Love at First Site

Love at first sight..we biharis master it!!!
The concept of love at first sight is quite unique in itself. Though I am not a PhD in love or for that matter love making, but with the limited knowledge that I have about the topics, I understand that love is a mutual understanding between two people of opposite sex (now it can be same sex also, and Europeans lead us in this arena too) that they care for each other, they trust each other (on most of the things) and they will do whatever it takes to keep the other partner happy (though the meaning of ‘anything’ varies from time to time, place to place and person to person and offcourse gender to gender). The whole concept of love lies on the basic premise that it has to be ‘mutual’, and two people (or more if u want more fun ;) ) must be involved. So like a plain love, I mean love that happens after sometime when almost all the considerations about future financial, emotional and other such sick al securities are tested to its truest degree, love at first sight also requires two parties, and they should fall in love at the same time.
So considering that love at first sight requires two people to fall in love at the same time, that’s when they see each other for the first time, I thought of calculating the probability of such an event. No dude don’t get me wrong, I am neither a statistics genius nor a desperate research scholar. I talked about probability only in its subjective sense. Let us look into the process of love and see how difficult it is for common people to fall into love at first sight and how easy it is for a bihari.
The Common Man Situation:
A boy sits in the train. Lucky enough, he saw a girl sitting right next to her. This was the first time he got lucky enough to have a girl sitting next to him. And to quadruple the joy, the girl was beautiful, well dressed and very open (she started talking to him as soon as he offered her help in placing her luggage). For Dhruv Arora , a delhi born and brought up upper middle class no nonsense studious kid, this was more than a dream come true. Looking into his past record of having no girlfriends (the cuchy coo ones), two girlfriends (the normal lady friends) and IIT Btech background, he had to fall in love. He did all what it takes to pretend that he was the best available bachelor for the coming one and a half days of journey to pune and somehow managed to get her number also. Smart kid, he managed to meet her once at HRC, spent a lot of money to make an impression. Later that night they saw a movie also and then had their dinner at a Mexican restaurant. It all went fine till the next weekend when the girl sensed that Mr Arora was expecting something else out of her and she informed him politely that she was already into a relationship. Her boyfriend was an IIMC grad and a Investment banker with deutsche in Singapore. Poor Mr Arora, he lost a lot in these two days. He lost few thousands that he spent on her, he lost an opportunity to visit daman and diu with his friends on that same weekend and the biggest one was that he lost the love that he desperately wanted to have. And all this because he wanted it to be ‘mutual’.
The Bihari Guy Situation:
The first thing that a bihari will do is, remove the concept of ‘mutual’ from love. For them it does not matter if the other party is interested or not. Love happens as soon as you want it to happen. So the chances of love at the first sight increases many folds. Let us see the same story when it happened to Kumar Priyardarshi, a middle class patna born kid famous as PD among his friends. PD has killer looks, killer brains and killer instincts.
A boy sits in the train. Lucky enough, he saw a girl sitting right next to her. This was the not the first that he had a girl sitting next to him. And like it happened every other time the girl was beautiful, well dressed and very open (she started talking to him as soon as he offered her help in placing her luggage). For PD this was a cake walk. Looking into his past record of having N girlfriends (the cuchy coo ones), N girlfriends (the normal lady friends) and NITJ Btech background, he had to fall in love. He did not waste any time and fell in love immediately. Love at the very first sight. It never mattered to him if she was interested or not, she became his love interest the very moment. He did all what a BF should do for his GF (only help and support, no nonsense acts) in coming one and a half days of journey to pune and somehow managed to get her number also. Smart kid, he managed to meet her once at HRC, spent a lot of money to make an impression on his LAFS GF*. Later that night they saw a movie also and then had their dinner at a Mexican restaurant which the LAFS GF* liked a lot. It all went fine till the next weekend when the girl sensed that Mr PD was expecting something else out of her and she informed him politely that she was already into a relationship. Her boyfriend was an IIMC grad and an Investment banker with deutsche in Singapore. Mr PD, the smart chap immediately dumped her as his LAFS GF* and clarified that it’s ok with him. They became best buddies in the coming months. PD fell in love with a lot of her other friends also. He never lost anything. To him all this was more of an opportunity cost. For example in this case also he just spent a few thousand on his LAFS GF* and then kinda dumped her. Come on GF dumps BFs and vice versa, that is common and don’t calculate all what u spent on her as loss. Though he missed the trip to Daman, his weekend was great. They had an awesome time at poolside bar at a 5 star hotel in the city itself. And the best part is, he was in love for fuc***g 15 days man.
I just lost what I wanted to prove and don’t have the patience to read or write any more, so guys take a break. Put in your comments. It motivates and discourages me, based on whether the comment is positive or negative. So write whatever u want to write, I damn care....if I get time, I will write again!!!!!

PS: LAFS GF means love at first sight girl friend.

December 2009...Life of a Prince

B schools at IITs are awesome. Apart from the world class infrastructure, faculty, studies, placements and blah blah, the best thing that they offer is a one month winter vacation. Mine started on 28th Nov. During the 1st week of December I visited Ranchi to meet a newly married friend couple and later attended a friend’s marriage. And both these events created confusion in my mind. Confusion that either I am growing old or they were in hurry. Anyways. The best part of the vacation was my visit to my relatives in UP. I visited Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Deoria, Bhatni, Sajaon and few other places which will sound alien to you( I know that even the last 3 were more on that alien side of the spectrum but they are for my memory aid). I met almost the whole family on my maternal and paternal side and there had been a lot of positive changes and facts that I came up with. I’ll try to enumerate a few of them:
1. I am loved by a lot of people; in fact by people whom I don’t even know or remember. I should take more care in knowing them in future.
2. Now I understand that why my dad insisted on my not staying for long at my maternal home. Coz that the best place to spoil yourself. This time around also I got a Princely treatment. I almost spoiled myself.
3. I got a huge demand out there dude.
4. Suddenly I realized that I should be calling and talking to a lot of people with whom I never talked in past.
5. You should not chase things, things will come to you. Just be patient.
6. Time and place control your behaviour.
7. You are being constantly being watched so try living up to the expectations.
8. Laptop is your best companion.
9. Bhojpuri is an awesome language.
10. One can live even without internet but mobile phone is a must.
I don’t remember much now as this all happened around 10 to 15 days back. Buy anyways, this trip was amazing. I realized that there are lot of people who like and love me and I should love them in response. I should immediately stop taking care of people who don’t take care of me coz that the only way of channelizing the energy in correct direction.

Months before the 1st sem end

I have not been blogging for quite some time now, to be precise, after mid sems. MBA takes a lot of time off your life. This might sound a myth but this actually is a reality. MBA, not the studies though, takes a lot of time off. Anyways. I’ll try to recollect all what happened to me in the last two months.
This past two months came will a lot of changes. Changes both on the professional front and personal front. Lets talk about the professional changes first, personal ones always take a lot of time. Professional changes were started with my selection as summer intern at VentureEast, a venture capital fund LLC co located in chennai. My post midsem summer internship journey started with interview at deloitte IT and continued with interviews at Heinz operations and KPMG IT and before the KPMG results my VentureEast interviews happened. A place comm. member informed that I got my VentureEast interview at 2. I came to hostel and helped Srikanth prepare his CV till 1.55 and then rushed to the interview room. As this was a telephonic interview, so no worries about dressing. The co was offering an amazing profile, sort of analyst and fund manager for one of its startup fund called BYST but I did not want to go to this company and the reason being that I wanted a big brand to join and was very hopeful of the KPMG entry. But destiny wanted me to be in Chennai in hot summers and thus VentureEast selected me even when the interview was the worst that I ever had in my life (you don’t always pause for 5 minutes on a ‘tell me about yourself’ question in an interview ). This selection led to a 3 days of pseudo depression. But then things improved when I looked back status of summer process at campus and compared my profile with others. I was more than happy. This selection brought about one more change also, I got more interested in finance in particular and studies in general (though the latter was just for few days). Two professional disasters also happened. Once where I won a VGSOM organized national level B quiz and other when I (or rather we) dropped the plan of participating in CFA challenge. Who cares anyway.
Personal changes were rather bigger in number and more satisfying and devastating at the same time. Friendships grew stronger so did the affection. My patience got tested on a number of occasions and but I guess I sailed through smoothly. Days before semester end saw some very rough patches, but somehow it all went well with time. At times you need to let things go and ignore at the same time to correct things. But ignore situations, not people. Ignoring people you love not only hurts then but hurts you also. Anyways it’s better that I do not go on writing a drama here.
All in all the last semester was a great learning experience, personally and professionally. I guess next sem will see a new me in all aspects of life. More lively, more active, more independent this time. But still I want to be loved by people whom I love.

Computers..as smart as you want them to be..

I should start with a warning. Computers are made to help human beings but they do so till you use your mind. Once you start behaving like a dog to it, it will do the same to you. A warning, never select all the files together for Shift Delete. Check once before you take this drastic step. Trust me shit happens.
I had numerous numbers of files saved on my desktop, mostly the ones on which I was working on currently. And 90% of them were important with only few of them having backup. I was just checking them one by one and was simultaneously transferring photos from my mobile to laptop and vice versa. Songs were on VLC player and was also copying the files on a pen drive. So technically, lots of things were happening simultaneously. When you are doing something like that, just forget to reorganize things because that what I thought and I am in deep shit now. I copied some files here and deleted some from there. The process continued till I accidently opened the ‘Recently changed’ folder and saw that most of the icons were shortcuts so better to delete them as they might be affecting the system performance. Selected all and SHIFT DELETE. Boom!!!!
Once I came back on the desktop I realized that few files were missing. As those files (which were not in a folder on desktop) were less important, I was ok. I then opened the ‘Draft Blog’ folder in ‘My documents’ and both the important blogs were missing. Came back on desktop and opened the important folders, Damn, all the latest files were missing. Suddenly I realized that I did some real stupid act. Ideally I should not have been writing about this on this blog, but then I want you to act little smart unlike me. Now looking for software to recover. Pray for me!!!

Miss someone and create this..

It was raining outside. I sat and tried calling few people. Two of them were in office so could not talk much and one, to whom I wanted to talk most desperately, didn’t pickup. I am not blaming anyone here, but this incident pushed me to think. Think as to why things change in life, why distance changes relationships and how it happens.
There are two complementary theories. I am defining them complementary to begin with but ultimately they will turn out to be supplementary.
The first one says, “Distance strengthens a relationship, love grows stronger”. When I say love, I am taking the most general sense of it not the typical boyfriend girlfriend type but general as in love between friends. And the second one goes like, “Out of sight, out of mind”.
To analyse these theories, we understand that distance is the key driver while there are two possible outcomes, one on either side of the spectrum. One leads to a happy ending where Raj and Simran would almost run into each other when the meet after six months while the other leads to a Ghazni type ending where Simran would even not remember who Raj was. Why and how does it happen?
Every relationship follows a cycle. Relationship initiates, grows stronger, stagnates, declines and then ends. Ends is not necessarily announced but happens when communication level goes to null. The initial two phases of this cycle are the most important nodes which defines as to how long or small the stagnation graph (period) can be and fast or slow the decline would be. Let’s take an example of two casual friends, a boy and girl, who work at office together and go out on few weekends together along with other friends to malls etc. If they do not have a lot of things in common or if they do not intentionally try to build a strong relationship, though there will be an initiation but the growth would be so weak that the stagnation phase would be very small and the decline would be extremely fast when they separate. This process gets a catalyst is either one of them gets a partner to fill the vacuum. So “Long time, no see” become “Long time, Don’t want to see”. On the other hand if they intentionally try to understand each other, develop a bond wherein they feel safe and happy in each other’s presence and their being together becomes a need for both of them, the outcome will be completely different. Their bond would grow stronger with distance and the reunion would be more passionate.
HUH!! I know it’s enough of HRish shit for the day. It was just that I was missing someone. Missing very badly so came up with this. Never mind...Chill is the word. You chill; even I will try doing that.
But before I finish for the day, one interesting line that I listened somewhere....
What ultimately defines a relationship is another relationship....agree??

Raashee

Why look for happiness outside when you can find it within. Funny huh!!! You will easily find such lines in Robin Sharma’s stupid motivational books or the Banyan Tree column of TOI. Most of the times, even I don’t care to either comprehend or even read such lines. But of late few things happened to me which kind of changed my perception.
Mid semester exams were on and I had already appeared for eight papers. One last was left. Six of us, the six most useless people assembled at institute building to discuss the contents of this last paper so that all of us pass. As even my condition in that paper was not very strong, I was fully ready to participate. And please don’t interpret that I was good at other papers, I was bad at almost all of them, it was just that this paper was just too haunting and I had already missed all the surprise tests. But before we could have started, my mom called me up and informed that my bhabhi was blessed with a baby girl. Now that was some news. For a moment the child in me woke up. I wanted to be at home and play with the baby. But the very next moment, the real I came into being. I enquired about arrangements, the hospital cleanliness, bhabhi’s health and a lot of other things. I went back to the assembly to discuss the paper, tried hard to concentrate but somehow could not for most of the times.
The very next day everyone was talking about summer placements. We were informed that some companies were lined up during the holidays and it is advised to stay back. For once, I thought of staying back. The thought was, cannot risk placements. If I go home, I might miss a chance. But then the baby girl was too strong a reason to go back home. And to be truthful here, someone else was also responsible here for my going home. And I am very thankful to that person for taking strong decisions and pushing me also to go back. I would have surely missed something had I not come home that day.
I, along with my brother, reached Bokaro at 12 in the night and the door of the nursing home where the baby was, was closed. So dad, bro and me went back home. The eagerness to meet the baby, see her, touch her grew even stronger. The next day, woke up at time and went to the nursing home to surprise people (My home coming was not known). I entered the room, and I suddenly realized I was in for a surprise, that now I was no longer the youngest member of my family. The first look of the child. It was not the first time that I was looking at a 1 day old baby, but then she was special. She was my brother’s daughter. My parents’ first grandchild. The first girl child of gen next of my family.
She came with a lot of changes. My bro became a father. Father, now that is some responsibility. Being a father meant that all the existing bonds from my bro to other family members grew a bit weak suddenly and she created the strongest bond with him at one go. I felt jealous. But she deserves that. My mom and dad became dada and dadi and suddenly started appearing a bit older to me. I became a chacha. Yet to figure out the responsibilities barring few known ones that I do daily like changing her dress when she pees or preparing milk for her or even singing for her to make hep sleep. But most importantly, my Bhabhi became mother. She is almost my age and we are more like friends. And I guess I am more mature than her but as soon as she became a mother, all the idea of I being more mature or sincere broke.i thought that as a mature individual, I can at max change a process, add profits or own a company but she just gave birth to a new life. A new life that can breathe, drink, cry, make noises and has a capability to grow. A new life which is so delicate that you are afraid to even touch her but still so attractive that you cannot stop yourself from doing that. Her eyes were closed when I first held her. Tongue was rolling and arms were folded tightly within. She was sleeping and there was no movement, but even then she was so attractive that I kept on staring at her. It was after some 30 minutes that she opened her eyes. I thought she was looking at me but it was the tube light that she was more interested in. She kept rolling her eyes for some time and then slept again. I was there with her for the next four hours and every small move of hers caused the same excitement as it did at the first sight. While coming out I realized that for the time I was with her, I did not think of anything other than her and happiness just paved in her path without me looking for it.

Two days...complete contrast

Two days...exactly opposite to each other.
As the exams are fast approaching, studies has soared up the ladder in the terms of priority of life at this point of time. I have been skipping a lot of things to create some extra time for studies but sadly mostly ended up sleeping and not studying.
Yesterday came with a similar choice. Pt Hariprasad Chourasi, The Padma Vibhusan Flute player was playing at Kalidas Auditorium in the campus. PD was very excited about it. I was not, as I wanted to study. But then something happened, may be I thought that I would be able to write a blog on this and listening to him would be a life time experience. So finally PD cope rope in three of us to join him to the concert. I appreciate his efforts because it was raining heavily outside and I would have not gone out in those conditions for anything. So finally four of us reached the auditorium, completely wet (wet as in drenched, don’t think otherwise). Sat there for 15 minutes and realized that though he was great but we still have not developed a taste for classical. We came out and it was raining even worse. But then riding was fun apart from the fact that I almost lost my mobile and wallet to the rain. Later in the night I realized that I did a right thing by going there. I realized that at least I will not spend my hard earned money in future to attend such concerts. But the day as a whole was happy.
Today being a holiday again, woke up late, ate, tried to study and slept again. It was evening when I realized that everyone else was studying and I was an exception. But who cares. One of our Rich and Awesome professors threw a dinner party for all the students and faculty members. It was raining again. Almost the whole batch made it to the party. I have been a public person all through my life. But frankly speaking, I am changing now. I did not like lots of things. I was feeling as if I am just acting laughing there. As if I should not have been there. And the strangest thing about all this is that one of my closest friends here felt the same way. I don’t know if this is because weather or something else but if two people are feeling the same negative vibes then there is something wrong, for sure. I am just hoping that it’s not too bad.
No net connection in hostel today. So will post in tomorrow. Watched two episodes of HIMYM and a episode of Sex and the City and I am feeling so fresh. Thanks Robin, thanks Barney, thanks HBO.

Walk the Talk...

Last two days has been awesome. It was by birth day on 18th and I was at hostel. This situation in itself explains all the pain that I must have gone through in the night. But then I have to explain because there is much more to add to it. 17th eve and a rumour spread that there will be a fee hike for our batch. Obviously everyone got furious. But god why on 17th? This rumour translated into more number of legs hitting my bums, more number of hands pouring sauce and cream on me and more number of people showing up for the celebrations. Even though I was hit very badly, thanks to my room partner for provoking people, but then I enjoyed it. Received calls from almost all the friends and family members from whom I expected the calls barring few, who are in B-Schools. And I forgive them. I understand the pain. I spent the night chatting with a friend. Slept for some three hours and then went to college. It was one happening day. Whole batch was discussing the fee hike and our proposed protest against it. Mr Vinod Gupta, the founder of the college was also expected to visit the campus the same day. Netagiri full on. I was actually enjoying it. Evening went to the hospital here. Was not feeling well. Had my dinner. And then talked to some more friends.
Now I must say that this day was also awesome. My blog on 17th was my first emotional blog and this day was a continuation to the story that made me write that blog. I talked to that special friend (SF) of mine as to what all I felt. It was then that I realized that SF felt the say way and on a much larger scale. If my feeling was lake tullu, SF’s was pacific. In fact SF went on saying that SF’s behaviour towards me changed a bit because few, or a number of, activities of mine made her feel less important. And I agree to her. I became too casual and I should have not behaved like that at moments. But then I seriously disagree with one of SF’s beliefs and I just hope that SF understands that now. It’s all cool between us now and I cannot say how happy I am.
Two days and two important lessons:
1. It’s not always you who drive your life. Circumstances and people around you have a lot of effect of what all happens to you.
2. Don’t take things for granted. Don’t hide things. If you feel that something is going wrong, say upfront on face. And try not to lose the loved ones for some stranger.

I am confused...I am losing...or I am just reacting too much

It was a strange today, one strange day. Yet again one of those days when my emotions fluctuated in a flip flop manner and worse, I was not able to hide those. This whole blog might appear very confusing but that is how the day was. The day started with a confusing decision, whether to attend the first lecture or not. And finally, after a lot of this and that I attended it. Things started off on a happy note with the first class getting finished at just an hour instead of two. We all went to our favourite food joint and that is where this all stated. I seriously hate poseurs. I hate people who behave in two different ways at two different places. I hate people who try to enter my space. And to add to all this, what if they have all the attributes and hobbies that I hate. I define that as an awesome hate effect. That’s what I was going through. In fact I have now started hating the mere presence of few people around me. Two of them for sure. I have been a people’s person or rather am a people’s person and have never felt like this before. But for these two, either I am overreacting or I have changed.
I am sure that this hate has not grown in a day or two. It took some time to build this. But the hate feeling soared up exponentially today because that very presence of the person was affecting my space. That was affecting my interaction with someone whom I treat to be very special. That presence caused me behave awkward with someone whom I wish to share all my emotions with. That presence caused the person to walk off even without asking me if I want to come along. That person is special to me and at some point of time I felt as if I am losing that person to someone with whom I don’t even want to share space. I was not sure about all this and felt that I was just thinking too much. I thought that I was the only one who did not like that presence of the person, but then suddenly two more joined me. We never bitched about it but understood very fast that we all were on the same boat creating the same sense of dislike.
For once I am not sure how to behave or what to do. Should I talk to the ‘special person’ because I want that person to know this, as we promised that we will not hide anything we don’t like? Or should I just let it go and see how things work out because I am not sure as to how that person feels about the ‘presence’? It’s a confusing day and given that tomorrow is my birthday I need a miracle to happen so that my mood gets better in some two hours. I will act, at least for today because I don’t want to hurt a numerous good friends for all that is happening to me.

Independence Day

I woke up at 1 in the afternoon today. Had a bath and late lunch. Freaked around here and there till 4 in the evening. Surfed net a bit and then played cricket in the evening. Late evening was dedicated to bath and doing nothing. Friends went out for a dinner but I did not join then because I was getting too lazy to walk or drive, drive cycle. At 11 in the night I am writing this blog. One more day passed, one more Independence Day passed.
This day happened to be a day on importance when I was a kid. I still remember the day when I would wake up early on this day, dress in white, go to school to attend the flag hosting and parade. In fact I was a part of the parade. Sweets were distributed to all the students. Back home the whole family used to sit together and have specially cooked lunch and dinner together discussing things like freedom fighters and their battle against British rulers. But then things have changed, certainly.
I was coming back from Tech market yesterday when I met Col. Gill on the road near hospital. He was on his regular evening walk. He asked me as to what my plans were for the coming weekend and I said that I am planning to go to Kolkata. He replied, “You should not go tomorrow”. I said, “Why”. And his reply was, “I hope remember that tomorrow is Independence Day and you will find a lot of crowd everywhere”. Frankly speaking I was ashamed. Ashamed because I forgot that the next day was Independence Day. The feeling in itself was sinking. Later in the night I read the notice regarding the Flag Hosting at Institute main building. Now that was my chance to get my acts right. I planned that I will surely attend this celebration. But then, what you plan and what you do, don’t always run on the same track.
This afternoon, about 1 hour after I woke up, Swati called me up and told me that she attended the function. And yet again ashamed was what I was. This time ashamed for not doing this much even as a token of respect and gratitude for all those who sacrificed their lives to give us this day.
I am not promising anything to anyone, but I am apologising for spending this day like the way I spent it today. Forgive me!!!

Life..the IIT way

I am an IIT student and that happened on 21st July when I joined VGSOM at IIT Kharagpur. Kharagpur is a small city, or better town, approximately 2 hours away from Kolkata. I don’t know much about the town because since the day I have come here at the campus, I have never been to the town. It’s not that the town is an amazing place to visit I am missing something by not going there but the truth is that town has not much to offer apart from few malls and a Railway Platform which is the largest in Asia. Let’s now concentrate on the IIT part. I still remember that day when I entered the campus for the first time. It was raining, not heavy though. It was not that first time that I was visiting IIT KGP. I came here in 2006 also to attend Spring Fest. But this time the timeframe, the story and the emotions were completely different. I was going to be a part on an Institute that every engineering aspirant dreamt of. Though they dream more about getting a B Tech from here and not MBA but then even the MBA from here is worth it. The very idea of spending coming two years at a college and that too IIT was kicking. I felt proud when I was entering the campus. Felt proud for becoming an IITan, 7 years late though. Campus here is huge, some 1200 acres in total. All the students, most of them, have their own cycles to roam in the campus. My school is some 500 mts away from my hostel so cycle is a need. But its fun. Riding a cycle, racing with mates, doing stunts on it, its all fun. Initial few days were roller coaster. Lots of classes, lots of assignments and on the top of that few of faculty members were not satisfied with that so they came up with surprise tests in their subjects. It was all difficult in the beginning but now, who cares. I think I am gelling with the system now and these pains are becoming part of life fast. IIT can boast of having the best infrastructure in India. You name it and they have it here. Olympic sized swimming pool, a Cinema hall sized gym, wood finished Indoor stadium, three huge auditoriums and what not. Frankly speaking I am yet to see places.
But for a person like me, people are more important than buildings. I guess I got lucky here also. Got an old friend who joined the college along with me, so finding friends initially was never a problem. I already had someone whom I could call friend. People are good, generally. Few of them are very rude also but they are everywhere, not just here. What? Did u say girls? What is that? Ohh ok...we do not have a lot of them here in IIT. Engineering colleges are famous for not having girls. Though my engineering college was an exception. But then situation is real bad here. I pity the UG guys. They need girls at their age. Not having girls to hang around with might affect their growth, mentally and physically. But why just UG. The situation at PG is no great. Its a well known fact here in IIT that the school of management and school of law are the only places in IIT which can boast of having beautiful girls in the campus. Its true. VGSOM has been a leader in this aspect till last year. This year we are facing stiff competition from Law School. But I am still not satisfied. The reason being that I left a B- School (yes its your college sheen) which is like Pacific Ocean of crazy beauties and I am comparing VGSOM with that college in this regard. I know that the comparison is not fair, but cannot help it. Wuff...lots about girls. Enough for today.
Life is good here. I just hope the placements happen on the same lines at it happened last year.
May god bless us all!!!

The firsthand experience

One of my vgsom batch mates reached the campus much prior to us. He was one of those privileged once who could see what we were expected to see much later than him. That’s really not the problem. I had a problem with his experience sharing techniques. He used to write blogs about anything and almost everything that he saw and to mail the links on the group forum. Now as most of us one of those curious child kind of people, used to visit the link and read the blog. I personally liked the blogs till they were informative in nature but once they started to become more of a emotion sharing sessions, I started hating them. The real reason of hate was something different.
Last month during my visit to Gokarna, I met Dave and Rejane, The SA couple. Dave once said to me that he did not like taking pictures especially of nature. The reason being that you get more involved in taking the picture and thus miss the real beauty that you could have seen through your eyes. My idea was a bit different. I felt that a photograph must be taken because that is the only medium through which you can make people see and believe what you actually saw. He claimed that I was partially wrong because by making them see that thing through photos, I am actually reducing the importance of that beautiful experience that they could have felt themselves had they visited the place on their own.. Being a photographer myself, I never accepted his ideas.
But today, after reading my batch mate’s blogs, I have started believing Dave. I feel cheated. I feel as if I am being fed with news that I do not want to listen, I feel as if I am being made to listen things that I want to discover myself. I want to be there at the campus and find things myself. That’s how I will get the real feel of a firsthand experience. Having read about all the places before hand, it’s more like reading Hindu, which comes one day late when you already know all the breaking news of the day.
Dave was true. We all believe in finding things on our own. Though we ask for some help to reach the unknown territories, but we do not want our discovery experiences to get ruined by letting some stranger tell his stories and we listening to it like dumbs..

Name defines personality...are you listening Shreeya..

As he once said, "What’s there in the name"...I am deliberately using a Pronoun here instead of the Noun because he himself was not interested in the name. This idea of not identifying someone by his name sounds fake and faulty to me. Had he been not known by his name, these words of his would not have meant anything to the millions of people who know him now. I believe that name has to be there. And I also believe that name has a lot of effect on the behavior and personality of a person. I expect ‘Vikram’ to be an aggressive person while ‘Khushi’ to be a soft and mild girl. I expect ‘Aditya’ to be a young dynamic individual while ‘Lalitha’ to be a homely housewife material. Name has its effect. Though in varying degrees sometimes.

One such name that I feel worth mentioning here is ‘Shreya’. This name comes in various forms like Shreya, Shreeya, Shriya etc meaning Favorable, Auspicious and Fortunate. The origin of the name is Sanskrit. Apart from the few celebrities like Shreya Ghosal and an south Indian actress Shriya, I know few of this class who are closely associated with my life. The first one that I met was a small kid who happens to be my niece (a very long distance relationship). She was amazingly cute and lively. There was never a dull moment with her. At that point of time, I never believed that her activism has anything to do with her name. But with my meeting with two other people sharing the same name started pushing me towards making such a perception. My landlord’s daughter in kolkata had the same and she was kind of the most adorable girl in the whole colony. She was loved by all and sundry. The other beautiful person who flaunts the same name is my Sister-in-Law. She again is one gem of a person. Very lively and cheerful.

My belief about this name was strong but it grew stronger and even made me make a perception about this name when I met two girls having this name at scmhrd, pune. I didn’t have much interaction with one of them. But the other one was simply rocking. Bhat she was. God makes people of all different kinds. And coincidences make them meet. She and I were in the same study group. She was so much like me. ‘Awesomly
Awesome’, as we say it. One more Shreeya, who was full of life. She rarely cared as to what people thought of her when she laughed loud in class or when she made me dance and act anywhere and every in and around pune or when she helped two tired souls to achieve what they always wanted. Her beautiful eyes and lively smile can bring happiness even to the poorest of the souls. She has her own set of problems, but I am sure that she would overcome then with time. I want her to be happy all the times, so that I get to read less of her blogs. I just wish that god makes more of this kind. At least one more for me, ‘Only for me’. May god keep all the Shreyas happy and kicking.

The Roadtrip..4days,1300km, Bangalore to Goa and back

When you plan a trip, especially the ones which are very long and to unknown destinations through unknown roads, you expect lots of surprises to happen to you. Neeraj and I planned to have a road trip to some place around Bangalore. Both of us were free last weekend and Neeraj also took a day and half off. So we had some four days in hand. Few places like Coorg, Ooty and even Pondicherry came into consideration. But the place where both of us wanted to go was GOA. Neeraj did the planning part. Maps of Karnataka and Goa were arranged, Net was searched for road maps and tourist destination en route. As Goa was 650 Kms away from Bangalore, we were a bit skeptical about going there but we had a beach called Gokarna in our minds, which was some 500Kms away from Bangalore and Jog falls was in that route itself. So the plan was pretty much set. Visit Jog Falls and Gokarna and come back. But life never runs as per your plans, so things went a bit different than we thought it to be. I will try to recollect all what happened to us and the trip during those four days of travel on day by day basis.

Day 1, 19 Jun 09, Friday:

Neeraj took a half day off from office and that was the best decision he made during this journey. We could manage to start our trip at 1430hrs from Old Airport Road. First destination was a small town called Nelamangla. This was a small town just outside Bangalore but is very important junction for traffic movement. Till this place you will get huge traffic. There is one road at the end of this town which goes towards Mangalore which pulls all the traffic towards itself. So post Nelamangla, traffic is descent. From here to Tumkur, the road was ok wild mild traffic. After driving few kms we realized that almost all small and big cities had one road that entered the city while there was one bypass road. These bypass roads saved a lot of time for us. So when you are entering a city, just ask local people as to which road is bypass and take that. Infact we skipped the Tumkur city and touched the highway again at 10 km away from town called Gubbi. As per our plan we had to reach Shimoga by eod. We had cities like Tiptur,Arsikere,Kadur and Bhadravati on NH 206 in the way to Shimoga. Bhadravati is a steel city have a SAIL steel plant there. Beautiful Township. We reached Shimoga district at 2030hrs. It took us one hour to reach hotel Jewel Crown where we had a booking for a night stay. Book the room in advance coz this hotel was real crowded even in the off season. The road till s
Shimoga was good. Mostly two lane roads with no partition, but the traffic was not much so driving was never an issue.

Day 2, 20 Jun 09, Saturday:

We woke up at 6 in the morning. The next destination was Jog Falls. Come out of the hotel, take a left turn and you are on your way to Sagar, the next town en route. Sagar is very important destination for this trip. Make sure that you take your breakfast here. Buy some snacks as well and most importantly, get you car tank full here. There were no petrol pumps in that 150 km ghat section that stretches from Sagar to Honnavar. There is a HP Pump in the sagar city on the right hand side of the road. We started off for Jog Falls at 0700hrs from Sagar. The road was till Jog was nice with few bad patches here and there. But yet again No traffic. The road is narrow and there are some sharp turns and hairpins also so make sure that you drive slowly, you are always on the left side of road and you keep honking your horn at turns. We reached Jog falls at 0900hrs. The view was awesome. We were at the first tourist destination of our journey, so the sense of achievement was making up prouder. As this was June, so there was a very thin line of water flowing down the falls. But then the view was amazing. We left for Honnavar at 1000hrs. This was a continuation of the ghat section. But the road was much narrower and curvaceous this time. Most of the times we were passing through a narrow, one lane road with jungle on the both side of us. There was deafening silence all across. That’s what we call nature at its best. The journey continued through Honnavar, Kumta and we reached Gokarna at 1230hrs. Gokarna is 10km off the highway. There are four beaches and a famous temple called Mahabaleshwar temple which can be visited. Enter the town and go straight, you will reach the temple and the Gokarna Beach. Temple and the prasadam offered there was awesome. The Gokarna beach is not that beautiful though. The most beautiful beach of the area is OM beach which is some 4 kms away from the town. Instead of going straight into the town, if you take a left and go straight, you will reach the Om Beach. There is a Namaste guest house on the beach. Book your hut in advance for 600 Bucks a day. This beach is named so because of its shape which resembles Om when written in hindi. That was a beautiful rocky beach. There was something very unique with the beach. The beach was divided into two sections by a huge rock. There was lots of wave formation in one part while it’s was exceptionally smooth of the other side. This place was silent and serene and we decided to stay back there for the night. We met two South African nationals there at the café. Dave and Rejanna were on a trip to India for one long year. We talked for some 2 hours and I was surprised with their knowledge of Indian politics. As there stay in India was long and without any plans we offered them a ride to Goa with us which they happily accepted. Don’t get surprised, we decided to go Goa the next morning coz we realized that we were very close and it would be fun. At 12 midnight we all went to bed with plans to hit g
Goa the next day.

Day 3, 21 Jun 09, Sunday:

We woke up at 6 again. We had a plan to leave Gokarna by 0700hrs. We hit the highway at 0715 and by 0745 we were at Ankola. We had our breakfast there with our new travel mates, Dave and Rejanna. The one difference between yesterday’s drive and today’s drive was that today we were talking a lot in the car. Lots of talks on culture, tradition, music, education and world of other things were going on between us, that is what happens when people from two different world meet. We resumed our journey on the same highway and reached Karwar. Karwar is a famous port town on the western coast on India. It took as some 20 more minutes on the road from there and we entered the state of Goa. There is a striking difference between the people and culture of the two states and it was clearly visible. As we did not have much time to visit all parts of Goa, we decided that we would touch only southern Goa. Our next destination was Margaon, the second most famous town of Goa after Panjim. Goa is a small state and the towns and cities are very close to each other. Roads at Margaon are very confusing, so make sure that you ask locals for path and confirm them also from others. Out next stop was Colva Beach. The biggest beach in South Goa and possibly the dirtiest. The stretch was very long. We had our lunch and a seaside dhaba. I don’t remember the name of that dhaba, but the food was good. They had lots of options for non-vegetarians. After having a great food there we started off for our final destination in goa, Banaulim beach. This was a beautiful secluded beach, one km south of Colva. Instead of going for hotels which are some 500m away from the beach we went for a shack which was on the beach itself. Go to the main beach, take a left turn and walk 300m, you will get a series of shacks. They charged us just 200 bugs per day which was cheap by Goan standards. The surrounding was clean, serene and full of foreigners. This was the first time that we went into the sea in Goa. The evening became special because of the stupendous view that a rising storm created. The evening was all dedicated to World Cup T20 Finals between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. As neither India nor SA were in the finals, we along with our travel mates enjoyed the whole match without any fight .

Day 4, 22 Jun 09, Monday:

Yet again, we woke up at 6. It was then that we realized that we were some 670Kms away from our homes and we had to drive all the way back home in one day. The Road that we took for the up journey was good and had less traffic also but it was slow. Slow because of the long stretch of ghat section and just two lanes of main highway. We decided to take an alternate path back home. The plan was to drive back till Ankola and then take a left turn to reach Sirsi. Sirsi was on the other side of ghat but this path had only 50 kms of ghat section. We said our goodbyes to out travel mates and started our journey. After reaching Sirsi the roads went a bit confusing. We took all the countryside roads which were not mentioned in the map. Because of that we had to ask a lot of people. But then after lots of confusion and even a fear that we are lost, we reached Haveri, the place where we touched NH4. This was Mumbai-Pune-bangalore highway, a part of the Golden Quadrangle project. It was 0130 when we reached Haveri. Had our lunch at a road side dhaba and we resumed the journey. There were no tourist destinations in this path and the only thing that we were supposed to do was to drive. The road was amazing. 6 lanes at most of the places and 4 lanes at times. We hit the max speed of our journey, which was 140kmph, in this stretch itself. Parts of this highway are under construction, so there are a lot of diversions and crossings on the road. From Haveri to Devangere, there was a bad patch of road also. But the post Devangere till Tumkur through Chitradurga, it was pleasure driving there. The road was as smooth as butter and traffic was as fast as F1. We reached Tumkur at 1830hrs. We took a break at Tumkur as we were sure that the coming 3 hours from Tumkur to Bangalore through Nelamangala was not going to be fun. And it happened as per expectation; I will define that 3 hour as the worst part of our journey. We reached home by 2200hrs. Ordered a Pizza, could eat just half of it and had a great sound sleep.

Trip Stats:
1. 1300 Kms Roundtrip.
2. 4 days in total of travel and stay.
3. 31 hours of driving (approx)
4. 17 kmpl of mileage.
5. 140 kmph as the max speed hit.
6. Unlimited fun

Life....the banjara way

The last post of mine was related to my trip to bokhhalli with a focus on the treacherous journey to the Jumbo Island. For sure i am never going to sail in sea again. Even not in my wildest dreams. Since the last post, i was very busy. lots of things happened in the month of may and beginning of june. These happenings made me believe that however confident you might be, however strong you might be, however willful you might be, your life and its path is not always decided by you. Its the circumstances that drives you. When things go good, you are praised for making the right decision and there is a flip side to it also.
For me, the last one month or so was very unique. Full of traveling, fun, masti, trauma, pain and labor. I will dedicate the next few posts to wrap up all what happened to me in the last one month. but as of now, i am too tired to write anything. so take a chill pill....keep rocking!!!

A trip worth mentioning

It was a long weekend after a very long interval of time. Plans to do something special, probably do a road trip to somewhere close to kolkata, were on for long back. Few places that came into consideration were North Bengal, Sikkim, Shillong, Bhutan and even Nagaland. The last three never got a second consideration because of their unknown journey routes. We kept on discussing North Bengal and Sikkim for long but thanks to the elections and separatist movement in Darjeeling (Gunjan came up with these points) we dropped the plans to these two places. Even I was partly responsible for us not going there. My own travel plans to home was pretty undecided. Finally, one day before the Labor day, we decided that we should atleast go to some nearby tourist spot, and the first thing that came to our mind was Bokhhalli. That was going to be an outing after a long interval of time. Last time we visited Digha and Shankarpur (Gunjan was committed then, now he is committed to getting committed). Cab was booked, bags were packed, sunglasses were on and we started off for Bokhhalli. The journey was pretty descent barring a few nearly missed accident chances. We got a opportunity to have a look at the gates of the temple that we always aimed for IIM,Joka. A small ferry ride to cross the river and 40 more kilometers, we were at Bokhhalli Beach now.
We suddenly realized that we all were very tired ( I badly needed a place to release my pressure off) and we need a place to freshen ourselves. Hotel Babylon was selected for the purpose. We got the room at dirt cheap price. A nice breakfast followed the much needed freshening up process. The next destination was Henry Island. That was one good beach. You need to walk approximately one kilometer amidst bushes to reach the beach and I believe the walk was worth. White sand beach, full of Red crabs and four of us were the only living human species there on the beach. The view was simply awesome and the experience enriching. The next stop was Jumbu Dweep, the most interesting and happening part of the journey. This place was important for me because I knew this name since my childhood (My family Panditji referred to this name in the beginning of almost all the Pujas to represent India).
We hired a private boat (Jetty as they call it) and four of us started our journey towards JD (Jumbu Dweep). Intitally for some 15 minutes, we were in Ganga sailing smoothly. Clouds were on and cool wind was flowing making the journey even smoother. Little did I realize then that the later 40 minutes of journey was going to be hell. As soon as we crossed the river Ganga and entered the Bay of Bengal, the fun quotient started dipping. Initial 10 minutes were scary. The jetty was swinging in a simple harmonic motion and the swing was extreme. Two of the four were not at all enjoying the ride, which was me and gunjan. For the other two, rhea and anu, the ride was complete fun. I remember, me and gunjan were trying our best to keep our hold intact on the sole pole in the center of the jetty. I don’t know how to swim, but that was not the real problem. Even if I had known swimming I would not have been able to anything to save myself or others in case of accident (which looked pretty evident to me then). With every passing moment I was thanking god for keeping me alive for one more second. By then even the jetty driver started to enjoy my terror stricken face and most probably started to shake the jetty even more. That was for sure intentional. Even Sajal Sir appeared in my mind once for his most famous words “water water everywhere, not a drop to drink”. Drinking water there was never an intention. But the shear presence of millions of liters of water around us which looked more like some semisolid paste of water and sand ready to swallow whatever falls in it, made me remember all the good and bad deeds of mine of my lifetime. For the first time I started to believe that there might be “Darr ke aage Jeet” but “Galla sabka sukhta hai” is not the only thing that happens. Your pulse rate starts surging. You tend to sweat even in the windiest conditions. Pictures of your family photograph starts flashing in your head. You start remembering all the amazing things that has happened to you in your life. Finally somehow we managed to reach the island. Once again, we were the only people on the island (barring one stray dog, I wonder how he reached there). The thirty minute stay there was fun. For the first time I experienced water surrounding me from three sides. Mainland India was far away, not in sight. I enjoyed the return journey from JD a lot. The fifty minutes of return was calm, silent and non scary. I slept all through the journey leaving it all to god. In total, that was one awesome day of fun, the perfect kind to say alvida to kolkata which was my home for almost three years.

Alvida to people i love

And finally my last day at this project, GE Oil&Gas , at TCS. This was the only project that I was associated with during my almost 3 year long tenure at TCS. The association was long and beautiful, full of exciting days and end less fun. The journey started on 20th November 2006 and today of 30th April 2009, it is going to halt. In this story, I will write names because I want this one to be a transcript of my amazing memories that are attached to this place. I will never forget few things, things like:

20th November: for that being the first day of mine in the project.
Jan 2007- May 2007: for that being the time when I learnt most of the things. Infact that was tougher than my engineering studies at college, but then it was worth it.
New Building, 4E 43: for it being my first working cubicle.
May 2007: for Saikat being released from RTS and Niraj becoming the next module Lead.
June 2007- October 2007: for that being the 2nd most difficult times for me in project. Infinite number of issues, No Saikat, Suyash on Battle with management, Niraj was a functional resource, Anwesha and Abhishek were babies in project. For that being the time when I worked like hell. For that being an amazing learning experience in terms of Client management. For that being the time when I got introduced to Federico and Antonio.
New Building, 4W 59: My 2nd cubicle. Same chair.
November 2007: for that being the time when I absconded from office for the first time for CAT preparations.
December 2007: for that being the time when I was made module leader on federico’s request.
Jan 2008- April 2008: for that being the toughest, toughest to its maximum level, time in my career. Infinite to the power n issues. 14 hours was the average time that I spent in office. Won most number of appreciations. Fede started trusting me. And all this was because I did not crack any b-school exam so I had nothing else to do.
May 2008- October 2008: for that being the transition time when I started transferring work to Anwesha and Abhishek to fulfill my onsite dreams. Twice we didn’t get the OTM project, so 2 missed onsite opportunities.
November 2008: Absconding again from office for CAT. This time they all knew it.
Dec 2008 – Mar 2009: for that being the time when most of time in office was dedicated to studies GK studies and GD/PI preparations. And off course for being the first time when I was all set to go onsite for GECARS project.
April 2009: for that being the last month at work when I felt most liberated. This time around onsite news was not affecting much. I liked everyone around.
Fun@work: for being another team that I led with amazing people in the team. Organized numerous fun sessions at canteen and 2 huge parties at Nicco Super Bowl. I will miss writing those invitation mails.

And now some people:

Ramesh Kumar Kollana: for taking me in this project and trusting me. Helping me all these days. And being a leader to be looked upon.
Sayarnil Banerjee: for being my first guide, for teaching me SSP5, for letting me use his computer when I needed.
Saikat Kumar Das: for him being my first module leader and teaching me the things corporate way, in fact teaching me things in a tougher way. I respect him for all that he has done to me, but I never want a boss like him for myself in future 
Madhumita Ray: for teaching me what not to do at work. For teaching me how to say no to your boss and much more.
Niraj Kumar: for being my second module leader. For him being a functional resource.
Suyash Srivastava: for lots of reasons and to be simply said for just being awesome.
Ankit Sharma: for being the best support all through these days. Even now. For his motivational talks and caring attitude. For being my party buddy. For lots of other things that can not be mentioned here.
Arunava Das Choudhury: for being an ideal senior in project. No attitude. Always a helping hand. Amazing individual.
Debasis Mohanty: for him being the first person whom I know who visited china for a TCS project. For him being a quite person still rocking in parties. For him being a person who was always with us whenever we went out for weekday parties.
Anwesha Bhattacharya: for he being my cubicle mate all through these days. Sweet, caring, no attitude. She was one who always made me feel that I was worth. She is one amazing friend.
Rohit Tirkey: for being my college mate as well as my project mate. Once again a raely party guy.
Harry Zhang: for being the person whom I trusted for ant technical thing and for taking care of things which even I could not understand at times. For him being a china team mate who created trust in the whole china team.
Abhishek Guha: for being my technical support when I needed him the most. Cool headed and soft spoken.
Wasim Alam: for him being the youngest member of sourcing team. Always charged up and kicking. Will go places.
Tushar Pandey: for saving my ass for all those SSP5 issues. At times he came up with things I did not understand but I still trusted him.
Niky: for being a smart talkative girl with whom I share a good range of bandwidth. For being complex to understand at times but a perfect to make fun of at suyash’s cubicle. Will miss her drawer which remains full of chocolates.
Indranil datta: for him being one of those senior members of the project with whom I shared a great relationship. Great speaker and motivation leader. Always supported me during my CAT journey.
Durlabh Mukherjee: for being my college senior and my PL. a true party guy. He initiated most of the fun initiatives and rocked at parties also.
Makrand Tipre: for teaching me how to remain cool in tough times. For teaching me a bit of AP and for being my cubicle neighbor for sometime. His thoughts remain as amazing as he was.
Bikram Dasgupta: for him being my finance counterpart of mine and my competition. Always criticized sourcing and its people when I did the same for finance. Good at heart. Charming personality. I want him to get married, lets see.
Arindam Basu: for him being one of those people who always had a joke to crack, mostly about clients. His sensible talks were real sensible.
Navin Kayan: for him being a person who always had the latest news about TCS and who always interfered my privacy in cubicle by peeking into my computer at all the odd times.
Dipankar Sen: for him being Dipankar Sen. a replica of BB Paul from BIT.
Pallab Dasgupta, Subrata Kundu and Sourav Bose: for being the most closely nit group of the project. For even going to the toilet together.
Subrata Kundu: for being my GB project partner and making sure that it got completed. For always asking for SIPs and Proactive steps for last month when he knew that nothing like that happens in real.
Manish Saurav: for him being the PL of the project in which I was supposed to visit onsite. For hi being the most tortured TCS employee at onsite. For him being a college senior of mine and for him being a chill party.
Pushan Bagchi: for his Satyam stories, “What I believe” statements in meetings (which were like 5 minutes long, without a pause) and ever lasting commitment to JJ and PII users, John is the name I guess.
Debashree, Arun: for being exceptionally supportive during F@W activities and for being good friends. And ya Debashree is the BPO girl, phone always on.
Subhajit Bhattacharjee: for him being the most creative creature on earth making all the official websites in red, orange, yellow and other charismatic colors.
Nishad: for him being the person who maintained the Night Cab Drop excel for 2 years and finally getting released and torturing people around.
Amruta Rao: for her being the one of those RTS people from Mumbai whom I like. She is a more of a friend now than a team mate.
Federico Andres Marini: for being an awesome client IM. Supporting me always and trusting me for whatever I did. At times even moving my code to production without testing them. For being a source of inspiration and for always keeping me on my toes. Great leader and great individual.
Antonio Piseci: for him being that person who loved me and always appreciated my efforts, however small they were. At times he was irritating also but he is just Perfect!!!. And yes I will miss hi “Any News”.
Deborah Tombini: Never worked with her but even then I will remember her for being the nightmare for all the finance guys especially Manish.
Roberta Incerpi: She just loves Suyash.

I must have missed few names and few occasions but then it’s just too much of writing for today. One this is for sure, this project and its people were great, all of them. I had great time working with then. Memories will last for long…..

I hate friend's friend

This was not the first time that I was traveling to Ranchi in an early morning Shatabdi, but like any other time, I was excited. With every bought ticket and every boarding on train or flight, the only thing that I think is that who would be my co-passenger. In long journeys, this thought becomes very important for me because I am not one of those who like reading novels and not also one of those who can remain in mute mode for more than 48 hours. As any other single ready to mingle guy, I always wished that I may end up getting a smart, intelligent and beautiful young lady (Boy!!! don’t laugh, I know few of them who are pretty and intelligent) as my co-passenger and on this day also the wish was same. I booked a chauffer driven Civic to drop me at Howrah station in time. The train was standing at platform 10. My legs were pretty excited to reach the seat and I started walking towards my coach. Ok so there I was. My name was correctly printed against seat no. 52. Being a chair car, 52 was the middle seat in the 3 seater side so this time the probability of having a dream co-passenger was higher, 100% more than same figure had I got the window seat. And then the search began as to who was sitting at seat 51 and 53. Wuff!! What day is today. On 51, Ms ABC, F 22 and on 53, Ms XYZ, F 23 and of course on 52, me, Mr Demanding, M 24. So it was kind of my day. I was more than happy. In fact elated. I went directly to the washroom, prepared myself for the occasion and started walking towards my seat. Man, that was more than what I expected. Untill I was at my seat, there were two young ladies sitting besides me, one at each side. But when I was there on my seat, I had two young, beautiful and smart ladies sitting on either side of mine (intelligence was yet to be checked, but with the looks they had, you would be mad if you are still asking for intelligence). The train took off and so did our chit chat. Both of them were very friendly. One of them was working in an IT Co. while the other one was a student at one of the most famous fashion designing institutes of India. Leaving these credentials apart also, both of them were intelligent. Those were 6 hours of complete fun. We talked on a lot of things. We even shared our numbers with a promise to meet again in kolkata when they are back in a week. In fact one of them almost proposed me. You know the day was real special. We all parted at Ranchi station with a sweet train journey memory in our heads.

Now this was some story. You know these kinds of stories never ever ever happen to me. They never ever happen to you. They at times or never happen to your close. But this always happens to your friend’s friend whom you don’t know. Just ponder over and you will get several instances when your friend had cited such stories saying that you know, one of my friend’s friend, I don’t know him, had this kind of an adventure when he was going to Goa or my friend’s friend met Mukesh Ambani at a Delhi Metro station or my friend’s friend almost killed a lion (hehe, I am sorry for this one, but people cite stories of similar heroic caliber). The point is that all this dream things never happen to you in real but certainly happen, almost everytime, to your friend’s friend (you can extend this pointer to any number counts).

By the way, before I close I must say what happened in my story. I reached Howrah in an Ambassador (Non AC, It was not a taxi, even then it was expensive). Mine was a window seat. And the seat besides me was vacant. The coach was quite noisy but even then I slept all through the journey. And I kept on cursing all my friend’s friend for having such great experiences in their lives.

Shubho Nobo Borsho

A new year, once again. One more of those days which we just celebrate because all the others around us are doing the same. I am neither a Bengali nor do I understand the Bengali culture very much. Robindro Sangeet still remains alien to me. I am yet to understand as to why they pronounce Laxhman as Lakhhan in Bengali. The concept of reading all ‘a’ as ‘o’ is still a mystery. And above all, why do they write my name as Sourav even when I clearly tell them that it is Saurabh and not Sourav as in Sourav Ganguly. But still, I know that today is Bengali New Year. So “Shobho Nobo Borsho” (I hope I maintained the accent well). And all the credit for making me aware of this special day goes to my closest office neighbour who is my cubicle mate and who is one complete Bengali Girl. When I first met her, her Hindi was pathetic. Two years and she has improved a lot. But she still processes Hindi in the same way as she used to do in past. Listen a Hindi word, translate it to Bengali, Prepare the answer in Bengali, Translate it to Hindi and then speak. Generally this process works well. But at the times of crisis when she is under pressure, she mixes it all up. It’s ok. Not a big deal. She is the one who suggested that the Project’s Mid Summer Party should be called “Nobo Borsho Party”. Nothing bad with that name, but come on, we were thinking the names on the lines of “The Bacardi Blast”, “The Summer Splash” etc and she had this to give us. She is one sweet Bengali girl. Anyways the point here is not sketch the picture of a complete Bengali girl but to understand the importance of this new year.
I don’t want this day to pass as just one more new year day. I don’t want this day to be one more resolution day where I promise something to myself and forget it the same day. I don’t want this day to be one more day when I sleep all morning and go out in the evening for a dinner. I want this day to be a day of change. I want this day to be a day of construction and reconstruction. I want this day to be a day of hope. I know that writing a few fancy lines is not a big deal and words like hope, justice etc always fall in place. But my ‘Hope’ is different from the ‘Hope’ that appears in Neta’s speech. My hope is a hope that every common Indian holds that one day I will make my family proud, my friends proud and my country proud. Hope that one day I will be in a position to look beyond my own needs and will fulfil the needs of my family, my society and my people. This hope in itself requires me to develop a lot of courage and strength, and I promise to myself today that I will do it all, whatever it takes, to build myself so that one day all my current hopes turn into reality and I start building newer and bigger hopes.

The ROI factor

Why the youth is not attracted towards politics? Why we always talk about young leaders and end up getting the same old parliament with an average age of 65+? Why the youth participate in the internet protests against terrorist attacks but don’t even come out to vote? Why do we always tend to complain but never care to participate? The simple answer to all these questions is the famous economic jargon called ROI – Return on Investment.
Life of a young aspiring person is mostly driven by this three letter abbreviation called ROI. Almost every action that he performs is first evaluated for its potential ROI. Let us start the analysis with career choices. When we were given an option to choose between science, commerce and arts while going in standard 11th, most of us went for science as the prospects and career opportunities looked better. Yes the ROI at science was better. When we passed 12th and we were asked to choose from engineering, medical or science graduation. