Autobiography of an Unknown WIMWIan

A recent PJ

2009-05-02T22:39:00.001+05:30

What do you call a japanese teacher who impresses you with her "girl-next-door" attitude?

Ans : Pado-San :)

Kerala - God's own country: Part 3

2009-04-12T16:53:00.006+05:30

We set out for Aleppey (Alappuzha for the Mallu purists) at dawn the very next day (Sunday, 14th March 2009). This time round, Adrian, a friend from the client side came with us as well. We used the same taxi we went to Athirappilly in, thanks to the marvel of technology that is the mobile phone. The mobile phone has done to commerce what Twenty20 has done to cricket - instant gratification guaranteed!

By the way, the taxi driver had a rather memorable name - Romeo, but as far as Mallu names went, one felt it was significantly lacking in imagination and that sense of debonair abandon that mallu parents have while inflicting some unsuspecting kid with a name worth regretting! Romeo can count himself lucky not to be saddled with something like "Lijeemon Samuel", "Bobbilikumar Thettachan" or "Pearlymol Vadakkeparambil". People who know me are apt to say, "You are one for commenting on others names, Rangarajan Vijayaraghavan", but believe me, I mention these names out of a purely kindred spirit :) . For a much better description of South Indian names, readers are directed to a much more famous blog post!

All said and done, Romeo was a good driver, though more of the "What the racetracks of Monza lost Kochi has gained" school of driving than the "Slow and steady wins the race" school. Effectively, he ensured that we reached Aleppey in about an hour. We saw some interesting sights on the way, including a brokerage firm with a name designed to combat the worst of recessions:

Morgan Sachs International Brokerage House Limited

(now that's original!)

We also saw a juvenile elephant, looking rather contemplative, being transported by a tempo and about a million bridges over backwaters along the way. We reached Aleppey at about 7.15 AM and read a sign-board that said "To the beach", much to our surprise. While our research had thrown up plenty of results on the backwater cruises, no one ever seemed to have mentioned the beach. Still, we headed to the beach, with minimal expectations. We were in for a surprise - not only was the beach quite large, but clean, picturesque and empty as well! Here's a little sample

Btw, all the above pictures and any other ones I may post about the Aleppey trip were taken by Abhay from his Nokia E70 camera (thanks to my camera resting safely with the Canon Care Center by then) - now that's a truly versatile phone! Of course, due credit to Abhay's photography skills as well :)

Adrian, Abhay and I had a good time walking along the beach, watching crabs, clams and other forms of marine life as well as a really funny bird family running around at the edges of the beach looking for a tasty snack. It was hilarious to watch them running spiritedly after a receding wave, with alert eyes on the lookout for the next meal, and running back hurriedly as the next wave came in. Better seen than described though!

We then had our breakfast at a nearby restaurant and soon left for the backwater cruise. We reached the backwaters by around 10.30 and spent some time looking around the area for some houseboats.

More about the houseboats in the next post :-)

Kerala : God's Own Country - Part 2

2009-04-05T08:50:00.004+05:30

Abhay and I looked around for a suitable place for a skinny dip and a couple of deliciously cool dips in the water and some pictures later, we soon made our way from near the top of the waterfall through a paved pathway leading donwards to the base. We made our way through a clump of bamboo to reach a bunch of rocks at the base (towards the northern edge) of the falls. There was a rope barrier towards the end of these rocks to prevent people from getting into the water but we had good fun, hopping towards the edge nimbly and soaking in the scene close-up.

The view from the base was MAGNIFICENT! The spray was so strong that we could feel ourselves enveloped in a wet, white curtain some 50 feet away from the actual falls. And to boot, it sounded like we were inside an aircraft engine. We headed a bit further away from the falls to get a more central view (instead of the side-on view that we had been getting so far). We found a nice big rock that promised a fantastic front-on view and quickly clambered up - we were not disappointed. When you get a view like this, there ain't much more you can ask for!

But the joy was short lived. A septuagenarian dressed in khaki gestured frantically at us from the river bank and ordered us to climb down. We were apparently beyond the borders of the limits set by the rope barrier. We took a couple of hasty pictures from the top and made our way down. But it was going to take more than an old watchman to drag us away from such vantage points. We soon found another rock to perch on (this time within the rope boundary) and enjoyed the cool spray that was on offer for quite a while. Then, we called it a day rather reluctantly and headed back up, enthralled by what we had experienced

We soon headed further upstream, to a place called Vazhachal (again on the same Chalakudy river), known for its waterfalls again. However, these were not as much of a spectacle as the Athirappilly falls and we started walking further upstream in search of better sights and sounds. And it was in the course of this search that I had the misfortune of losing balance and falling into the water - camera, mobile phone, watch and all! The camera promptly coughed and died, whereas my trusty Nokia got all fogged up but worked feebly. Thankfully, the watch was still fine. A rather damp end to a fantastic morning I thought. Gloomily, Abhay and I headed back to Kochi after letting these gadgets dry out in the sun for a while. We reached back at around 3 pm

After having some lunch and going to give my camera to be fixed at the nearest Canon service center, we decided to head out to the harbour and try our luck with a sunset cruise. Turned out, we weren't that lucky! It became overcast in the evening and tourists cancelled any cruise plans they might have had and occupied themselves with the simple joys of sipping tea by the harbour. Reluctantly, we were forced to head back that evening, disappointed.

Things took a turn for the better that evening as we made plans to head out to Aleppey the next day. After doing some research and consulting with Adrian (our resident client-side tourist in Kerala :)) , we hit the sack, preparing ourselves mentally for another early morning start and looking forward to the backwater experience. As we were to find out, a truly unforgettable experience was in store.

Rest in next

Kerala : God's Own Country - Part 1

2009-03-22T21:08:00.006+05:30

Had the good fortune of being sent to Kochi on a project recently. While I have been to "God's own country" twice before (once to Shoranur to catch a train back to IIMA - you can find details about the trip here; and once to Kovalam on a company Offsite) , this is the first time I stayed there for an extended period. And now I am in a position to say that the epithet is richly deserved :)

For starters, the client office was right next to the harbour and I got to see some fantastic sunsets day after day from the window. Here's a little sample

Naturally , could not just stop at just soaking in the sights and sounds of Kochi alone. So, called over another colleague, Abhay [due thanks to Abhay for taking the above pic!]and we went gallivanting through Kochi and some neighbouring places over a wonderful weekend.

First came Athirappilly Estate, a sleepy estate around 70 kilometers from Kochi full of lush bamboo forests, rubber plantations and palm/coconut trees but perhaps better known for its waterfalls. Mani Ratnam has an ongoing love affair with these waterfalls, by the way, having used them in two rather memorable scenes in "Dil Se" [Jiya Jale] and Guru [Barso Re]. And if I may say so, Mani Ratnam seems to ba a man of good taste :D.

Our enchantment started with the approach road to Athirappilly itself - winding, serene and rather oddly, lined with newly built bungalows [thanks no doubt to the booming Middle Eastern economy and the sizeable remittances from "mellus" in the "Gelf"]. Soon afterwards, the houses faded out, to be replaced by more lush plantations (including the quintessential banana plantations) and the odd toddy shop along the way.

Shortly, we reached a 'check post' - our entrance into Athirappilly estate. It had rained there and the smell of earth that had recently slaked its thirst was palpable. The road started climbing again and the twists, turns and mini-bridges that are the hallmarks of Ghat Roads began to manifest themselves eagerly.

We soon reached the entrance to the falls, got ourselves entry tickets and hurriedly made our way downhill towards the falls. The distant roar of the cascading waters and the coordinated chirping of the birds in the forest fed us a primal feast of natural music that left us asking for more. [We were quite early to get up and push off to Athirappilly as well, so not too many people were there at that time, making the atmosphere even more serene]

We reached the falls and were greeted with a sight for sore eyes. There was a surprisingly large quantum of water flowing for this time of the year (March), augmented no doubt, by the recent rain. The entrance to the falls from the ticket counter actually opens out close to the top of the falls, where you can see the Chalakkudi river eagerly heading downhill, only to find a little wall of rock about forty feet tall to be navigated. And navigate it does, with great glee. The river breaks into two main sections and empties itself into a couple of dents in the rock face barely more than 10 feet wide and thunders down the wall of rock in a grand cavalcade of furious water droplets fighting for space in a race to reach the bottom first.

More pictures and details to follow :-)

A picture is worth a thousand words

2009-02-01T20:34:00.000+05:30

I caught some amazing pics on my way back from Addy's wedding in Kolkata (for those who don't know, he is my batchmate from IIMA, a fellow CA, one of my best friends and most importantly, a PJ-maker par excellence :D) - The route back from Kolkata to Mumbai took me through Nagpur and Nasik. These pics were taken somewhere after Nasik and near a place called Igatpuri, famous for things other than stunning sunsets! Nevertheless, some of the scenes I saw could have been taken directly from a picture postcard.
Now the silhouette here, with the sun blazing a fiery streak through the trees and lighting the entire horizon in a blaze of yellow, orange and red is my favourite of the entire set of pics I took. Notice how the clouds add an ethereal daub to the brilliantly lit sky.

The Iron Fort - Part IV

2008-10-27T13:31:00.005+05:30

[continued from the previous post]

Lohagad is an imposing fort when you approach it. The ramparts are in excellent condition for a structure over 300 years old and the only signs of real erosion are on the steps leading through the fort, where water has created its own pathways over the years.

The arches enclosing the doorways still look remarkably sturdy and one can still see the holes in the walls that must have housed the barrels of many a cannon in the days gone by. Pretty impressive, we thought. We were left licking our lips in anticipation as to what would be found on top of the fort.

There we were mistaken. There was NOTHING of note on top of the fort, except a decrepit, dome-shaped mausoleum
and a bunch of rather aggressive monkeys which used to chase people carrying bags! The first time (with Vix), the monkeys snarled at us and made a move towards our bag but we beat a hasty retreat. The second time we were not so lucky. Some of us had moved away on our respective journeys of exploration, leaving behind D and E with the bags. The monkeys had a suitable target and laid their theiving hands on our luggage in the hope of snatching a tasty snack. Fortunately D and E along with a few others managed to scare them off.

Soon afterwards we beat a retreat, a lot tireder than when we started climbing. The sun and humidity had taken their toll. A hasty lunch at a wayside restaurant had us rejuvenated for a bit and we made our way back to Malavli station pretty quickly, helped along the way by welcome bars of chocolate.

Our adventure drew close to an end as we neared the station. However, a small twist in the road to come. There was no train due for the next 1.5 hours, so we had to take a couple of rickety autos and drive all the way to Lonavla :-)) - the route to Lonavla from Malavli was scenic as well so we did not really mind the bone-rattling drive. Along came Lonavla and a couple of chikki packets and half an hour later, we were on our way back home, tired but satisfied with a day well spent.

And oh, by the way, this post has been such a long time in the making that yours truly decided it was better to have a terse post and finish off the series than have no post at all :)

The Iron Fort - Part III

2008-10-26T20:34:00.005+05:30

By the time I am completing this write up, the trek that we went on already ought to be a bit of a distant memory. The negligent kid in me feels like flinging down the pen and paper and walking off in a huff, miffed at his own inability to string together a write-up in time. The long forgotten trait of discipline! Hmph!

But then, the more I think about it, the more I realize that this was a trek not easily forgotten. The memories stay with me as green as a freshly watered leaf. So here goes.

The Fork in the Road:
We set off pretty briskly from Malavli station, stocking ourselves up with water, chocolates and chewing gum at a quaint provisions store on the way. The group soon split into two: 'the front-runners' and 'the back-markers' - Political propriety prevents me from saying who formed part of which group :). So let me make an ABC case out of it.

A,B and C were the frontrunners whereas D and E brought up the rear. It was quite hot that day, unlike the first trek which had a nice spray-like rain cooling me and Vix on the way. The fact did not go un-noticed and E told me, "Ranga! It is so hot! You should have asked us to bring sun-tan lotion!". Ah well, given that it had been raining the last two times I came here, forgive me for my oversight.

I thought, the weather has the uncanny ability to change the fortunes of many a man, more renowned than me. Take Hitler for instance. It was like the leader of his Russian front troops coming up to him on one fine winter morning and telling him "My dear man, You said Siberia would be nice and breezy at this time of the year and it is 40 degrees below zero - you should have told us to get our fur coats along!"

Hitler would have done two things - shrug his shoulders expansively and then shoot the Russian Commander. Given my placid nature, I thought of doing just the former :D

And shortly, after a rather sweaty climb with many breaks in between, we reached a fork in the road. Well to be more accurate, it was more like a "T-junction" on top of a mound connecting two hills. There were forts on either hill, the one on the right being Lohagad, and the one on the left, Visapur. Since Vix and I had gone right and reached Lohagad easily last time round, we took the left turn hoping to conquer Visapur this time. The fort was clearly visible - the end was nigh, or so I thought.

Our turn to Visapur did not start on the right note, with the track taking a downward turn as soon as we started off... but the hope was that it would rise again. And rise it did, though not as sharply as we'd have liked. It kept winding on and on and on and soon we realized that we might be taking an entire chakkar around the hill without going any higher at all. Serious self doubt began to creep in and the entire team was beginning to blame me for taking them on such a tortuous path. Of course, a 35 degree sun beating on our backs did not help the state of mind either. "Turn back" was the common refrain, but we plugged on for a short while afterward.

Thankfully, our decision was made relatively easy by an almost-impassable stretch of slush and mud replacing the road we were walking on. There we took a halt and decided to beat a retreat. The amount of flak that I had to take for 'guiding' people onto this route was unbelievable! When Vix and I went to Lohagad, we consulted this local stripling, who told us at the T-junction that the right path led to Lohagad and left to Visapur. And those directions I followed, in full faith. Never knew that my faith in the local would turn around and bite me in the shin like that.

I could imagine the gang's state of mind though. The Israelites would have felt the same of Moses, who if, after a long, tedious crossing of the sea had turned around and told them, "Look folks! Here is a desert. Now I would dearly love to take all you guys to the promised land, but you have to make do without water or food for the next twenty years" - not the most charitable of feelings I s'pose.

But then, all the grumbling aside, I was with a team of great sports and they decided to follow me up to Lohagad - we were back to the T-junction in just over 20-25 minutes though it had taken us nearly 45 minutes to traverse the same distance towards Visapur. Good progress made! Now we headed towards Lohagad, again taking a few breaks along the way.

Thanks to our diversion, a gang of trekkers, clearly led by some Team building/Event management kinda company had joined us (we had overtaken them right at the base of Malavli). Now this would have been fine, had the over-enthusiastic trekkers not had an inclination for shouting out "Har Har... Mahadev", every five minutes. We felt like pushing them off a cliff for their chants.

We kept plugging on and many muttered curses, tired steps and determined stair-climbs later, we reached the summit of Lohagad fort.

(rest in next)

The Iron Fort - Part II

2008-09-07T09:45:00.006+05:30

This write-up should have come some four weeks back if it had to have any reasonable accuracy. But as has been the long continuing tradition, laziness got the better of me.

In the meanwhile, however, I have managed to complete another (un)successful trek to Lohagad, leading a pack of office junta - Varun, Arunav, Rhea Shaama (Nishant Kumar being an absentee) - the "(un)" part coming in because we ended roughly two kilometres west of where we were supposed to end up (i.e, the adjoining Visapur Fort)! But, what the heck... trekkers can't be choosers! In hindsight, I comfort myself by mouthing some lines from "Yun Hi Chala" ... (Movie: Swades)

...जो राह तू चले अपने मन् की
हर पल की सेब से मोती ही तू चुने
जो सदा तू सुने अपने मन् की

At the end of the day, we had a great time during both treks and that is what matters!

Before I get into the narrative, let me have a preliminary digression to give some relevant travel information for the avid trekker.

Destination: Lohagad Fort (9 km away from the nearest railway station, Malavli)
Route: Mumbai (Dadar) - Lonavla - Malavli (by train)
Mode of transport: Train
Start time: 5.50 Am Indrayani Express from Dadar - scheduled for halt at Lonavla
Arrive at Lonavla: 8.05 AM
Catch the local train from Lonavla to Pune - 8.15 AM
Reach Malavli (Next station after Lonavla) - 8.20 AM
Start Trekking: 8.30 AM
Reach Lohagad Fort: 11.30-11.45 AM (at a fairly brisk walking pace)
Explore the fort and have lunch in the meanwhile: 11.45 AM - 1.30 pm
Start descent: 1.30 PM
Reach Malavli Station: 3.45-4.00 PM
Take train to Lonavla: 4.50 PM
Reach Lonavla: 4.55 PM
Catch train to Mumbai: 5.30 PM
Reach Mumbai: 7.45 PM

Now, since our two treks were largely similar in nature for the most part, I am combining the narratives into one.

The red-eyed mornings:

Let us take some time out here and contemplate the life of a sparrow. Have you ever thought how early a sparrow has to get up in the morning to start hunting for the unwitting worm? Have you thought how animals have to make do without snooze buttons? Have you contemplated how boring it must be to be up and about at the crack of dawn? Must be immensely difficult, no?

Even for me, a person used to an "up-and-about-at-6-am" ritual at one point of time in the distant past, getting up at 4 am for a trek on a Saturday morning can be a pain, me having lost the 'early-rising' habit long back. Additionally, since I had spent a fair few late nights during that week at work, I was cursing myself under my breath for having such a hare-brained trekking idea when I got up.

The first time round, Me and Vix managed to get up in time (just about) and left for Dadar Station from our respective homes at 4.40 AM(!). The second time was more of an adventure, as I became the "Mr.Alarm Clock" for all of my team-mates, giving all of them some wake-up telephone calls, yet getting another half hour of snooze time in between! Still, I managed to leave for Dadar station by 5 AM

A tale of three stations:

Dadar station, as many people would know is probably THE busiest station in all of Mumbai. The amount of hustle and bustle there at 5 am is unbelievable. Serpentine queues, busy porters, chai stalls doing roaring business, bewildered travellers trying to navigate a labyrinthian scheme of foot overbridges and platforms (for the uninitiated, there are multiple platforms with the same number in Dadar station - apparently due to two separate sets of railway lines passing through the same station! Be careful when you ask a fellow traveller to meet you at Platform No. 4!!). If ever there was a setting designed to make one feel like an ant, this is it!

Now, given that Vix and I had left together, the trip to Dadar station and the attendant navigational bloopers were much diminished. The journey to Lonavla too was uneventful, with the only interesting incident worth recounting being better described by the following picture.

Things, however, were different the second time round.

Arunav Tripathi and Shaama were the unfortunate victims of the 'dual Platform number' confusion. There are two Platform No. 4's in Dadar station. I did not know this fact and had asked everyone to assemble on Platform No. 4 at 5.30 Am sharp. Shaama managed to overcome the confusion in time and reach PF. No. 4 by around 5.35 or so (thank God for cell phones). Arunav Tripathi, of course, was not so lucky. Not only did he come a bit late to Dadar station, but also got lost in the maze of foot overbridges in his attempt to come to the ill-fated platform.

The Indrayani express puffed by 5.50 Am (dot on time!) and was scheduled to depart in the next couple of minutes, closely followed by Arunav Tripathi huffing and puffing his way onto the platform, and that too ticketless! Better late than never though... we hurriedly boarded the train and it chugged out of Dadar station shortly.

After the usual cloak and dagger deals with the TTE, we managed to extricate Arunav from his ticketless plight and sped away on our serene journey to Lonavla - beautiful scenery sped rapidly to greet us. The refreshing smell of the fresh earth was a welcome change from the smoggy pollution of Mumbai roads. The change of scenery from Kalyan to Karjat (stations en route to Lonavla) was stark - dank shanties and stinking streams, nay rivers, of sewage giving way to verdant fields, idyllic thatched houses and gurgling silvery brooks.

The way from Karjat to Lonavla was even better, with steep valleys fading away into the depths on one side and gorgeous waterfalls greeting us with their spray on another. (This experience was better the first time when I went with Vix, thanks to it raining intermittently then). The train too was fast, just halting at three stations en route to Lonavla.

We reached Lonavla by around 8.10 Am, greeted by swirling clouds and fine drizzle the first time and with warm sunlight the second time. But oh man! Lonavla station sure is DIRTY! One look at the tracks below and you would want to puke! The station is dirty even by normal Indian standards, with the track just being one unending mass of plastic litter, paper bags, carelessly thrown chikki packets... grrr.... when will the Indian public change its mindset?

Anyway, me and Vix managed to grab a breakfast at the station, and, unknowingly, missed the 8.15 local to Malavli in the process. We had to wait for another couple of hours for the next local and occupied ourselves by searching out photo-worthy scenes within Lonavla station. Nothing much could be classified as photo-worthy material, except, of course, a seedy, run-down building that claimed itself to be "Suyash theatre- Dolby Digital" - If that theatre is Dolby Digital then I am George W. Bush.

The second time round, I was wiser, running down to the ticket counter and getting the team some tickets to Malavli and running back in time for catching the 8.15 local from Lonavla. Thank God we made it in time! Spending 2 hours in that dirty station was not my idea of fun!

Malavli is the next station after Lonavla on the way from Mumbai to Pune. The train made short work of the miles in between and 5 minutes after it started from Lonavla station, we found ourselves in the quaint railway station that was Malavli. You reach the station and you perceptibly feel the nature of life undergoing a sea change - fewer people on the platform, a much slower pace of activity an infinitely cleaner station than Lonavla! A lazy, contented feeling envelops you like Chanel perfume and the mood is set for a lovely trek.

(rest in next)

The Iron Fort

2008-08-24T20:48:00.006+05:30

Have you ever got the feeling that your life is just passing you by randomly, without any direction whatever? That there is a larger purpose to your existence than mere day-to-day prestidigations in front of the computer? That there is something out there that is calling out to you more persistently than an ICICI bank Credit Card Seller?

One of the things I feel very strongly about is a healthy work-life balance. Balancing these two different spheres requires a great degree of determination, especially on the 'life' front (your office will ensure that you pay sufficient attention to work!). One of my ways of having a good "life" is to explore nature - go on treks, take pictures, go running. etc. And the monsoons are a lovely time of the year to do that, especially in and around Mumbai. Couple with this the fact that I have not been trekking since April (that wonderful Gangtok Visit) and you know the reason behind my introductory paragraph

Thanks this feeling of 'not having been among the great outdoors' going at my vitals like a persistent woodpecker, and more importantly, thanks to Vix (photos to be found here) , who moved my from my lethargy through an inspirational gtalk session, we both planned a trek to this fort near Lonavla called Lohagadh.

A write-up of the rather interesting trek follows, but in the meanwhile, you can find some pictures from the trip here

Cheers,
Ranga

A Collection of PJs

2008-04-19T19:43:00.006+05:30

Have been planning to compile a small collection of PJs which I have created over the past few years - been a while now, but here are a few. More to come

Situation: The RIL Office in Sewri is the Fly Capital of the World… (I mean the Insect variety, not Pilots)

Complication: Employees often spend most of their time swatting away the flies and manage to spend very little time actually working…

Conversation in the morning:

Client: "My God, there are so many flies here... All we do through the day is to swat them away"

Ranga: “That’s what we said we'd deliver at the beginning of the project right? We now actually have a SWAT team!

For more info on SWAT teams, please refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAT_team !

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Why do misers simply adore cans and cans of Tropicana?

Coz they are Can-juices (kanjooeses)

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Lower Parel, Mumbai>

Hari: Ranga, why don't you get a vodka for me?

Anip Sharma (simultaneously): Hey Ranga, I am planning to go on vacation to Europe... you know any good places to go to?

Nithin Chandra (also simultaneously): I need some fresh air man... it is so stifling inside...

Ranga: Ba(ha)r-se-lo-na !

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During the Heights of the currency crisis (pre liberalization) in 1991, India was forced to pledge its gold reserves to Bank of England to maintain solvency. The country was literally on its knees and days away from bankruptcy! The celluloid potential of an event so momentous could not but be noticed. Yash Chopra ji has decided to 'cash in' on the opportunity and wants to make SRK play the role of Narasimha Rao in a movie about the crisis. Qn. is... what will the name of the movie be?

Ans: Cheque De India...

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Once upon a time in China, (not so long ago) there was this really talented painter... like many of the impressionist masters, he was widely acknowledged for his use of colors. However, the market for color paintings in China was not too lucrative. He decided to move to India, where the market for such colored artistry was booming at that point of time... and true to expectations, his work was a huge success here. What was the name of the painter? And what was the painting style he used?

Ans: Rango-Lee

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How do you describe the following situation?

One of India's brightest lawyers fell in love with a colleague of his. He takes her to Paris, that most romantic of cities. There, they go to the Eiffel Tower. On the restaurant atop the tower, just as the sun is setting, the lawyer proposes to her….

Ans: High Court

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Which Bank has the Most Unfriendly customer service at its branches?

Ans: I see Icy Eye (ICICI)

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Which hill station is a Boxer's favorite retreat?

Ans: Punch Gunny (Panchgani)

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Dr.Salim Ali, when he was young, had built a reputation of being quite the flirt. But he grew out of it, later to become one of the greatest ornithologists in the country. Many moons later, he decided he had had enough of ornithology and decided to make a profession out of his second great love… Aeroplanes… he became a pilot. Soon after retiring from aviation, he decided to write an autobiography narrating his life story from the cradle to almost-at-the-grave…what would it be called?

Ans: Birds I-view

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Traffic Sign board en route to Vashi

GO
SLOW
WORK IN
PROGRESS

Yours truly felt it was lacking in proper punctuation. Modified suitably, it reads as:

GO.

SLOW
WORK IN
PROGRESS

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Here's one interesting incident from office… protagonists being Sonali Agarwal and Rangarajan Vijayaraghavan

Sonali Agarwal: "Ranga, where's the slide?"

Ranga: "[slid across the marbled floor] There you go…"

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What do you call a dark, talented, male Bengali singer?

Ans: Tan Sen...

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How do you describe a really hot Indian woman?

Ans: Sizzling Brownie

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Why is it that the normal, average human being is so selfish and nasty?

Ans: Coz statistically, the average human being = a mean human being

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A geeky statistician Mr.Ranjit Singh Quartile falls in love with numbers so much that he spends all his time in the statistics section of the library. And, as fate would have it, there was this attractive female statistician (!) who shared the same passion for numbers… it was a case of love at first sight for the guy... Time passed and the couple kept running into each other more and more frequently at the library. One fine day, RSQuartile could no more bear to keep his love under wraps and he launched into a fervent declaration of love towards his star attraction… what song did he sing?

Ans: Pyaar humein kis 'mode' pe le aaya…

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Why did the second guy in a row of three laugh at another guy who was third in a row of five?

Ans: coz he was a co-median…

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What do you call a website that helps you make fun of yourself?

www.takemytrip.com

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ATK Colleague 1, ATK colleague 2 and Rangarajan having a conversation about the Marathon. Reference was made to how we ran in the hot sun, wearing a shirt supporting the United Way NGO cause…from which a rather intuitive connection was drawn… as follows

Ah… how much more trigonometrical can we get? We run for a cause(cos), wear a sign(sin) and get (tan)ned…umm… wait a (sec) ….caught(cot) the point?

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Next to the Nestle Milk Chocolate Factory in Switzerland is an animal farm.

There were some prize bulls in the farm which bristled with discontent at the treatment they were getting from their human masters. In true Orwellian style, they launched a stinging attack on the inhabitants and the contents of the factory next door. What was the outcome of the revolt?

Ans: Chocolate Moos (Mousse)

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There is this particular collection of clothes doing the rounds in various fashion capitals of the world which mysteriously gave the models wearing them some highly embarrassing moments in public, by malfunctioning at ....umm... inappropriate times - Question is: what is the collection called?

Ans: The Fall collection

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Why would it be a very bad idea to give loans to HUL retirees?

Ans: They are already lever-aged

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What would Napoleon the Great be called if he were a glutton?

Ans: Napoleon Bon-Apetit

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Which cell phone brand would Johnny Depp endorse in the movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean'?

'Sea-men's' (Siemens)

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Q. What did the Inventory controller say to the Head of Procurement to explain to him the benefits of pooling?

A. 'Prevention is better than pro-cure'!

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What term do you use to describe a frustrated birdwatcher (and I don't mean the winged variety :D)?

Ans: Horny-thologist

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The character 'Donkey' in the film Shrek is chosen as the mascot of a popular internet shopping site. The name of the site was changed in its honor… what were the original and revised names?

Ans: www.ebay.com became www.ebray.com

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Why is a car without a stepney the longest lasting variety?

Ans: Coz it is tire-less

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What would be an assassination consultant's favourite movie?

Ans: Kill, Bill

( Bill as in billing the client)

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Which is the world's most lecherous website?

Ans: www.go-ogle.com

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What is the favourite music of Comp-Sci Engineers

Ans: Algo-rhythms

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Why did Princess Anne and her husband Philip feel happy about conducting a Photograph throwing competition ?

Ans: because it was Phil-Anne-throw-pic ...

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It was the peak of the resume submitting season and PGP1s are scrambling over themselves in order to apply to all the Day Zero companies.... some consulting and Fin companies ask for covering letters to be attached to the resumes...

One such hypothetical case stares a consultant in the face: Mr.xyz has always wanted to do banking since he was in the cradle and has dedicated his life to the singleminded pursuit of investment banking as a career ... [damn...copy-paste gone horribly wrong!]

How would you describe such a resume?

Ans: Ctrl+(C-V)

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The West Bengal State Government decides to formulate a policy to promote three industries in the state. The Industries are: 1) Information Technology, 2) Golfing and 3) Tea .. what would the policy be called?

Ans: The West Bengal IT, I-Tee and High Tea Policy

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Imaginary Situation: House Maid is found stealing money from the house and is caught red-handed by my mother.... she is chased rather publicly to the ends of the city for her transgression... and in the end collapses out of exhaustion after covering pretty much the whole of the city... This became highly celebrated and the public decides to take out an annual event in its commemoration... what city am I talking about and what is the event?

Mum-Bai Marathon...

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Misbah Ul Haq was caught sledging in the ongoing Indo Pak cricket match and the match Referee Ranjan Madugalle booked him for an offence under the ICC Code of Conduct... what did he term the offence?

Ans: Misbah-aviour….

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King Arthur, the leader of the Knights of the Round Table was obsessed with fighting evil and expected his twelve chivalrous knights to share the same obsession. He made them go through drill after monotonous drill to train them for fights - real and imaginary... "Up thy noble steed Sir Lance-a-lot, chaaaaarge...., let ye ugly dragon feel thy might…attaaaaaaackkk....Well Done Sir Lance-a-lot! You may now Alight and take a bow.." and so on... Doing so many up-down routines on a daily basis can decidedly be a wearing business and the noble knights were pained in more ways than one... they decided to name their physical affliction after their Leader. What was this affliction called?

Ans: Arthur-itis (Arthritis)

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The market for re-treaded tires is a dangerous one (highly fragmented and low margins)… and yet an entrepreneur decided to seek angel investor funding to set up a small scale retreading plant in India … the investor, naturally, declined the offer and our entrepreneur decided to go it alone… How would you describe the situation?

Ans: Fools rush in where Angels fear to "Tread"

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A.T.Kearney, despite having some profitable clients in the Middle East, took quite some time to set up a Dubai Office… why?

Ans: They thought Dubai's No Great Sheikhs (No great shakes)

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There was this Arab who went prospecting for oil in the vast deserts of the Middle East and , not unexpectedly, he found huge reserves just waiting to be tapped. He immediately had an oil well built in the area, but did not start pumping out the crude from the well immediately… soon after this event, there was a huge earthquake in the immediate surroundings of the well… Why?

Ans: Coz, Mother Nature read the situation as: "Sheikh Well Before Use"

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When does one musician fall in love with another musician?

Ans: When they strike a chord

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What does one musician say when he meets another musician at a meet?

Ans: Let’s exchange ‘notes’

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A Consultant's life - Part V

2008-04-19T15:45:00.005+05:30

Just discovered how to paste HTML code onto blogs directly. Thought I would start off by putting one of my favourite pictures from the recent Gangtok trip

Without HTML pasting, putting up pictures on the blog is one hell of a pain. Every time I want to insert a picture, it goes and sits right at the top of the article! Is there any way around this predicament?

A Consultant's Life - Part IV (Incomplete)

2008-04-13T11:03:00.009+05:30

This thread of posts must take the record of being the longest set of chronicles I have written under the same title. Is it that two years of working has taken its toll on my imaginative capabilities? Hope not!

In terms of content, this is a follow-up of the 1st part of the series with the above title: Some things don't change and some things do...

Of the things that do change, especially on the personal front, the most prominent and significant is the change in marital status - tons of my friends, batchmates etc. who were leading single, unattached lives have decided to take the plunge and step over to the grhasta side of life.

The latest bachelor to bite the dust among my friends' circle is Avishek Addy (the PJ king of my batch) - he is getting engaged this May. Guess he hid his PJs well during the time his would-be made the choice :D. A months back, couple of my best friends, Poza and Bhars, also got married. Is it something about the stage of one life? A little introspection leads me to a very consultanty answer...

I figured that people by and large go through a 2x2 matrix of life [my non-consultant friends call this the point of no return, the point where I form 'frameworks' for the heck of it :)] - I call it the JOL framework (nothing bengali about this, though!). In a nutshell, the journey of many people's lives follows a 'Z' pattern through the following matrix

The JOL (Journey of Life) Matrix

Most people start their lives by being single and happy about it and somewhere down the line, that happiness vanishes and a desire to be with a member of the other sex takes over- neatly described by the following masterpiece

JOL-ly Roger Calvin here is in the bottom left quadrant of the matrix and Hobbes is in the top left quadrant. From the "Girls/Boys! Ewwwwww... yuck! I hate girls/boys" phase to the Hobbes phase of "Whom do we smooch?", it is one turbulent journey!

Another natural question which cropped up was: where do you fit "Relationships" in the picture? To that the answer is: Substitute "Marriage" with "Relationships" in the matrix and you get the answer in a more generic way

(Incomplete)

A Consultant's life - Part III

2008-04-07T13:15:00.002+05:30

Yes, Consultants do have 'lives' ;-), especially when they get time off to refresh themselves with some well earned leave! Yours truly went on a trip to Darjeeling and Gangtok recently - Paradise found!

I shall be uploading a more detailed travel write-up shortly, but in the meanwhile, the interested reader can check out some photos here.

PS: The not so interested reader can stifle his/her yawns :-)

A Classic PJ

2008-03-20T19:52:00.004+05:30

This is not mine, though I wish it were.... (one of the best PJs I have heard in a long time)

The cows in the Animal Farm have been reading about bear runs and bull runs in the stock market for a while now. First its one, then the other. After a while, they got really frustrated...Why the hell can't we have a cow run!!
So, they started a new stock exchange, the Cow Jones Index, and proclaimed, "There shall only be cow runs in this one, bulls and bears take a hike."

But having grown so fond of the hedge surrounding the animal farm, they became quite interested in hedging their risks as well. Thus began the Cow Jones Futures Index (CJFI). Now, what did these chaps trade in the CJFI?

Ans: Dairyvatives, of course

Of course, yours truly made a dairivative PJ of this masterpiece, and came up with the following:

If investors got wary of investing in the Cow Jones Index directly and decided to give their money to someone else to manage, what would they be investing in?

Ans: Moo-tual Funds

PS: I am in the process of collating some of my PJs and putting them up for display on the blog... so people who remember some of my earlier ones, please send me a mail/dbab/comment, anything!

A Consultant's life Part II

2008-03-17T20:00:00.004+05:30

In this post I am supposed to write some stuff on how things change and how things don't. But then, as someone before my lifetime put it,
The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men Often Go Astray (or some such thing)

To cut a long story short, my best laid plans have changed, not permanently, but enough to warrant a deviation in the topic of this post.

We at A.T.Kearney had an intra-office cricket 'tournament' - basically a lot of young and old consultants getting together and having a lot of fun. I prepared a match report and thought it fit to post it on the blog. A word of warning though: All characters mentioned in the report are real, though the non-ATK reader can, for all intents and purposes, treat them as fictional :)

Official Match Report

A Lukewarm start, a sizzling mid-game and a red-hot end (literally!)

Ladies and Gentlemen, call it Saturday morning blues, call it cold feet, but indisputable was the fact that the start to this all important cricket fixture was lukewarm. Of the 18 members registered, drop-outs were so significant that the teams had to be pruned to two from three, with “Scorching Suns” being the casualty. The captains of the remaining teams, viz. Kearney Kangaroos and Dada’s Devils took to the field on a pleasant breezy morning to inspect the pitch and formulate team strategies accordingly. This was followed by the toss for Match 1

“Dada’s Devils”, under the leadership of our very own Kaustav-da (who, ironically, is a bigger fan of Sachin Tendulkar than Sourav Ganguly), got off to a good start by doing what has eluded even the charismatic captain of the Indian Team, Mahendra Singh Dhoni – winning the toss. Batting first was the natural choice and, as time proved, a good one.

The Devils’ innings – An idle bat is the Devil’s workshop

Kaustav-da and Nithin took the field, with Varun “Lee” Poddar opening the bowling for the Kearney Kangaroos. Disaster struck quickly as both Kaustav Da and Vivek Kalucha (who came in after K-da was out, caught) came and went without troubling the scorers within the first over. The score at the end of the first over read 3/2 and the Kangaroos, justifiably, were jumping all over the place. However, for Nithin “Yuvraj” Chandra, this was just the calm before the storm.

GG was the first victim of Nithin’s onslaught, with his second over being mercilessly dispatched for 30 runs including three towering sixes and two fours. The spring in the step of the Kangaroos was brought to a brutal, but effective halt. Jassi turned to Arunav to stem the haemorrhage. A run-out effected of Nishant in the third over provided a brief respite for the fielding team but Dada’s Devils still managed to eke out twelve runs from the over, including a couple of well struck fours.

Nithin and Abhiram continued the innings for the Devils with Arunav and the Jassi/Mahesh combo holding fort relatively economically. Arunav conceded just 25 runs from his two overs… (the figures would not have been as bad, had Nithin not decided to despatch Arunav away for a 4 and a 6 just as the innings was winding up to a close) and Jassi/Mahesh managed to keep Abhiram quiet, though they would not have liked the Umpire’s strictness with balls going down the leg side being heartlessly declared wides. (Damn those limited overs rules!)

Thanks to Nithin’s masterclass and significant contribution from extras (13 of them), Dada’s Devils set the Kearney Kangaroos a target of 85 in 6 overs, translating to a run-rate of just over 14 runs per over. The lukewarm start had morphed into a sizzling mid-game and a mouth-watering chase loomed on the horizon.

Kangaroos’ chase - look before you leap

Jassi planned to lead from the front as he took the field with Mahesh to open the innings for the Kearney Kangaroos. The chase began disastrously with Jassi being stumped efficiently by Nithin off Vivek’s opening over. Mahesh soon followed, getting run-out without troubling the scorers. GG restored some life to the chase, with a brilliantly struck six right over square leg, followed by another sparkling four.

The second over of the chase was a tight one, with Nishant steaming in and beating the batsmen with sheer pace, conceding just three runs and bowling GG out. The pressure was mounting! 71 runs to be scored off the 4 remaining overs. Dada turned to the star of the first innings and said “Ek over daalega?” , to which Nithin said, “haan, daaloonga”, and the rest, as they say, folks, is history.

An extremely tight over with Arunav’s wicket thrown in for good measure made the task for the Kangaroos even more difficult. What made the task more difficult for the chasers is the fact, that the graciousness shown by the Kangaroos while bowling to Nithin, was not reciprocated, with not even a single extra being conceded.

Varun Poddar struck some valiant blows for the Kangaroos and their team took 25 of the next two overs (Vivek and Nishant being the sufferers), without the loss of a wicket. Still, the required run-rate was not met, leaving the chasers a 36-run target off the final over, to be bowled by Nithin.

If Nithin had been miserly in his previous over, he was downright mean in this one. A nagging line and impeccable length meant that the ‘roos task was that much more difficult. Apart from a conciliatory 4 off the penultimate ball of the innings, the last over was a terrible let-down for the Kangaroos with neither Varun nor Kunal able to make any impact.

The result: Dada’s Devils defeat Kearney’s Kangaroos by 28 runs – a convincing victory, with the Man-of-the-Match award going to Nithin “Yuvraj” Chandra. Kaustav-da marshaled his troops very well, though his contribution with the bat resembled more the hero of his land, Sourav than the hero of his mind, Sachin

Match 2 & Match 3: Commentary truncated!

The remaining two matches were on similar lines, except that Ranga, the resident photographer, added strength to Dada’s Devils while Kunal and Hemant lent their expertise to the Kearney Kangaroos.

An added attraction was the commentary of Varun, Vivek, GG, Kunal and others whose observations on the activity on the field were as funny as they were insightful, though their sledging against the umpiring did not find much favour with either the opposition or the umpires. There was talk of the commentators being fined 50% of their post-match pizzas for the transgressions.

Just before this correspondent signs off, late on a Sunday night, his blow-by-blow commentary on the excellent proceedings looking to be cut short by a series of uncontrollable yawns and project commitments looming large in front of him, he feels it worthwhile to recount one unforgettable 13-ball over from the Kearney Kangaroos to Dada’s Devils in Match 3 as a sign-off gesture.

The bowler in question shall not be mentioned, but Mumbai Mauler Nithin Chandra was the tormentor. The bowler managed to deceive batsmen, wicket-keepers, umpires and commentators alike with his flight, with one well-directed (!) delivery failing to release properly from his hand and trickling down to short cover.

The few times the ball actually managed to float into Nithin’s vicinity, it went away rather quickly, getting dispatched to all corners of the ground. The outcome: a match-winning 37 runs conceded off 1 over, with 2 sixes, 4 fours (including byes) and god-only-knows how many wides!

This particular over sent the Kangaroos scurrying to all parts of the ground and was well liked by the rather limited audience of Parul and little Arjun Kalbag, whose presence did much to add to the fun and festivities (For those who did not turn up to watch the match today: You missed the treat of the year, people!)

Till the next event, cheers and lagey raho!

- Rangarajan Vijayaraghavan

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A Consultant's life - Part I

2008-02-19T21:06:00.018+05:30

A relatively chill period on my current project and an irresistible urge to let my fingers loose on blogosphere has resulted in this post - ages after my previous one

Faiz Azim (a good friend of mine at work) and yours truly were having this illuminating conversation today (for ease of typing, Faiz Azim will henceforth be referred to as "F" ):

F: "Hey Ranga. Good to see you.. been a while! Are you still working on two projects simultaneously?"

R: "No, thank God! I am relieved to say that is now past tense... My recent past was indeed tense

F: "Ah! I see ... your present is continuous, but do you think your future is perfect?"

R: :)

A wholly unintended side-effect of this grammatical jousting was that I realized one thing: To keep my present continuously recountable in future, I'd better do some blogging right away! So here goes... This post is a rather light-hearted take on consulting, work, life and all that has happened in the 1.898765 years since I joined A.T.Kearney!

I know Consultants are very fond of structure (did I hear someone mutter 'paranoid'?), but giving a structure to a reminescence is a good idea nevertheless. This chronicle is divided into the following sections:

- Some things don't change

- Some things do change :)

Some things don’t change

- Mumbai’s commuting infrastructure still sucks: The average speed of commuting on Mumbai roads is 12 kmph – as much as a fast jog. Roads keep getting dug up in a heartbeat. The municipal authorities are like God . They are continually engaged in a cycle of creation-preservation-destruction of existing infrastructure.

In my opinion, the municipal authorities have a three step approach to ease infrastructure bottlenecks (yeah, yeah, 2 years in consulting does have its effects!) :

Create bottlenecks first ("Ah... this stretch of road looks neat! Let’s say a nice big gash across the middle? After all, the city needs better telecom connectivity right?", or "Wow! This is a smooth bit of road... but wait, come the monsoons, it would be choc-a-bloc with potholes. What say we ‘concretize’ it just before the monsoons?" [Conversation with Road contractor: Psst... Psst...give me 10 crores and this baby is yours])

Let commuters suffer for a few months (the following is an actual mail sent out by a large Indian bank to its employees)

"We have received information from MSRDC that work of the flyover at Santacruz Airport junction is in full swing and it is targeted to open the northbound carriageway of the flyover to traffic before the onset of monsoon 2008. Due to the construction of the flyover, there will be little more congestion on this stretch for the next 3-4 months.
In view of this we request you to inform all passengers traveling to keep an additional margin of 1 hour for reaching the airport so that they may not miss the flight."

Shift the bottleneck from the place of creation to some other place . I can just about visualize a ToI article like the one below "After the flyover was constructed over the turn towards Santacruz (Domestic) Airport, congestion near the Andheri flyover has multiplied enormously, with vehicles often having to wait over 1 hour to turn towards Andheri station from the highway. The authorities, however, are jubilant, saying that there are no more traffic jams near the domestic airport."

- IIMA Campus still rocks: I have been to campus multiple times for recruitment related activities, my most recent being on that most touted of days, Day Zero of Placements. Placement activities take place in the new campus these days and things have improved to a great extent since my placements took place 2 years back.

For one, the greenery is beautifully spread across the new campus and the buildings just look amazing at night
The eternal charm of the LKP is beyond description ... When I visit campus, I go there sometimes just to let the atmosphere and grandeur of the architecture soak in.
Despite the supposed laxity which has crept into the current batches at IIMA, we still have facchas losing sleep over Operations Management, MANAC & WAC - guhahahahahahahaaaaaaa [Muggo Facchon Muggo! Short MANAC Quiz at 2.30 beckons :)]
People still doze off in classes , only to get told off by DT or some other prof at IIMA

- Calvin and Hobbes RULE!
Came across some outstanding (as usual) pieces from Waterson - am posting them below for the greater good of society :)

Rest in next!

The Second Chapter: The Gita in Brief - Part I

2007-10-28T16:32:00.000+05:30

After a brief hiatus, I resume my interpretations and summarization of "Talks on the Gita" by Acharya Vinoba Bhave. What follows is a discussion on the second chapter of the book, which coincides with the second chapter of the Gita.

The Second Chapter of the Gita is said to lay the foundations for the teachings in the rest of the chapters. It establishes three principles which are expounded in different ways later:

The spirit ("Brahman") is deathless and indivisble - and you are that spirit
The body is transient
One's svadharma cannot and should not be thrust aside

I have often heard from my IIT-ian friends that most stuff they learnt during JEE could be built from First Principles. Similarly, these three aspects form the First Principles of Vedantic philosophy, reflected in the Bhagavad Gita. Let us go into each of these in greater detail.

Note: the following paragraphs can get quite boring for the non-philosophical variety of reader. Don't say I didn't warn ya! :)

Vedanta philosophy talks about the Eternal Spirit or "Brahman" or "The Self" that pervades all creation. The spirit is referred to as "That" - formless, timeless, genderless and perfect. One of the most famous quotes from the Vedanta period is one from the Chhandogya Upanishad, viz: "Tat tvam asi" or "That you are". Each form of creation is Brahman and it is said that every one's journey through the cycle of birth and rebirth is to understand this truth.

Brahman cannot be perceived by the five senses, but by pure intellect alone. To perceive Brahman requires the utmost control of one's body and mind. To the economists, Brahman is the 'invisible hand'; To the devout, Brahman is God; To the disbelievers, Brahman is disbelief and to the farmer, Brahman is the daily bread.

Vinoba says:

"The self is impatient to pervade the world. It wants to gobble up all creation. But we shut it up in a cell (our body). We have made a prisoner of it. We do not even remember that it exists. From morning till evening, we are busy minding the body. Day and night we worry about how fat or how thin our bodies have become. One would think that there was no other joy in the world...Even when a man draws a small circle and calls it "his own", the unconsious aim is to taste the joy of growth in the self; for thereby the self bound in the body comes out for a little while.... But it is like the prisoner coming out of his cell into the couryard"

The Gita refers to various ways of seeking perfection, or Brahman, described above. The person who seeks is referred to as the sadhaka. The sadhaka is however, bound by his/her attachment to the body and to preserving it. The Gita seeks to destroy this illusion by laying down the fact that the body is ceaselessly changing. Cells get created and destroyed at every given moment - so much so that the entire body is supposed to get a complete overhaul (in terms of blood, skeletal structure etc.) once every 12 years [I believe the figure is around 10 years for the skeleton itself, and 7 years for the blood in one's body].

In addition, it says that the body is like the cloth that the spirit wears. Once it wears off, the cloth is discarded and a new cloth is put in its place. Understanding this, the sadhaka is supposed to dedicate all action in the pursuit of his/her svadharma. I had already referred to one's svadharma in my earlier post. But the author makes a beautiful comparision which is appropriate to mention here:

"This svadharma comes to one naturally. One does not have to go out in search of one's own dharma... I would compare svadharma to one's mother. It was not left to me to choose my mother in this birth. it had already been determined for me. No matter what sort of person she is , there is no pushing her away. that is precisely the case with svadharma - it is inescapable. Besides, svadharma, we have nothing else in all this world to rely on, to rest in."

Therefore, understanding that the body perishes every moment, and understanding that the Spirit pervades everything everywhere, the author urges the sadhaka to leave the crooked ways of adharma (what is not one's dharma) and paradharma (someone else's dharma) and follow the natural, easy path of svadharma. He should never let go of the motherly security of one's svadharma.

When I re-read what I had written above, I was left thinking "Yeah, yeah, fine - all this preaching is great, but this just addresses the "What should I do" part of it, without ever touching the "How should I do it?" bit.

[Other readers, of course, might be left thinking "Oh boy, what a bore! Who really cares!" - but then, due to my significant interest in the above, topic, I can't help getting a bit detailed :) - which is also why I put the plot summaries in first :)]

The "How to go about it" is going to be part of my next post. So till then, cheers and Happy reading!

An in-flight experience

2007-10-27T20:37:00.000+05:30

PS: This article below is meant purely for fun and not intended to hurt the sensibilities of anyone. Apologies :)

Once, I had to go to Jamnagar and, expectedly, the only airline to serve that destination was an Indian Airlines Flight (looking at the number of people on that flight, I could not but think that there was a huge market opportunity - but then, that is another story).

I boarded the flight and was greeted by a stentorian "Welcome aboard, sir" - except that it had as much warmth as a graveyard. I was confronted by an imposing woman, some ten feet in height and a width to match. Every cell in my body froze. I had the irresistible urge to cower into a corner; my past seemed to come rushing back to me and I felt like a little schoolboy again.

I hurried to my seat and fastened my seatbelts, finding an odd comfort in doing so - she would have to take the trouble of unbuckling me first before she could throw me out of the window/door you see...

Time passed and they safely locked the doors (phew!) and the plane taxied to the runway. In the meantime, the airhostesses started serving 'preliminary' refreshments, namely fresh lime juice. However, the juice wasn't as fresh as I had wanted it to be. So I asked for a change.

To borrow a Wodehousian phrase, ice formed on the stewardess's upper slopes. She said, "Let me check, sir". The "welcome aboard" sounded quite cheery in comparison... this felt like I was in an Arctic graveyeard with a Polar Bear breathing down my neck. I was significantly alarmed at having fastened my seat belts. I could have at least dived under the seats for protection otherwise. There I was, helpless, immobile and unarmed, with Jezebel herself in front of me. Damn you, Ranga! Foresight! Foresight!

Anyway, there must have been a hint of mercy in her (somewhere deep down I think), and she finally condescended to give me a fresh cup of juice. The experience left me deeply reflective and weirdly relieved. I thought for a while and suddenly it struck me... the airhostesses on Indian Airline flights could not even help being cold; it was part and parcel of their existence. It was pre-ordained when they named their employer.

... All Indian Airlines Flights are called IC(y) flights...

One of the best PJs I have heard in recent time

2007-10-27T20:33:00.000+05:30

I saw this on the electronic Notice Boards of the IIM-A campus and could not resist posting it here.

How do you call Rowan Atkinson when he is sleeping?

Ans: Soya Bean :)

The Yoga of Despondency

2007-10-14T22:33:00.000+05:30

To put it concisely, the plot outline for the context for the Gita (and the rest of this post) is as follows:

Villains and Heroes ready for battle - hero commander goes to see who all he's going to fight - hero sees his relatives on the villains' side - hero gets the heeby-jeebies - hero questions why he has to fight

To put it as I have just done above is the equivalent of saying a Beethoven MP3 is just a series of 0's and 1's - true, but not quite true enough !

So, in slightly greater detail

7 armies on one side (for the Pandavas) , 11 armies on the other (for the Kauravas) stand armed and ready in Kurukshetra ready to annihilate each other. Arjuna, one of the greatest warriors in the Mahabharata is in the middle of no-man's land, facing the Kaurava army, ready to raze his opponents to the ground...and he raises his eyes to look at the 'enemy'.

There he sees his kinsmen - uncles, cousins, brothers, sons , lined up in row after unending row, ready to do death unto each other. His mind wavers, his body trembles and despondency takes over... "Is the end that I am fighting for (namely, kingdom) , worth killing my kinsmen?"

Following this question is a series of rants against war:

Those for whose sake we desire kingdom are themselves here, waiting to kill each other - why should I fight?
How can we kill our own people? They might be overpowered by greed and might be willing to kill us, but we can't do the same because we know that it is wrong to destroy a family like this
If we kill entire families, their traditions, customs etc. are lost forever. What greater sin could I commit?
If they should destroy me in battle when I am unresisting and unarmed, that would be better for me, rather than my taking up arms against them

It is worthwhile to note here that Arjuna would not have had any qualms killing the opponents had they NOT been his relatives. He was a warrior and it was in his blood to fight. As much as it is in a businessman's blood to trade or in a good student's blood to learn. He was trapped by the attachment to his relatives, and that prevented him from doing his duty.

The author makes a beautiful point : Arjuna was at odds with his svadharma. If he had really been converted to Non-violence, a la King Ashoka, he would not have been satisfied by Lord Krishna until his real objective was met. He was trying to talk his way out of his dilemma , out of doing his duty. His path to doing his duty was clouded by attachment, by illusion.

This 'attachment' is a common issue faced by people all over the world. And many in the corporate world can especially identify with this:

Should I dump stocks on a distributor in order to meet the current sales target or should I find ways of creating demand?
Should I sell this medicine even if the side effects have not been fully tested?
Should I report higher quarterly earnings by valuing stocks higher and adjust them in time for the annual report?
Should I recommend the client against what he/she feels is the right course of action, even if it means I won't get future work from them if I disagree with them?

All the above situations arise from an 'attachment' to the results of one's action rather than doing the right action. The right action in this case is set in the context of one's conscience. The purpose of the Gita is to rid us of our illusions and attachment in the pursuit of our svadharma. What is svadharma? Literally, it is "one's own way", determined by our unique DNA! It is what makes us tick, what makes us who we are.

Each person's svadharma is his/her own and holds the greatest attraction to him/her. However attractive/easy another person's dharma seems, you should never follow it. You should follow your true vocation. The path might be strewn with thorns but that path is yours and yours alone. By treading your own path, you never have regrets and grow as a person.

By treading your chosen path with a sense of devotion to duty, you also demonstrate a willingness to live by the consequences of your choice, as it is yours and yours alone. Nobody forced you into it, and nobody can force you out of it. So if it means a change in career paths, do so by all means. But once you have changed, be prepared to live with the consequences.

I chose consulting as a career because I felt it represented the right balance between learning, business and interpersonal interactions. The path I have taken has been tough, yes, but I am proud at sticking to my choice. I have taken the rough with the smooth, and a year and a half after I joined consulting, I am completely at peace with myself. The paths are never easy, but it is your willingness to fight it out and stick to the choices that counts.

That's all fine, the reader might say. "You have got a job that you like. Great! But that is not the same for me... I was forced into a banking job because there was more money there. All I really wanted to do was marketing. I was forced into a job because of the money - I have a family to support". People often say they are 'forced' into doing certain jobs/tasks. Such short term aberrations do occur and are quite common in fact. But then, they are the outcomes of their own desires.

If I desire something and expect it to fall in my lap, it is not going to happen. I have to work to get it. If the path is tough, then I live with it. I work hard at whatever life throws at me, even if it is something that I dislike.

At the same time, if I am forced into something that I 'dislike', I have to ensure that I am always on the lookout for something that my heart lies in, so that, if the opportunity presents itself I am not found napping.

When you do something with your heart and soul, you often end up creating a competitive advantage that none can replicate. Given that 'competitive advantage' is what businesses are endlessly in search of, finding where your heart lies and working that to your employer's advantage is something that will be mutually beneficial in the long run! This feeling of dedication of one's heart and soul is what is called vikarma elsewhere in the Gita. But then, that is the subject matter for another post :) - enough for now!

Old wine in a new bottle (err.. template)

2007-10-13T22:45:00.000+05:30

After over a year of sticking to the lighthouse blog template, I have finally decided it is time for a change. The new template is fairly elegant I think... must acknowledge Vishal Grover's contribution in my taking up this template (IIMA has made me a stickler for APA referencing!).

Of course, that does not mean that my writing will get any better! Hence the title for this post.

PS: Getting the My-Shoutbox and the Visit counter applications to integrate with the new template was a bit of a pain. But the effort was worth the change. I quite like the new template. Thanks Vishal!

Talks on the Gita - a precursor

2007-10-11T20:20:00.002+05:30

My current project is quite hectic... long nights, high stress and all that. And expectedly, when you come close to 'killing yourself for a living' (as a colleague of mine aptly put it), that is when your interest in philosophy really kicks in! :) - Shubhang Shankar, another of my colleagues at A.T.Kearney, can vouch for this as well!

And what better way to re-visit philosophy than to take up a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita?

"Talks on the Gita" by Acharya Vinoba Bhave is one of the simplest and most beautiful expositions on the Gita that one can ever come across. It is a life changing book in every sense of the word. Just reading it makes one's wandering mind feel at rest. This is going to be the first of a series of nuggets from the wonderful fountainhead of the philosophy of life that is the Gita. I shall start with a small selection of quotes from the book and as time passes, augment it with more experiences/observations.

So here goes:
The Gita is set in the context of the Mahabharata, a truly outstanding work of a 100,000 verses that gives new meaning to the word "epic".

On the Mahabharata, the author says:

"The Mahabharata tells us clearly that none but God is wholly free from blemish ... The Mahabharata describes human life as a fabric woven out of both black and white threads. Himself standing aloof, Bhagavan Vyasa projects on the screen of the world a picture made up of both light and shade, of the universal movement"

On the Gita, the author says:

"The Gita is the Upanishad of the Upanishads...Almost every idea necessary for the flowering of a full life occurs in the Gita"

The first chapter of the Gita, where Arjuna's despondency is pictured, is a fantastic context-setter for the rest of the Gita, because it talks about the fundamental human dilemma that everyone faces in the course of daily life, or the pursuit of svadharma as the Gita calls it. When one follows a choice that one makes and the consequences of the choice lead to seemingly unpleasant situations, how does one respond?

Does one question the very choice that one took up in the first place?
Does one flinch in the face of unpleasantness and choose to run away or choose to stand and face the consequences?
In the face of a choice with an unpleasant consequence, issues of "morality" frequently crop up (note that 'morality' normally never interferes with actions when the choices are pleasant! ) - how do we overcome the barriers we put in front of ourselves and pursue the path of action, and detach our minds from the consequences?

The first chapter, titled the Yoga of Despondency, deals with Arjuna's dilemma in terms of the above questions. I shall discuss this in greater detail in the next post

On poetry at the workplace

2007-09-14T07:23:00.001+05:30

Interesting interview on how poetry, imagination and creativity at the workplace are important and how they need to be nurtured carefully to achieve tangible competitive differences. A side-effect of our over-analytical upbringings (and I presume to represent the majority of the managerial and working population here.) is that the softer qualities like creativity, imagination, artistry etc. are ignored by and large. Maybe we need to fight for their rightful place in any workplace.

As a 'creative' person , I also feel, however, that creativity needs to be controlled as much as it it needs to be nurtured. Creativity is a 'childish' thing, knowing no bounds once the 'creative connect' is made. It makes one rush headlong into any activity. Some tempering of the emotion is essential, to bring a more 'detached and rational' framework within which creativity can thrive. "Ain't this paradoxical?", one might say. But from experience I can say that the 'framework' needs to be there, however broad it might be. The trick lies in making the framework broad enough that creativity is not stifled and yet defined enough that it meets the business requirements of the organization.

For the entire article, refer http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1745

(those who are prompted for a subscription are recommended to sign up...some fantastic articles there!)

Paradise revisited!

2007-09-03T20:07:00.001+05:30

I went on a client visit recently to a place around 100 km from Mumbai. The site is nestled amidst gently rolling hills which erupt in violent greenery during the monsoons.
The client guest house overlooks a little lake on one side and a small hill (with a couple of waterfalls) on the other. The hill was typical of what you'd find around Mumbai - like a table, with intense greenery at the bottom, some sheer rock faces in the middle (of course! how else would the waterfalls form?) and again greenery(primarily grassy) on the top.

The entire scenic package was too tempting to pass up without a trek... and trek we did! We (me and a couple of client team members) started off one morning (6 a.m!) and left for the temple. It had drizzled/rained continuously the previous day and the route was wet. The clouds too were tantalizingly indecisive: "Should I unload my watery burden or do I carry it elsewhere?". But it was not raining when we started.

We went towards the temple, trudging towards the base of the hill. The forests at the base were wet and looked like they had been newly sent back from the cleaners. The moon peeped at us naughtily over the top of the hill (yes, it was that early in the morning!) just to be swallowed by some angry looking clouds shortly. We had to climb a set of haphazardly assembled stairs to reach the temple. They were quite slippery, with all the rain and moss. A word of advice here: Never wear running shoes on a slippery trek! Trekking shoes are different from running shoes for a reason, and I found it out the hard way!

Keeping a steady pace, we reached the temple in around 20 minutes, despite stopping here and there for clicking some pictures. The temple was built around a crack in the rock face and had a Kalimata-like deity inside the crack. We reached the porch of the temple and got a breathtaking view of the surrounding hills and plains. There is just one word to describe the feeling: "PEACE"

Soon after we reached the temple, the benevolent-till-now clouds changed their minds and decided to unburden themselves on us. The shower lasted around 20 minutes and we could see the volume of water in the adjacent waterfall growing visibly. Thank God we had some shelter! During the shower we had the song of a turned-on mynah (or some such bird) to keep us entertained. The range of tunes it could produce were stunning - quite the composer! I named it A-Mynah (pronouced the British way, it is the same as A-Minor :))...

Once the rain subsided, we left the temple and branched off towards the waterfall. One of the team members, Rajan Tendolkar, is a trekking enthusiast. His knack for finding the right paths and goat-tracks was amazing. We had the roar of the water to guide us as well... amazing how such a small waterfall could generate so much noise.

Slipping and stumbling, we soon reached a stream which seemed to emanate from the waterfall and then the task became easier. Sometimes along the stream, and sometimes through it, we went; higher and higher till we came to an impassably dense bit of shrubbery which would lead directly to a wedge in the rock face where the waterfall turned. At that point we took some more photos, before turning towards the base.

We took a different route to the base, heading north instead of south (where we came from). This took us through yet another stream and a few leg-grabbing creepers/bushes before we reached a beautiful clearing where the streams split into small rivulets gently meandering around the clearing. Soaking in the sight, we plugged on, only to get soaked again :), this time through marshy grasslands. I nearly lost my shoe there! But this was a short stretch and we were soon on the road leading to the guest house again.

2 hours, a bit of mud and a lot of water later, we were back in the guest house, feeling hungry, exhilarated and of course, slightly sad that it had to end. Of course, half an hour afterwards, the rest of the team and I were rushing off to deliver yet another presentation at the client site... there is consulting for you! Rushing headlong from one experience to the next ...

Eight Skills of Highly Successful Consultants

2007-08-25T16:27:00.001+05:30

An interesting article I came across recently http://ezinearticles.com/?Eight-Skills-of-Highly-Successful-Consultants&id=2075.

This article talks about the skills needed to make highly successful consultants, the skills being
1) Designing
2) Delivering
3) Selling
4) Contracting
5) Relationship Building
6) Separating Process from Content
7) Socratic Questioning
8) Saying No

The article does not talk about "values" of a consultant, but those I feel are equally important and will finally influence the way the above skills are built.

Any consultants reading this out there? :-)

On decency at the workplace...

2007-08-24T13:47:00.001+05:30

Interesting article from Knowledge @ Wharton. My favourite bit given below:

"Decency is not just about being nice," noted Harrison, author of The Manager's Book of Decencies. Rather, it is about creating a "bubble wrap" of good deeds that will protect a company in hard times. "Our willingness to be decent at work cannot depend on whether business is up or whether we're in a bad mood or whether it's raining. Decencies don't amount to anything unless we take the trouble to make them come alive through concrete acts in all kinds of weather."

Again, implementation is the key, but then, I have it in me! :)

Powered by ScribeFire.

PJs for the day...

2007-08-24T12:58:00.001+05:30

One of the best ways of keeping up my contribution to this blog will be to keep peppering it with the numerous "witticisms" I conjure up/come across on a daily basis. So here goes...

Jai Bajrang Bali!

The actress/model Yana Gupta fell in love with a rich industrialist and then got married to him - on one condition… that he transfers all the money to her on his death. How would you describe the situation?

Ans: Czech-mate

Which hill station in Maharashtra is a Boxer's favourite retreat?

Ans: Punch Gunny (Panchgani)

Of Wodehouse, Vedanta and Long distance runs...Part II

2007-08-15T10:56:00.001+05:30

Been ages since I blogged. Need to get back to a more disciplined habit again. Maybe keeping the posts shorter should help!

Nearly 8 months have flown by since the last post, yet the title for the blog seems surprisingly fitting. So many incidents in the past few months can still be attributed to Wodehouse, Vedanta and Long distance runs... though more figuratively than literally.

I have always been an admirer of PG Wodehouse's brilliant style of wit and the way he takes a 'not-too-serious' view of life. I implement it in my own way by cracking "witticisms" (the purists may sneer and say .. "PJ" - but who cares! :P) and taking potshots at normal, day-to-day situations. Am thinking of putting up a collection of my PJs on this blog. Should be up shortly... Life ain't worth taking too seriously.., so don't!

One of my friends (Shubhang) used to love the quote below:

" First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you
win" - Mahatma Gandhi

The same way, PJs are infectious :-) . It has been over a year to convert some of my colleagues to my way of thinking, but the Force shall prevail :). As for Vedanta, life teaches lessons on detachment all the time... and the essence of Vedanta seems to be "Detachment". The true karmayogi is supposed to be Detached from the consequences yet 'engaged' in action.. that is a remarkable balance to achieve. There have been just a few instances in my life where I could genuinely say I was in that state. But it was a 'divine' feeling to experience!It should be possible to achieve that state more regularly with discipline... need to work that out. And long distance runs! I Completed the Mumbai half marathon in January this year and have been running off and on afterwards.. it is a PHENOMENAL feeling to get.. tired and excited at the same time. Waiting in the queue for nearly an hour and a half immediately after the marathon, to collect my completion certificate was a pain beyond words though... AARGH!! There were a lot of things to learn from the marathon, the primary ones being

It is not the person who runs fastest that wins the race, it is the one with the greatest average speed!
It is no use straining yourself in the beginning, to drop out of the race later
Never go by what other people say! Have complete belief in yourself..
Warm up (preparation) before a race is crucial!

One of the biggest complaints against consultants as a race is that " They think and say a lot but do very little" - I shall prove them wrong!

Of Wodehouse, Vedanta and Long Distance Runs Part I

2007-01-14T21:18:00.000+05:30

Nearly six months after my last post of any note, I revive my rusty literary brain again to think blog for a few minutes. Thanks Tahseen .. you have ensured that my New Year resolution goes unbroken… at least for the time being :)

My first instinct when I start this piece is to give an excel sheet-by-excel sheet description of all the interesting bits of consulting I have done over the past six months, but what the heck… don’t think that my readers will be interested in the intricacies of the Poisson Distribution and Spiked Demand anyway :D

When I chose consulting, my choice was heavily influenced by a nebulous concept of work-life (im?)balance…Oh, and by the way, I have a very Indian, and in fact, very Mumbaiyya concept of work-life balance – as long as I leave at 8.30 AM and am back by 10 PM, I consider it a nice, relaxed day … damn those weekends! :P

Jokes apart, life in consulting has been good. How can I crib when an Optra comes, picks me up and drops me back at home and work five days a week most of the time? And what more proof of adaptability do I need when the client thinks that I am an engineer, completely oblivious to the fact that sine waves, lognormal distributions, Fourier transforms and the nth law of thermodynamics are as obviously intuitive to this Chartered accountant, as Tamil is to an Egyptian?

But then folks, there you have it. Consulting is the ultimate test of adaptability – of the capability to learn new things. And if you have won the trust of the client through your knowledge of the subject and an understanding of the practicalities of his/her situation, you have won a friend for life, and probably a bit of repeat business as well J.

One thing consulting (and I am sure this is true of every job that a WIMWIan lands up as well) makes me really ponder about is ‘the meaning of work’ and ‘the meaning of life’ . Remember Frankl’s “Man search for Meaning”? I am DEFINITELY not saying that today’s corporate life, however striking the resemblance is to a rat-race, comes anywhere close to the horrors of a concentration camp. But it does force us to lead lives where we are forced to run without knowing why we are running. Notice the use of the word ‘why’ instead of ‘where’ (I believe I have answered the ‘where’ part sufficiently for myself. My duty (thanks to the Gita) has been fixed as the search of excellence in my chosen profession. Wherever it leads me I am happy to go!). What do we achieve by doing whatever we do?

The One With All the Resolutions

2006-12-31T11:28:00.001+05:30

MY NEW YEAR RESOLUTION: To update my blog at least once a month!

Of Lions, Politics and the Gita

2006-07-22T20:10:00.000+05:30

It has been a looooooong time since I blogged. But finally, a completely chill weekend and a cup of coffee has made me decide to revive my rusty literary fingers with a small writing session on blogosphere once again.

Quite a bit has happened in my life since I bid adieu to IIMA in my last post… For starters, I got just about a week off before I joined work . Consultancy beckoned… and so did aamchi Mumbai. Shifting from campus was not that big a deal, but getting my parents to shift into the city was an additional responsibility. But thank God, that went off without a hitch.

I have accumulated a lot of thoughts during my three-month old career in consultancy, which I have been itching to put into words. Apart from the substance of these thoughts, I also realized I had spent too much time with Nat Geo and Discovery channel in my formative years J. The similarities between living in the managerial fast lane and the life that many animals live out there in the wild are striking. I now understand the meaning of the phrases ‘rat race’ and ‘dog-eat-dog world’ in their truest sense. Let me draw an analogy.

Take the instance of a male lion’s life in the African Savannah. The male lion’s entire adult life revolves around getting mating rights over the females and defending his ‘harem’ from other adult lions. Territorial disputes are a way of life for our harassed, yet majestic feline. There is no such thing as a harmless male adult in lion society; each is interested in building its genetic pool and thwarting its competitors for survival.

Now consider life in a city like Mumbai, which is renowned for its ‘survivor’ attitude. Not only do the people here have to fend for themselves in order to get ahead in life, they also have to be wary of other individuals encroaching upon their ‘space’ in the race for resources. The same behaviour gets exhibited in different ways in different spheres of economic activity. At the lower levels, the auto-wallahs fight their daily battle by trying to extract that one rupee extra from the unwary customer. In the corporate world, people’s ambitions to get to the higher levels or to protect their current jobs are paramount drivers of their behaviour. This desire makes them aggressive. Power and politics rule the roost and establishing one’s territories as wide as possible is a way of life. I observe these ‘instincts’ at work every day in my project.

But given the phenomenal success of our species in infesting pretty much every part of the planet, I often wonder what is the reason in fighting tooth and nail to establish power hierarchies in corporate circles… does it have any meaning whatsoever? What is it that they want to achieve in life? And will these ‘territorial disputes’ help people achieve whatever they seek to do?

This was the primary question I posed to myself recently. I found something which resembled a satisfactory answer to the question (and not unsurprisingly, it related to animal behaviour J), but surprisingly I realized that it was not so much an interest in these ‘territorial disputes’ as it was a question of that elusive thing called happiness. Will I be happy running the race on a day-to-day basis? It was then that I turned to my source of eternal advice and comfort – The Bhagavad Gita

The Gita talks about the way of action: devoting oneself to the achievement of excellence in one’s chosen sphere of activity without bothering about the results of the process. And to borrow a line from one of my favourite professors in IIMA, ‘you should find joy in the process, and not in the result’. In a way, I also think the Gita talks about choices. People (especially out of B-school campuses and into their jobs) often question the choice they made in taking or not taking a particular company or field, so much so that attrition rates in the first year after leaving campus is often in excess of 60-70%. The Gita on the other hand, I believe, talks about picking a choice based on the available information and not looking back at it to see whether it was the right thing or not but rather, to do that which is needed to make the choice work.

But will doing ‘that which is needed’ entail doing something unethical or immoral or against one’s code of conduct? I for one firmly believe that there is very little role for aggressive conflict in people’s lives. But such conflicts are a reality in everyday corporate life. My sattvik nature rebels against getting into the quicksand of conflict, but then how do I defend myself when being faced with it? My ‘survivor’ instinct tells me that I should become aggressive myself but I somehow believe that this is not the way I want to live my life… but then, having made the choice to be in the field of management, I need to do ‘that which is needed’ to make my choice work. What will it involve? It simply involves defending my territory against ‘encroachment’, clearly demarcating my boundaries and letting people know kindly but firmly that intrusions beyond those boundaries are not permitted.

I have my place in this world; I am a unique individual and nothing which other people say will make me question my abilities or my capacity to learn from others. I am here to do something which I have chosen to do and I will do it within the framework of my morals and my way of life. I will find happiness in doing the thing I have chosen. I WILL NOT have regrets. At the same time I will do what I think is fit to make the world a better place for all of us to live in. If I have to bide my time, so be it.

I now feel a bit sheepish at writing all these on my blog but I believe this is something all of us face as adults in an intensely competitive world waiting outside for us.

Bye bye IIMA

2006-02-24T15:11:00.000+05:30

My last class of PGP got over yesterday. End of a chapter? Or end of an epoch? I would like to think it is the latter.

The two years spent here at IIMA have given me more experiences worth treasuring and cherishing than the 'lifetime' I spent before coming here. Where do I begin my journey down memory lane? Do I start with the eternal appeal of the LKP? The scintillating qualities and character of the people (students and profs included)? The everlasting impressions of the pressures and tensions of PGP1? The exhilaration of unbridled freedom of PGP2? The legalised addiction that is DBabble? It is a journey of reminiscing with a clear beginning but with no end in sight - I love you IIMA.

I remember last year seeing the senti NB get flooded with thousands of little reminiscences of various things - midnight cups of tea at CT, various CPs, ACPs, SACPs and disagree CPs, walks in the LKP, tempo shouts in the mess, T Nite chants, 'My two pence nostalgia' and what not. Let me start with my own list [RCP disclaimers apply :-) ]

What will I miss most about IIMA? Difficult to answer - IIMA is an experience beyond words; you have to live it to believe it. Where else will you get a pot pourri of the brightest minds, biggest ambitions and strongest characters mingling without inhibition, with IIMA being the touchstone of their aspirations?

The first week at IIMA - best described by the phrase 'Ohhh....maaaiiiiiii...........gaaaaaaawd' - brought together the dorms (at least many of them) in a way that would never be forgotten ... be it the concerned tucchas who made us run from pillar to post, applying for various clubs or the assignments which were bestowed with the 'well meaning' intention of making us experience a nightout as soon as we arrived here... by the end of the week, a weary batch of facchas and facchis would be left hoping for better times around the corner...we could have scarcely been more mistaken - PGP 1 first term does not strike terror in the hearts of a WIMWIan without reason.

How do I describe the unique brand of terror caused by a little piece of paper fluttering inside a wooden notice board which read 'QM Quiz at 2.30 (or Manac quiz for the engineers :->)? The endless poring over casemats, blackbooks and notes taken down by the literally inclined was enough to make me freak. Blood curdling shouts of 'Muggo facchon muggo' in the mess, in the dorms and wherever there was a tuccha congregation did precious little to ease the frayed nerves. WAC runs and HR assignments ruled the roost.

But soon, TNite came and proved beyond ample measure that group bonding was here to stay, even in THE most competitive of places. Memories of hundreds of eager facchas partly running - partly wading through the monsoon-soaked LKP lawns, of stentorian tempo shouts and ingenious posters, of colourful classes and people sleeping on benches or curled up in the corners of the classrooms will remain evergreen. PGP1 was all about mugging, so I thought - Tnite changed that. After that, exams came and went, quizzes flew past us but nothing would ever be the same again.

Second term gave a small peek into what a PGP2's life would be. Chaman lal and co brought colour to a rather drab academic existence. Third term was rather like the famed story of Sisyphus and the boulder, with one expecting liberation to be just around the corner but that corner never seemed to come. Life was one long story of bleary eyes, mountains of books and endless cups of tea with the only thing sustaining me being the hope of attaining the Nirvana that was PGP2. Exams came and went and voila! salvation was at hand!

Fourth term and a completely new experience - no staring anxiously at the quiz notice boards, no more huddling over black books - whatay! It was time to say goodbye to a harrowing one year and welcome a new set of unfortunate sufferers into the PGP system - OM Shanti OM I thought. Soon it was birthday time at D21 and what do you know? A new hobby! And entertainment for all!

In a way, it is futile to distinguish between terms in the second year... it was one long extended holiday - a holiday where one could do whatever one wanted, no questions asked. Some typical instances
- CG Road? Fun Republic? Pani puri anyone?
- Can someone tell me the best places to visit in Timbuctoo ? I have a 5 day weekend
- Can someone share the latest episodes of Naruto/Scrubs/24/South Park? whatever!
- Acado, can assignment xxx/ IP report submission be postponed till after we
graduate pleaaaaaaaaaaaaase?
- Mid terms? What are they?
- Muggo facchon muggo! MANAC/OM/QM ka tempo high hai, facchon ki le li zig zag zig zag
- How many people are planning to take the CG exam tomorrow? :-)

As someone said, time is not measured in moments, but heartbeats. Going by that I have spent longer than my physcial lifetime here. My heart beats for you WIMWI - these are the experiences of a lifetime which are forever part of me as they are part of you. Now it is time to step out of your benevolent arms into the big bag world of corporate existence, but the lessons you taught me and the friends that you have given me will be there always to help me out and give me solace when I am down and give me humility when I reach hitherto unexplored heights...

Bye bye IIMA

Ranga

The Ravi C gems series - Part 2

2006-01-16T12:26:00.001+05:30

I have taken a course called Logistics management taken by Prof. Ravichandran in the sixth term. Boy! It is the most awesome fun! I have taken some pains to document some of his classic one-liners in class. This blog is a small sample:

a long discussion in class over a point ... same point gets repeated 20 mins later as if the guy is making a fresh point ... Ravi C says "I thought we had already covered this point some 20 mins earlier... Does sound travel so slowly here? "

I don't know why, but RaviC used to mercilessly tease some foreign students who came to IIMA on Exchange and were (un)fortunate enough to choose his courses. Here goes a small sample:

We were discussing a case on the supply chain for Hoechst Pesticides and he gets irritated at the speed the case discussion is progressing"You know you guys should have been able to complete the case discussion in 40 mins if you had thought clearly... now we have spent the better part of 4 classes on it - 9 times as much time.

With a sideward glance at the exchange students, he follows up "With increasing globalisation, the Indian students are also becoming world class..."
[silence for two seconds and a riotous thumping of the benches as the message sunk in..]

Bright student: Sir, this inventory is stocked in the head office whereas the recommendation is to stock it at the regional offices.

Ravi C: " If there are four members in your family and one of them goes abroad, then how many members are there in your family? It doesn't matter where the inventory is stored bhai as long as it is stuck in the system"

On the idea of debating options for transporting goods from factory to markets: to illustrate the idea of buying low value-add items locally the prof said :
"If you are going to transport cowdung, will you transport it by airplane?"

more to follow... :-)

Ranga

Reflections for the new year

2006-01-01T11:38:00.001+05:30

I have always been fascinated by the concept of new year resolutions. It is almost like a capsule of all the good intentions that one can have. It is like one of those rare flowers, (I think it is called kurinji in Tamil) which blooms only once in 12 years, only to fade again as quickly as it came.

I have tried to give up the habit of making new year resolutions for quite a while now, but even if I don't declare something formally as my new year resolution, I find myself unconsciously becoming determined that I would achieve something worthwhile or do something better this year and Hey Presto! I have a New Year Resolution even before I know it. Needless to say, not one of those good resolutions has materialised fully till now.

What causes the human brain to make resolutions? Fundamentally, I think we are a dissatisfied lot. The ability of the human mind to reflect analytically and/emotionally on past happenings and dissecting them into some specific cause-effect relationships is no doubt well established. But it is during some landmarks in time such as birthdays or New Years that there is this trigger which prompts reflection much more than during normal times. Again maybe the human mind is fundamentally optimistic? There is always the inclination to believe that the future will be better than the past if one takes the necessary actions... maybe that is what has made our race so successful?

But then, what prevents most resolutions from seeing the light of the day when it comes to action? In my opinion, it is that reflection is generally almost completely internal but action is completely external. And being external, there are a lot of forces in the environment that influence action a lot more than they would influence reflection. The really exceptional people can focus upon their reflections and use them to take the necessary actions to influence the environment in such a way that the reflections bear fruit in terms of actions and results. Will I be one of them? Till date, I haven't been able to achieve even a tenth of what I set out to do, but that will not keep me from trying :-).

The Ravi C Gems series - Part 1

2005-12-07T17:24:00.001+05:30

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...

2005-11-28T19:34:00.001+05:30

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

2005-11-23T14:15:00.001+05:30

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...

2005-11-20T18:12:00.001+05:30

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

2005-11-13T11:34:00.001+05:30

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

2005-11-07T10:54:00.001+05:30

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

2005-11-06T20:33:00.002+05:30

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

2005-11-06T19:11:00.001+05:30

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

2005-11-02T11:44:00.001+05:30

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

2005-11-02T11:05:00.001+05:30

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

2005-09-17T20:58:00.001+05:30

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!

2005-09-08T08:53:00.001+05:30

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

2005-08-24T17:15:00.001+05:30

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!

2005-08-23T00:50:00.001+05:30

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?

2005-08-20T07:28:00.001+05:30

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

2005-07-15T13:03:00.001+05:30

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

2005-07-15T10:45:00.001+05:30

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

2005-07-12T07:59:00.001+05:30

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...

2005-06-22T07:00:00.001+05:30

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

2005-05-18T15:24:00.001+05:30

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...

2005-05-12T15:19:00.001+05:30

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!

2005-03-25T16:56:00.001+05:30

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

2005-03-03T06:18:00.001+05:30

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

2005-02-23T21:34:00.001+05:30

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

2005-02-06T07:19:00.001+05:30

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...

2005-02-02T19:56:00.001+05:30

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

2005-02-01T08:00:00.001+05:30

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

2005-01-24T06:11:00.001+05:30

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...

2005-01-21T00:57:00.001+05:30

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

2005-01-13T15:12:00.001+05:30

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!!!

2005-01-10T14:31:00.001+05:30

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

2005-01-07T16:45:00.001+05:30

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

2005-01-06T16:01:00.002+05:30

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

Nothing to write about...

2004-12-22T17:06:00.001+05:30

This blogging habit of mine has become a fairly addictive thing over the past few days. I want to keep writing on it even if there is nothing worthwhile to mention. Now, going over the last couple of posts I find that there is that 'spark' lacking in the posts. Eek! If it is like this to write an ordinary blog and sustain the interest of the reader (myself in this case :-)) , imagine what it would be like for an advertiser whose bread and butter is made by sustaining the interest of the target customers (who are nowhere as kind as I am while evaluating my own literary efforts :-)).

That has led me to decide that I will update my blog only if I really find some meaty stuff to write on. (Oh, I am a vegetarian, by the way... the 'meat' allusion was just a figurative one). So why am I blogging now? Actually, I am feeling wide awake even at 3.30 am in the morning today and don't really know what to do!

Come to think of it, I think my next post will be on sleep, its aftereffects and side effects...
More stuff is just around the corner...

Sitan

Thinking through...

2004-12-19T07:52:00.001+05:30

Another amazing Finance Class happened today. Man! Our professor for this term was truly awesome. Today was the last day of classes for the second term and we have the weekend to prepare for the end term. I have a lot of catching up to do and this therefore promises to be a short post...

During the Finance Class today, we were discussing some complex concepts and the professor did an amazing job of guiding us through the concepts... He is fond of the words "Run the logic on _____ situation ". He makes us think logically through the steps that are involved in an action. Invaluable I would say. The problem however lies in building rigour into your thinking process so that you do not make mistakes or skip any steps while conceptualising a problem. There is a good chance that you will come up with the wrong solutions or conclusions otherwise. What is required for this? Well, apart from the gift of good brains (so often taken for granted, yet so invaluable to success), it requires logical thinking and phenomenal concentration. I mean, if you have to really conceptualise at that level, you must be able to shut out all external influences (believe me , our class gets quite noisy at times :-)), and then take a thought process to its logical conclusion...

As managers of the future, I believe we all have a responsibility to ourselves to develop this wonderful habit .... Not an easy task though. It requires a lot of trials and frustrations (as if we do not have enough frustrations already)... But then as Churchill once said,
"Success is the ability to move from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm"

:-))

Discipline

2004-12-18T06:21:00.000+05:30

I am feeling pretty philosophical right now, especially after I know I have wasted time much better spent more productively. This series of blogs will help me focus on that strangely elusive quality called "Discipline".

Discipline is a pretty strange creature. She is the pet of those who can sacrifice the present for the future. For those cursed souls who can't do that, she is more elusive than the Loch Ness Monster...

What is it that makes one waste time when one knows that there is work to be done? Or, more relevantly, what is it that helps one focus on the work and keep the play for later? Discipline, of course!

Yeah right- pretty obvious answer that. But, talking about it is never enough. Nor is wishing for it ever going to help. It is a way of life. It is what distinguishes the good from the bad, and the great from the good. Mundane, yet powerful, discipline works in strange and wonderful ways to improve productivity manifold.

I quote a few memorable quotes on this topic:

"Half of life is luck; the other half is discipline - and that’s the important half, for without discipline you wouldn’t know what to do with luck. "
Carl Zuckmeyer

" When you have a number of disagreeable duties to perform, always do the most disagreeable first. "
Josiah Quincy

"The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do. They don't like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose. "
E.M. Gray

Nice quotes, these and very true too! One of the most important things discipline allows you is the ability to have a peaceful sleep every night. Once you have done your work for the day and achieved what you set out to do, nothing more matters for a hearty sleep. And believe me, in a place like IIMA, a guilty conscience is the last thing you want to have while hitting the sack after a long, tiring day...

Well, I have to discipline myself as well. Must log off now :-)

Sitan

Of Profs and proofs

2004-12-16T17:28:00.001+05:30

We have this finance professor called Ajay Pandey (I am proud to say that he was one of the panelists who interviewed me during the IIMA admission process). Oh man! His fundas in Finance are the strongest I have ever seen! The man truly knows his subject. In fact, I have never seen him at a loss even once when handling some fairly tricky questions from the students. He seems to be a storehouse of knowledge and I am not the only one who feels that way. Even guys from IIT, who have had exposure to some pretty great profs rate him very highly indeed. It makes me really proud to have made it to IIMA, you know. Having exposure to some of the best faculty in the field is a rare thing and it really is upto us to maximise what we get from the classes.

Talking about maximisation, I have been maximising my sleep off late. While my colleagues are slogging away and sleeping barely six hours a day, yours truly manages to snore away for at least 7.5 to 8 solid hours :-D. Initially I felt guilty about it. But later, I realised that sleep was not a bad thing after all. Some people consider it a waste of time. It is not that we do not "waste" time otherwise. The most important thing is that we manage to stay productive during class hours and absorb whatever is being taught. I mean, imagine if one were to sleep even for a few minutes in the Finance class ( and mark my words, if you keep having less than 7 hrs sleep a day, you are bound to 'sleep' at least for a while in any class), one would miss a few pearls of wisdom from the prof. The profs here are unbelievable, especially Ajay Pandey. But the thing with his classes is that you have to be constantly attentive. One small lapse is what it takes for some fin funda from being highly interesting to being pure Over Head Transmission!

Come to think of it, I have never learnt Fin the way it has been taught here. In CA, all we used to do was to accept certain statements and formulae at face value and never bother about the foundations. But here everything is about proof - not in the technical sense of having to prove how a formula came about but more about understanding the theoretical foundations of a formula. I realised that I had been conditioned to accept whatever explanation was thrown at me without really questioning the motive behind it. That I realise no longer applies. I must learn to question and analyse the underlying ideas. That is when I get true insights into the concepts and can use them in a variety of situations.

This approach also ensures that nobody is able to pull the wool over my eyes in future managerial situations as well. If there is one thing good about IIMA, it is the way it teaches one ot question one's assumptions and re-examine truisms in a new light. I realise that it is a whole new way of thinking. God help me change my mindset now!

Blogging off

Sitan

Uncommon Sense...

2004-12-15T15:15:00.001+05:30

Another day, another marketing class... The company being discussed today was Procter and Gamble, one of the worlds best marketing companies. The students were asked to prepare the case before coming to class (At IIM A, the case method of study is THE preferred pedagogical tool. I don't entirely agree with the insti on the use of this method, but then that is my raw material for another blog.:-)). The entire outlook of the case transformed before my very eyes in the classroom. Our prof took us through the processes the company used/would want to use when faced with a particular decision problem. The way we looked at the case was totally inadequate.

But, in retrospect the entire approach seemed driven by common sense. Common sense ... I have never come across a more uncommon characteristic among people. One of the vaunted characteristics of this institute is that it implants some common sense in its alumni before they graduate. I can see how it does that. The professors here, knowingly or unknowingly, help us get a perspective on a common sense approach to a business problem. I could also analyse the P&G case a lot better after the perspective offered by the prof. Common sense is indeed uncommon. But, with some practice, I am sure we will do a good job as managers in the future.

Today I came across a message posted on our electronic notice board ... the title is "KISS" (acronym for "Keep it simple, Stupid!"). It goes like this.

1) When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found
out that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity (Ink won't flow down
to the writing surface).In order to solve this problem, it took them
one decade and $12 million. They developed a pen that worked at zero
gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface
including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to
over 300 degrees C. And what did Russians do.....................??
The Russians used a Pencil!!!

2) One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was
the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan's
biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a
consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Immediately the
authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which
transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery
department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly
line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem.
Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with
high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap
boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty.
No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent
whoopee amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with
the same problem, did not get into complications of X-rays, etc but
instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial
electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan
on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty
boxes out of the line.

Moral of the story: KISS (Keep It Simple,Stupid) i.e. always look for
simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves
the problem :-) So, learn to focus on solutions not on problems

Ample testimony to the usefulness of common sense I suppose... :-))

Bloggin' Off
Sitan

Memoryless Systems and my experiences with QM

2004-12-14T17:08:00.001+05:30

Oh My God!

We had a Quantitative methods class today... the prof was talking about exponential distributions and some illustrations of the same. Ooof! Are they ever hard to understand! All the theory he taught seemed to make sense...then Kabooom! He thrust some seemingly "simple" problem on us.
That effectively destroyed whatever confidence I had in the subject. It was Overhead transmission pure and simple... I could hear the whooshing sound of all that gyaan passing right out of my brain.

Eeek! If a CA like me (who has had a prior exposure to Probability and distributions) can resist QM like a bucking bronco, I can well imagine what it is to have a non-maths background. It must be like a rustic Greek being caught in a Tamil Nadu village.

There was this concept of memory-less property of exponential distributions being taught in class. Memory less... Memory less... Memory less... What was actually taught ? Oh..I feel my memory is getting progressively lesser. ;-). I thought of me having a good head for data...Facts, figures, trivia - everything was right up my street, or so I thought. But this has been a rude awakening. The way things are taught here are a lot more about concepts than mere facts. Abstracting the concept from the data is extremely important...Thankfully, I have a set of very helpful friends who can make sense of the distributions, probabilities and stuff.

Actually it was not as bad as I paint it to be, once I get some help... God bless the IITs(and the other Quant focussed colleges) and Thank God for the Mathematicians of the batch! And God bless their helpful hearts! After the event I actually feel that Quant is not such a tough subject after all. All it requires is some acquaintance, a helluva lot of practice and some common sense. As future Managers, all of us will be required to use/interpret large quantities of data and this is a useful way to make sense of it all...

That's enuf for now....
Sitan

End of an epoch...

2004-12-14T05:54:00.001+05:30

The Goddess of Devotional music, MS Subbulakshmi passed away a couple of days back...

I could barely believe it when I read about it in the papers. Yeah, granted that she was not young any more and was reported to have been admitted to hospital. She had also stopped singing since her husband died. But then, it still was difficult to come to terms with her demise.

Having been brought up in a conservative South Indian family, MS was a part of my life from a very early age. You could find most South Indian Households reverberating with her "Kausalyaa Suprajaa Raama Poorva Sandhyaa Pravarthathe..." every morning. My initiation into Vishnu Sahasranamam was through a half - hour long gramophone record carrying her rendition of the same... I still remember feeling all restless and wondering when the recital would get over. But now, I can not have enough of it... Strange how things work.

However, even at a young age, her singing in the film "Meera" attracted me. Later, this attraction changed to fascination. I simply could not get enough of her songs! In fact, one of my first uses of Sharescan after coming to IIMA was to find out the availability of MS Songs on the LAN :-)). Her voice would seem so soothing and mellifluous. But what made me really pick her out of all others of her generation? Was it the Clear tone of her voice? Was it her impeccable fidelity? Was it her purity of Shruti? Was it her incredible attention to pronunciation? Or was it something more?

I found the answer one day while I was waiting outside a temple... I had heard the song "Dolayaam" (which is supposed to be sung when Lord Vishnu and His Consort are together on a swing) sung by a prominent Carnatic musician of our times some time back. Then I heard the same song sung by MS being played... The difference could not be starker... It was clear to me then that what was a direct conversation with God for MS remained a mere song for ordinary mortals...It was that Bhakti that really came through in her songs...

Her devotional songs had the ability to transcend the boundaries of the earthly world and take us to a different plane altogether. It was almost as if she could see the Deity she was singing about. That to me was the difference...

It also taught me a lesson on what is uniqueness and excellence all about. What made her stand out like a shining light among those illustrious exponents of the noble art of Music? It was her involvement in what she set out to do...She could do it better than anyone else because she put her entire Soul behind her effort. That to me is the key lesson her life holds for people, irrespective of country, religion caste and creed.

She also used to consider herself a student of Music till the very end...That gave her the humility that endeared her to all music lovers. Her contributions to charity were not to be sneered at either.

Thanks to all the technology we still get to hear those divine songs, but her demise leaves a void that cannot be filled. She was the Don Bradman of Carnatic Devotional music (or Kalidasa, for the more poetically inclined :-)). Others could always try to wrestle for the second spot, but the foremost place is hers and hers alone, in my mind at least.

May her Soul Rest in peace...
Her Lord has called her to His abode...

Logging off
Sitan

Abstraction...

2004-12-11T18:52:00.001+05:30

This piece is about how important it is to get beyond the details to arrive at the concepts. It is one of the keys to long term success. The ability to extract the concept from the detail is what distinguishes the "men from the boys" so to speak ( or the "women from the girls" for those who might think that I am a chauvinist pig after reading the first phrase :-)). IIM-A does actually place a lot of emphasis on this aspect. Maybe it is why this institute creates such outstanding managers.

We were sitting in finance class today and I was feeling lost in a jumble of maths and graphs . Then the prof reiterated the fact that the weird caconography that he did on the board was only a tool to arrive at the basic concept underlying it all... It then dawned on me how easy it really is to get lost in details and miss the forest for the trees. At the same time, it is important to read, understand and interpret the data carefully and arrive at logical conclusions based on it. Tough going huh?? Yeah, I bet it is.

When I was at the Taj I was talking to this really high up official who probably revealed the key to being a successful analyst and an effective decision maker at the same time. He said that the most valued ability for an analyst is to be able to get immersed in the detail that he/she creates. That is what helps him/her create outstanding reports. Once the report has been created (in draft), it is necessary to get into a totally different frame of mind and approach the entire thing from a totally different point of view. The ability to "move out" of the data and take a bird's eye view was, is and will always be highly prized.

As entry level graduates, many of us will be involved in writing reports rather than interpreting them, at least initially. Later on, roles will change. But the truly outstanding performers will be able to abstract away, even at the entry stage, from the data they created and view their efforts in a conceptual and managerial framework that will make the final outcome much more lucid and relevant. This will also help them avoid the oft-criticised failing of the MBA, viz. being good at giving theoretically sound but practically useless suggestions.

Rest in next...
Sitan

Clarity of thought...

2004-12-11T06:48:00.001+05:30

This is turning out to be one series of articles on pseudo-philosophical and moralistic lines. But then, I like thinking about all these things. Now, there are a couple of lines in Sanskrit that I know which go like this...

"Buddhir balam yashodhairyam nirbhatavamarogataa
Ajaahyam Vaakpatutvam cha Hanumat Smaranaath Bhaveth"

"Taddrshtva Vyaaditam Chaasiyam Vaayuputrassubuddhimaan
deerghajihvam Surasayaa sughoram narakopamam..."

I am not too good at understanding Sanskrit, but these lines are in praise of Lord Hanuman. The first verse just invokes His Name and says that those who remember Lord Hanuman will be blessed with Intelligence, mental alertness, diplomacy, strength and clarity in speech.The second verse just praises His presence of Mind. Lord Hanuman was supposed to be an epitome of clear thinking and this is what is painfully lacking in many people today (me no exception).

This lack of clarity in thinking is found in many aspects. Take academic learning for instance. Our course requires a lot of clear thinking on many concepts that are taught in class. In fact I believe that a lot of our problems in understanding the concepts taught will be solved if we give ourselves the time to sit back and ponder over what was taught in class. Now there is nothing that prevents us from doing it but sheer laziness. Thinking is one the toughest activities one can ever do. The rewards are great but so are the efforts and the distractions!

Clarity in thinking is a difficult thing to achieve but it is amazingly productive...Believe me I have seen some very live examples (within my study group here at IIMA) and firmly believe that there are few things more admirable than instances of clear thinking. That is what I am trying to emulate myself. It is incredibly tough to really get to the brass tacks and think uninterruptedly. Then again, the rewards are great.

Take another instance of confused thinking... Career choices! Do I want to go into marketing? Finance ? Operations ? Strategic administration? Most of us do not even have a clue. Things here are purely driven by mob mentality and introspection often takes a back seat. As a result, many people take up jobs they are not comfortable with and this does bring a lot of unhappiness in our lives later. The turnover rate among fresh graduates at IIMA is incredibly high and I would probably put it down to lack of clarity in thought (Of course, there are also some cases of lack of opportunity, but then clear thought and action creates its own opportunities!)

Oh I could go on and on about this instances. But I think this is too long already. I need to blog off and spend some time ..... THINKING !

Sitan aka Rangarajan

Law of Averages

2004-12-09T07:10:00.001+05:30

In the long run we all get what we really deserve...Nobody can stay 'lucky' in the long run. This might sound a bit cynical, but I have found this to be absolutely true in my short life so far. Everytime I think I have been unfortunate in some aspect, a windfall comes my way and things even out. And naturally, the opposite also happens quite frequently.
The worst part is getting caught in the ups and downs rather than thinking "Long term". It is tough to escape the rut but it has to be done. I am currently in a phase where I am frequently subject to both ups and downs. The bad part is that I am finding it difficult to get out of the cycle of happiness and disappointment...
I came across this inspirational poem called "If" written by Rudyard Kipling. I quote,

" If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;..."

This is the toughest thing of all. I am trying hard to put it into practice...
My peace of mind depends on how successfully I execute this ... Oh well, time is a great healer. Let's see what happens :-)

Sitan

Pride in work...

2004-12-07T19:34:00.001+05:30

My Blogging rate has increased exponentially over the past few days...Is it that I don't have anything else to do? Of course not. Somehow, I have fallen under the spell of blogging and the strange mix of openness and privacy that it offers. And then, when it becomes a sort of necessity, I can always find the 10 minutes required somehow :-).
There are many incidents taking place nowadays which teach me the real meaning of some fairly commonplace words. One word which really got meaning for me a few hours back was the word "Pride". By this I mean taking pride in one's work.
My friend was disappointed at a poor performance he put up in one quiz sometime back... I thought, "Hey what's the big deal? Everybody makes mistakes in some quiz or the other..." . But then I realised that it was not the actual grade that he got that mattered so much. What really bothered him was that he had "failed" (in a relative sense of the term :-)) to do well in the subject that he loved most. The pride which he took in his performance was a lesson for me as well.
I realised that we need to take pride in our work for us to really excel in it. A "chalta hai" attitude may still result in our doing good work, but it does not promote excellence. In the world today, where excellence is the name of the game, pride in one's work is an absolute must.
However, this has a caveat attached. Having pride in one's work is all fine. But one should not let it get overboard and feel dejected at having made a mistake. Disappointment is fine only to the extent one can learn from it.
Life will keep teaching me new lessons everyday...the only thing is that I have to be a good student and keep the learning spirit and take each lesson as an invaluable contribution towards the development of my personality

Bloggin' off
Sitan aka Rangarajan

Loneliness...

2004-12-06T14:52:00.001+05:30

The second year students broke for their term breaks around one week back (they get 3 weeks holidays between the fifth and sixth terms!). The dorms generally wear a deserted look without them around. It is almost as if the place is devoid of life. There is no music constantly blaring out, no shouts of "Muggo, Fachhon, Muggo!" ... and so on. We do not realise the value of all these things when they are there but feel bad when they are not present. The pervasive feeling is that we can't wait for them to come back. The presence of the 2's does a lot to bring "spirit"(no pun intended :-)) into the dorms, which we all miss sorely.
All we facchas get to do is to attend a few company talks and mug on as usual. Btw, there was this BCG talk on strategy on Sunday. It was very interesting indeed and threw some useful insights into what a consultant really does.
The thing that impressed me most during that talk was the definition of strategy one guy gave us. He said strategy is all about making hard choices in order to get the best out of the available resources. I then realised that it was what I have been missing all my life. Everyone needs to make hard choices if they have to reach the top. Naturally, it is a painful process. But running away from unpleasant decisions will only delay the inevitable. The "winners" are the ones who can take the challenge head on and be decisive. More important is the commitment to the decision once it is made. Once these two things are there in place, a formula for success is already brewing. Add to it a recipe of grace from God's Hand and voila! Nothing can prevent one from going to the very top...
This musing seems slightly philosophical to me, but then I am coming face-to-face with myself while writing this blog. I know that I have not been required to make the kind of tough decisions, many of my batchmates have had to do so far. I have generally enjoyed the best of many worlds, with my parents always ready to provide me the support I needed. But now, if I have to go out into the real world, I have to develop the skill of explicitly making hard choices . Even as I write, I am making a choice of what I want to do with my time at IIMA and the choice I am making, I feel, is helping me see things in black and white.

This blog somehow resembles a diary of sorts, where I can really let myself go... I think it is good for me. Let's see what I do from now on...

Sitan

Diminishing marginal returns...

2004-12-03T15:02:00.002+05:30

We had a marketing class today where the professor talked about the concept of diminishing returns applying to life in general ( I don't remember the context in which he mentioned it anyway, but then, in Marketing I guess it really does not matter :-)). Coming to think of it, the law of diminishing returns is at its punishing best in any performance driven scenario. Take IIMA for example. Here we find most students braving sleepless nights and nightmarish loads in the first year to struggle to be among the top. Beyond a point, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain productivity. Often it is the case that people drop off to sleep while poring over their books. The less sleep we get and the more work we put in,the more difficult it becomes difficult to get proportionately higher grades. There are a blessed few, who manage to extract the best out of their productive time and manage to beat the law of diminishing marginal returns. But for the rest of the people, this law is a poignant reminder of our failings (ironic...me saying failings, when many people would give an eyetooth to be here and think that the privileged ones who make it to IIMA have near divine status).
But then, one of the greatest challenges in our lives is bound to be one of extracting the most of our productive time to achieve the sort of results and fame that we often dream of... But how to go about doing that? I am reminded of Lord Krishna's immortal saying here:
" Karmanyevaadhikarasthe Maaphaleshu Kadachana "
"Do your Best without expecting the fruits of your efforts " and leave the rest to God.

I have never come across a more profound statement...
Now why am I blogging without getting down to studies? Fact is, I am feeling sleeppy after a very nice dinner (They actually serve good food in the mess sometimes :-)) and thought a bit of blogging will wake me up nicely...

In fact, this exercise has been so effective that I lost sleepiness halfway thru this blog and started feeling guilty :(...so that's all for now.

Blogggin' Off
Sitan aka Rangarajan

Amazing Class...

2004-11-30T00:25:00.001+05:30

We had an awesome marketing class today, with participation pouring in from the students. The class was on demand forecasting and the students came up with some innovative ideas to fit a curve to the given data and use it for predictions. The teacher also did an excellent job in directing the course of the discussion. His statements in hindsight just seemed to be common sense. After a while it seemed that there was no insight gained during the class. A further thought made me revise my opinion. There are some who disagree with me but I think Marketing as a course is just a lot of common sense which often gets missed out.
What's more important is the fact that the case method of study followed here does force people (sometimes) to grapple with real issues and deal with situations where there is unavailability of data and a high degree of uncertainty...
Whatever it does, it certainly makes one think logically and systematically through a problem, which will be of great use when we enter the real world...

Proud to be a WIMWIAn
Sitan

I know what I do this summer...

2004-11-27T11:03:00.001+05:30

I will be working with the Corporate and Investment Banking Division of Citibank this summer... Whew! It is a real relief when the summer placements process got over...The tension inside the faccha pool (that is where all the first year students are asked to assemble) hits you like something solid! Seeing the anxiety on the faces of some of the best and brightest in the country really makes me wonder about the system. What is it about Day Zero jobs that makes people go ballistic, trying to rush headlong into areas they (often) know very little about? Is it the money? Is it the prestige? Is it the glamour? I think it might be a mix of all the above three. But anyway, is this process not just another step in a long career and more importantly, a longer life?
I know many of my batchmates will not agree if I say that the summers/final placements process does not really matter in the long run. On a personal note, I would like to be in a job that at least keeps my sense of self worth intact and helps me lead a balanced life with work and fun mixed in ample measure. I myself got placed in Day One and many feel that those who do not get Day Zero placements will try to console themselves saying it does not matter really... but believe me, I have heard reports from some of my seniors about the nightmarish work hours they had in I-Banks and the immense pressure trading jobs put on them. Pressure is good till a limit, because it brings out the best in you, but an overdose is not really healthy. Then again, it is just my view (which by the way, matches with the lazy outlook I have on life in general :-))
Life is long and is to be enjoyed well...Why waste it trying to think about competing with others. I compete with myself and try to my job better every time. That is more than enough for me.

Logging off
Sitan

The hottest winter I have ever experienced

2004-11-02T00:41:00.001+05:30

The title of this blog has absolutely nothing to do with the weather (which is Gorgeous, by the way, at least by South Indian standards) . It is summer placement season here and things are literally heating up on campus. Life is becoming more and more hectic as the funda sessions start pouring in from Placecom here. Moreover there is a lot of muggin to do before the summers start.

That's all for now...really don't feel like blogging now
Sitan

Stable Change

2004-10-17T22:41:00.002+05:30

I am not referring to horse stables in my heading :-)
I was prompted to log in after i finished filling up my TAS application form for the Summer recruitment process.
I really am at a loss to understand why companies insist on us filling out these long painful forms that apparently seem to serve no purpose other than make for good creative fiction writing...
But then, maybe it is intended to cultivate patience in our minds, a good characteristic of managers. Maybe I will look back at this experience and say it was all for the best, but then, maybe not :)
I am editing this post ages after I actually created it. Now I am absolutely determined to publish it!

Logging off for now
Sitan aka Rangarajan

second term at Central Jail (oops! IIMA)

2004-10-01T19:34:00.002+05:30

the second term here started with a bang. we had two submissions the very first day of the term.
we were cursing our seniors who had promised us that we would have a really chill term
but after the first couple of days, things seem to have eased out. i don't have anything much to do for the weekend (except prepare my cv for the summers!!!!)

coming to the summers placement process, it is strange how one gets the writer's block as soon as one starts to have some intention in mind ! i started to think about what i wanted to put in my cv.
ideas start flowing all around me, yet i am unable to pin down one really satisfactory cv point.

oh well, i guess it is going to be a painful process.

Labour Camp _ IIMA

2004-09-07T05:36:00.001+05:30

Wow!!
What a week we have ahead of us.
5 submissions and 1 quiz in the week leading to the end terms. One of our seniors had told us that the first year at IIMA is a labour camp. Now I see why.

The worst part is that the city is getting hotter and hotter again. The level of my laziness, I have found, has a unique relationship with the external temperature. It is inversely proportional once the temperature starts going down below 25 and directly proportional once it moves above 34.

But overall, I would say that this has been a good learning experience for me. I have probably learnt more about management in these three months than I have done in my previous 22 years. No wonder this insti has such a good brand image.

Proud to be at IIMA

Philosophy??? naah...just practical lessons I learnt

2004-08-19T22:43:00.001+05:30

The last few days have awoken the sleeping philosopher in me. I thought I had done a decent job during my mid term exams. Only now do I realise that I have come up woefully short in meeting the expectations of the teaching assistants who actually correct the mid term papers.

What does this all have in store for a guy who came to the best b-school in asia pacific with a truckload of expectations?

A lot, coming to think of it; and this is probably true for all people who find themselves messing up one exam or another.

Learnings:
1. do not try to jump to the skies with just a pair of sneakers on. You need the ammunition to do it.
2. better take to the skies in a set of small jumps than try to fly. You will most probably land with a thud if you are too ambitious.
3. be realistic in your expectations . You cannot expect to become a genius overnight. But what you can do is to keep plodding away steadily.
4. Never let your efforts slacken. Giving up is simply useless.
5. Have faith in god at all times.

singin' in the rain

2004-08-08T11:26:00.002+05:30

it has been raining continually for God Knows how many days here at IIMA. The campus is getting flooded and we have to wade through gallons and gallons of water to get to our classes.Mr.Louis Kahn probably came from a Desert. So he apparently forgot that there are such things as rains. The drainage system at IIMA is adequate testimony to this...

The rains of course have brought their own power cuts to this place. We have been having Economics sessions in pitch darkness (there is hardly any natural light in the classrooms). Talk about knowledge dispelling the darkness of ignorance.

We also have this thingy called T-Nite at IIMA, where all first year students ("facchas") have a whale of a time trying to out-shout and out-perform their colleagues from other sections. The seniors say that this is the most memorable time that we will ever get to spend at IIMA. I don't doubt them. The fever runs really high and loyalty to your section really comes through. The fun is even more when we have to rush out in the pouring rain for buying stationery, bugles, ribbons and stuff .

This week promises to be really hectic, what with having to keep your preparations for class up to the mark and simultaneously trying to see that your section emerges on top... But then, as McDonald's slogan goes:

"I'm luvin' it"

Signing off.

path breaker...

2004-08-04T21:42:00.001+05:30

This is my first attempt at blogging. I must admit, blogging has a sort of addictive quality to it... I have come across quite a few witty blogs during my stint of just over a month and a half at IIMA and thought I might join the crowd.

My mid term exams just got over :) . What better time to set about doing something I haven't done before?

That's enuf for my first post. gotta go frontlog on some sleep.