WHAT THA F...........UN!!!

Super-mom 2020, will she be better than my mom?

2009-03-17T02:20:00.000-07:00

I am lazing around at home with absolutely no work to do.. so this devil's mind realized that it had not posted anything on the blog for a long long time. So here it goes..

This is about the movie Sasirekha Parinayam which i happened to watch on TV this Sunday. Was an OK types movie with all the now popular antics and tantrums of Genelia. While watching the movie i realized how the characters in the movies change according to the changing behaviours and cultures in the real life.

The hero of this movie is Tarun(yes he has made a comeback after the chocolate boy stint of his in the early 2000s) and Genelia plays the female protagonist.

I couldnt resisit doing an in-depth analysis of the kind of characters that were portrayed by them in the movie( yes i am that jobless now!).

The characteristics of the hero:

Calm and Composed

Cool head over shoulders

Caring

Atleast looks responsible

Has seen the outside world and understands its demands

Patient(very)

Takes well thought out decisions

The characteristics of the heroine:

Naive

Throws tantrums

Not afraid to throwaway her marriage

Demanding

Doesnt look very much exposed to outside world or feels the need to

Cute and intruguing(atleast for the movie)

Brash

Impulsive decisions

Irresponsible ( if u will)

Mind you this is not a one-off movie which has such character portrayals, this is something which has come to be a sort of norm while etching characters of a (Gult/Tam) movie nowadays.

As the cliche goes, "reel life imitates real life", i would put my money on you finding every other guy or gal on the street or in your neighbourhood having qualities similar to those listed above more or less.

I would clearly put a huge disclaimer that this is no male-chauvinist speaking here and i have just unbiasedly illustrated the change in the behaviour and characteristics of the X/Y/Z etc generation.

Gone are the days where the girl would be subdued,shy and confined to her home and college, learn the errands at home ( give a helping hand to mom), a bit hesitant to voice her opinions, be ready to take on family responsibilities etc. In a way it is good that there has been great leaps in woman empowerment and the fairer sex is demanding its pound of flesh in the corporate jungle. But somewhere down the line i am really worried if the quintessential woman has lost those special qualities that we always admire in our moms who are:

Patient, Responsible, caring, multi-tasking, a true home maker, adjusting to situations et all

I really hope our future generations will continue to have such super moms which we were fortunate to have.

At the same time i am not trying to drive home the point that all guys are like how Tarun is in the movie, but from whatever little experiences i have had IMO the current generation guys are far less chauvinistic ( i wont say that we've totally lost it :P), more open to adjusting, even if unorderly at times understand responsibility, yes the brashness remains but controlled one though. ( Yes i am going to get brick bats from the gals for this!)

I really want to see, if at all there is a sequel Sasirekha Parinayam - 2 where the couple get married and later have kids, i want to see how Genelia manages the show and the kind of chemistry the couple will have.

I really hope she kicks a$$ and forces me to put a foot into my mouth. :(

Go Genelia go!

Go New-age girl to be woman go!

E summit 2009

2009-01-23T12:48:00.000-08:00

This is one event for which i have put my heart, sweat and blood for to make it happen.

Tomorrow is the event, hope it goes on well for the team..

Cant call this blogging but posted after a long time..

Totaly exhausted. I think inow i can put on my tshirt which reads "100% overworked"

Totaly swamped tomorrow:

1. my event

2. Wipro online test

3. Mom coming to Calcutta(yippie)

Structured Creativity!

2008-08-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

Oh i am back. As my orkut status reads, term 4 in IIM Calcutta is really screwing me. Lots of projects, quizzes, portfolios to manage, endterms looming over(just a day left). Amongst all this frustration, drama and jugaad there are some creative and lighter moments which while screwing you one side, still manages to bring a laugh or smile on your face by the sheer uniqueness and brilliance of it.

One such hillarious thing is our tryst with a course called Structured Finance in the term 4 of our MBA. This was one of the few courses which didnot have a cap or cutoff grade. For the uninitiated, cap in a subject means the professor has set a predefined maximum intake (Eg. 50 students) and cutoff grade meant u needed a minimum of B+ in a few related courses to opt for the course . So this subject was opted for by a whooping 144 students in the batch. There were two tranches of people who had opted for this subject. One lets call it T1, who were really focussed on finance, specifically markets and had come to know from the seniors that he is one of the best visiting professors taking a finance course in IIMC. The other T2, were guys who were having a mixed bag portfolio of subjects. They were looking to take one FIN course and Struct Fin seemed a good and easier option since it dinot have a cap or a grade barrier.

