Finally

18:something IST on the 24th of February 2010.

200 not out

Imagine a standard ninth class 20 years from now. A teacher asks a student what is poetic justice. The student goes up to the board and writes 24/02/2010 200*. For that is what it is. A perfect 200*, not a run more, not a run less. If there was any remaining shred of doubt, it has surely been blown away. If anyone person could have broken this barrier it was him.

But you know what is the most enduring image from the game? 49th over, last ball. Dhoni whacks it down the ground and he scampers through for a single. A single on 199 not out? With six balls remaining in the innings and enough runs on the board? That's selflessness personified.

For his entire career he has carried us on his backs, all the billion plus of us. He has fallen, only rise greater and better. I cringe at the mere thought of the Indian batting line-up without his name. Somehow, everything remains possible when he is there.

Each stroke from his willow has conducted the symphony of the heavens themselves. And the music has lifted our hearts, brought back our smiles, even enabled us to feel pity for Warne in 1998.

For 20 years, over a sixth of humanity has united in prayer to a single God. And there have been aspersions cast over him from the sect of non-believers. They said he was old, he was feeble, he didn't have it in him any more. That he was not the best.

And each time the gong of his response has been singular. The sound of the ball hitting the middle of the bat, and racing past the fielders on its way. His mouth has been his bat and it has done quite a lot of talking.

But we Indians are not satisfied. I want India to win the world cup at the new Wankhede in Mumbai and for him to score a century. You see how even I write 'want' and not 'wish'?

Most people would think what now? What is left for him? Rest assured, this 200 is special but it is neither his motivation nor his inspiration. They both still remain the Re. 1 coins that coach Archrekar put on his stumps at the Shivaji Park nets some 22 years ago.

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar - 200 not out. FINALLY

The Roller-coaster

Wow! The last 1 week has been one helluva a ride!

I guess you do get a different perspective when you have seen the highest of the emotional highs and the lowest of emotional lows.....

I think not getting into PLACECOM hurt more than loosing the Gen-Sec election, and I really don't understand why. I guess it was probably my last chance to be able to make a really meaningful contribution to MDI, or maybe it was not. It just hurt real bad.

I sometimes wonder, whether it is right to be so emotionally attached to the people who are close to you. I think I get hurt way too easily on some fronts and then start to make doomsday prophecies about them. It is what Sumeet refers to as La-La land! :) I think I need to start becoming impersonal about certain issues in life and start giving time. But then that is just not me. I will go full out for any person who is dear to me. The crux of the problem does not lie there. It lies in the fact that I begin to expect from others as well. I never expect that I get the same as I give, but the fact that small things seem insignificant to others seems to gall me. A phone call, enquiring about dinner, these things matter a lot to me but not to others.

I am slowly getting used to the fact that most of the world will not care two hoots about you. I think it is the search for that portion of the world that truly cares about you which is important. You may flit like a bee from one flower to another but when you are in real need, there is only one beehive to which you will return. The question is you may care for someone but that person may not care for you. Then what do you do? Do you still push, still care, still put effort or do you simply stop because that person will not respond.

This is an intensely personal choice and there is not right or wrong way. Personally I have chosen the tough way and decided to plough on, irrespective of how the other person feels or responds. I know I am going to feel cheated, humiliated, angry, frustrated. But I know that if I stop doing it, then I will feel even worse than this. Only through the paths of fire are the men of steel created. Maybe this is my path of fire, this is where God will test me. In the end, I might not even get what I wanted. But yet I shall move alone. I may not be the first choice, but I definitely will be the last option.

The best part of this whole week was the discovery that I am not alone. Finding someone who is having the same struggles as you does not necessarily lighten the load of the fight but it does give you a semblance of hope that what you do is not madness, and your beliefs are shared by others too. It is only in cauldron of brotherhood that the stew of hope is brewed. I thank God for showing me that I am not alone.

I am leaving for Mumbai on Thursday evening. And I am pissed that I cannot be totally happy about it too. But as I write these words, it dawns upon me that most of the things in life that trouble us are beyond our control. Maybe the three days I am not at college will spark something new. Maybe there will be a small feeling of missing me somewhere. Maybe I will get a half minute phone call. Maybe my basketball match scores will become important.

Maybe it won't happen.

But I still struggle and live in hope.

cheers,

moksha

For Kiddo :)

Seema left for Shanghai today morning 8 am IST.

It seems just yesterday that we were in class at SFIT, practising for the volleyball finals, cheering and jeering each other and she flat out beating me in every exam we took :)

Time does fly really really fast. And you really should not have any regrets because that will really not matter whatsoever. The point I am trying to make here is that whatever time you have spend it wisely. In just another blink of your eyes you will be in your cocoon of routine and then all you have left is memories of times spent with friends in college.

If you have some friends make sure that you gather enough memories about them to last a lifetime, for sometimes that's all you will be left with. Take time out to make sure that there are moments that you will cherish forever, 10 years down the line you should be able to make each and every moment come alive again. The moments could be the most profound and also the most mundane, it doesn't matter. Each is precious and preserve it well. Spend time with each other, all the grades, marks and other issues become in-germane down the line. And do not hold back, its probably the worst thing you can do, for it leaves scope for regret. Have faith in your friendship and trust in your friends, it'll never let you down. And remember, true friends are always there.....

Seema once gave me some of the best advice I have ever had in my life, she said that if I wanted to learn the guitar I needed to fall in love with it. Thanks kiddo! Never got round to saying that. I hope you have a brilliant time in Shanghai and learn some Mandarin too :)

cheers,

moksha

Time to get lil serious

The great thing about being at MDI is that you can have so many seemingly random discussions which actually lead you to start thinking and changing yourself.

I was sitting at Nescafe with Shrek, Shef, Mitthu and Anup doing bakar, when Anup showed us the presentation that he will be giving for a really prestigious competition. Shrek had just returned from IIM A after reaching the finals of a case study competition. He mentioned that how intensely competitive IIM A was and how great the experience was. He also exhorted me to start participating seriously in the good competitions and not give up any chance that came my way.

That led me thinking very seriously about my commitment to the competitions that I had taken a part in. I guess I never ever took them even a bit seriously. Most of the time I would not even send in an entry after registering for the event. I really need to change this and start participating sincerely. I guess what we can do and think on our own is going to give us a real education. It will not be the textbooks we read or the papers we write. I guess its time to really start thinking about the cases that come up and not just writing faff because I have to. And the prizes are not the primary motivation, I really need to start thinking that is all. My brain is like deep frozen right now.

I also hope that I can form a stable team to take part in these competitions. I guess that is very necessary because it helps build great rapport and the team develops a working style of its own. The two people that I team up with right now, Maddy and Philter are amongst the best on campus and I really hope that we can win some really good competitions.

I guess I really need to start preparing for a year and a half down the line from now onwards itself or else I am pretty much screwed.

cheers

moksha

The MDI Story continues......

Wassupp people,

With CAT servers failing everywhere, I think its my moral duty to tell all the guys and gals taking CAT this year how it actually is in a top-notch B-school.

I joined MDI in June 2009 and now its December 2009. 6 months is more than enough to decipher the mystery of a b-school. But first some definitions:

1. FAFF: anything which has nothing to do whatsoever you want to talk/write about but you talk/write about it anyway because you don't know the actual stuff. This definition may vary from person to person.

2. RAFF: acronym for Random Arbit Faff !!! ;)

3. NPA: Non-performing asset. Someone who does nothing whatsoever for you group projects/presentations except taking the marks (and sometimes credit too!)

4. Ghissu: That person who wishes to be buried with their books and will probably learn how to have sex from them.

Now that the basics of a b-school are given, let us proceed to the details.

TERM-I

Firstly, the guys from a Commerce background are Gods and the engineering/science grads are relative idiots. Please accept that. Only then can you have enough gumption to ask their help in MANAC-I and MICROECONOMICS. And if you don't then you will probably end up like me. MANAC - I a B and MICROECONOMICS a C-.

The only place where engineering grads may have a slight advantage is Stats, but B-school stats are nothing like engineering stats. You will probably scratch all your dandruff off solving even one question (although that more credit to Prof. Joydip's papers). HBO and MP-I are the two subjects that you can (rather have to) faff your way through. Also you can afford to be a NPA if you are lucky enough to have a commerce grad in your project group. The best subject is OCPS where you just have give speeches and learn how to use Powerpoint to make presentations and answer std. VII english papers all over again. But the subject that takes the cake is LAB, where you are required to know stuff like the entire Indian Contract Law of some year and the Indian Companies Act 1956 and stuff like that (SFITians can equate it to IEM :P).

Term-I is the time when the toppers will be seen. Most of them will be ghissus but there will be one or two genuinely nice ones (eg: Priyata Modi, Calcutta University, Eco topper). You will also see the really intelligent people who will also do reasonably well (eg: Sumeet Mitra, SPCE, 74%) and then the people who are intelligent but lazy (yours truly) and the really really lazy ones! You will also find a completely different species called the PLACECOMERS (eg: Suraj Nambiar, Nadi and Divya), next post for them.

Term-I is also when you'll make all your friends. And trust me these will be friends for life, it cannot be any other way. Finally, please do not screw up your CG like me (5.43). Its hell trying to make it up later. Minimum 6. My reasons including a grade dock for bunking too much and not being able to attend term presentations due to being sick.

SUMMERS:

According to me summers are the greatest levellers. They really give an ego boost to people like me who get placed on slot zero and a battering to the true ghissus. But this is more of a biased statement. I got just one shortlist on day zero, which I converted! I didn't get shortlists from any of the dream companies of mine :( So the point is be prepared. You will NOT get shortlists. Convert what you get. But there are instances of people getting amazingly high number of shortlists and not converting a single one (one had about 30 shorlists!!!) So it works either way. What do companies look for? Doesn't matter! You need to be confident and more importantly lucky. A close friend of mine was rejected in the final round of each company she was shortlisted (including the top 3 marketing firms on campus) and then finally made it through the last company of the day zero.

Please be clear as to what kind of job you want to do in the future. 3 months is enough for you to know that. If you are still confused, you are fucked! Royally! Aniruddha Ghoshal wanted to do Ops so he applied only to ops profiles and finally got through an Ops profile. That's clarity of thought. Now he is off to Europe for an exchange tour in term V.

Btw, Godrej Sara Lee picked me up for summers.

About me:

Well I am a idiot as of now, with a CG of 5.43 (m screwed) and nothing else. Though I have a really good summers ahead. Hoping to turn things around in Term-II (doesn't look like it with a 14/60 in my MACROECONOMICS mid-term). Hopefully, I'll become better as time progresses.

Best of luck to all my friends taking the CAT,

cheers,

Moksha

Notes:

MANAC- Management Accounting

HBO - Human Behaviour in Organizations

MP - Market Planning

STM- Statistics for Management

OCPS - Oral Communication and Presentation Skills

LAB - Legal Aspects of Business

Winters and Extra Classes amongst other things

I write this post from the most amazingly comfortable position of having my feet in a warm blanket and right after a dinner of palak paneer and chicken! So please pardon me if you find this post incomplete..... it means that I slept off.

The winters have finally begun, average temperatures hovering around 13 C. It is quite an experience for someone who hasn't been in a winter before (I have, since I spent 7 years in Delhi). There are quite a few people on campus who are having a fit trying to stay warm. And speaking of fits, my class is about to have one as we have class everyday at 8:30 am. And that means getting up at the God foresaken hour of 8:00 am and seeing your roomies sleeping in a foetal position under their blankets. Then comes the struggle of finding your slippers because invariably someone comes and takes them while you were sleeping and putting them away somewhere you just cannot fathom. Following that you struggle to touch the tap to get water to brush your teeth and once the water flows out you jump up a mile because the water is friggin' cold! You have barely brushed and its already 8:25.

So you rush out of the washroom, take your bag and run....... only to reach the class at 8:32 am (kindly remember the class is supposed to start at 8:30 am). Now here comes the twist in the tale. If the class is a MPI (Marketing Planning and Implementation) class then out Prof locks the door at 8:30 sharp and we loose attendance! So you wake up at 8 am and dont even get attendance. Life is so fair! On top of that we have had a MPI class almost every day (we are supposed to have only 2 lectures per subject every week). And we get a new case for every class, a negative marking quiz which is quite unfathomable!!!!

If that is not enough I have an extra MPI class tomorrow morning AGAIN at 8:30 am and I have no clue as to whether I will make it or not. And if I dont then I will have missed 4, which means an automatic grade dock for MPI at the end of the semester!!!! So I cannot say I haven't had uneventful term so far. Did my first MR project at Illumina, opened for Indian Ocean \m/ and have not been attending half my classes.

Also suddenly I have started developing a feeling that I just might sign out of placements next year and do something on my own..... Lets see how that goes.......

Till the next time you read my blog,

cheers

moksha

PS: I still pray for all the troubles to be over for all my friends!!!!

The MDI Saga begins.....

Its like one of those Star Wars movie's beginnings, Long Long Ago in a Galaxy...... or something to that effect. I mean I feel like writing in that frame of thought but what the hell, I'll just be my usual self.

So here I am, @ MDI Gurgaon one of the premier colleges.... ooops B-Schools in India right now. And frankly, I am loving every moment of it. This despite the fact that some things will never ever change including the fact that I slept through my Micro-economics class yesterday (1.5 hrs to be precise). So what is it that makes MDI tick? Well as we managers would say (lolzzz I know!), MDI has many core competencies. I guess I have fallen in love with the red brick campus here. There are very few campuses in India that are completely red brick ones. At 40 acres, MDI isn't exactly gigantic but its quite big. The best part is that it is very well maintained, it has to be the cleanest campus in India. There is a football ground WITH GRASS :) and a six hole golf-course to boot. Its really so green here, you have to see it to beliveve it.

The mess food is, well frankly its quite good and by far the best mess food you'll get at any management campus across India. Also there is Sharmaji's if you need garam garam Aloo or Gobi Paranthas, Samosas and Ice-cream. But the crowning glory is the all night canteen called Arcus. It starts around 6 pm and shuts shop at 6 am. And it spoils you for choice, all kinds of rolls you want, all types of kulchas and curries, soft drinks, sutta, everything. I have eaten chole kulcha at 4:30 am at Arcus and nothing tastes better after a good game of volleyball! Sports, name it and you have it, including a full fledged gym and yoga centre.

As far as the acads go, initially it is quite hectic and you require a lot of effort to pull through your induction week. But after a week, 4 hours of sleep becomes a luxury. Not that there's so much studies to do but there's too much stuff to do here. As an example, today, i'll go to my basement and Jam @ about 10:00pm and then go play badminton @ 12:30 am. Go to arcus after that, have something to eat, come back to the room do time pass, study a bit and go to bed by 3:30 - 4:00 am. I have a lecture @ 10:15 am tomorrow so I can lie in.

The profs here are killer! We have a marketing prof who has actually handled the recent South African Presidential elections. He is also one of the highest paid consultants in India. Our stats prof is an ISI, Kolkatta graduate and he is mad as a coot, but also a genius! His style of teaching is kickass! The thing is that all profs here are PhDs so they are basically knowledgable and very experienced. One prof teaches all management concepts by writing poems on the board. There is a huge amount of flexibility, students can change the syllabus if they wish to. Students can give bad feedback about a prof and he/she will be removed after the mid-term exams.

As far as what I have been upto, well I drank so much on freshers, I passed out after puking a bucketfull! Have been thoroughly enjoying, making loads of new friends, sleeping in class, reading chapters before going for a lecture, discussing cases till dawn, eating north-indian food, starting a small band as well! So you see, life is quite eventful as of now.

Before I sign off, few notices

@Raj: congrats for your selection dude, but wish you were here

@Chillar: Stick to it brother, I know some shit in life is hard!! and soon you'll be getting the first tapes from Gurgaon

@Opium: fuckah, if you ever read this please courier me GUNDA and SHAPATH man! please!

@Everyone in Francis who thought my jokes sucked: This one is from Shubhayan my roomie, from BITS Pilani

There are n people standing in a queue, the first waits for a minute and tells a story, the second for 2 mins and the nth person for n minutes! Now all the stories are different but to a person listening to them they all sound same why??

Answer: Since the stories are not continuous, they cannot be differentiated!!! :P

PS: If you need more, call me.

PPS: My new no should be out in a day or two... watch out for it.

ciao guys, me off to have chicken curry in the mess..... yummy!

cheers,

moksha