Days seem to be getting longer....

IT is just afew days left to the beginning and end of placement week to come on us and I am starting to find these days getting longer and longer and longer. With daily full dress rehearsals and GD's (and somehow I feel...now interviews as well) it is becoming an ordeal that does not show any signs of abating. As it is...it is becoming more and more difficult to go out with so many other people who have nothing more to do but give gyaan to people like me on how to go about targetting companies...

What can a little success do to an individual is amazing. From being a no one to being a person who feels that he is the GOD and then going ahead and trying to prove it to the less lucky mortals is a behavior that has been written on since long time back (not that I have read any such books but guess it must have..how can the enterprising psychologists and sociologists of this world leave such a topic alone!)

Anyways...as Abhishek Bacchan says... "ye world hai na world...isme do type ke log hote hai, ek jinki naukri nahi lagi hoti hai aur dusre jinki lag chuki hoti hai. Jitni jaldi iss dusri category mein aa jaoge, utni jaldi kismatwaale kehlaoge" (this world has two type of people, one who have not got a job and the others who have. The sooner you join the second category, the earlier you will be called a lucky guy.)

Friends???

Friends...that is what people like to call themselves. Of course everyone knows the definition of a friend.." one who stays with you in cheer and tear....bla bla bla..." and of course everyone boasts of being one who does that. But in the end it all boils down to the same thing. "I have one thing which you dont...so obviously you dont know what you want in life while I always did..." even though the same person for the same thing may be feeling exactly the same way just two days back as you are feeling today. Arre if you dont know how to make a person feel more comfortable...then at least dont worsen the situation for him. At least, calling yourself a friend, this much you can do. But what does a friend in despair...in need of a shoulder to cry upon get? He gets another person talking in the same way as the rest of the human race in exactly the same tone making it clear ki in this world, every man is for himself. Friends are there only till the time they are required by you. Least bothered about what they may be feeling or may feel if you talk in the way you want to.

This is the definition of a "friend" as should be told to children. After all schools are supposed to make children fit to live in this world and this is one essential thing that has to be learned....or maybe this IS taught in school...i may have missed that class

A random thought...for the record

Just a thought which passed by in my mind while talking with a junior...

Since you are in the system,
Be like the system.
Till the time, you are not able to change the system,
Dont talk about the system.

All the more reason to try and rise above the system

Nice day this was...

Hmm....so where do i start?

This post is actually a continuum of the last two posts with positive results for both of them. I cant believe that I finally managed to clear a GD. This is a different matter that out of the 9 ppl in my group, 7 were selected (these minor things are better overlooked) but the point is that I cleared! Company is Genpact (GE's BPO) and the pay is good. The interview was also fine...actually i guess my navy background really helps in a lot of places simply because of the reason that the other person surely does not know anything about the field and i can faff to my heart's content :-)

I may or may not get thru but i surely gained some confidence as far as my capabilities regarding my getting placed is concerned.

Dinner ka to pata nahi...but the lunch in the mess was again pretty darn decent. Rajma chawal remains my fav any time anyways and this today was also pretty good...of course not comparable to what i could get in delhi from my mom's hands.

Vaibhav has reached back to delhi from IMA after two terms getting over. Next term he will be the boss in the academy...how i remember my days in NAVAC when our sixth termers used to srew us like hell and we had no option but to think of the time when we will be in thr place...that chance never came for me but still.....remember i do...


chalo gd nite for now
till nxt time

The mess bounces back

By making that statement...i am probably imitating our media which has the habit of exhorbitantly expressing itself everytime a small player makes a significant achievement...sometimes to such an extent that the poor player (he is a human after all) is left feeling like a god and starts to falter...before reaching the alter (;-))..

I guess since our mess is not going to know about this post, it really does not matter in this case. Tonight for dinner (which is cancelled for me by the way) we had parathas with potato in gravy and cucumber raita with the usual daal and fried rice. The entire fare has been served to us every friday but today, the taste was much much better. It sounded as if the thought of losing great business had made the contractor realize that he had to do something and finally...a.k.a. Ajay Jadeja in his hay days...the mess rose from its slumber to serve a menu which was not only eatable but actually relishable (if i could use a word like that)

Hope the good work continues....and oh!!!...by the way...i still dont have a job :-D

I have no clue what i was thinking about when i opened my blog today. guess that is what it is supposed to be like that u can publish anything that u feel like, whenever u feel like. but today seems to be a very very spl day. i have lost 2 offers...not that i had them at any point of time but i could have got them only if.........

only if i knew the answer to that only if....
only if i understood what these ppl select in a GD....
only if i knew what godamn thing is going to be asked by an interview panel which could be of importance...
only if i had the capabilities of faffing which everyone else seems to have and everyone feels that as an "mba" everyone is supposed to have....
only if i understood what was going on in ppl's minds at any given point of time...
only if i had a fraction of intelligence that Mel Gibson got in What Women Want...
only if i become fortunate enough to get what i want or desire at least once in my life....(other that my better half or best full that she likes to be called...and of course my parents who i am really fortunate to have...)
only if.....i knew the answer to these only if's.....

i was just wondering wether the only way that i could get a job was in a company which did not take a gd...???

maybe...because that is how i got my summers as well.

god send a good company where they dont take a gd....baaki future mein kya karna hai ye main sambhaal lunga...shayad...probably with ur help....

guess thats it...this is all that i had going on in my mind and this is all that i wanted to just take out somehow

Team for the World Cup

i was standing in front of the mess the other day when i heard a great roar of spectators coming from the T.V. in the MPH upstairs. Sensing a blistering knock from Tendulkar or Dhoni, I ran upstairs to see the match. What i saw on the screen was something completely different. Tendulkar was dejectedly walking back to the pavilion after having made a painstaking 2 runs from 15 balls. India had lost their second wicket. India went on to lose the match by a record breaking 10 wickets. They had achieved this feat only 3 times previous to this, once before against the proteas. Big deal...u may feel. India is known to be unreliable in terms of cinsistent performances anyways. But the deal is big...this time, it was the first time that a home crowd was cheering for the visitors...and cheering in one voice. It was the first time that a state or a region had taken so much importance over the country for so many people at one place. It was for the first time that just because a Bengali was not playing in the match, the crowd was willing to change their dedication to an alien nation. It was in my reckoning, the first time that the true nature of this regional snake has shown its fangs.

Are not the other players of the team not Indians? Are they not playing for the country? Are they not representing the people of India (which in my knowledge also includes West Bengal)? This is the same team which convincingly defeated the Lankans and had just broken the record of unbeaten south africans. Would they have lost in this way had the crowd behaved as they shld have....For the Country...?

From next time I feel the selectors have one more criteria to fill before deciding on the team for home matches...the venue will have to be decided first and then a reservation has to be made in the team that at least one player in the playing 11 has to come from that state.

If these are the reservations that are going to come to the team...why not have the usual SC/ST etc reservations? Possibly we could even incorporate one for the part of the country....say...2 places for a North paw, etc etc etc etc....and the team for the World Cup is ready!!!

The World as I see it

The World as I see it

This blog belongs to a senior in XIMB...some awesome pics that he has taken. Chk it out

Friends

With so many things at hand, you would never expect someone to have time to just sit idle. That is what I felt like doing for some days now. It is in times like this that the true value of friendship is seen. Somehow, friends will just sense something wrong....somehow they will know that you are not feeling good...somehow you will give urself away even if u try ur best not to. Then that friend will just take in their hand to guide u out of the rut and back on the track. Such an amazing feeling it is to feel that way...to either get urself pulled out or to pull someone out who u really care for.

A friend can easily change ur mind from feeling like nothing could go right to the point where u just start murmuring "I believe I can fly" and actually feel that u can.

Thanks to the world for giving such good friends to me. Hope I can keep upto the expectations of my friends...

Ironies abound

I was going through an old episode of "The Great Indian Laughter Challenge"...it seems to have taken our campus by storm...every dialogue/joke is listened to with the utmost attention and then repeated almost everywhere across the campus. One guy who was not even selected (his jokes were really pathetic...probably that was the reason for his rejection) gave this really nice seeming sentence..."What an irony in life that Diwali has Ali (Diw'Ali') in it and Ramzan has Ram ('Ram'zan) and still the two religions find it so difficult to coexist in so many parts of our country.Cant we just stay together and work together?

Nice thought...I really feel it merits more than a small mention in a laughter show amidst so many other PJ's which are being told at a dime a dozen...

Life is full of ironies. Or I seem to be experiencing more than my fair share of them. Our B-school follows a mixed way of teaching. What I mean is that we do a lot of theory through the Stanford way of teaching through books and class discussions but almost similar amounts of work using Harvard style case studies where we get to experience the problem as it took place in some organisation and then solve it.

I really dont mind either of them and truthfully feel that both Stanford and Harvard should follow our style of teaching. My current apathy is towards the cases as we discuss them in class. The company in concern has a problem (most likely they have got into one). Among all the things that we will see, there will be the way that things would have been done so as to have avoided the problem alltogether. And mostly, this is the teaching that we are supposed to get from the case. "How could things have been done so that this problem would not have occurred?" Wonderful, right? But a small problem. Dont these companies have managers who have also done their MBA from some b-schools? OF course they do. Then would not they have thought of all these things before going for the step that they did? Of course they would have. Even then they decided to go ahead with this idea. Why dont we discuss that?

e.g. the HLL's merger with Tomco was being discussed in one class. Final decision was that the only person that it benefited was the promoters of HLL. If that was the case, why the hell did eveyone else still go ahead with it? It has been found clearly that they all could have known about this imbalance of synergy before going for the merger. Did they not do the simple valuation calculations that are required to do this? I dont think so. Then why did they go ahead with this? The case is over but we still dont know.

Time is flying

It has been 11 days since my last post here. Sure not what i have been doing since afew months. But with the news of the first company coming on campus for its placements, time has just started flying. Nervousness has become evident on a the faces of a lot of people. Library is getting more and more people every night...and Time Is Flying.

All the best to everyone for getting the jobs that they are dreaming about.

My aim in life

I read a science fiction novel some days (or was it months) back. It talked about time-traveling and how tourists were taken across time to see the dinosaurs and all the other beasts and things that were present in their history. They were not allowed to step on the land in these different times but a floating carpet was spread just above the land on which they could walk. This was done so as not to disturb the balance that was prevalent at that time.

One guy on one such tour mistakenly steps on the grass and kills a butterfly which was sitting there. He gets scared and does not tell anyone. On coming back, they find that the entire world has changed. Things are not as they had left them. Their is a different fascist government, people talk different, houses are different...nothing is the same. The guy understands that it is because of the butterfly that he killed and decides to do something about it.

The novel starts here, my story ends here. My wish is to be like that butterfly. Just imagine the kind of change that occurred over time just because of the absence (or presence) of that butterfly. I want to be a person who brings about a change in the world which will be seen and appreciated. How many people can right now boast of having brought that change? I dunno but I am sure very few. I want to be one of them and that is my target...I want to be the butterfly...

Bhitarkanika Trip

I seem to have this strange laziness which lives deep inside me. We went to Bhittarkanika National Park on 7th and came back on 8th. During the entire trip, I kept thinking about all the things about the trip that I was going to write in my blog (one of those things that u get to start doing once u start writing on a blog I guess…). I came back 2 days back but this laziness has ensured that I did not put a word anywhere about this trip. Now that I am at it….so be it….

Bhittarkanika is one of the lesser known national parks in India. Situated in North Orissa (some people might call it dangerous because of the number of incidents of disappearances their), it is famous for the crocodiles that are present in huge numbers in the backwaters. Creeks and small lakes make for beautiful sightseeing as well and the number and varieties of birds that are present here will probably be matched only by Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary. The strange name of the place really struck me hard and I was unable to remember the name even after the program was finalized (took a real stress on my poor small brain for me to remember it). I actually asked a number of people why the park got this name but no one knew. It seems that the place (called Kanika I presume) was ruled by King Ali a long time back. He used to go for hunting in the jungle which is now the park. Since this was a pretty dense forest (it still is), it came to be known as Bhittarkanika….(bheetar means inside in hindi….I guess it means the same in Oriya).

We started in high spirits on 7th morning feeling really great and wanting a lot of adventure (not knowing that we were in for a LOT OF adventure). The 4 of us i.e. myself, Mayank (Ghattu…the guy who arranged the entire trip…thanks man), Sabyasachi (Saby….our interpreter for the trip since he is the only one among the 4 of us knowing Oriya…though we all doubted his mastery over the language) and Abhishek (Tyagi) had hired a taxi (happened to be a Tata Indica) for taking us to Raj Nagar and then on to Gupti. Raj Nagar has the main office of the forest department who were supposed to give us permission to go into the park and stay their for the night (our plan was to stay for 2 nights inside the park in a place called Dangmal where the forest department has a guesthouse. We reached Rajnagar in 4 hours (most of the time was spent listening to songs of Shhh… on the car player and sleeping…Tyagi slept the most as he did throughout the trip…this guy has the stamina for that). In Rajnagar, we asked for directions and a really great fellow told us that we need not go to the forest office their and could get the permission directly from Gupti (this was the place from where we could get the boat for the park). We were really happy and thanked him for the kindness and carried on to Gupti. I will never forget the next one hour of my life. Muddy ponds of land on both sides with a road snaking between them (no light poles which would actually make a night trip a very horrendous experience…we were going at 2 PM though). The road was just a mud track with large and small stones sharing space on the road. After every small distance, there was a catchment of huts made of mud and straw. Lots of people and almost all of them living in total poverty. We reached Gupti at 3 not knowing that we had a total drama waiting for us. There we got to know that the permission had to be got from Rajnagar. Since we had come all the way, the official there told us that he will try to get permission for us on the wireless when he talked at 4. We had to wait. So we decided to have something to eat. A small restaurant (if u could call it that) came to our rescue. Had great tasting fried fish and some vegetable mix (which also had fish pieces in it…they don’t make anything without fish there) with rice. I loved it, so did Saby (though he says that he liked it because of the hunger…though I don’t thnk the same), Ghattu did not have the dried fish and Tyagi did not have anything (just biscuits and some namkeen). At 4, the man (I actually want to use a lot of abuses for him but I guess I shld not do that here) took his own sweet time in calling up the central office and finally announced that we will have to go all the way. After a lot of shouting and cursing, we started back on the same beautiful track to Rajnagar. We reached there around 6 (just in time since the sun was setting and we had no intention of going on the mudtrack in darkness) and went straight to the office of the DFO. I have never seen a more efficient govt office before (not even the German visa office which was worse than most of the Indian govt offices anyways). The clerk was more than willing to prepare the order, the officer was more than willing to sign it and the peons were more than willing to help us with the details and even give us tips. Amazing!!! And none of them took any money!!! There was a catch though….we will have to stay at Gupti since the park is closed after 6 and no movement is allowed. I was the unlucky person who had to go outside and ask our driver to take that poor Indica back to Gupti in darkness on that same track…I was scared… but the second shock for us….he agreed without blinking and no extra costs…just the pre-determined kilometer reading….Amazing!!!

Back to Gupti was a completely different experience and I will love to share that with u but I guess I have already told a huge story without talking about the park (nothing much their though….just animals and trecking…we all know about that, don’t we?) We stayed in Gupti in 2 rooms. I went off to sleep almost immediately. Then at 12:30 Mr.Ghattu woke me up and asked me if I will accompany them. They were going with the guys on duty who were going on a night round in the park for looking out for poachers….interesting but no thnks…!!! Then Ghattu said that Saby and Tyagi were also coming…interesting…O.K. and we were off. Took a boat in the silence of the night which took us to some place inside. Then we were supposed to go into the water and on the land for a round. This was not what I was going to do and the same thing was there in both Saby and Tyagi’s minds as well. We all stayed put…Ghattu….went off after being careful to take off his shoes (he got a lot of rashes and bruises and was groaning even now!) The rest of the trip went in sleep and we came back to senses only after we reached back to Gupti at around 4:30. slept for 1 more hour in our rooms and then we got ready for pushing off for the park in the boat which was made ready for us.

The park is basically lots of small “islands” surrounded by lakes and swamps making for a lovely breeding ground for a large number of animals and birds as well as for fishes and snakes. A very beautiful park and I could really not find any good reason why it is not as famous as some of the others that I know of or have been to. Besides the crocs (which are actually in abundance), Bhitarkanika is also famous for a large varieties of Kingfishers, deers, monitors, snakes, turtles (including the now famous Olive Ridley Turtles)….this list could go on endlessly….flora consists of very beautiful mangroves which are actually more beautiful to look at in reality than they look in photographs with their prop roots and all the other plants with their breathing roots (pneumatophores for the more botany oriented minds). The creeks with dense vegetation on both sides ensured that we had that feeling of being watched throughout the trip which actually makes such visits even more exciting. We went to Baghaban (plz ignore the spelling mistake in the name in case it exists) where we saw the birds on top of the trees….awesome…..then went on to Dangmal where Ghattu prepared lunch for us using the ready-to-eat meals which was very yummy and we even played with a house-cat (he he he) which was more interested in the left-overs than in us. We came out of the park through Chandbali because the exit roads from here are a bit better (they were actually a lot better) and then took a bus and then taxi back to college.

In all a lovely trip which could not have gone better. We were able to fulfill our basic aim of having a great time and we did come back with a lot of nice memories and learnings. I will definitely recommend Bhitarkanika to anyone who wants to spend a couple of days specially in the winter season since the weather here is absolutely fabulous then and the birds as well as the turtles are in full breeding mode….a scene worth watching.

Njoy!!!

Superbly amazing, majestically awesome....these were the kind of words which were coming into my mind when I was thinking of how to write about today's event in my blog. Unfortunately, I find all these to be very small words. My vocabulary does not have words to suggest the kind of show I witnessed today.

Decibelz 2005, part of xpressions had its first version this year. With bands coming in from small cities and colleges, I personally was not expecting the kind of show it finally came out to be. I was actually wondering what OTV (state TV of Orissa) will gain out of telecasting this event live.

In the end, I am happy to eat my words. Sorry...again a very small word....I was made to swallow my words and digest them by the performances. Each of the 6 bands were just upping the standards of rock music as I know it. Compositions...original or not were simply awesome and you did not need to be high on dope to just sit their gaping at the scene in front. I am not going to talk about individual bands since it may not do justice to all of them but the kind of talent that exists in our country has made me understand and decide that I am never going to underestimate anything and anyone before I have seen them first hand.

SIMPLY AMAZIMG.....

I seem to have come a full circle. I had decided at the beginning of this term that I WILL NOT take part in any competition. Had too many already for showing on my CV as it is. But little did I know that I am not going to heed to my own words. Here I am right now busy more with the various competition deadlines than with my own deadlines in terms of staying free. In cases like these, I usually like to blame everything to God and this time is no different. It is all God's wish that I find myself where I am right now. Interestingly, after realizing my fault and actually not having any time, I still look at the new competitions to see if I can take part in any one of them!

Something I would like to say to myself in hindi....arre sudhar ja bhai...sudhar jaa...varna bahut pacchtayega

It is not normal for me to put in two posts on the same date...even though the time difference is a bit on the higher side, but as I said in the previous post, there are days when things just keep hapenning.

This time it was the re-arrival of the pop (our LAN messenger). Now things will go more towards normal as we have the divine pop to provide some sort of excitement in our otherwise dull lives.

Thank you God for listening to our prayers...we can get back some semblance of normalcy in our lives now.

Some days life is so dull. As if their was nothing in this entire world that could shake the laziness away from you. Then suddenly one day in between will change the entire idea....in my case I would put it at 2 days actually. This entire term had started on a very lazy note. Absolutely no classes and the entire weather ensured that we did not feel the need to get out of our beds....let alone do some useful work. The last two days changed the entire thing.

In the end it feels as if some hidden force had just been gathering strength to strike at the right time. This time it had to be my girlfriend...actually it was me only...I am just blaming her (after all I can take those liberties on my blog ;-)) Yesterday I suddenly came to realize that I had (I thought) not told my beloved (her name is Megha btw) about my blog. Just one of those things which suddenly strike you and I could not believe what will happen to me when she finds out. Daring that I am, I decided to find out my fate and the next time I mailed to her, I sent her the link to my blog.

I came to know almost instantly that lightning takes a lot of time to strike. She took less. The next moment I knew, she had inundated me with "How could you's"...well had I known the answer, I would have told her but that is not the case....even I dont know. It has taken two days for me to get back into her good books again (hopefully) and this time I intend to be more carefull. You dont want to lost the faith of the one person who means so much to you, right...

So the next time you are getting bored...just 'forget' to tell something to your girlfriend / boyfriend (I dont think the latter will work though...it is the girl's who have the knack of scolding properly)

All the best people.

The following are the lyrics of the song "Am I true to myself" by Lobo. How true can simple songs sometimes be? I guess this actually takes care of the self-actualization stage that we keep talking about in our management day and night. We would have reached this stage if we can actually look into the mirror and see a very satisfied person, a person who has been true to everyone, a person who is happy with all that he has and all that he has been able to achieve for himself and for people around him. Can we actually make these things come true for ourselves? Ever?

Take care and have a safe journey towards self-actualization....

Today I looked down in the water
I saw a face look back at me
It hit me like a bolt of lightning
I may not like what I see.

Am I true to myself
Do I believe in what I do
Am I playing a role
Do I want to be like you
Or am I what I hate in others
Only seeing things my way
That's what I'm gonna ask myself today.

Do I really like my brothers
Do I like my hair so long
Do I try to think of others
Can I believe what's in my song

Do I think of all men equal
Or pretend I just don't see
Have I looked for good in others
Or just laughed and let them be.

Someone tell me how much can it rain in one place. Delhi has started getting rain from the last 2 days as I came to know through my family. Here in Bhubaneswar if I find the sky clear and no water falling from heaven to completely soak me within 15 seconds flat, then it will seem different. So much has it rained since the last 10 days or so (non-stop, unlimited, beating down on the roofs) that the recent Mumbai floods would definitely have got a lot less (this makes me want to praise the dranage system of Bhubaneswar though I feel it is more because of the elevated land area that has resulted in this beautiful drainage).

The pros of these rains is the wonderful water that is always present for you to take a bath in. We can always go to the bathroom to do that but bathing in the rain has a different sensation which only people who have VOLUNTARILY taken a bath in the rain will be able to explain. Another huge advantage is that I actually sit inside my room all the time and that is really essential right now with a business plan, Kurukshetra presentation, project appraisal and company analysis to be done in the next one week.

The con is definitely the difficulty with which clothes dry up. They take more time to dry than start smelling due to the dampness. I thought I had left this clothes problem in the navy but it seems to keep occuring again and again. "History repeats itself" so they say.

Not that I never think about people in distress but this time my heart seriously goes to the people in the drought affected areas. Cant someone give some of this rain to them?

Exams are over. Actually it has been two days since they finished. I was too lazy to get up from my bed to write a post to let anyone who cared to know about this. Actually anyone who would care to know about my exams being over already knows that they are over.

My learning from the last two days:
1. Come what may, I cannot sleep for more than 11 hours at a stretch (Yes, I AM doing an MBA)
2. If you sleep for long hours, you actually feel more sleepy during the day. So you have to sleep more and that makes you even more sleepy.
3. You feel more hungry when you sleep than when you go out and play football!!! Yeah...even I could not believe this could be true untill it hapenned to me.

Its been two days since the pop stopped working on campus. It was a real relief intially with Kartikeya (K-virus) and now even Bivas and Maloy coming up with thr versions of Stick Cricket and Pingu and all the other games....and that also always during exams....but now the absence of pop is getting on to me. You feel so cut off with nothing to do. No pops just popping out of anywhere and u getting to do all sort of things....quizzing, revising syllabii, teasing ppl etc etc etc...

And that actually made me start feeling about the time when we will leave the place. Probably ximbians.com will be helpful since we still will be able to have a virtual pop where we can interact and chat but what if we do not get time? Rumpelstiltzkin, Don, Eminence, Webmaniac, Dragon, King Arthur, Scarface, Cupid, Critter, Narcissist, Scorpion... and of course the ppl with thr actual names...Safi, Maloy, Venky and roll nos as well (U104008 is the top of the mind here)....is it going to be the same? I actually see two juniors calling themselves Hawk and Eagle...wether intentional or not....I liked it ;)..these are synonyms of my name after all so i can say they are inspired by me...he he he (God save them)

The 14 14 14 14 (War cry of AOE) from Arthur which makes us run to start AOE......(6) (sign of the devil on pop) from Don which i started patenting for myself......demands for songs or movies, assignments or project reports of seniors, calls for meetings or fixing of dates....I am sure we cant have all this anywhere else.

I hope my work makes me so busy that I forget all about it and get on with my life. I hope that the same does not happen with my frnds and we all stay together. I hope i stop being so senti sooner than later since i have an exam to give tomorrow and 4 more over the next 2 days...

This term is coming to an end in another week or two with the end of the exams. Looking back i found this to be a really different term from a lot of aspects. First of all I actually feel that i have learnt something in this term. This feeling of having learnt something is actually an alien to me and my body still has to create antibodies for this disease. Till that time i have to suffer. Secondly this was probably the first time in my life that we had less classes during the week and more during the weekend (sometimes even 6-7 classes on a sunday). 15 august was a monday and we were actually regretting getting an extended weekend since that meant more classes.

All said and done this was a better term....not withstanding the constant enmity which exists between me and marks which i am sure is going to continue till death do us apart...

till next time.....ciao

I was going through a website detailing the lives of people living in concentration camps during WW-2. I came across this para from a guy in Auschwitz Concentration Camp which was supposed to be the most notorious camp of the type. The para goes...

"Despite the madness of war, we lived for a world that would be different. For a better world to come when all this is over. And perhaps even our being here is a step towards that world. Do you really think that, without the hope that such a world is possible, that the rights of man will be restored again, we could stand the concentration camp even for one day? It is that very hope that makes people go without a murmur to the gas chambers, keeps them from risking a revolt, paralyses them into numb inactivity. It is hope that breaks down family ties, makes mothers renounce their children, or wives sell their bodies for bread, or husbands kill. It is hope that compels man to hold on to one more day of life, because that day may be the day of liberation. Ah, and not even the hope for a different, better world, but simply for life, a life of peace and rest. Never before in the history of mankind has hope been stronger than man, but never also has it done so much harm as it has in this war, in this concentration camp. We were never taught how to give up hope, and this is why today we perish in gas chambers."

To think about the plight of the people living there is a bloodcurdling experience in itself but to think of the really important ideas that come up from these experiences is another. Dont we all live on that thin string of hope that binds us to what we want to achieve. Had it not been for hope, would I have ever thought of becoming an MBA and spending 2 more years of my life studying? It is just the hope of making it big after doing this course that i am actually doing it. Same can be said for everyone in this world.....cant it?

GOD loves me. I am 100% sure of that. And how I got to know this is because however much i try to reduce my weight, it just does not come down. GOD likes to see me healthy and hence he has put such habits into me. My interest in food and excercises seems to be conversely related to each other. So even when my aim of reduction requires me to concentrate more on the latter, I seem to be more inclined towards the former. Hence while I usually skip excercising almost daily, i prefer to eat enough food to keep a family happy (and such a quantity is possible because of the mess i eat in....had it been anywhere else, my consumption of food will probably rocket to inconcievable proportions)

Please everyone...pray to god to keep loving me as much but do change his perceptions of a healthy person..

Yesterday evening I played football. Not that it is a really great achievement of that I did this for the first time but it was a genuinely new experience. I never thought that football could actually take the role of a cross country and that a ball could decide the direction of your running. We were practically running from forward position to defence position as the other team kicked the ball here and there. The final scoreline of our having lost 0-3 was actually an appreciation of our talents. The way the teams were matched....it should have been at least nothing to a dozen or two. In the end I was basically lying down in the ground with absolutely no energy to move my legs and wondering what kind of godly intervention will make me get up and go up to the second floor (my room is on the second floor). I somehow managed.

After that I had a feeling that I really wanted a 'bhutta' (corn...the way it is made here makes it really tasty.) For that I took my legs which were screeming for some kind of respite all the way to Swosti for buying that.

It is morning now and still my legs are aching for a little bit of rest....well lets see...I thnk i will let them rest in class where i will sleep peacefully.

Life is a torture. Specially when this life takes us to the Business Ethics classes twice a week. I have no clue why we are studying what Aristotle did or could have done or what is the meaning of teleology. Ethics as a concept is known to everyone and I would prefer if it is left to each and everyone to follow his own ethical standards. As it is, I dont see much change in anyone who has gone through this course.

Considering all this, I am the only one in our batch who has to attend two ethics classes continuously. Not considering the fact that these two classes are seperated by a gap of two whole days and also not considering the fact that the reason why these two classes are continuous for me is that I have not attending the 3 classes that lie in these two days, the thought of 2 classes is enought to send shivers down my spine.

Hope I scrape through tomorrows' class....

Exams ended day before yesterday and new energy came into my otherwise lazy bones. It ensured that the great pangs of sleep that i had been experiencing for the past few days was gone and was taken over by this really great urge to stay awake...even when i actually had time to sleep now. Stay awake I did but what i did while awake is something which even i cant explain. For the simple reason that i did not do anything. The cycle starts like this...in your room you think of what to do...cant find anything worthwhile (i am not going to start studying plz...papers just ended...) so i just start off on an expedition tour roaming around in blocks and trying to find people who are both awake and in their rooms so i can reduce there brains to dust by using my gift of the gab. i dont find any people who fit into the above category because of the simple fact that each one of them is on a similar mission. so what i finally end up with is a group of people chatting away to glory with no respect for either the people or the time...all of us competing with each other for talk time as if we are not in any informal discussion about no topic (choice of topics is an entirely different matter which requires a whole blog to itself but i will rather devote another post to it)...but as if we were in a GD for the post of a CEO (do we have GD's at that stage???)...The great chatting session actually makes us all hungry so we decide to go to mess and have something to eat. another chatting session till the time that eatable is consumed and then back to our rooms. In the room i try to think that i am feeling sleepy and try to go to sleep. seems like another waste of time so i get up again and not having anything to do...go on a mission to make people get up and talk with me....and everyone else is doing the same....cycle continues. This is how i keep busy during days after the exams...really a very very hard work to do..dont u thnk

Seems that all that I can talk about during exam time is related to exams...we had International Finance paper today. I practically started studying yesterday after giving myself the usual kicks in the ass for not having studied till then and how i was going to flunk because of that...(how do i manage to repeat this again and again after promising myself to study as soon as the exams get over...I will never understand)

People all around me were studying like there was no tomorrow or someone will hold back there degrees if they did not study...I couldnt care more it seems...but I did. My paper was at 6:00PM today. Yesterday I decided that i will surely wake up early in the morning and go to the library and study like hell...u thnk that i did not get up eh??? Well i am not that bad....i did get up, had breakfast as soon as the mess opened and even went to the library to study. Sat and studied for some half an hour before the first pangs of sleep hit me. I immediately heeded their advice and dozed off right there......what hapenned after that is history and i prefer not to repeat this part of history ever...

Hope they do not hold back my degree!!!

My dreams

Man...am I bad at this...everytime I log in I think that next time will be sooner and it always gets later. And the funny part is that I always happen to remember my ID and password...for a guy who cant remember where he kept his mobile...this is a big thing. Guess I am more hung on the old fashioned way of writing diaries. Will take time to get used to a blog. (Please dont ask me how much time)

I was listening to some saxophone instrumentals today in my room (supposedly preparing for my term exams) and I started of on one of my frequent dream chases....

What will probably be the best thing that will happen to me? It will probably be moments with the girl I love. Dancing close to each other with sweet romantic instrumentals playing in the background (have to be slow though...dont u feel i am very selective?....back to my dream...), sweet smells of sandalwood in the slow breeze and no one to disturb us or worry us in any way. I could probably carry on this way throughout my life....

lemme get on in my dreams for some more time before i get back to my paper preparation....and nxt time i promise to be more regular...!!!

tough weeks gone by

whew...those were tough last few weeks. First the great German fiasco in which the embassy actually proved that there is no difference between the Indian or any European government as long as it is a government. How do these people survive...I have no clue.

Now in Kolkata (I still prefer to call it Calcutta) things are going along much better. Cant really think about Germany all the time. Life keeps going on. Project is great and simply put...will make for good interview FAFF. "FIBRES based reverse engineering model for future strategies for 3 of TATA international's products". I hope that I will be able to do as much work as it requires. Sure will give my best.

Ciao my blog for now...will keep posting

As we saw and the seniors went away

As i saw them all leaving one by one, all the things that we had done together went through my mind...the ragging in which we really hated them all to the time when they woke up at 5 in the morning to help us out with our assignments when we loved them so much. those were our seniors...so good yet so bad. now that they are gone leaving us to take care of the next batch which is yet to come, i really miss them. now is the time when i really know there true worth. what they stood for and what they did. of course there was not much defference between them and us but they were the seniors...the guys who were supposed to help us settle down and the guys who did this work perfectly.

all the best to all of them from the bottom of my heart. take care and do well in life. that is all i wish for.

keep in touch guys...

As we saw and the seniors went away

As i saw them all leaving one by one, all the things that we had done together went through my mind...the ragging in which we really hated them all to the time when they woke up at 5 in the morning to help us out with our assignments when we loved them so much. those were our seniors...so good yet so bad. now that they are gone leaving us to take care of the next batch which is yet to come, i really miss them. now is the time when i really know there true worth. what they stood for and what they did. of course there was not much defference between them and us but they were the seniors...the guys who were supposed to help us settle down and the guys who did this work perfectly.

all the best to all of them from the bottom of my heart. take care and do well in life. that is all i wish for.

keep in touch guys...

Why cant we be just Indians?

Today we were giving a farewell to our seniors. Some momentos for them for which each one of them went on the stage one at a time and took the momento. I could not help but notice the aplause which the juniors were giving. As soon as a Tamil was called on stage, the entire Tamil group in the audience clapped. The same was the case with Telagu's, Oriyas, Maharashtrians, Keralites.....and almost all the other places that make up this great country which we call India. The point to note was hardly any of them thought of clapping for a person of some other state except when they knew each other well enough. A small thing like clapping when someone goes on stage????? Why this difference? Are we from the same nation which fought together to achieve its independance? Are we the same nation which has caused the biggest rising against the English rule in 1857 which even shook the very roots of the nation on which the sun never set just because of our sheer unity? Are we the same nation in which Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes together make such a deadly combination in world tennis when individually they are not even in the top 100?
Why has this difference creaped in? Why do people prefer to stay within there own "kind" and not intermingle? Why cant we be just INDIANS??? Do we need another Subhas Chandra Bose to remind us that we are one country??? Why this big difference on such small matters?? Why cant we be just Indians??

Why is HR not compulsary???

Not that I like HR. I would be the first person to run away if HR is compulsary. But the kind of people who want to become managers really should know how to deal with people. After all, wether u r in finance or mktg or ops or systems...u have to deal with ppl. and then i see the way we just slaughter anyone who is trying to do his best but is unable to. why do we do that? the poor guy i am talking about must be crying out aloud in the bathroom of his house right now thinking about the next time when he has to meet us.
I just hope that i dont become that....have to keep that in mind for future...forever...

classes...classes...classes

We had 4 classes today....nothing new. We even have 5. but the problem comes when you have classes when there are supposed to be none. Seems like MBA is all about classes. But IC is seriously good. The way he just gets into a simple looking case and gives details about the company, it seems that he was there when the company was having those times...wether turbulent or not. I am sure that if I am able to keep my eyes open in his classes, i will learn a lot. Amen. Hope that truly happens.