And here comes Prof. VK, the securitization stud who teaches at a level which needs atleast some basic knowledge about bonds, fixed income, options etc. Most of the T2 and some of T1 were in for a shock and had given up on the subject in in the 3rd,4th classes itself. The classes were conducted on the Saturday mornings which was the worst time to go to a class. All this culminated into an indifference on the part of many students towards the subjects and many had made it a habit to sign the attendance sheet and leave the class. The professor dint care about it in the first few classes but started getting frustrated slowly. And then he thought enough is enough.He had his own way of vendatta. He started conducting quizzes in the last 5 minutes of the class when atleast half of the class had left after the ritual of signing the attendance sheet.

Quiz 1: He started with the first quiz. With just 5 mins left for the class to end he asks the students to take a sheet of paper out of their books write their names and reg nos and answer a few SIMPLE questions. People still couldnt believe that they were actualy going to write a quiz. Before anyone could even react to what happened the quiz was over. Half the class was literally RAPED since they just missed a quiz which had 5 marks weightage ( 5 marks really matters here since you might lose or gain a grain for even 0.5 marks).

Quiz 2: The same event happened 2-3 classes later in the last 5 mins of the class. This time people were accustomed to the surprise if not prepared for it. Some of them managed to call their friends who had already left to rush in time to attend the quiz. This time it was more interesting. This was like a real Quiz Quiz. We had to guess the word or the concept which you could decipher from a cryptic statement. There were 15 suchs.
One interesting one was:
"It goes well with bed, bread and bonds!"
The answer was: Spread
There were many nore such interesting hillarious cryptics. One was relating "wardrobe malfunction" and CDOs, can you beat this for creativity.(Answer was Ramp up Risk:). We managed to survive this one too

Quiz 3: By now we were like anticipating a quiz almost every class. Risk averse people slowly stopped leaving the class after the ritual while the risky guys left and had someone in the class who would buzz them if at all the quiz happened. The creativity levels in setting the quiz was growing exponentially. I was wondering if the Prof had a split personality - one which was a hardcore FIN focused securitization God and the other was a Creative and Art oriented person.
Ok without deviating from the topic lets go bang onto the quiz. This one was a Yes/No or True/False type quiz. We were a bit happy that we dint have to write paragraphs like we did in Quiz 1 or concepts like we did in Quiz 2. This was merely a Yes/No one but no it was not to be cake walk. In the quiz we actually had to write if each of the 10 topics which he gave was taught in the class or not! If yes we had to write a line on it. It has negative marking too. There were people rushing in in the middle of the quiz. Yes the buzzers haddone their job. The vendatta part of this quiz was that if u didnot attend the classes properly you wouldnot have any clue what he had taught even if you learnt it on your own. The funniest thing was when we came to know that all the anwers were "No" i.e the Prof hadnt taught any of the 10 topics in the class!!

Quiz 4: This was an encounter that i faced just today. As usual the Saturday morning blues. Again the last 5 mins quiz. Here ended the routine or stereotype. The CQ(Creative Quotient) was hitting the roof. This quiz was the randomest of all. We had to write as many one-liners, punch lines or Rajini type "Oru dadavai sonna nooru dadavai sonna madiri" one -line punches. This happened when is was my frustrated best because of Struct Fin. Still i managed to rack my brains and come out with some some bizzare and few horny ones
Some of them were as below:
SPV(Special Purpose Vehicles) are like pimps!!
In securitization, there are many friends who want to share your joys and sorrows.
REITs(Real Estate Investment Trusts) are like beehives. Each hole is a unit in it and every bee(read investor) has a right on the hive. The bees provide honey to the beehive(read investment)

And thus ended our last class on Structured Finance!!

This professor is so much into securitization that he even made 2 different tranches or classes(exams) during our end terms. One was a low risk moderate return, a written test. The other one was a high risk high return class which was a excel based spreadsheet exam. Even the evaluation was weird as he came up with his own Beta( scaling factor) for the risky tranche.
We manged to make him realize that he was playing securitization games with our Grades and got our End term de-securitized.

I hope i maximize my returns in the End Term exam..

PS: Pardon me for the highly loaded Finance jargon. The theme of the post needed it to be so..

DD1 Nostalgia @ 3 AM in IIMC

2008-08-12T15:09:00.000-07:00

Today i truly got nostalgic about DD. As usual we at IIMC were going full swing on the IP messenger discussing all the latest gossip on the campus, about the frustrating Term 4 and how the quizzes, projects and exams screws you. The topic suddenly drifted towards the old DD1 channel and what people remembered the most about it. Now everyone pounced upon this and went back to the good old days when DD 1 was the one and only channel and there were so many interesting things that came out. Some of them that we had totaly forgotten. It had taken us back to our childhood. Of those chitrahaars, rangolis, sorry for the interruptions, Didi's comedy show and what not. The newsreader aunty with her 2 rupee coin sized bindi. To put a few things down on paper sorry on the post. Here we go: ( the list is too long so bear with me). I beat you will remember atleast some of it and that would surely bring a smile on your face.

Remembering DD - 1
1. Sorry for the interruption screen
2. The calendar photo that they show with some crap music as filler
3. All regional channels will restart at 8 AM. Over to Delhil screen
4. Chitrahaar ka woh logo
5. Rangoli's hostess with that flower pot on her side gives some arbit gyan and plays some old songs
6. The kaal chakra thing bfore Mahabharath starts
7. Sunday noon news for the hearing impaired
8. Potli baba ki
9. UGC programs
10. Super Human Samurai
11. Super Hit muqabla
12. DD1 female news reader - fully clad in saree, huge 2 rupee coin sized bindi and her hair tied like a volley ball
13. Swami and Friends
14. That DD1 logo with the music in the morning when telecast resumes
15. Chandrakaantha
16. Rozgaar samachaar
17. Raashtriya saaksharta mission
18. Mala-D Ad
19. First Nirodh Ad (Guy opens a friend's drawer and finds lot of girl's photos)
20.Baingan Raaja
21. Rukaavat ke liye khed hai
22. Ek chidiyaa
23. 11 am program for farmers
24. CIET le kar aaya Tarang Tarang Tarang Tarang
25. Vande mataram in the morning (sigh..... I really miss that one)
26. kisan bhaiyon ki choupal
27. mile sur mera tumhara
1)Mile sur mera tumhaara
2) Bhaje Sargam
3) Lijjat Papad advertisement
4) Spirit of Unity Concert
5) He-man Cartoon
6) Vyomkesh Bakshi
7) Chanakya
8) Tenali Raman
9) Tehqiqaat
10) Junoon
11) Swabhimaan
12) Shanti
13) Aparajita
14) Waqt
15) Dekh Bhai Dekh
16) Zabaan sambhaal ke
17) Motu Patlu aur shekh chilli.... doctor chadda hai bheeghi billeeee (still remember the title song)
18) Stone Boy
19) Milkibaar ... give me the power
non-stop nonsense :)Non stop nonsense - oh that was cool, 4 videos in the screen each with a lagAnd finally the guy comes out and acknowledges the applause from the crowd
1) Ulta Pulta
2) Flop Show
3) Waghle ki duniya
4) Buniyaad
5) Hum Log
6) Doosra Keval (Shahrukh Khan)
7) Jungle Book
8) Shikaari Shambhoo (small serial ... didnt run for long)
9) Phulwaari Bachon ki
10) Rambha's island
11) Disney hour (Tailspin, ducktales, darkwing duck, quack pack etc..)
1) Bhaarat ek khoj
2) Turning Point (A science show featuring Girish Karnard)
3) Gaayab Aayab
4) Meena (cartoon to promote girl's education)
At the night- Primetime
Knight Rider
Street Hawk
Oshin
Fauji
Nukkad
Circus
Buniyaad
Kile ke Rahasya
Byomkesh Bakshi
Tehkikaat
Reporter
Surabhi
Turning Point
Bharat Ek Khoj
Mitti Ke Rang
~plztoadd: : Swabhimaan: : Shanti: : Ek Do Teen char ( yes there was such a serial): : ek, do teen , char.................charo mil kar saath chalein to ho jaye chamatkaar : : : : Chuna chuna .... some paint ad: : : Torino .. its a new new feeling .. ( was an Indian cool drink )
Emi ramayya emi alochistunavEmi ledu ma intiki godda chavadiki em veddamaniIndulo alochinchataniki emundiCharminar Asbestor sheets veste sari!!
Elephant ad of fevicol featuring rajkumar hirani (director of munnabhai MBBS)
Aishwarya Rai : "Hi! I am Sanjana, do u have a pespi?"
Mera joota hai Lakhaani
O ho ho schooltime Action ka Schooltime
Khaae Jaao Khaae Jaao, United ke Gun gaaye jaao
Asli masaale sach sach, MDH MDHAmritanjan - poye pochu, its gone ad
"Kya hua?... Bacha kyun ro raha hai?.... Use woodwards pila... jab tu chota tha to tujhe bhi wahi pilati thee"
"Vicco turmeric, nahi cosmetic, Vicco Turmeric Ayurvedic Creame"
"Soundarya Sabun Nirma... soundarya sabun Nirma,Tum Husn Pari, tum jaane jahaanTum sabse haseen tum sabse jawaaaaaa"
"Detergent Tikiyaaaa..... 555"
"Dhoondte reh jaaoge"

Forgive the repititions and numberings. I couldnt start formatting and renumbering them. Too huge a list and yeah cases to be done for tommorrow so apologies..
I am sure the Y2k generation can never relate to these things. Please pour in your comments if you could even relate to a part of it.

~RIP DD1

Hong Kong ke Rang!!

2008-04-17T09:19:00.001-07:00

We are staying in a Hotel called Bishop Lei International which is in mid-levels in Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong Island is one of the 4 territories in Hongkong. There are other good ones like Kowloon. But this is the place where the money, people and the highrise buildings are there. This is the island which turns up on all those Hong kong tourism site ads and post cards. It is a very small island and well connected. The roads are too narrow and people walk very fast and all over the place. The financial hub in Hong Kong is Central. It is where the business is in Hong kong. The area is full of bankers and executives in their business attire walking from one building to another without having to touch down on the ground. There are sleek elevators, escalators and direct connectors between buildings. You have to venture out on the roads during the lunch time to see the mayhem. Hell breaks loose as whole of the HOngkong is on streets. From Mid levels the place where we stay there is a so called travelator which is world famous, its a continuous stretch of flat travelators and escalators down the hill (and uphill depends on the time of the day). Its about 1-2 kms of travel without having to walk. This is one reason we dont have to pay for our travel up and down the hill daily to the work. In the morning there is also a free shuttle from the Hotel which drops us at Central from where it is just a few hundred metres away. Strangely most of us in this hotel turned out to be vegetarians and to our utter dismay we cannot find proper vegetarian food at any local restaurant. There is a place called Lung Kai Fung where there are a few Indian restaurants which serve good food. But otherwise it's a fight daily to get vegetarian food.Chater House where JP Morgan has its muiltiple floors of office is great. It houses all the top brands in the world like Armani and what not. My desk is on the 25th floor of the building and it is a trading floor full of Swordfish type computers with 2-6 screens for a single PC. Looks mind boggling. Work has already started in full swing and I am working for about 12 hours a day after long time. On Saturday we had gone to an island which is about an half an hour travel on Ferry from Hong Kong Island. Its a hilly island with a small waterfall, a small beach etc. Each of us rented a bicycle( that is how ppl travel around the place) and went around the island which was great fun. On Sunday we went for a hiking on a hilly place called Shek - O. We went on the trail called Dragon's back. Its called so coz it has ups and downs just like a dragons back.. it was raining slightly and the whole areas was very foggy. It was really a great experience doing the climbing.. Then we went to a beach nearby which was awesome.. the color of the seawater was good and the beach was nice. Wanted to jump into the water but because of bad planning didnot take extra clothes so just went leg deep into the water..

Happening life at IIMC!!!!

2007-08-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

Its been ages and ages. I can find cobwebs on this blog which i just managed to clean to an extent so that i can add some few bytes of crap to it

This is all because of the hectic and happening life in IIM Calcutta
Ask most of the previously regular bloggers on campus who have totaly lost touch with it.

Thats the kind of life you have here in campus
Its a world in itself. What can i say about it.

Its not just the courses, lectures, case studies and stuff
Its also about the DC++, the footer volley game, the bakar with wingies, the sollu with the gult gang, venting of frustration about the worst sex ratio here which will put the BIMARU states ratio to shame.(ref: IEPH)
Its about starting the day at 12AM, watching TV shows, movies from LAN, roaming around on campus, having the late night dosa at the Night Canteen. The overflowing lakes through which we swim to the class(almost literally)
Time just flows, days blur int each other, you sleep after dawn break and rush to the class with a brush in the mouth. Dozing off to glory with good number of company in the class. Those odd parties on weekends which starts late in the night and ends early in the day.

Just when you thought life was fun and moves on, the midterm exams are there on your face.
Thats when reality dawns. Thats when you realise what you missed when you were dozing off. RGgiri starts, everyone sticks to their rooms with books and lappies in their hands. Every exams shows how life is all about different twists, turns and surprises.

But yeah life goes on and we return to do what we love doing on campus. Refer to the fourth para..

Joka aaaye.................

Dreams do come true!!!

2007-04-28T04:01:00.000-07:00

I have never seen feelings and expressions change so fast from one extreme to another extreme in a span of few hours. This i have experienced myself in the past two days.

I am sure you can figure out the total change in the tone of my voice from my last post. The last post was written in utter frustration. This one is written in the peak of euphoria and ecstacy.

