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

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!

The Ravi C gems series - Part 2

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

The Ravi C Gems series - Part 1

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

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

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

"Looking away..Like newly married brides"

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

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

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

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

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

The one in which he explains cycle time:

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

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

StratStud Student: Both.

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

StratStud Student: That's a philosophical question.

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

On Foreign Students

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

On self:

"I am a sadistic monkey, u know"

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

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

In a session on scheduling:

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

Student: Sir, it should improve its scheduling policy.

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

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

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

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

On feeding a bottleneck:

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

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

RC: “Arre yeh kya humarey liye hai”?

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

On averages/mean as a performance measure:

Student : Sir, the queue length is 2.25 people.

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

Student : err…ummm…

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

On asymptotes:

Student : “The function gradually approaches 0…”

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

“Isko koi samjhao bhai”

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

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

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

On the same AWOL student:

RC: “…WIP gone missing”

On scheduling conflicts:

Student: “It arises because of shared resources.”

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

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

RC: "Which is your favorite LP problem?"

Student : "Adani Wilmar"

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

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

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

Dunno the context:

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

Ranga

Of influences and writing styles

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

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

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

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

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

Ranga

Mean reversion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can it get better than this?
PG Wodehouse rocks!

Blogging off,
Ranga

Sunny days...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogging off
Ranga

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

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

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

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

Rangarajan

End of an epoch...

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

Clarity of thought...

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

Labour Camp _ IIMA

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

path breaker...

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.