm...this has set in train an interesting line of thought. Maybe there can be more on this topic soon.

Another thing with the information that floats around so freely is that very few people actually bother to assimiliate it and use it to their advantage. The differing abilities to assimilate leads to what is now famously known as "asymmetry of information". Often, exploiting asymmetry of information is often the very basis of modern commercial existence. Joseph Stiglitz's pioneering work in this area has often led me to ponder on the dynamics of information flows. Not that I have read his works directly (yet), but I have come across his references in so many contexts that I have come to form a deep admiration for his work. Information asymmetry crops up in the oddest of places and converts life into one eternal search for more information. More importantly, the communication process of humans is often so inefficient that it is one hell of a fight to extract information through conversation/questioning.

Take the role of a consultant, for instance. He has to approach the client with an open mind and needs to figure out what the client wants purely through skilful questioning. The problem arises when the client is not able to assess the extent of knowledge possessed by the client and vice versa. Each party sets out with a set of assumptions about the other's state of knowledge. Often, overcoming the barrier created by the initial assumptions is the key to a successful engagement. There are probably millions of instances of such assumptions caused due to asymmetry of information, but I can think of only one now... be sure that I will blog my next interesting instance of information asymmetry faithfully :-).

Enough for now, rest in next

Ranga

Sunny days...

Back to blogging after a looooooooooong time now... I have been having a very interesting time in Mumbai, both in and outside of work.

First the travel experience...yours truly got into his first tussle with an over-enterprising autowallah as soon as he landed in Mumbai; not bad though...managed to escape unscathed. Otherwise travel in the Mumbai suburbs has generally been a breeze ( I travel against the direction of the rush (in trains)). On one occasion however, I managed to get myself into a squeeze (literally) in a Dadar-Sion train - OH MY GOD! That experience showed me the limits to which a given confine could be crammed with tons and tons of human mass. As individuals, we lost our identity into that throbbing mass and were probably crammed tighter than the proverbial sardines. But then, what is Mumbai without its crowded trains?
If there is one thing to be said of Mumbai's public transport, it is its unparallelled efficiency. Distance here is measured not in kilometres or miles, but in minutes. This is a tribute to the train system which has made large distances seemingly inconsequential...believe me, if I had to travel these distances in my home town, I would have spent at least 4 hours travelling each day.

Now for the accomodation here...we have landed ourselves in one of the best pieces of real estate in Mumbai. We are staying in Wilson College across the road from Chowpatty "beach" at one end of the Marine drive. Note the usage of quotes for the word 'beach'. Chowpatty is one of the dirtiest, shallowest and most feeble beaches (in terms of waves) I have ever come across. However, there is at least a semblance of a breeze to keep us nightwalkers happy. In addition we get a lovely view of the queens necklace in the night (For the uninitiated, the queen's necklace does not refer to a museum piece, but to the lights lining Marine Drive).
As far as the infrastucture goes, the accomodation is pretty decent. But it cannot hold a candle to the awesome infra we have at IIMA. Like one of my friends, I will be a lot happier to go back to IIMA this time round. We never realise how much of a good thing we are getting unless we see something worse :-).

Coming to the all important topic... FOOD! (yes, you saw it right...Food IS the most important thing, especially for thin people like me). There are a few places which we haunt on a regular basis...one of them is called Crystal. It is a small, dingy looking restaurant overlooking the beach. The food they serve is very good though and there is always a queue lined up at the entrance. The crowd that we get outside is pretty much our age as well. It is unbelievably hot inside, especially if you are unfortunate enough to get a seat on the mezzanine...once, after dinner, I came out knowing exactly how it feels like to be a tandoori roti. Despite this , we enjoy the food there. I wish I could be like Sidin and embark on an enthralling narrative of my gastronomic adventures, but words fail me. Ahhh! If only I could describe how it was to have cold kheer trickling down my throat when it was around 45 degrees Celsius inside that hell-hole, or how it was like to roll delicious aam-ras around in my mouth before letting it sink into one satisfied stomach.
Lunch is generally had at office itself and it is nothing to write home about. But we interns generally have a lot of fun chatting with each other and generally forget about the food. I was out of office for a while during which I had to hunt out some decent eateries. Fortunately, it was not long before I found an Udipi Hotel serving some edible south Indian food. That gave salvation to my wandering gastronomic soul.
My adventures with food have been as interesting as they have been varied...I guess I can write more about this in another blog.

Let me now turn to the company I work for. My project is a forward looking strategic project, which was the last thing I expected in a Corporate Banking Division of the world's largest financial services provider. But, having been here for a while I realise that there is a lot to be learnt from doing such projects. The interactions with people and the relationships you develop form the basis for successful networking in the future. More importantly, there is a lot more information stored in the minds of people than you can google for in a lifetime. Talking to people gives one varied perspectives on the business, the industry, the job and much much more... it has been a thoroughly enjoyable time so far and a lot of credit must go to IIMA for the way it refines our social skills... (some may disagree with this statement, but to my mind, IIMA and its courses have taught me to guard my tongue, which I feel is the most essential part of social behaviour).

This blog has become quite long already...so rest in next. Expect some musings on friendships, physical exercise and movies there.

Blogging off
Ranga

PS: Btw, the title just refers to the "Summers" project I am doing...the weather is typically humid and not all that sunny here :-)

The last lap...before the next race begins!

The first year is drawing to a close... I am feeling deeply introspective right now. I in fact wrote a looooooong blog describing just how deep this introspection was...but due to some quirk of fate, it got erased. I guess the reader will never know what all I had written in that blog... but then I am not sure anyone will be interested in it either :-).

Anyway, to round it up, it has been an exciting and eventful year so far with one more set of exams to go... I am just tightening my seatbelts for one final roller coaster ride on the wheels of academic fate in the first year. Ready to go to the trenches and battle on !

Rangarajan

Anonymous Feedback

Feedback is an important process of self realisation and improvement. In terms of our ID (Individual Dynamics) learning, it helps us reduce the size of our blind self.

We have this concept in the institute where people are requested/allowed to give feedback to others in their junior/senior batch, through a particular website. Unfortunately, the feedback is allowed to be anonymous. Some people reveal their names out of their own volition, while some do not. Then the very idea of feedback gets warped in the sense that people who dare not say some things to your face seek the cover of anonymity to settle their petty grievances.

It seems a rather cowardly thing to do to take cover under this system and use it to vituperate against people with whom they have a grudge. This thing has happened with a few of my batchmates and it leaves a very unpleasant feeling with absolutely nothing constructive to work on for the person concerned.

When we did our course in SBC (Spoken Business Communication, for the uninitiated), we were taught some of the characteristics of good feeback ; it was supposed to be direct, controllable by the recipient of the feedback and so on. But this system of anonymity seems to bring out the worst in some people and defeats the purpose itself.

Mind you, I am not saying that this system is all bad. Not at all. In fact, I have received some valuable feedback myself and it has set me thinking on the right lines (hopefully ;-)). The only thing is that it acts as a convenient cover for some people which they use to the fullest.

The natural reaction for someone who receives unpleasant anonymous feedback is to become defensive. But once we realise that our reactions to such feedback is the first thing preventing change, we can hopefully overcome this initial reaction and try to use the feedback to mould our responses.

Again, if the feedback is just a set of gaalis, then it is just a waste of time to even think about it... hard though it may be. Well, I guess I am a die-hard optimist anyway and believe that there are positive things to be gained from every experience. This feedback idea is a novel one as far as I am concerned, at least in terms of its implementation. Whether this will stand the test of time, however, remains to be seen.

Sitan

Diversified portfolios and principles of Human Resource Management

I have been meaning to write for a long time now. But all I have been able to do is to get a few draft headlines. I keep thinking I will come back to them but that time never seems to come. Anyway, here is one thing I am itching to write about.

We were talking about valuations of companies in our Finance II class. The issue was whether a merger would increase the value of companies if there were no synergies to be had. One student recalled an earlier lecture where Ajay Pandey said that in an efficient market, people will not pay more for a diversified company because they can themselves hold a diversified portfolio anyway. Of course, this discussion assumed the absence of synergies. This discussion sort of set me thinking on tangential lines. Human Resources is one of my better favoured areas of study (ask anyone in my class and they can tell you :-)) and I applied this theory to principles of human resource management to come up with an interesting analogy.

When we receive our initial undergraduate education, we are trained to be specialists in our respective fields. Be it computer engineering or medicine or accountancy, the narrowness with which we deal with our respective areas of study is astounding. Once we go into organisations as specialists, we are valued for the specialisation that we bring in.

Then there are these people who decide to go in for doing a post graduate degree in management. This is where things become interesting. When we exit b-school and go out into the job market, expectations of the recruiters change dramatically. Of course, we are initially expected to work in the areas of our touted specialisation ( or, if the companies aren't that smart at sensing our aptitudes, for some area where they deem fit to put us in). If the companies think they need a different specialisation they will hire a different person. In that sense the HR process resembles efficient markets. But later, we are valued for the synergies we bring to the workplace; synergies in terms of our ability to integrate knowledge from various functional areas, synergies in terms of being able to get along with people and so on... This value is much harder to estimate and often companies spend a huge amount of resources trying to get the right person for the right job.

However, there is no denying the fact that, early on in one's career, be it as a techie or as a management student, the recruitment market behaves as if it expects little synergies from diversifying our initial portfolio of knowledge. But later, those very synergies become crucial for managerial success and significantly influence the money and respect we get. Basically, time can improve synergies depending on the extent of integration we achieve within ourselves. This again is a function of our willingness and ability to learn.

On a more personal note, I would like to achieve the abovementioned synergies as quickly as possible. But I wonder whether the job market would value me for that...

Bloggin' off
Sitan

Bye Bye Winter

I feel so sad... just a few days after my post on wintry nights et al., I am forced to say goodbye to the wonderful Ahmedabad winter. The night temperatures really dipped a week back, but now they are rising again. I can no longer feel the rush of a cold breeze on my skin when I walk out in the open (and by the way, that does not mean that I have become numb, just that the temperatures have gone up :-)).

Well, It was good while it lasted. This is probably the best winter I have experienced ever. Pretty natural too, for one whose ideas of winter are as equatorial as it can get. For a person who has seen too much of the sun at its resplendent glory, this winter was pretty much near nirvana. My last winter was in Mumbai (when at work with the Taj Group). Pretty okay types winter we got there. The night air tended towards chilliness but nowhere near the sustained effect created by the Ahmedabad winter. Well, I guess all good things come to an end.

Talking about coming to the end, I think I am running out of ideas for this entry... have another entry lined up though.

So that's all for now.
Sitan

Of Wintry nights and Cold Baths...

WOW!

The Winter in Ahmedabad is simply amazing. We are into February but the winter shows no signs of lessening. The cold wave started off in November sometime I believe. I heard this winter was bad even by Ahmedabad standards. But then I have found the whole experience extremely enjoyable. Very strange, considering that I have spent most of my life in a place where the lowest it ever comes to is around 20 degrees C.

It reminds me of another entry that my friend posted sometime back... totally unexplicable behaviour from a couple of equatorial sojourners. But then, I think it might have something to do with the fact that we enjoy the cold weather so much that we like feeling colder than the normal Northie. Even then I find it strange while I go to class boldly flaunting a short half sleeve cotton t-shirt while many of my friends come in leather jackets, full sleeved sweaters and what not... maybe it has something to do with the cold water baths I take every morning.

It is a totally unique experience to have a cold water bath in the middle of winter. I mean... imagine this situation. You just get out of your bed (muttering curses under your breath) at 6 am in the morning. After some time, you dare to venture out of the comfort and warmth of your room to get ready for classes. You quickly towards the bathroom and open the shower tap. Brrrrrrrrrr..... It is like being pierced with a thousand sharp needles all at one time. But then your body gets used to the temperature and you shake of your sleepiness faster than a dog shakes off water off its back. Believe me, once you get over that first cold drenching, it is a totally refreshing experience.

These bathroom exploits of mine have been the subject of many an amazed look from my dorm mates :-D. Somehow, that makes it even more fun. Most importantly, the coldness of the bath makes the winter air much more comfortable...

Too much on this already... better stop before the reader gets cold feet!!! ;-) (and stops reading.)

Sitan

500 Hits...Oops No! Make that 600

I planned to write an entry marking the 500th visitor to my blog, but then the hit rate seems to have gone up quite a bit over the past few days. So, I am forced to write a commemorative blog on the 600th visit to my corner in the web...

To the reader who has endured my random mumblings over the past few months, I can only say: "Wow! You have got some patience :-D"

This habit of mine started in quite an inconspicuous way, soon after I entered the Hell Hole, otherwise known as IIMA (Make no mistake, however: all references to Hell are only related to academics and the rat race for grades...But in all other ways, you will not get a better place to spend two years of your life).

What started as a hobby in the first term became a sort of passion in the relatively chill second term. Then, even when the supposedly nightmarish third term started, I could not let this habit go... It offered me a strange sense of peace. Maybe it was because I was always attracted to the English language and writing seemed to be a sort of outlet for my emotions. I never had the habit of writing a diary. But then, things change when you are in your room all the time and the only thing you get to know really well is the computer monitor. This blog then became my outlet - a vent to my frustrations, a place where I could share my happiness, my thoughts on life and its foibles in general and on life at IIMA in particular. It still continues to serve that purpose...

This blog has caused me to introspect quite a bit. And the lessons I have had to learn have been very valuable. Generally, I find that this place teaches to strike a balance between the various priorities that we generally tend to have in place all at the same time. There was a time in the first term where I thought I would not have any time at all apart from mugging. But as time progressed I realised that I was spending my time invisibly in many ways which could be controlled. That is when I realised that we all have the time for doing all the things we consider important. Later on in life, we will also find that we have to strike a balance between work and personal life. This is where the pressure put upon us by the institute comes in really handy. All I can say is, I am glad I came here.

I have also become a big fan of Sidin's blog ever since I came here. I was inspired by it. I even had grandiose plans of making my blogs as delightfully witty as his. However, after a series of botched attempts at creative witticisms, I decided to stick to my (rather ordinary) style of writing. Another lesson learnt... Never try to imitate others. Be what you are and people will appreciate you (read my blog, in my case :-D)

Anyways, this blog also made me realise that I would be happiest doing the things that I like. It doesn't matter what other people think of me. So, I'll keep blogging, like it or not.

Finally, to the persistent reader, this is my message:
"Read on, O ye reader, for thou art getting an insight into my soul"

(And even if the reader decideth that there art more worthwhile things to do in this world (as surely there must be :-)), I'll keep blogging away in my corner of the web...

Cheers
Sitan

The Innocence of Childhood

When we grow up, we lose an important part of ourselves - innocence. That pure, childlike quality is soon lost as we are forced to fend for ourselves in the real world. To children, the world always appears black and white. Things are very simple - good/bad, hot/cold, like/dislike, joy/sorrow all are simply interpreted and experienced. But this process becomes more and more complex as they grow up. There was a line in the movie "Courage under fire" where one of the actors says "Imagine what it would be like to be like kids - never bothering about the consequences of their actions".

As children, many of us are not required to bother about the consequences of our actions. There are always their parents to guide and direct them. And as far as satisfying wants goes, their main source of satisfaction is provided by the parents. Effectively, they structure their interactions in such a way that the parents form their window to the world. Hence all behaviour needs to be concerned with getting the right reactions from them. Later on, they realise the need for social interaction. They find that they need to behave in certain ways with certain people to get their things done.

Soon after they enter adolescence, things become more complex. They have to start thinking about reactions and counter reactions of a lot more people now. At some level, there must be some manipulation of these behaviours in order to achieve their purposes. The sad part is that everyone has to indulge in this sort of activity to continue leading a life (unless the life is one of Sanyasa) - be it the Chief Executive of a large organisation or a farmer struggling to see where his next meal will be coming from. Soon they realise a need to put up a 'front' to others in interpersonal relationships. This leads some to wonder, "What is the purpose in my behaving in the way that I am?""Am I really achieving something worthwhile by doing all this?""How do I define something as being 'worth it'?" and many more fundamental questions.

Most of us spend a lifetime looking (unsuccessfully) for the answers and continue leading a complex life in the midst of innumerable interactions with ourselves, other people and the environment in general. There are instances where we come across incidents/lessons that make us immensely uncomfortable both with ourselves and with others. We try to analyse them within the limited framework of our experience and try to make 'sense'. There nearly always comes a time when we decide to choose to stick to or not stick to a particular path/course of action. What makes us pick one over the other? I'm not really sure, though I believe that upbringing plays an important role in our choice.

As far as I am concerned, I was always taught to be honest and truthful in all my dealings with people. This feeling has entered my blood in such a deep manner that I feel the prick of conscience every time I put up a 'front' while dealing with someone. It makes me really uncomfortable and I feel that nothing can be worth hiding your real feelings. After coming to IIMA, however, I have realised that interpersonal relationships are not always about saying what you feel or think. Impulsiveness has to be controlled and a rational and more mature approach is called for. Actually the transition has been pretty tough and I am not sure that I am fully 'there' yet. But I am trying and will persist as well. Dealing with the "Is it worth the effort?" question is the toughest thing though. I am trying to find reasons that justify this transition - every one seemingly more plausible than the other. Well, I guess the journey will continue till I reach a stage where I am comfortable with the new me...

Rangarajan

Time to get Chaotic...

It is "Chaos" time at IIMA :-). It is a inter collegiate cultural festival with over 50 colleges participating from all over the country. Most importantly, it gives all of us here a welcome relief from the rigour of everyday studies. I thought I would dig up the origin of the word "chaos" from the net. Here goes:

Chaos is from the Greek word Khaos, meaning "gaping void". There are many explanations as to who or what Chaos is, but most theories state that it was the void from which all things developed into a distinctive entity, or in which they existed in a confused and amorphous shape before they were separated into genera. In other words, Chaos is or was "nothingness." Though some ancient writers thought it was the primary source of all things, other writers tell of Gaia (Earth) being born from Chaos without a mate, along with Eros and Tartarus. Then from Gaia came Uranus (Heaven or Sky) which gave us Heaven and Earth.
Chaos has been described as the great void of emptiness within the universe from which Eros came and it was he who gave divine order and also perfected all things. In later times it was written that Chaos was a confused shapeless mass from which the universe was developed into a cosmos, or harmonious order. For instance, Hesiod's Theogony says that Erebus and Black Night (Nyx) were born of Chaos, and Ovid the Roman writer described Chaos as an unordered and formless primordial mass. The first Metomorphoses reads, "rather a crude and indigested mass, a lifeless lump, unfashioned and unframed, of jarring seeds and justly Chaos named."
The Roman writer Ovid gave Chaos its modern meaning; that of an unordered and formless primordial mass.

- an unordered and formless primordial mass - that is a fairly accurate description of the state of mind of the people here during chaos time. This is a platform on which people shed their inhibitions (and "prohibitions" ;-)) and have a whale of a time.

We had a concert by the band "Euphoria" last night. It was great fun to see the audience sway in one mind to the vocal wizardry of the lead singer. The day before we had sterling performances by Aslam Sabri (with his Qawwalis) and Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia(or so the people say) . Yours truly skipped the Qawwalis bcoz he is as familiar with the nuances of the Hindi Language as a crocodile is with vegetarianism.

Overall, the festival does a lot to bring colour into IIMA, which is otherwise pretty dull and drab on most non academic fronts. Our seniors say that this will be the best time we can have at IIMA. Maybe it is true. I guess I have to find out :-))...

Sitan

Systems

We had an EEP -II class (Economic Environment and Policy) sometime back. Our professor was talking about the phases of colonisation of India and the underlying economics at play. He painted an interesting picture of the situation existing at that time and also explained the underlying economics in various phases of colonisation. That sort of set me thinking. It was fascinating to explore the interactions between various institutions, people and interests.

It also was a lesson in trying to get the "big picture" from the details. It requires an ability to sift through large amounts of detail and discerning patterns, trends and interactions from that detail. It also requires immense concentration, an ability to keep stacking data in the mind as and when it accumulates and an ability to run over that data at regular intervals. Sounds tough?

Well, it is. But as managers, it will be critical to balance and manage the interests of various stakeholders while arriving at a decision. The truly successful managers will be the ones who manage to strike that balance more often than others. Probably the one thing that matters more than everything in that scenario is something that will help us integrate all that information in our mind. It is something that I have written about earlier as well... Common sense- and that too in no mean measure.

The systems approach is what we need to take back from this institute to the workplace. What it really means is that I need to have Clarity of thought (remember my post on Lord Hanuman earlier?) so that I can focus on the problem at hand and arrive at decisions that hopefully strike the right balance between various interests that are often conflicting.

God Save Me!
Sitan

Three Cheers for Ajay Pandey!!!

Our Finance Professor from the second term is back to teach us again... he is THE BEST professor that I have ever had in a finance/ accounts related area. Whatever be the area he teaches, he manages to throw some useful insights and conceptually relate whatever has been taught so far to the current discussion.

Finance was always my favourite subject even at the CA level. Now it has become more so, thanks to the professor. I am not alone in this feeling either. Most of my classmates feel that way... Prof Pandey has a huge fan following (including many members of the fairer sex :-)).

Another thing I realised today was that I waste inordinate amounts of time. Take this blog for instance. What I could probably type out in 5-7 minutes takes me a full 20 minutes because I am not able to organize and put down my thoughts lucidly. It is an immensely painful experience. One may think, 'What is the big deal with 10 minutes ?' . (At least that is what I do :-)). But then it is these small intervals of 5-10 mins each that really eat up your time...It is actually waste your day one minute at a time...How do I discipline myself to cut out the distractions and focus on my work? That is the challenge I set myself now...

Gotta Go
Sitan

Belonging

I have had a whale of a time this holidays. My parents came over and spent time on campus. We did not do too much really. Just sat around and kept talking, laughing and watching movies. It was one of the happiest times of my life. It was the first time they had come to campus and they really loved it. I was happy too... I could share my happiness with them and feel really positive about coming to this place. ( I feel positive about this move otherwise as well, but then there's nothing like sharing your happiness :-))

It was when they left that I really started thinking about how important it is to belong. The feeling that there is someone to care for you and likes you is invaluable. We had this class in IGP(Interpersonal and Group Processes) where we discussed the concept of "strokes". Strokes are stored stimuli which people go over to feel good (or bad) about themselves. I realised that my family gives me the biggest source of positive strokes. They accept me for what I am and are happy for me. That is really a huge source of self confidence and self esteem. This self esteem is reflected in our interactions with other people. Self esteem in turn also helps emotional stability and a maturity in dealing with emotions. The list of positives seems endless.

I consider myself lucky to have such a nice set of people around me- be they friends, relatives or family. It makes me feel good about myself. And this message is for the reader:

Make an effort to reach out and share your feelings with someone you truly care forand who truly cares for you. Be it the kind shoulders of your parents or the gracious arms of your brother or sister (or your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse :-)), you will find that doubles your happiness and halves your sorrows. Well, that seems pretty good arithmetic to me !

A fairly sentimental post this... but then again it gives me a positive "stroke" :-))

Sitan

The Joys of Slumber

Third term has begun here at IIMA. This is supposed to be the toughest term in the first year. And believe me, when they say it is tough, they mean it! We have loads and loads of work this time and hardly any holidays worth the name. Even the public holidays are compensated by classes on saturdays...

I had a whale of a time in the term break. The first thing I did on the exams getting completed was to get as much sleep as possible...Ahhhhhhhh! The joys of slumber! The exquisite sweetness of a refreshing sleep is not matched by too many pleasures in life :-) It was a treat to be able to get up totally refreshed in the morning and read the papers at my own leisure instead of hurrying through my activities like an automaton. But then, too much of sleep too becomes boring after sometime. What is really needed is a nice balance of work and sleep. Sleeplessness for a while is fine (especially if there is some important work to be done). Foregoing sleep is really worthwhile only if you get some overwhelming reward for doing so (and don't mistake me - a feeling of achievement is also a good enough reward; I am not talking about monetary rewards alone - in fact I don't think money is worth losing sleep over )

The thing with sleep is that you tend to crave more of it, the more you get when you have a sleep debt. At that point of time, it does not really refresh you. Quite puzzling in fact. I would have thought it would be good to grab whatever snatches of sleep you could when you are sleep deprived. Doesnt work that way though... Sometimes it makes more sense to keep that sleep debt at bay...

It is a very confusing thing actually. But I guess in a place like IIMA, there has to be some sort of compromising on sleep if you are to get your job done. The balance between the additional work done and the reduction in sleep is the tough thing though ...

Sitan