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.

Pavillion lautkar...

There are many joys of coming back to India. Working till 10 at night everyday is not one of them. If you reach home at a time when the first batch of drunkards are just making their way out of bars and you are too tired to join the second, then something is definitely not right here. For six long years I was blessed to have a client based in UK, a country where business transacts at a time when most of India is awake unlike US whose work timings match that of our jackals and owls. All good things cum to an end and so has my honeymooning with decent client work timings. But this is recession period and complaining can just make your manager sentimental while he informs you of how much you will be missed in the organisation.

Even without the changed work schedule, life takes a volte face every time I come back to Mumbai. While in England, if I were to wake up and jump out of my thid floor balcony (and were I to remain alive), I could have taken a couple of more steps and pronto I would be at my office desk ! No Ma, I did not fill in as the evening security.Here it takes me an hour to reach office by bus and by Mumbai standards that is ridiculously early.One might argue that the solution lies in taking a house near to my offfice which brings me to another interesting bit of information.Search for a house in Mumbai is another fascinating experience if you are a bachelor. 95 out of 100 building societies would outrightly reject you and you need not even be named Imraan Hashmi for that. Even if one is named Rama Krishna Gopalacharya (which I am not by the way) you would not be allowed to a take a house for rent and your only fault is your marital status. That’s it. No arguments. This search for a house almost made me call up home and ask Ma to start her long and eagerly awaited search for my bride but thankfully I saw a place which sold beer. I mean what do these bachelors do that they are so shunned by the society. Okay, they do a lot of things for which they should be shunned by if not ejected from civilised society but my point is why do it in a manner which makes life difficult for fellow bachelors. So my hunt continues.

Other than the above mentioned pangs, I am enjoying every remaining bit of being back. I love the FM radio which Dhan Te Tans your mornings like nothing other. Easy access to Vada Paos and Bhel Puris and Paani pooris only cements my faith in the Almighty. Its good to be back for there is no other country in the world where people leave early from work to see a high tide from a bridge.

I wish all of you a very Happy Independence Day and I hope we achieve freedom from the horrible menace of swine flu sometime soon. Till then wear masks. Its pretty cool infact. Gives you a menacing look.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Apologies for the long absence from the blogging scene. There has been a lot happening on the non blogging aspects of life. For one, I should soon be heading back home. No, I have not been laid off as yet but my company seems to have a charming policy for me. It allows me to spend the sweltering summers in India and the freezing winters in UK. My company is renowned for such employee friendly policies.

As I write this post, The T20 World Cup is in the semi-final stage and India, as described in most of the popular media has made an unceremonious exit from the tournament, a train of thought, I firmly disagree with. In my opinion, the Indian team played impeccably well and I will attempt a short review of some of the classiest performers in the team to prove my point.

By the way, if anyone ever comes across a sentence which uses the phrase 'ceremonious exit', then please let me know.

Suresh Raina - I think he performed marvelously and we should not be misled by statistics. He is a performer par excellence and for him the World Cup was a stage, a grand stage to showcase his art. The only issue was that someone should have informed this great artist that this was not the World Cup for Belle dancing, which, had it been, he would have won hands down considering the awe-inspiring dance steps that he regaled the audience with while facing bouncers from the West Indian and English fast bowlers. No prizes on guessing on who would be winning the next Nach Baliye contest. As he gyrated all around the wicket, I think I faintly heard Dhoni shouting from the stands,

"Raina....in kutton ke saamne mat naach"...but it was a tad too late, Basanti..er..Raina had already begun his performance...

Ravindra Jadeja - This guy is a true hero. No longer would terminally ill patients need to petition the government to grant them the right to euthanasia, nor people contemplating suicide take to drastic measures to end their lives. All their misery and suffering can be alleviated by simply watching this master play an innings of cricket. He guarantees you a peaceful death out of sheer boredom. If only the poor chap could have held his wicket for some more time in the match against England, we were assured of a victory as the English players were sure to concede defeat to escape from the grotesque torture that Jadeja was imparting upon one and all in the name of batting. The below is what one of my dear friends Nilabza, had to say about him:
"He should be fed to pigs. Country seller, Olokhi pecha ekta, Dekteo shala ta shutki bepari laage , Gu khawrar dol" (Jinxed Owl that he is, looks like a vendor selling smelly dried fish , Pack of shit eaters)

I leave it to your imagination to visualise this.

Yuvraj Singh - His attitude and facial expressions makes you feel guilty of the fact that you are not paying him special taxes for the huge favour he seems to be doing to mankind by playing cricket. If arrogance and conceit were to ever procreate, my assumptions are that their offspring would have shocking similarity with Yuvraj. Yuvraj was once considered one of the best fielders in world cricket. Even today his fielding is a captain's delight. So what if the captain is now from the opposition teams. The manner in which he let go the ball off the last delivery of Harbhajan's over should be a lesson for any kid but one should remember that there is no easy path to such success. Such finesse can only come from a correct mixture of nonchalance, callousness, irresponsibility and more importantly the ability to withstand pressure of trivial issues such as the fact that you are representing your country. It comes after a lot of practice and IPL matches.

Ishant Sharma - He was once a bowler who bowled with fierce pace and aggression and scared the wits out of classy players like Ricky Pointing. That was becoming too passe and predictable I guess. So the Indian think tank had a new role for him in this tournament. They said, "Ishant tu Zombie banega" and boy did he play his role to perfection !! Of course his stint with the Kolkata Knight Riders team just before the world cup helped a great deal in his preparations.By the time he came into the tournament, he had well perfected the art of bowling like a top notch imbecile and seamlessly slipped into the role expected of him by the team management. BCCI must be complimented for creating this well-oiled machinery that churns out players with such unique repertoire of skills.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni - Last but certainly not the least of the awesome performers was our great Kapitan Kool. But the temperature of his coolness has steadily been decreasing over the past couple of months to have now reached a sub zero level.

Initially I thought that he was suffering from some bowel clearance problems which can understandably make any person irritable, but the lowly mortal that I am, I had got it completely wrong. Under the sheet of ice with which he came up to address press conferences, was a great thinker and strategist at work.

His decision to make practice sessions optional before both the crucial Super 8 matches speaks volumes of his wisdom and far sightedness. Could we have seen the grand Raina-Gambhir Hopping show otherwise ? Continuing with Zombie Sharma in spite of RP having figures of 1/13 of 3 overs and his extraordinary decision to send in Jadeja ahead of Yuvraj and Pathan are what legends are written of. The media is calling him rude but then they fail to see his benign nature which was in full display while he batted. He did everything possible to do away with the tag of being an aggressive batsman which the media again had foolishly added to his reputation over the years. He hit just four boundaries and a single six in the entire tournament which goes miles to show his kind nature and concern for the opposition. After all winning is not everything; there is something known as humanity too which is so much more important than a mere game of cricket.

In light of the above, I think we should stop being unnecessarily emotional about this whole issue and learn to see beyond the obvious. There is inherent greatness in the Indian cricket team way beyond the comprehension of ordinary cricket fans such as me and you. We would never stop watching India play, no matter what we think of their performance. So lets get on with it. There is a series to lose in West Indies. Cheers !!

(Thanks a lot to Anjali for kicking me out of my laziness,,,,....)