Happy Birthday Bloggie !!

My blog is six years old today. Named after the iconic Coffee House at College Street in Calcutta, I guess laziness was something that came in its DNA. Yet, 55 posts that averages to 9 posts a year is not that bad, considering that the author was recently diagnosed with chronic PAS or Posterior Adhesion Syndrome, a rare disorder that immobilizes all locomotory and sensory activities for considerable periods of time as soon as the posterior gets a resting place. Often this is diagnosed incorrectly as being a Bengali. (The symptoms may be similar but this disorder is far more severe.)

On this joyous occasion, I must also observe a minute's silence for those many thoughts that did crackle out of the brain with the enthusiasm of a Oliver Ridley hatchling, only to take the expression of a severely PMS affected woman and fizz out with a whimper without ever seeing the light of the blog. And there were very many of them. Let those fertile aborted thoughts rest in peace. Amen !

Meanwhile a quick month long trip to Scotland happened between the last post and this. The trip wasn't meant to be this quick but one can never truly qualify as being from the IT industry if he hasn't been part of a project that was scrapped when in full steam. So now here I am beaming with pride at the completeness of my mandatory IT credentials, as one fine Monday morning soon after completing a status call , we were all invited for a meeting that announced the immediate closure of the project. Just like that ! Not much work is done in the Western world when the birthday of Jesus is around the corner and when you have developments such as these, the people affected are left as directionless as a cow in a busy Indian thoroughfare. You can chew cud, you can stand in the middle of the road amidst honking cars wondering about how the universe was created or you can just smack the dog nearby with your tail for all anyone cares ! Such was my case too as no one had an idea of what to do with me. So I loitered around for some time before the think tanks realised that the financial impact of my liability was not helping the recessionary economy at all and decided to send me back. But not before I celebrated the 25th Dec birthday. And boy is the birthday celebrated with pomp and show !! Not a single shop was open, not a single house had any fancy lights hanging outside, not a single public transport vehicle on the streets !! Much similar to a curfew after a riot in our country ! Its a private celebration they say.. Wierd , we say considering this is the only thing close to a festival that these guys have !

Anyway a friend from yonder years had come over to share our mutual melancholy and with two more of her friends , we embarked on a climb up Arthur's Seat, a 825 feet hill in Edinburgh that provides some exotic views of the beautiful city. But planning and execution are two wicked step sisters who rarely see eye to eye. Nature that day was in the mood to play frisbee and typical to her playful nature, chose us humans as flying disks. So strong were the winds that it was next to impossible to stand aground and if you belong to the gender with not very heavy hanging organs then God save you on such days.

But we did manage to scale almost to the top where we met a not-very-cloth-friendly Canadian girl. In other circumstances, I may well have spent a moment admiring her visible contours but in those extreme chilly and windy conditions, where my features were slowly but surely turning Mongoloid as the photo to the left confirms, I just left the thought float away with the wind. Some people just don't like wearing clothes and that's that. We were led in this campaign by a very spunky lady of our group, who braving these extreme conditions was more than willing to lead us to the top. It seemed King Arthur's spirit had possessed this otherwise sweet lady and boy was she determined to go and check out the seat !! Her tresses, which kept swinging around like a lost compass needle in frantic search of the north, complimented her possessed state and dare we not have followed her ! Nature however intervened our glorious march and just a little distance from the summit, we decided that birthdays were better celebrated where Gods were not taking their Fluid Mechanics practical exams

The following day was Boxing day, a day traditionally meant to torture the male species. Comes camouflaged as Sales in Fashion stores ! With the friend from yonder years also in a mood to celebrate her womanhood, I had to tag along of course. Thankfully other than the one occasion when she managed to get lost in the crowd with the cellphone obviously left at home and her having no clue where that home was, it was not that torturous a day out. What I couldn't help noticing was an Indian gentlemen who cut a very sorry figure of himself in his desperate attempts to keep track of that wandering kid, the other one pooping in the trolley, those thirteen packets overflowing with female and kid clothing and the red water bottle. As consolation for all his effort , his wife had bought him a bright yellow T-Shirt that said "My wife cutest !" As the happy family made their way back home, with the wife cheerfully chattering away on the phone informing her mother in Ernakulum of the day's steals, the gentleman walked with an expression of having lost a lot more than a mere few hundred pounds on that cold Monday afternoon . "Honey I love you na", she said. He smiled. On his cell phone he opened the Facebook page of his only remaining bachelor friend who had just uploaded pictures of a Christmas in Goa with a few scantily clad Ukrainian ladies. He clicked the Like option and sighed.

I flew back to India in another couple of days and finally saw the T3 terminal which sure is a treat to watch. An Indian origin smart looking female bearing no signs of being married and carrying an American passport lamented about the fact that I being an Indian too had to queue in the common line for immigration clearance. When good looking females pass an opinion , I always agree and this one had an American passport !! Are you kidding me ...I nearly fell on my trolley trying to convey how much I agreed with her. Our paths were destined to diverge in a couple of minutes but her sad expectant eyes did convey to me how lonely she was ! Alas I had a connecting flight and she a kid !

A fortnight later, I am still put in India while my current bosses continue to figure out something that my previous ones have burnt much oil thinking over, but to not much avail ! How can they make any use of me ! Let them take their own sweet time. Its 2012. The world is coming to an end anyway so why bother much !

I had started this blog inspired by mydayzwithmyself, a blog maintained by a fellow IIMCian, which he in those days updated regularly with large doses of his typical humour. As I see his blog too hasn't seen much activity of late. Blame it all, we may on Blackberrys and Androids but then I'm sure every blogger wants to continue writing.

So here is raising a toast on my blog's sixth birthday.

I want to write more. I hope to write more. Maybe I will write more.

Cheers !

Photo Credit : The spunky lady - Divya Iyer

Sazaa-e-Namak Paani

This time the reason for my break from blogging is quite serious. With a heavy heart I must announce here that I have just been released from prison. This piece of news must come as quite a shock to many of you but it unfortunately is true. To arrest your alarm, I owe all of you an explanation here to explain my current circumstances.

I was jailed on the 18th of August soon after I came back from a quick visit to home on the Independence day long weekend. Little was I to know how my own independence was to be brutally cut short soon after. The rude jolt came in the form of a shrill phone call on a cozy afternoon when completely unawares of my impending fate, I was busy sharpening my skills in online archery. (Angry Birds was blocked in my office and no matter how angry we were at this, the policies remained unchanged and thus the game beyond our reach ). To come back to the point, the call was from my manager who wanted to see me. Now this itself was a disturbing little thing which sowed the seeds of doubt in my mind. Over the past three odd months, we had developed a very beautiful relationship - one in which we saw as less of each other as possible. In times when the resource utilization was best left undiscussed, it was a mutually agreeable unsaid arrangement.
As I made my way to his desk in the 8th floor, I kept wondering what the reason could be behind the unexpected invitation.
Could it be what I was thinking ? But how could it be so ? It was unimaginable that it would catch up with me so soon . Not after all the effort that I had put in the last year and a half in the desperate hope to never ever tread those God forbidden paths again. But the shadows of the past are lengthier than we think my friends. It was time to face the truth.
"We have identified a project for you. "

Seven harmless little words which came together like a slap in the face. I was just getting so comfortable in the post MBA do-nothing phase but someone just got jealous I guess !
To add salt to injury, I was informed that the project was housed in an ODC. To those unfamiliar with this obnoxious little term, ODC stands for Offshore Development Centre which is an area in an IT office that is earmarked exclusively for any particular client. The client has a free hand to impose any restriction within the confines of this area in the name of security policies. Thus if they were to ask to us to present ourselves in yellow pants and red shirts with blue shoes, we being the typical accommodating Indian service providers would go a step further and add a cowboy cap and maybe orange feathery mufflers to go along with it. Well this particular client was not so much bothered with our attire as it was paranoid with our cell phones and Internet activity. To enter the premises of one's own bloody office, any cell phone that had a camera was required to be deposited to the security chaps who manned the doors 24/7. You would go crazy answering to the daily question " Sir phone aache ? " but the buggers wont relent.

Thus started the jail term. Internet services were completely blocked. Can you even imagine a life without Google but one such existed within the confines of those walls. My brand new Blackberry had to be forsaken for a camera less and a lot many things less Nokia 1800 which however introduced me to a world which I had thought was long lost- The world of the great Kumar Sanu. With FM being the only means of relaxing in an otherwise claustrophobic environment, I was amazed to see (hear) that Kumar Sanu numbers were not only alive but thriving in Kolkata FM channels. It was impossible to surf through all the FM channels at any point in time and not find at least two that were playing old nasal Sanu hits. Bengal does not forget its heroes..So true!!
The authorities were so stringent with data regulations that they thought it wise to not even install Microsoft Office in our PCs. All Excel based flash games faded into oblivion and with it my hopes of being a great Online Archer.( Ricochet Kills Version 2.0 - Just FYI for those interested) So the only thing that the PC hosted was a link to a remote machine that resided in a foreign country and no prizes for guessing which one. So technically I was actually working in US. Aur lagao H1 par restrictions...Aur karo L1 reject.... But Hum desi log tumhare wohan kaam kar ke rahenge !! Karlo jo karna hai.

The prison term soon started to take its toll on me. With no Internet connectivity and continuous barrage of Bengali radio advertisements that were hell bent on making me buy just about everything from umbrellas to advice on sexual issues, I started showing signs of depression. I would go back home and watch Rakhi Sawant's talk show on TV. Yes my condition was that serious and it was then that I decided to do something about it.

I write this blog to say that I did. A few changes in life have followed. I have escaped from prison (read : changed my job). I have landed in Mumbai once again and today morning did something that I always dreaded. Travelled to office in a local train during peak office hours !!! The fact that I am writing this post shows that I survived. In fact it wasn't bad at all. This city makes you a survivor.

A new chapter has thus begun this week. Will keep you posted as the story unfolds.
Till then have fun !!!
I will miss the city of Calcutta nonetheless. Hope to write about that sometime.

Kya hua......Tera vaada

Two months have passed since I rejoined back corporate life following my MBA and boy have I taken the world by storm !! Cutting edge strategy work, shadowing the executive board and winning a couple of top notch deals....All in this short span of time !!!!

Yeah and I also am Brad Pitt .....Read on.

It all started with an induction week in Pune as a part of a batch of MBA graduates, the average age of which was greatly distorted by me being in it. Apart from those excruciatingly boring speeches about company capabilities by equally bored gentlemen , some very interesting activities formed a part of the program. As a part of team building exercises, was one where we were supposed to lie flat on the floor with eyes closed and make weird noises that were to depict different kinds of laughter. As the room steadily started resembling the venue of the annual World Hyena Conference, I wondered whether all those foul sounding noises was actually aimed at me. A person with 7 years of IT experience , frustrated with his job turns to an MBA from the best in the country to get out of the mess and after spending close to 2 million rupees and a very fertile year of his life, comes back to join the same rut !!! Bravo... Bravo I heard and then the howls grew louder and more sarcastic.

And then I had a second thought, that maybe it isn't directed at me alone ...Here was a batch of 30 odd MBA grads from prestigious colleges hired by an organisation that for certainly had the word Business Consulting in its name but no matter how hard the business owners tried to convince us (or probably themselves) about the consulting aspects of the business, there really was none . This was more a case of selling TT balls in a Rasogolla tin with the label - Made in an Indian Institute of Management !!!

The howls of laughter suddenly sounded like chants of Ulloo Banaya !! Ulloo Banaya !! and those expectations of doing cutting edge management consulting work died at a very premature age. The face of that HR who had recruited me suddenly floated by. He had a sly smile !!

A morning of Salsa camp with an instructor in very tight fitting clothes and a God gifted figure helped relieve the uneasiness a bit but it only confirmed the fact that my dancing abilities are best and probably only appreciated by equally drunk gentlemen. It was sheer decency on the part of my dancing partner that saved me from being physically assaulted by her for repeatedly stomping her feet.

Coming to accommodation, sharing rooms is something I don't mind at all, provided the physiology of the roommate allows for the appreciation of an extra orifice. But my organisation was not very keen on my interests as I found myself holed up with another chap in a very smallish room. So we turned to that one thing that offers solution to so many bachelor problems. Yes, Beer. And the one week of induction passed off peacefully thereafter.

Next destination and place of posting was the City of Joy. I have always wondered which this city alone got this name when Kingfishers Strong is available in every city of this country.

For those under the illusion that Gujarat and Mizoram are dry states, a visit to the nearby asylum for a quick checkup and maybe a week long stay is highly recommended. By the way, if you do manage the visit, then probably you could do me a favour and ask the HR junta (who surely must be permanent residents there) as regards what was the sense in having an induction planned at a location, 1841 kilometers away from the posting location !!!

However, this did give me an opportunity to touch base with some long lost faces from the engineering era, which only cemented the fact that the disorders that those 4 years introduce into your system are unfortunately and fortunately, permanent.

Now if the room in the guest house in Pune was small , the one we got in Calcutta was probably meant to house prisoners for the night who have escaped jail and were being transported to a higher security facility the very next morning. We were also welcomed by a rodent of a size that for a moment made me mistake him for a fellow new joinee. The housekeeper negated that. In this moment of disbelief, one of my colleagues thought it prudent to mention that some of hisbatch mates recruited by one of the two cola giant were received at the airport in a stretch limousine. The irony just seeped in further.

Office started a day later. The person I was asked to report to curiously had to leave for US that very day and to think of it I had barely spoken to him for five minutes over phone ! Its amazing what measures people have to take to avoid my company ! Nonetheless someone else filled in to show me around and introduced me with fellow team members. Of course there was no seat allocated to me but there was promise of one in a couple of days.

The start surely was encouraging !!!!

To be continued ....................

Nearly an article..but

Just over a month since that eventful day when India lifted the Cup and I lifted my degree at my convocation. It has been an arduous five weeks of complete joblessness since then. With a joining date ensuring that everyone in the batch sees a credit of their first post-MBA salary before I even start my first day back in Corporate life, I have given laziness a whole new meaning in these days. Laziness and me have always been very good buddies. We understand each other very well and communicate at the right wavelength and this post, which I started writing when Osama still had twenty days to live stands testimony to this fact.

Okay what can a person in my situation do to make himself useful at home, a place which runs just perfectly fine in my absence ? Fans have been cleaned, a leaking stove repaired, windows sparkled and attempted to learn driving for exactly 2 hours. Now there is this thing about driving cars that I have come to accept. It is just not my cup of tea. Three Mirrors- 2 eyes, Three foot pedals - 2 feet, a machine certainly not as per God's design, crazy fellow drivers breathing down your neck, scratching your bottom and honking incessantly as if he is in a hurry to go and scratch the bottom of another as soon as you make way for him. Its complete chaos and I in all my wisdom have decided to not add to it.

Now a week remains for me to start work and here I stand with a degree from one of the most reputed business schools of India. So what difference has this degree brought in me as a professional?

*******************************************************************************

This is as much as I could write in a month and a half. So instead of sacrificing this unsaid thought and as a tribute to my laziness, I will post this in my blog. Office starts in an hour. A new journey towards possibly newer destinations. Will have to wait and see.

Convocation or WC Finals ?

For all those nights spent solving quant problems to clear CAT, for those train journeys at 4 in the morning to Baroda to take SIM CATs, for all those days spent in frustration at not getting/converting calls, for the effort it took to renew interest in MBA while working late nights in office, for that 3 week back pain that helped me take GMAT, for those hours and hours spent in writing and then rewriting application essays, for the tryst with failures again and then rising up for one last time, for the 10k flight to Delhi to attend interviews, for that one email from IIM Cal that changed my life, for the last one year that has given me the pains of being a student again and all the fun and frolick and nightouts and exams...yes for all of these, I choose my MBA Convocation today over World Cup Finals. May the best team win !! Cheers !

The ship turning in.....

A week into our internships and I have a deep urge to pour out my state of mind. But before that, what this internship is all about, needs to be told.

Like most things in IIM Calcutta, this concept of having a one month internship as a component of this 1 year Tandoor Grill Course, too was driven by a Bheezeeon (some outside Calcutta spell it incorrectly as Vision). The Bheezeeon was to make five international friends. Yes Five. Not One, Not Six but Five. So in order to implement this PentaFriend plan, a study tour was organised collaborating with international management schools whose name if searched in Google usually come in the second or third pages of the search results. Three years down the line, not many friends were made so this idea was discarded with our batch and the Bheezeeon got confined to getting an internship done from just about anywhere. Gorakhpur Brick Factory would do just as fine as Bain . That we are accepted in neither is another story all together.

So there we were , a bunch of 44 scrambling to get internship offers from whosoever had a space to offer in their office premises for a month. Hurt at the unceremonious manner in which we shelved the PentaFriend proposal the college offered no support at all in this process of securing our internships. Just FYI, an all-AC 85 room temporary structure was erected over two months to cater to the summer internship process for the PGP folks. But of course the comparison does not hold. We are PGPEX you remember, guys with an average work experience of 9+ years, people who know the nuances of the industry, appreciate the courses so much better and of course pay shit loads of money for the course. We do not need these facilities nor the support of the institutes, do we ? We are way above all these trivial things as meagre summer internship offers from UBS, Merryl Lynch, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, McKinsey, A T Kearney and the lot.

Anyway so here we are, a week into our internships, splintered across the country, working primarily on projects that require intensive researching, data analysis, corporate strategy formations, market entry decisions, new business proposals etc.
He he he ....Yeah sure !!

Four of us are in one of the top Indian IT firms within the Process Excellence division of their BPM department. Okay no giggles allowed here. Blogspot is naturally turning the word Process Excellence into bold each time I type it.)

Our office which also houses the corporate office is situated in an aptly named place called Sarjapur (HeadGoPur). We all know how Indian IT firms work best when employees keep their heads and brains back home.
Now there are certain things that you would never want to see in your life again. People swiping their ID cards while entering the office in the morning is one of them. The moment I saw droves of people queuing up to mark their attendance in the swiping machine, some very painful memories flooded me. Eight months it was since I had last seen something as painful as this. And it does not stop there. Our one-month-employer, I guess must be CMM Level 5 in Swipe Usage .
So once an employee has marked his attendance, that goes into the record books as his/her time of entering office. The next swipe which would happen when he enters his wing would also be recorded marking the time of entering his actual work place. The difference in the two swipes would thus determine the time one has spent devouring Dosas and Idlys and gossipping in the office cafeteria- an important matrix for the project manager indeed. In addition every swipe out from the wing, other than the last swipe out of the day, must be paired with a swipe in. This would check tailgating and more importantly determine the time spent outside doing non-billable activities. Another important KPI for the manager.
Thank God that we are yet to be given our cards which however comes with its own set of inconveniences. With both the washroom and the coffee vending machine being outside the wing, some natural biological requirements are held in check till someone kindly opens the door for us.

Now as regards our project , well, lets say we have had a very fruitful week and there are two people whom I would like to sincerely thank for this , Sergey M. Brin and Lawrence E. Page. These two individuals to whom the Indian IT industry owes a major share of their profits have blessed us too with their guidance. Lets avoid the details of the project, as discussing them might be in violation of my Intellectual Property Rights.

Another aspect of this one week which deserves mentions is the awesome food that we have been having. One experience surpassing the other. Basically the Bangalore cuisine is pretty simple. A red coloured paste which is of course Andhra style forms the base. Now you may involve animal pieces or poor vegetables in it and you got yourself a dish. What happens to your Gastro intestinal tract following this consumption is also best left unsaid and unheard. Lets just say that the Tissue paper industry has been doing good business in part of the country.

Such has been the week of our temporary re-entry into corporate life, a life which however much we wish to avoid awaits us in some months and to say the least , the dress rehearsal has begun on an interesting note.
Joy Baba GoogleNath !!

Atithi Devo Bhava

A much talked about event in management school circles is the IIMC-XLRI sports meet. Now I know why. Undergrad education in an REC has its advantages. Along with the degree, one comes out of the gates with a lexicon - a compilation of the learning of many generations of bright and wise minds. And deep learnings they are, about humans and their profound relationships. The uninitiated call them expletives.
But if all these days, I was carrying a dictionary, the sports meet gifted me an encyclopedia. Here is what happened.

Lets start from the beginning.
Friday 31st of July, 2010: The campus was abuzz with enthusiasm. Banners of the genre shown below and the shrill of Vuvuzellas shattered the tranquility, creating a feverish pitch around the campus.
(Ahem- that 34-5 you see is a mere statistic showing the distribution of overall tournament wins between the two institutes over the years. Who is 34 is just anybody's guess)
After some prolonged but necessary check of credentials at the gate, by around 10 pm, the guests started entering the campus. The banner read :

Our campus is a beautiful one and we take pride in showing it to outsiders. The route to the registration desk thus ended up being slightly longer. The guests had got their drums and drummers in an attempt to create their own din. Pity, there was no event for these skilled chaps. They would surely earn fortunes playing in marriage parties. We do give credit where it is due.

A Howrah bridge divides our campus into two halves, one half housing the PGP folks and the other us, along with the faculty. As our dear Colonel has aptly put it , it was the commonality of the spirit of the two halves that was in full display when receiving the guests.
We prepared Mashaals and got fireworks as our bit of the contribution from PGPEX. Later we added a few impromptu welcome sonnets of own to add on to the huge list already in existence. As you would understand, none of those sonnets could pass the eligibility criteria to be printed here.The aptly named hostel, Annexe was the chosen spot for the registrations.
The stage was set and so were we .

The actual reception ceremony soon began as the XL junta started streaming in, and chaos and mayhem procreated in gay abandon. Imagine a 1500 crowd screaming at the top of its voice. Add the influence of alcohol and you got yourself a party. A big party with firecrackers bursting where they ought not to, human relations being bartered thick and fast and the mere mirth of being a student. A human chain on either side of the exit corridor ensured that each and everyone of the guests got individual attention as they moved out. It was fun.

The first event was supposed to start at 2 am in the morning with Softball and Tennis. Just to ensure that the guests could make use of the morning freshness after their surely tiring journey from Jamshedpur. Such cordiality is also extended when IIMC visits the XL campus and it is this bonhomie that makes the event such a super success. The Rain God was in a bad mood and heaven relieved itself of many a cat and dog. All events were cancelled for the night.

We reached back to our hostels and realised that some of the XL junta had been housed there. One of them came searching for water in my room. Some of his other friends also were thirsty.
15 bottles of beer at 4 am in morning to quench their thirst and ours.
I went missing after some time and a search party checked ditches and drains but failed to find me. I was later found sleeping in one of the rooms, sharing the bed with a person of gender not to be associated with my sexual orientation.

Obviously Saturday started late but we missed nothing as the overnight downpour had messed up most of the schedule.
Tennis is one of the prestigious events and we had added interest in it as we had our very own representation from PGPEX there. That she is a former national level player helped. In short, the female on the other side of the net was butchered. Sledging from the opposition camp was hard and intense but there was little they could do to stop the bleeding. In the parallel basketball court, our men's team stream rolled theirs and before the guests could lick their wounds, our women's team smashed their counterparts too. The football team returned from their match. 4-0 in our favour !!
The unique feature of any game was the interruptions that happened after every fifth minute. The friction of sporting rivalry often reached tipping point and all it resulted in was two groups of men rushing at each other's throats baying for the other's blood. Only to disperse in a couple of minutes whereafter the games resumed and the cycle followed. Encyclopedia got new chapters at each such creative intervals.

A few of us who did not have their marketing project presentations that afternoon filled the gallery and soaked in the atmosphere. We had our own small contributions to make to the happenings as well, you see. And we certainly did not disappoint. Knowledge grows only when shared. The women's basketball team from XL may have lost the match but they gained so much more from our sideline discussions (primarily one-sided) with them.
Men's tennis was probably only of the two events, (the other being badminton) when the guests tried to prove the below point wrong .
Injury to our chap and lashing rains overnight led to a hung result. To be fair, the XL chaps showed a lot of gumption. In the background, chants and poems eulogizing relations among family members were bartered at will, defying the basic laws of supply and demand. Supply obviously far exceeding demand.

We had to present our project on selling TV over mobile phones the following day and so we took a break while an alternate team who had missed the day's proceedings filled in for us. The girls softball which we missed was equally Fab(ia), I hear.

Dinner, Beer break, Excessive rains.

2 am - Women's Badminton. The atmosphere was curiously polite with measured sledging. We lost, despite the heroics of one of our multi-talented player pursuing her Fellowship here and needless to say, her Fellowship of admirers saw a quantum boost during the games. She surely was one of the players of the tournament for us.

3 am- Mens Singles badminton. Superb start by both players. Excitement builds. Rain drips from the roof onto the court. Dampener. Relationships exchanged with more intensity. Bonhomie over smoke, the regular and incensed. Rains continue unabated.
We call it a day. The matches happen later in the night and XL save some face by winning them.

Rains played spoilsport with most of the remaining events including the much awaited cricket but all in all it was a grand experience to be a part of. Exhilarating and wholesome entertainment. Hats off to the organising committee who managed to stage a wonderful event in the face of an inclement weather. The spirit surely rose above the elements.
"Atithi Devo Bhava" - Guest is God, is a concept integral to our Indian culture and ethos. And I'm sure each and every one of the 250 odd XLRites who visited the campus during the 2 day event would have no reason to feel that they were treated any lesser. We made every attempt to live true to our traditions in letter, spirit and vocabulary. The final scoreline of events that read 13-3 in favour of IIMC stands testimony to the fact. I mean even God would not have expected them to win 3 events !!

The night after, was the celebration party. I have spoken enough. Let pictures do the talking.

Cheerio !!

Photographs Courtesy : Sameer Karkhanis, Utkalika Badu, Hriddhi

Dancing to the tunes of management

Education, said somebody, is the progressive discovery of one’s ignorance. In the last couple of months, the pace of this discovery has been so scorching that often the poor ego was left severely bruised and hurt. But then I discovered something important, the joy of collective pain. The sinking feeling after each academic disaster is often assuaged when you see the majority of your fellow mates sinking along with you. Management , what I understand after the completion of first term is all about having as many people as possible with you when sinking. From this definition, I have not done too bad.
Another learning of prime importance is that when you know no shit about something, you might as well change the definitions as I have just done above. In the corporate world, there is a term for it -Thought Leadership.

As the term progressed, the class too evolved greatly in character as individuals and groups started blooming with their own unique traits. While some sought (seek) the answers of life in class, some were (are) more interested in answering them. Common ground often is never reached nor sought. That too has a terminology - Rich diversity of batch. A subset of this diverse batch is the following :

The Band of Brothers (with No Sisters) - A conglomerate of individuals held together strongly by the bonds of grapes and barley who believe that the greatest discovery of mankind is the discovery of the process of fermentation. They invariably represent the second category mentioned above and some even claim to receive their answers directly from the Buddha. (Attempts at group discussion for academic purposes within this group have proven to be hopelessly futile for obvious reasons.)

There have of course been quite a few deep learnings and important events since the last post, some of which are described below :

Jargonology - The reason management education is so costly is because it is here that you are introduced to terms and definitions which twist and turn the muscles of the brain so bad, that when appropriately used, an antagonistic audience would be compelled to cede ground. If they are still not convinced then you are equipped here with a rich repetoire of world famous theories to further substantiate your views. The term Bullshit is believed to have originated from such rich discussions. But one should be careful in its usage as the higher one goes up the corporate ladder, the more is the chance of interacting with people talking in this same bovine language.
So next time , if you hear a person use terms such as Cognitive Evaluation Theory, Fiedler's Model of Leadership, Economies of Scale, Multi Divisional Organisational Structure etc etc, have pity on him. He must be repaying a hefty bank loan.

Theory of the Raised Hand - This is a unique theory that claims to solve any management problem. No matter what the complexity of the issue, you just have to ask people to raise their hands and depending on which direction the majority of hands are pointing, the decision can be taken. The basic logic behind this is that, some would invariably faint from the combined stink of the armpits. Works very well in boardrooms I hear. Has been helpful in our class as well to sort out contentious issues.

I was not born theory : This feeling hit all of us after the Financial Reporting and Analysis (FRA) examination where we were asked to balance some cash flow statements. Never has the word balance seemed more alien than on that day. This subject that had tormented us throughout the term simply deep FRAied us in the exam. A scalded behind is all that I could bring home from that course.
Some who had their birthdays during the term had it comparitively easier as they had already been subjected to such feelings before through vicious attacks of cake smacking on their faces. Owing to this increasingly violent trend, many have decided to postpone their birthdays till the next year.

Are you understanding ? : Often you would not, but the key is to pretend that you do and 'meaningfully' participate in the class. Unfortunately, dozing off is not counted as a participative process which gives people like us a serious disadvantage. Other than that, just opening your mouth (yawning excluded), tearing apart a classmate's argument or his shirt or his dignity all seem to be contributing towards meaningful class participation. Its a big bad world outside and this is where we sharpen our skills of survival, provided of course that we are not mauled here itself.

Some other titbits :

• One of my greatest achievements (read joke) of life - An A+ in Probability (The environmental factors played a part of course). For the remaning subjects , its the familiar story of Kabhi to Nazar milao, Kabhi to kareeb aao with A grades.

• After three failed attempts to enter Tantra , the happening disc in town, due to gender related issues, a few of us finally managed entry owing to the benevolence of a couple of female classmates and the perseverance and belief of one gentleman from the Band of Brothers mentioned above. Some night to remember that was, whatever portion I remember of it, that is. Include a trip on an open tempo through the midst of the city and it was a memorable weekend for the student in each one of us.

• The excel sheet with the bills that followed was equally forgettable !!

• There is a certain Pyarelal who does the washing and ironing of clothes and every cloth that he takes for washing comes back with a permanent mark of D12, my cell..er room number. Imprisonment is here to stay.

• The two PGP batches are now in full strength in campus making for healthy peeks at civilisation. Those like me whose marital status still reads Free have our tasks cut out if we are to make any use at all of this status.

As I write this piece, the second term has started in full steam. In the very first week, a barrage of case studies greeted us with all ferocity leaving most of us quite shaken. While the characters in the cases fish in Montana, we have been left to fish in unchartered waters. Time alone would tell where the sail next takes us.

Entrapped

So the ice broke and also a music system remote. RIP my friend; at least you had a quick death.

Years ago on a visit to a zoo, a memory was permanently sketched in my mind- the sight of a chicken in a sleeping python’s cage. That same chicken has been visiting me frequently in my dreams over the past one week and a sense of brotherhood seems to be developing between the two of us. Another fellow mate, 'Bijoy' has identified our situation with that of flies that get attracted to the shine of these insect electrocuting machines.

Very Profound indeed.

The classes have started encroaching to timings when a person looks much better with a pint of beer in hand. But no, you have instead to understand whether a damned construction supervisor’s wages should be accounted for, while calculating the fixed asset value as per some god forsaken Accounting Standard. Some numerically challenged person like me named Millie had botched up her balance sheet big time but there was no reason that I should get the same for rectification. My feeble attempts to reach at the correct figures and its atrocious degree of variation from what was the actual solution was not very boosting for the morale. The one skill that engineering had taught me well was the ability to copy-paste and that skill alone had helped me maintain a continued salary inflow over the last seven years in IT. I sincerely hope that I get to use this universally usable skill to tide over this attempt at management education. After all reinventing the wheel serves no purpose to the society, does it?

We also went through our first surprise quiz on Microeconomics. More surprising than the quiz was someone asking for an extra sheet when all I had filled in were my name and roll number! In fact those were the only two items for which I had genuine answers but thanks to some wise decision on my part as regards the seating arrangement that day, I was inspired in a few answers to the problems. The seating arrangement awaits evaluation once the answers come in.

The PGPEX Chairman addressed the class for the first time and it was heartening to finally see a head that oscillated along the Y-axis to our suggestions instead of the by the now familiar No-No-No-No-No that we got as an answer to any request directed to his next door office. Applying the two negatives theory might just work there. For example :

Us - “Sir, we absolutely do not want any printers in the hostels”
Reply : “No-No-No-No-No”

Us - “Sir, we have pledged not to bring vehicles to the campus"
Reply: “No-No-No-No-No”

Us - “Sir, we will positively not use a classroom on weekends for consulting club meetings”
Reply: “No-No-No-No-No”

Communication training continues. But they do not teach theories such as the Some-Alcohol-No-Spouse theory which has a profound influence on communication abilities. Leave a man with some beer and assure him that his wife would not be in the vicinity and check out the amazing communication channels that then open up. The party last week stood testimony to this remarkable piece of study.

Two new faculty faces entered the classroom. The very interesting Prof for Stats could well have an alternate profession as a marriage counsellor considering his unique ability to evaluate any aspect of life through the prism of marriage. As regards bachelors, someone opined that its our wives-to-be that are controlling our actions. Not something that will go down well with Ma.
The other class on learning Advanced Excel is an experience in discontinuos education. What needs to be taught seems to arrive in small packets of data after long intervals and the class goes into a state of slowmotion every now and then. People are utilising this time of packet drops for sanity checks (read, Gtalk and Facebook)

The weekend arrived and with it came the month end but not the SMS from the bank which confirmed credit of the dear friend, Salary. I am so missing you, my friend. I know I had been harsh upon you and time and again criticised you for your abysmal growth rate but now that you are no longer here, I feel your absence very strongly. May we unite soon and have a stronger bond in future.

Baa Baa Black sheep

The alarm went off at 7 in the morning. The early morning brain convinced me that the alarm was playing up and I kept snoozing it for a good half an hour more before the reason for this unkind deviation of routine dawned upon me with a sudden ferocity. Classes were to start in less than an hour !!!

This was it then, the culmination of all those hours and hours spent correcting sentences and solving mango-apple problems for GMAT, those endless sessions of writing essays and then rewriting them all over again, the butterfly picnic in the stomach before the admission interviews, the agony of the name not featuring in the first list and then finally the thrill of that one email from the PGPEX office that left me unemployed and poorer by 1.4 million rupees!!
The alarm had not malfunctioned. It was just time.

The orientation session the day before was fairly insipid with run of the mill speeches by the who's who of the faculty and administration. The only speech that evinced some interest was not surprisingly that of the Placement Coordinator. His tone however went unnaturally down when reading the placement stats for the batch that just passed out. Like everything else, lets blame it on the Americans not paying money for homes they bought.

Meanwhile we were all getting used to the life at IIM Calcutta. Hectic activity could be seen in the Cooperative Store managed by Gopida. From cycles to hangars to bedsheets to buckets, he sold everything and at brisk pace. I also squeezed in a request for my internship at his store just in case !
Nothing however matched the twists and turns that came with the Airtel phone connectivity. Guided by the most experienced shoulder in our batch who managed to get the Airtel chap in campus on a sweltering Calcutta Sunday afternoon (!!!), we played hard and counter negotiated almost every offer that the guy had to make. He came back on Monday with some new ammunition to fight in the form of compulsory ECS. Gopida rushed in on his bike and gave everybody a hassle-free prepaid connection which got activated immediately !
His fan club added some new members.

The grind began with a class on Financial Reporting and Analysis and the enthusiasm and excitement of getting back to the classroom after all these years of educational celibacy was all too evident. The scheduled one-and-a-half hour lecture stretched well beyond. The enthusiasm was thankfully checked by a sumptous lunch from Bapida's super efficient mess, the Kolkata heat and a subject called Microeconomics where most of us reacquainted with an old friend - The classroom sleep.
The lecture that followed was on IT and most of us were on familiar domain or so we thought. IT jargons flew thick and fast but mostly it was a good exercise for the brain to come out of the Nomenclature Disorder as the entire class reintroduced themselves and we got another chance to link faces with names.

Day II brought some interesting subjects and professors along with. There was some serious digging on concepts of mathematics, a subject which has chosen to block me from its friend's list for quite some time now and the few more lectures that has followed has confirmed that I am still not in its good books. From the safe looking set theory, the class has moved on to dangerous domains of permutation-combination and calculus. I could hear thick mention of that Probability word, an area where my probability of getting problems correct has always had a limit at zero.

Two courses on behavioural sciences. If the feeling of being a student had not sunk in as yet, the professor for Organisational Behaviour clarified all such doubts with strict instructions of being barred from attending classes if even a minute, were we to be late. The result is that the class is at full strength five minutes before the scheduled start and of course there are no restrictions on when she can start or end the classes. So now if this class has been standardised to a duration of one hour forty minutes, I understand that its all a matter of 'Perception'.
The class on Managerial communication (Oral) has proved to be quite interesting too as one would expect. The disadvantages of having a name with the first English alphabet came visiting earlier than expected and by the end of the week, I was done with my first 25 mark business presentation. So i have completed 0.375 credits !! Neat.

The ice breaking party is scheduled for today evening. Not that ice has not been broken already. But its always advisable to break more ice as the heat builds up around you.
So Cheers to the first week and the days to come !!
Bring them on, I say !!

The new journey...

IIMC Day 1 -- Nursing a bruised shoulder after carrying the Term 1 books from the Admission office to Hostel room. The room is air-conditioned and the air conditioner works !!!! A magnanimous 5 day break in the next one year !!! Classes start from Tuesday after an orientation on Monday. Orientation much required.

Ominous ......very Ominous....Keeping the faith
More later.....

The Metamorphosis of the guy with the computer but no brains to run it

Why do we store experience Under our Belts ?
Of course I understand that experience in that portion of one's anatomy would be something to boast about, but to store every other experience there can be quite risky. For e.g. 'He has proven experience of sharpening blades under his belt' ..........Not a comfortable thought at all.
Wiktionary gives us the following example of its usage.
"He got off to a shaky start, but with a few months of experience under his belt, he kept up handily with the veteran employee."
If you interpret this sentence any differently from what I did, then I assume that you are reading this blog from some monastery or convent or may be this blog was opened using google.cn
The reason why I at all got bothered with this phrase is that I wanted to start this post saying that I would soon have seven years of IT experience under my belt and the thought just kept deviating from there. Apologies.

Seven years is a generation in the IT industry and considering the fact that I have remained glued to one single company throughout this duration does not speak highly of my employability. In my defence, I blame it completely on my Bengali laziness and my inability to generate any interest at all in what I am paid for.
Time and again on weekends, when there is absolutely nothing to do or watch, I have often wondered about where is it that I belong ? This thought invariably lulls me to sleep and soon it is Monday again and for the next five days, there is no space for such silly questions.
More complicated questions keep me busy and almost all translate to "What the fuck went wrong? By when will it be fixed ?"
IT is very interesting in this sense. There is always fire in your pants with little or no water to douse it. Petrol…yes and provided in ample measures by anyone senior to you.
No matter what CMM level your organisation claims to be or what the excellence of the operations you may have in your processes, something or the other will invariably fail after the delivery. That is the golden rule of all IT deliveries.
In IT contracts of bygone days, there used to be a Service Level Agreement of FTR (First Time Right) delivery. The very mention of the term brings out wild guffawing and hysterical laughter in IT circles. Speaking of Capability Maturity Model Levels, these certifications for a company are often misunderstood as indicative of its quality standards. The truth cannot be farther from it. The various processes within, were created by visionary people with the sole intention of generating work where none is required. It gives the management something to keep themselves busy with or seemingly at least. So the whole bunch of people who actually bring in no revenue to the organisation spend their entire days creating documents and generating reports of different shapes, sizes and textures.
So if you have been asked to document something seemingly very useless, then do not fret my friend. Your manager sees management potential in you.

A software professional moves through different roles/phases as he progresses in his career. Attempting brief description of the few that I been through/seen from close quarters.

The Fresher- Fresh out of college, it is this group of individuals whom you need to contact if you want to access Gmail, bharatmatrimony, Youtube or any other such useful site that may have been restricted by your mean and selfish network administrator. The excitement of a first job and their desire to impress makes these freshers the most sought after resources in a project. These are the people who will document all your sins and go and play Antakshari in the canteen to vent their frustration. They also are a rich source of those forward emails that keep you informed of stuff like benefits of coconut, Miss Infosys/Wipro/Cognizant/... each featuring photographs of the same group of ladies, emails about how the movie Avataar has been ripped off from our very own Rajesh Khanna starrer Avtaar (the similarities are shocking !!) and many more of such information that bring a smile to your face when nothing else seems to be going right. This bunch of people are thus the easiest to work with, as long as they come without any romantic liaisons. The ones entangled in matters of the heart remain perennially busy over phone.

The Module/Group Lead - People with 2-3 years of experience in IT, irrespective of what they actually do in their jobs will invariably be a module lead in their resume. This is actually a ghost role created to placate hurt egos at not being sent onsite. With the lead word attached in his signature, he gets a feeling of authority which is very important to us Indians.
I often wonder, why is there this immense fascination among us Indians to be leaders. Everyone wants to lead something or the other. When I was of this module lead age, I was bypassed even for the Fire Warden role of my floor. So much for my leadership skills !!
You can identify this set of people very easily . It is that guy who whispers ‘Just give me a minute’ every time he receives a call on his mobile and walks out. Hunting for an alternate job is his life’s sole intention. Most succeed in their hunts and move on. Those who don’t, write blogs later in life.

The Float/ Bench warmers : The people who are paid to do absolutely nothing and often referred to as the Bench strength of an IT organization. Not officially allocated to any project or account, their only job is to come and swipe their cards and record their In-Out times. If, in between these times, he has made a visit to the nearby mall and caught the matinee show, shopped brinjals for his wife, or played non-stop Solitaire or Minesweeper, no one gives a horse’s ass. This phase in a software professional’s life is when he recharges his batteries and regains his belief in God, by which I do not mean Google. These float areas are the breeding grounds of attrition in an organization and often the management does not seem to mind it.

The Team Lead /Project Leader – This is the role offered to guys who have aged in IT and are no longer fit to deliver anything of any worth. Having thus fulfilled the primary and probably the sole criteria required for management roles, he is given the responsibility of managing a team of developers and yes the module leads too. He basically has the job of the Project Manager’s parrot and keeps himself busy by organizing useless meetings and sending out hordes of seemingly important mails.When he needs to show off something concrete, he would conduct something fuzzy like a functional training session or explain quality processes for the kids in his project knowing very well that no one would be listening anyway and even if they did, wouldn’t be in a position to call his bluffs. Undeniably though he handles a bulk of the day–to-day project management stuff and manipulates figures so that the project health sheet shows up just as expected --cute and non-alarming.

The Onsite Coordinator: Onsite usually refers to a temporary stint at a high paying client location based on foreign shores when you start planning for your two bedroom flat. Wives prefer such assignments even more for the fact that their mothers-in-law can only rant over the webcam. As an onsite coordinator, your ass is first in the line of fire. So your primary job is to sweet talk with the client and come up with innovative excuses whenever the guys at offshore screw up the system and the possibilities of a man delivering a baby are more than that of the offshore team delivering the product on time. Fire in the server room, developer attacked by Hindu fundamentalists, "Its working fine at their end" etc are some of the successful ones that I employed to buy time. You just need to sound convincing and speak fast. On the other hand , while interacting with the offshore developers, you start politely and end up beating the pulp out of them by the time the call ends.
However, onsite coordinators should never forget to bring expensive chocolates for the team when returning. It is after all a temporary stint and the wife should be periodically reminded of that too.

The Project Manager : Well, what more can I add that has already not been said and written about this group. Project managers in IT are no different from managers in any other industry. They seem busy, smile when asked difficult questions and will always curtail your leave plans. As regards what they actually do to earn their salaries, its anybody's guess.

As the Peter Principle correctly says , "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence."

Chal 90 maar

3 idiots, has caught the fancy of the nation like no other recent film has. Having read Five point someone, the book on which I thought the story was supposedly based before Vidhu Vinod Chopra shut us all up, I wasn't really excited about the movie release and gave it a skip the first weekend, while it kept on garnering excellent reviews from all quarters.

So on New Years Day, I queued up half an hour to book a show for the movie. Queuing for movie tickets brought back fond memories of my hometown where buying tickets was always a more fulfilling experience than the movie itself. At times, we were so thrilled at the mere fact that we had managed to get a ticket, we just went back home. Oh, I so miss those awesome cat-fighting and swearing between ladies trying to sell tickets in black. Those were the days when cinema meant wholesome entertainment, much of which came free of cost.

Two third-row tickets for the 9 pm show cost me Rs.500. I cursed the multiplexes yet again.

I will not review the movie here. I thought it was an alright film that just got mighty mighty lucky.
Instead, I'll share a few memories of those early days of engineering and pass on a few advices of my own on what not to do in engineering and topping that list is Never Ever try to electrocute a senior, particularly when he is peeing.

A couple of days after the Millennium New Year, the first semesters started. Throughout my school life, I never needed any forged Daddy-signatures in my report cards. In fact they were the source of those small joys that parents willingly accept as reward for all their sacrifices. Soon after the first semester results, I realised that this source of their joy had dried up for ever. I did try quite hard though in the beginning to continue with the good run, but peer pressure got the better of me...the peer pressure to live up to the high standards set by friends from a state called Uttar Pradesh. And no those standards had nothing to do with engineering but yes a lot to do with being an engineer.

Uttar Pradesh is a state where a child usually starts cackling right from inside his mother's womb, lest he not be given enough time to complete all that he has to say during the lifetime outside. By the time he reaches engineering, he has already spoken the volume which a non-UPite would probably take four or five lifetimes to reach and fate placed me bang in the middle of some of the greatest proponents that our college was to ever produce in this Art of Talking. They honoured me by converting my humble room (which by the way already had three other occupants) into their august Parliament where they assembled every evening to discuss on the graver aspects of life.
The uninitiated, that I was, I made meek attempts to shift the venue of these daily gatherings by scribbling quotations such as :

'If you have an hour to spare, don't spend it with someone who hasn't '.
Someone expounded on this thought and beneath it wrote in bold:
'INSTEAD SPEND IT WITH ME'

I was defeated and I entered the Great Grand world of Bakar.

Our discussions initially were concentrated on mostly identifying and allocating the seniors to their correct incestuous relationship categories, depending on their attitude with us during the ragging sessions. Gradually, as we realised that Gujarat was a dry state only till we reached Shankarbhai's egg stall, the discussions grew much in content and animation.

From what I hear, ragging has more or less been completely eradicated from our college these days, which is kind of sad. When I say this, I obviously do not refer to anything of the nature in which iron rods are shovelled up narrow human orifices, but of the kind we endured, which was certainly irritating as not many of us liked to get a girl's signature on the inked impression of our posteriors, nor were many eager to graph their erection-time curve on the back of condom packets and carry them as identity cards, but majorly they were exercises of ego massaging which if not taken to heart, were really quite harmless. The embarrassment of running in a crowded train shouting "Bhago Bhago train me aag laga gaya" or being made to sit in the
corner of the room with a bucket on your head to hide your 'shameless' face as reprehension for a bad joke or a wrongly credited fart or the great 90 degree pranaam are some instances that you can recollect and have a hearty laugh even years later.
Not to mention the joy one gets on kicking the arse of those same seniors once the ragging period gets over. It is so out of the world ! Not so much though, when in the subsequent years you are at the receiving end.

But God forbid if you were to fall prey to the 'Intellectuals', or the group that majorly comprised of people who had read or heard of Catcher in the Rye, Fountainhead or Catch 22. They would never have any straight questions for you and naturally there were no straight answers either. It was only through trial and error that one learnt to handle these individuals. On the stairs of a busy shopping complex, I once bumped upon one of these specimens who after the usual boring game of Guess-my-state-in-three-questions-or-you-are-fu**ed, came up with a weird and audacious demand.

"Allright fuc**r, come here and touch my balls", he said.
Caught a little by surprise, I wondered whether the guy was making a pass at me but if so why would he do so in such an inappropriate place and manner. I always thought that homosexuals were a little more discrete with their advances.

So I enquired " Sir, do you really wish that I should place my hands on your testicles?"

"How dare you question back your seniors, C'mon touch my balls" he repeated with morevehemence in his voice this time.

I thought for a moment and said what the heck. Arguing would only land me in trouble. Moreover, I have many a time retrieved cricket balls from shit holes before. These were at least was a couple of inches away from one.
So I slowly nudged my hand forward to have my first homosexual experience. What followed momentarily changed the equation of the ragger and the ragged

"What the f*** , What the f***, What the f*** !!!!" he shrieked as he recoiled a good five metres in a single leap at my advance.

"I meant the eyeballs, you pervert, the eyeballs" , I could hear him shouting as he ran miles away from me.

Batao, How was I supposed to know that ?????

These are of course the goody goody accounts and at times things were not so pleasant, but surely everyone would accept the fact that things were never so bad so as to contemplate running back home.

Re-categorising the seniors in newer and more complicated incestuous relationships usually took care of the frustrations. And if the situation ever seemed to be getting out of hand, one could always fall back upon his 'knowledge' of palmistry. Bloody worked every time !!!

In that great Parliament of ours, we once had a heated debate on this topic of ragging and most of us firmly pledged that we would all refrain from this ridiculous show of ego.
Thankfully the pledges were not on stamp paper.

Learning to curb the ego is not a bad lesson for a man to learn so early in life. Prepares him well for marriage.

Jawani ki woh raat

Realising that just three more days remain to the New year has suddenly put me in retrospective mood. That a whole decade has passed by in this millennium is reason enough to halt for a moment and take cognizance of where one stands in life and what the road ahead looks like. Blame, such thoughts on lack of beer on an extended weekend, you may, but the fact remains that this last decade has been and will remain one of the most defining periods of my life and I quite vividly remember it beginning .

First semester exams were precariously close and with ragging period still on, we had restraining orders on our enthusiasm. The walls of the college gate that acted as the melting pot of all our engineering emotions acted as the party venue.
Now, in all the Hollywood movies where Americans save the world from destruction, there will surely be a scene depicting absolute chaos where thousands of people are shown running helter-skelter away from the impending disaster. In reality, all these scenes are actually canned free of cost in cities of Gujarat where occasions like Sunday evenings, stock market gains, American visa approval of a fellow Gujarati etc are celebrated with such fervour and abandon that one often mistakes the scene as one before the end of the world.
So you can well imagine the scene of a millennium heralding New Year eve.
Roads were absolutely choc-a-bloc with traffic moving in all directions. Well, as long as the roads led to some eatery joint or at least some open space where the bedsheet could be spread for the entire femly to sit and eat khaman dhokla.
Another hot-spot was also a sea beach on the city outskirts. Unknowingly named after the great French novelist Alexander Dumas, the Dumas beach was hospitable to only a particular section of the public who needed some extra privacy while eating. (Lets keep it to khaman dhokla to maintain the UA certificate of this blog)
So we being a vehicle-less, girlfriend-devoid, cash-strapped group of ragged-first-year hostelites joined the party from our college gates equipped with resources such as whistling and hooting abilities and a running tap of creative and predominantly harmless expletives. We cheered on the party revellers till we got bored of watching the never-ending exhibition of two-wheelers with their shockingly dressed owners. That each of these specimens had body-hugging females as pillion riders was not very comforting either. Some fresh expressions took birth for the engineering posterity to cherish as we headed back straight to our rooms......well almost straight.
The detour towards the girls hostel was incidental and futile. There were to be a lot more non-incidental such detours over the years but the futility was to remain constant. In most government engineering colleges, surveys on the sex ratio of the college get results such as Not Applicable, You Heartless Bastards, Teri M* ki and so on and so forth. I prefer to maintain a dignified silence when asked of opinion on such matters.
Anyway coming back to that millennium dawning night, there was no booze either as Gujarat was to remain a dry state for us for some more time to come.
Thus started this decade, dry and not-so-high, only to chapter its antithesis in the years to follow.
Watch this space for more.

Excerpts from next episode :
"Not many of us liked to get a girl's signature on the inked impression of our posteriors, nor were many eager to graph their erection-time curve on the back of condom packets and carry them as identity cards."
"C'mon touch my balls" he repeated with more aggression in his voice this time...

Wishing all of you a very Happy New Year. Have fun and stay safe my friends.
One of my resolutions this new year would be to change the status of this blog from a quarterly periodical which it has unintentionally become, to something that can be frequented more often.