You have a visitor...

Unannounced, he showed up at the door. And thanks to the open door policy that I follow, he came right in. It was just a stroke of luck that I looked up from my work and saw him. After all, these creatures are known for their stealth.
Yes, you guessed it right - It was a snake. I am not an expert on snakes, but by its movement I could tell that it was a sidewinder. A sidewinder!!!... on a hill... in coastal Kerela.... aren't they found on desert sand??.... Yeah right!!! When you have a snake in your room 5 feet from you, you aren't really wondering if it belongs to that part of the country. You don't wanna know how it came in?? All you are worried about is how you are going to get it out. And when it roams proudly between you and the door, you don't even bother if it dosen't wanna leave; if it takes over the room. You only want to get out - let the damn thing stay! And, with your eyes fixated on that 'creepy','scaly' 'thing', you are only praying that the electric supply hasn't chosen that very moment to ditch you.

Well, that was what I kinda went through just past midnight after a relaxed Saturday evening which included a nice Grand Dinner in the mess and some cool songs by RJ Khadoos on K-dio. Our friend, who I still believe was a sidewinder (though Kalal sahab says that it was definitely a Krait), was 6 or 7 inch long, probably a kid looking for his mom(I am very glad she didn't come looking for him in here!), happened to wander into my room sometime around 1230am while I was busy working away at an Ethics assignment. So from a semi-drugged state, one sight of our friend put me into hyper-alert mode. Girls would die to have that effect on a guy. Who knows, our friend might have been a 'she' (killer looks... hmm...)

I had always believed that I didn't fear anything, but life at an IIM has other plans.

I finally did manage to get out, call the hostel 'chetta' and reclaim my room. Like they say in the ads, "Darr har kisiko lagta hai, muh har kisika sukhta hai(Everybody is afraid sometime, everybody has a moment when his mouth dries up)" and "Darr ke aage Jeet hai (There's always victory beyond your fears)".

Note: My only grouse is that I couldn't click a photograph as our friend chose to roll itself around my study table leg in one dark corner before it was removed. (All the animal lovers out there - our friend was not hurt or killed - it was just taken away :-) )

"Phone lagaun kya... ?"

Four and a half inches long, 2 inches wide, 117 grams - the dimensions of my life. I am not talking of any anatomical oddity but something more family-viewing type - my mobile phone. That little box the size of a small packet of chocolate can leave huge fully grown men powerless. It was as if I was decapitated.
This happened on Monday evening. Archana (archie) and Hetal (hate-all) were headed to the city to get archie's phone fixed. I remembered my phone's kinky behaviour off late and joined in. Off to the Nokia Care which gave me the impression of some revered temple - footwear taken off outside and people (hoards of them) patiently waiting for their turn. I don't know what this indicates - that too many people buy Nokias or that too many Nokias end up giving trouble(MBAs cant help evaluating every company's future and market share). Shaking off that valuation for a later stage, I concentrated on figuring out where to get myself a token and getting the 'prasadam' of having someone look at my phone(By this time, I had almost given up hope of having it fixed on that day).
The 5 guys before me from token no.125 to the 130 that I was allotted were fast enough and I was having my phone examined within 25 mins (even you would call that 'fast' if you had seen the situation there). The kindly lady out there remarked that it was a common occurrence with this model and would be resolved if she reinstalled the software. Having no other options, I gave the go ahead.
Fifteen minutes and the phone was as good as new. But the power of a mobile phone is not in its being, but rather in whats inside it. Those simple fifteen minutes had deprived me of about 400 contacts that I had in there and a few hundred messages. In an age where success or failure is simply about having or not having the right contacts, this was disaster. Now I was left with a phone which worked great(or so claimed the lady at the Nokia Care) but couldn't call or message anyone. I was powerless. If I ever got into a fight, I would be holding a blank phone and threatening "Phone lagaun kya?" Not that any fight ever entails any actual calling, but the threat would miss the feeling of credibility. If I needed some work done, I wouldn't be able to call a friend, shove responsibility and then party without a care. I wouldn't be able to read those old lovely messages and miss people (or rather, laugh at them for sending in those tacky jokes). What was I gonna do with that phone which didn't give me the power? It was just another electronic contraption.
For 5 hours that day, till we came back and I started filling in contacts again, my mobile was truly what it was - 117 grams of weight - a 'Thing' - not something which my life depended upon. For those 5 hours, I was free. My life was not in a toy that was designed in Finland, manufactured in China and assembled in Taiwan. It was where the Maker had designed it to be - with me.

Of Midterms, National Income and Ethics...

Getting out of the Operations Management paper, I heaved a sigh of relief. So far so good. I wouldn't have to bear the burden of being a Production Engg who failed in an OM paper because he couldn't 'rattofy' the capacity of each stage in the cases we had done in class. Correction: "... the cases we had in the handbook." The paper was much better than expected. A large part of it was based on concepts (or what I usually call Common Sense) and there was only 1 question that required remembering what some fellow had said about his analysis of some STCL case... Phew!!

One day gone and the two Operations subjects off the hook. Now I could start studying. One look at the timetable reminded me of the horrors of tomorrow. It wasn't even horror. It was more like that funny, empty, gnawing feeling in the stomach when you can't even remember a subject like that - MacroEconomics and Business Ethics. MacroEco, as far as I can remember, was conspicuously absent from our collective consciousness. No lecture lasted more than 45 mins, thanks to our wonderful prof who mistook our drooping heads(and eyes) for nods of understanding.

And Business Ethics; well that was a masterpiece. The first lecture we argued till our tongues fell off for how ethical it is to deprive the rich to provide opportunities for the poor - and the prof was mighty pleased with the CP (class participation). The next lecture on we were bombarded with Relativistic theory and Absolutism and Rawls et al. Till that day, I had never bothered to think that people actually do research in Ethics. WOW!! And ever since then, the Business Ethics class survives on DCP (Desperate CP) and even that is rare. In fact, my best sketches seem to develop in BE class :-D

Mental note to myself: I should scan some of those sketches and share them with you.... if nothing else, it will atleast take me to within 50 metres of the library.

Churma and Rotla in Chetta-land...

And with the summers done, we headed off to the closest we could to home - to Rajasthani Bhojnalaya. I can almost remember our mouths watering at the prospect of having daal-bati and churma (and also from knowing that we didnt have to endure any more GDs and PIs... atleast not for a while)

So packed up in 2 jeeps, we headed off.... (of course, pappu had his share of nakhras... and he got ample airtime ). The journey from the front seat was relishing to say the least. With Dhruv, Upadhyaya, Nikhil and Kalal sahab in the back seat, there wasn't one dull moment. With gems like " Dumb hona toh acchi baat hai " and " A girl is either dumb or single " coupled with Kalal sahab's frustrations at the passers-by (who incidentally were pretty well known to us) we had a roll.

The venue was quite revealing in itself. Holed up in a building that also housed a transporter with a truck almost hiding the entrance. We would never have found it if it weren't for Nikhil and his adventures with the Shah brothers (too bad he wasn't with them today). The guys at the Bhojnalaya were more than happy to see the crowd walk into their small setup. Little did they know what awaited them. With the air of an experienced hand, they set us up on 4 tables in a nice location from where we could watch Guru on a TV that was about the size of my palm. And then came the barrage of noise that seems to follow us everywhere we go. Pappu, Rajesh, Dhruv and Upadhyaya on one table and we knew where it was headed. The onslaught of the choiciest Rajasthani fare dipped and dripping in ghee didnt budge our spirits. We ate and ate until the guys declared that that was all they had... "Bhaisa, Rotla toh nahi haiga.... woh toh khatam ho gya". Not to forget, Pappu even declared Upadhyaya the winner for the eating contest. His culinary conquests are too much to be covered in one post, so i opt out of listing them. In the end, the relish with which we ate the food was evident in the fact that Nikhilesh asked for mattresses and Dhruv and Rajesh couldn't get off their chairs. And, if it weren't for the newly-ziddi Nikhil, we would have even come back without stopping to have either ice-cream or coffee - a first for any outing we've had so far.
What more could one ask from one evening - good homely food and over-the-top entertainment.

Had written these earlier and posted them elsewhere... posting them here....

Somewhere towards August end....
9 weeks and counting... ... Things are beginning to settle down. People are beginning to settle down. But the dust has just begun to cloud the atmosphere. The questions of India, of language, of movies and summers and exams keep us awake when we shouldn't be. Or should we....
A lot is happening... a lot is being said, and a lot is being heard. They know we sleep in class. They know we dont want to attend lectures. They know that all we want is fat pay packets. And they know that they have a job to do, a responsibility to fulfil, a goal to achieve and a name to live up to.
We know they know. A fine balance. IIM K.


Around July mid.....
3 and a half weeks on Kampus and one thing is for sure - Success dosent come easy.
Decisions at every step, deadlines every hour and an overload of opportunities when you wake up. At IIMK, the server never sleeps. If you check your mail 3 times a day, you're not an internet addict, you're left behind. 'Do it more often.'

This close-to-a-month here has taught me the meaning of relativity. Ability to do your work is relative. The speed at which you do it is relative. The number of hours you have in a day is relative.

IIMs don't teach you how to manage people. They imbibe in you how to manage yourself.
Every single day, a reminder: SELF-DISCOVERY

And IIMK shows the way...

They said we weren't in the big league. They said we weren't even in the league. They said we had a location disadvantage. They said we couldn't do it.
Then, we just did it. Summers at IIMK ended. The entire batch was placed in companies that wouldn't even visit other campuses. And aren't we proud....
As they say,
Sometimes, the greatest pleasure in life is in doing what people say you cannot do.