Yes i have made it! Dreams really come true! I got the final selection into Indian Institute of Management - Calcutta and four other IIMs. But Calcutta is going to be my next destination and my place for the next two years. Slogging, mugging, analyzing, ideating, freaking, flirting and anything under the sun will be there. The very thought of it brings goosebumps to me.

When i was biting my nails over the thought of the final selections in the IIMs, my mind started going crazy and i started playing with words when a palindrome struck me which really depicited my situation at that time aptly. For starters, palindrome is any word which reads the same when read from left to right or vice versa. The palindrome that struck my mind was:

MIINIIM ?

Wondering what that means. Watch it carefully, elaborating it in pure English it reads, "Am I in IIM ?". Funny is'nt it. Such wierd ideas strike you at the bizzarest points of time. But now to depict the situation i am in now, i will have to break the palindrome funda and rephrase it instead as

IMINIIM !

After 3 years in the IT industry from the fun we had in the ELTP training, elongated stint sitting on the bench(not the park's bench ok), going through all the troubles one can face in the first project itself, and then performing well constistently then on and leading a small team its been a long journey. But i had reached saturation and stagnation at some point of time, which drove me to dream for something big, different and challenging.

Then again there was a pattern of three lettered sets which changed the course of my thoughts and actions.. I have decribed them and explained how important and crucial they were(are) for me. Here goes the list

IIM - These are not just three letters, they are the most defining three letters which can totaly change the course of your life. The temples of management education in India.

CAT - These are another three letters. To put it bluntly if IIM is GOD, CAT is the priest.
These 3 letters lead to the golden gates of heaven ahem IIM.

ABC - No i am not learning English alphabets here. These are the 3 cities where the abodes of management education in India reside. Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta put in only in alphabetical order and not on any other basis. These 3 institutes are as different as Chalk, Cheese and Chinese. The most eminent managers in the world have graduated from these instis. Any budding manager will not bother to go beyond these 3 letters of English Alphabet.

HRD - Now comes the show spoiler. Human Resource Development is what is abreviated as this. But i have had serious doubts about the third letter from the happenings in the past few weeks. I would like to change it to Human Resource Destruction instead. The way in which they have handled the reservation issue, the nice puppet show that they have played with the IIMs and the games they have played with the careers of the student community.

Hey i just got a doubt. Am i awake or am i still dreaming. Anyone pinch me, is this really true. Oh no i cant feel that. I suddenly wake up from the dream to check if this really happened or if i am halucinating. I immediately opened the IIM Calcutta site and this was what brought smile onto my face.

IIM Calcutta Admission Status

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

You have been offered admission to the PGDM program.

Then i knew that "Dreams do come true"!!!!!!!!!!

Fir se Rang de Basanti!! Gandhigiri nahin chalega

2007-04-20T03:25:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: This post is written in a frustrated mood. I will be venting my anger here on this blog.

At this very moment i can really empathise and relate to Rang de Basanti and the frustration among the young group of dejected guys(including Amir even though he is above 40)

There is going to be a sequel to Rang de Basanti and this will be not in reel life but in real life
And no prize for guessing which minister will be killed in this sequel.

At first we were thinking of canning a sequel to Lage Raho Munnabhai following Gandhigiri and sending flowers to our beloved HRD minister to get well soon. But i think that stage has crossed long back and now we have decided to follow our veer Bhagat Singh.
We found out that sending flowers would not help senseless people. Even after the whole room is filled full of flowers he will think how to use them to create rift and politics and not change.
So asinine and arrogant people like him really needed the ahimsa to be used i.e Bhagat Singh ke raah pe chalenge hum.

I doubt even if Gandhiji was still among us now and had done Satyagraha or a Arjun March, there would have been any difference to these thick skinned true blue politicians.

Old and decaying minds like our "Theesre Pandav" Singh's must be put to rest, instead of halucinating about killing students lives for the sake of the worst PSB in India i.e Vote Bank.

I think what our Aaaj ka Arjun is doing now is nothing different from what the mentally unstable student did in Virgnia Tech University. Just that he was a student and not a HRD Minister.
Now i wonder if i could have sponsored him a visa to India and let him loose in the HRD Ministry.

I wonder if doctors are only the active students who protest against any injustice imparted.
What happened to the remaining student community. Accepted that this is a minority of the whole lot which is now immediately affected by this fracas but this in the long run is going to ruin the lives of every student and miserably damage the reputation of the central university.

This one incident proves how much we are at the government's mercy. What it can do if it wants to. So people who were dreaming of 9+ and 10+ consistent GDP please hold your breaths, one move from the government can bring all down to '0' any day.

This incident will prove to the world and specifically to the industry and global student community how mismanaged the best management institutes in India are.

There have been pages and pages of forums on the net wasted just shouting out and venting out on the events that have been happening in the past one month. But this will in no way affect the proceedings which are at the mercy of the HRD inturn at the mercy of the Supreme Court which is on vacation.

Look at our India guyz, can we let this happen to our country. There must be something radical that should happen which will bring a fear in the minds of these rotten, corrupted and polluted minds of the politicians. This is what logically leads to a repeat of Rang de Basanti.

This might be the headlines if the results doesnot come out next week.

_____________________________________________________________

TIMES OF FRUSTRATION
______________________________________________________________

April 26, 2007

ARJUN SINGH SHOT DEAD BY STUDENTS

Quota, IIMs and our Bheja Fry!!

2007-04-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

Ohh the wait continues for the IIM results and the hope that it will be released soon is diminishing evey second.

It all started with the Ministry of HRD and the skipper at the helm, the lunatic Mr. Arjun Singh with his mind only targeted on the elections and the vote bank came out with the idea of having 50% of the seats in the central universities including the IIMs reserved! This happens if the 27% extra reservation is implemented for the OBCs. Although lauded by the coalition parties mainly banking on resrvation like RJD,PMK,DMK, this is widely criticised by the diminishing sane community. But against all these protests the bill was made a law and the reservations set to be implemented.

Till then snoozing Supreme Court woke up one fine day and gained its sanity suddenly and it put as stay on this implementation of OBC reservation questioning the validity of the basis of this law on 1931 yaaaawn census, and recommending the exclusion of creamy layer. Then it again snoozed off declaring the next hearing in August.

The MHRD taken aback by this has given a notice to all central universities to stop the admission process till the matter is solved. (Do they ever think beyond vote bank and worry about the academic year of education and stuff, i think its too much to expect from Arjun Singh)

This is such an irresponsible act on the part of both the Supreme Court and MHRD. Supreme Court, because of the timing of the stay, the vagueness of the judgement and the time frame given for the next hearing oblivious of the academic year impending.MHRD with our most loved Mr. Arjun Singh at the helm of the affairs, first to come out with such a law which can be used as a case study to explain what votebank politics really means.

The aspirants for the central universities and specifically the IIMs whose results are supposed to be out on 12th, i.e today are left gasping. There are plans and other decisions they have to make based on the results. The private institutes have already released their results and the last date for paying the fees is also nearing. This has left us all in a soup. The productivity of work has decreased in the workplace of the aspirants. This stress is more than that of preparing for the CAT or taking the exam.

The IIMs must be proactive and atleast get the aspirants to confidence. They can find alternatives in which atleast the two sets ofresults, one with reservation and one without that can be released.

I think the HRD ministry and the Govt must imagine themselves in a position where the elections have already been held and the results are declared 2-3 months after it. Then they will understand the real pain that we, the aspirants are going through now.Some representatives from the student community have already put our grievence to the PMO office and also to The Honourable President.

Hope is the only thing we all are clinging on to, that some sanity comes back to the HRD and SC!

Coorg beckoned me!! - II

2007-04-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

16th March 007

The adventure continues where i left at "Coorg Beckoned Me-I"..........

We struggled to wake up early that day even though it was planned earlier. Auto Charlie as promised had sent his friend with the Omni our ‘rath’ for our so called expedition. After having breakfast at Athithi we zoomed off on it. The Omni turned out to be a hi-tech one coming with a dvd player and a display screen. Rakhi bhai who already was complaining of headache couldnot handle the convoluted roads and threw up. But no as they say "Tough times never last but Tough people do", Rakhi being the tough guy he is, recovered soon and we headed towards Dubare Forest.

This forest has an elephant sanctuary and we were told that we could feed the elephants if we reached early. We reached Dubare forest in about an hour, bad roads notwithstanding. Only the Cauvery river flowing through the forest seperated us from the elephants, which qwewon the other bank of the river. We hurried and took a boat to reach the other side. But as luck had it for us, the feeding time for the elephants was already over and we cursed ourselves for starting late. But hey we were fortunate enough to see a mother elephant and its baby. The curator was describing the food habits of the elephant and other details to a foreign couple, we joined them inquisitively. One startling fact we heard was that "the pregnancy period for an average Indian elephant is 20-22 months". That’s a long long time to be in your mother’s woumb. Poor baby, had to wait such along time to see the daylight!

The mother elephant was very friendly and we managed to take some snaps holding its trunk and caressing it, but the baby was wild and Sandeep almost got kicked for disturbing it. Yeah it was the arrogance of youth on youth. We pondered on the idea of taking a ride on the elephant but were put off by the exorbitant price of 100 bucks per head for it.

And yes we were tempted by the sparkling water of Cauvery to plunge into it and have fun. Without waiting a second longer we changed into the swimming clothes and no we did not literally plunge in since under the water it was very rocky. We knew we 'ROCK' but did not want to literally be ‘ROCKING’. The 2 guys who knew swimming well were showing off their skills demonstrating all the different strokes in the book, no straight drive here for the cricket crazies. Venkat(no he was not one of the 2) was lured by Sandeep into deep waters and he almost drowned himself. Luckily we dragged him out and he said he felt it was like a rebirth for him. Later we laughed a lot on this incident and teased him that he was a "Sahasa Baludu", but I am sure he won’t forget it.

Nisarga Dham was our next destination, which is a flora and fauna sanctuary. The whole area was filled with sky rocketing bamboo trees all over the place. These trees were making sounds as though they were going to break off and fall on us. There were also different species of trees with the scientific and the normal names inscribed on them. There were beautifuly created houses on the top of the strong bamboo trees. We disturbed a couple’s privacy by climbing on to a tree house opposite to theirs. And yeah you couldn’t blame us, as there wasn’t any “Don’t disturb” board on their house. A few paces down the road was a deer sanctuary with a huge braided fence separating the animals and the social animals. A small chweet girl caught our attention who was feeding the deers with cucumber pieces and talking to them continuously as though they were her pets. Rakhi bhai captured that in his handycam and we followed the cue by feeding the deers ourselves.

We rushed to the boating area as there was already a crowd gathering there. Each boat there was named after either rivers or Telugu movies, to name a few “Godavari”, “Chatrapathi”! We jumped into the pedalling boats and enjoyed the ride while adding a few snaps to the photo album, We later bargained in vain to buy some momentos from that place.

Hunger then came in the way of our pursuit for spiritual bliss in the so called "Golden Tibetian Temple". Again it was another Hotel Athithi that came to our rescue. 3 of us ordered for Full Meals and two for Mini Meals, but we all ended up having all Full meals. Thank God he didn’t bill us for 4 fulls.

We took off to the "Golden Temple" hoping to see Tibetian monks in the temple who supposedly sacrifice all the worldly pleasures to attain Nirvana. But we were taken aback to see 4 Tibetian students, on the way to the temple, zooming off on Karizmas and Pulsars with coolers on. Here, were the hi-tech monks from Tibet. Just imagine Dalai Llama wearing goggle and zooming off on a Karizma, a la Hritik Roshan. Whoever said that "Monks sell their Ferraris or Pulsars" will have to eat his words.
We finally reached the Golden Temple which is a buddhist monastery and has an education institution adjacent to it. We were wondering why the Tibetians had to find a place around 2000kms away from homeland to setup a temple and a college. There were dormitories for the students ahem the hi tech monks with Karizmas and Pulsars, parked outside their rooms.

The Temple had the typical Chinese architecture with the roofs curving upwards at the ends. The idols inside the temple were of Gautam Buddha and his two disciples. These were really huge and enhousing them was a big meditation hall. We posed in front of the temple posing as if meditating.

We were totaly fatigued after traveling and thoroughly enjoying the whole day. While returning, we listened to melody songs playing in the Omni and what a lullaby that turned out to be as few of us were dozing off to glory. Since we missed the "Raja Seat" the day before, we signed off the day with a visit to it. What a view it was from up there from the edge of the cliff! We envied the Raja of Coorg, as we were told that this was the place where he used to spend his evenings having this beautiful view. Finally we reached our lodge, tired but thorughly satisfied.

As if we had’nt had enough, we decided to go on a shopping spree. So after watching the start of the New Zealand-England match we started our shopping. We bought the bizzarest things, first we went out bargaining for the Eucalyptus oil and other tailams at every shop in sight. Finally we bought them at a shop only to find later that we were cheated :( . Finishing off the shopping with Elaichi and other spices, we had our heart's and stomachs full at Boy's choice as we called it (we wrongly read the Kannada script and the english one of the same name "Choice"). And yeah it turned out to be Boy's(our) choice. We hit the bed and watched the match till each one of us dropped dozing off.

Coorg beckoned me!! - I

2007-04-04T09:32:00.000-07:00

15th March 007

I was really pumped up for this trip after 6 weeks of gruelling rounds of interviews and discussions for my IIM selections. I needed to take some time out and was wondering what to do. And then Lo behold there was a tailor made trip for me arranged by our tour manager(actually he is our Cisco ka gyan dad) the great Rakhi bhai which I gleefully jumped onto. My interviews were to be over on 14th and the tour started on 15th, a 4 day exodus to Coorg!

It was 15th and even after my pathetic performance at the IIM C interview I had the expression of a school boy finishing his last exam of his annuals. And now Coorg beckoned me!

I took a train to Mysore in the wee hours from Bangalore to join The Gang – Rakhi(Dandipa), Manoj, Sandeep and Venkat(Narendra was missing), who would have already arrived in Mysore.

Mysore to me came across as a laid back Maharaja attitude-wallah city and hey there were also some chariots ahem tongas waiting for me right in front of the railway station. Instead i took the conventional auto to the bus stop. We took a bus to Madikeri which was about 140 kms from Mysore. Madikeri is a hill town in Coorg district which is the best place to alight at, to cover all the beautiful places in and around Coorg. The bus journey was a roller coaster ride and the worst part of it was that we managed to get a seat only in the last 2 rows of the bus. It was like a motored camel ride to be precise, with our heads kissing the roof everytime the driver decided to go wild. During the journey, we already started comparing it to Ooty and Munnar citing the height above the sea level and the chillness and stuff. While we were chatting on all the topics on earth ranging from college natkhats to politics, Rakhi was busy dozing away to glory, already dreaming of the beautiful trip awaiting us. I jumped onto my digicam and took a snap of him and teased him on this later.

After arriving at Madikeri the quiet and beautiful hill town we managed to drag our heavy luggages to the Chitra lodge. Our researchers Mr. Manoj and Rakhi had come up with huge figures of the hotel rates in Madikeri, but to our surprise the rates were reasonable and this being an off-season helped our cause. All 5 of us managed to squeeze into a single room which was spacious enough, if not luxurious. It was already 3 in the afternoon and there were elephants and not rats running up and down in our stomachs. So first climbed our way up the steep road and rushed to the nearest vegetarian hotel, 'The Athithi'. We had full meals and literally so, munching everything leaving only the plantain leaf to mercy. After a small nap we kick started our adventure trip.

Our tour manager Rakhi bhai slated 2 to 3 places for the evening in Madikeri itself. So we decided to load test any auto coming our way with all 5 of us ready to sandwich into it.And yeah we finally found a volunteer for that, Auto Charlie who risked even the police and agreed to this for a premium, with a rider that at least two of us had to get down twice during the journey in steep places. With Rakhi on the rod and Sandeep learning to drive, taking instructions in Tamil we started to Abbey Falls. We passed through many huge private Coffee estates on the way. For starters, Coffee grows in the shade of the tall trees surrounding it. So if u had visited a Tea estate before and expecting the staircase view here, you will be in for a disappointment but the tall trees surrounding the coffee plants would surely belittle you. We arrived at the Abbey Falls, it actually is a part of a private coffee estate but let open for the public view. As we were already told by Charlie and thankfully so that there was some drainage water mixing in the waterfalls we did not dare to step into the water. Instead we marveled at the sight of the water falls and we shutterbugs in a jiffy started taking snaps of us on the backdrop of the falls. Our personal cinematographer Rakhi bhai(yeah we couldnot afford Rajiv Menon or Ravi K Chandran for this) got his camera rolling as we did our antics.

Luckily on the return we got another auto to fit two of us and we were relieved from walking up the steep roads. I was the spokesperson for our party ahem Gang since I am a Tamilian and to my relief many of the people in Coorg could converse in Tamil. On the way back we struck a deal with Charlie for our adventurours pursuits the next day for a K bucks on an Omni. The driver, a friend of his would come at 8 30 AM and we were already dreading the thought of waking up early for that, mainly Sandeep.

We then set out on foot after successfuly load testing the auto. We visited Omkareshwara temple, a Shiva temple which had a large beautiful tank too. We then went to jail, dont mistake us for commiting any crime there, it was actually the Raja's fort which was now converted into a jail. We then headed towards Raja Seat which we were told had a beautiful bird's eye view from the top of the greenery below. But it was already getting dark and we dropped the plan. Instead we shopped for the needful for that night, we then managed to find a Chat bhandar to relish the cutlet chat and left for the lodge. We enjoyed the evening watching TV, playing cards and other things finishing a whole Sprite bottle besides the drinks. The game of cards ended with a tough battle between me and Rakhi bhai who won it eventually. We went to bed soon since we had to wake up early the next day.

To be cont........ wait for Coorg beckoned me!! - II

One step for blogging, a gaint leap for me

2007-03-02T06:35:00.000-08:00

Ready steady 1 2 3 here i go
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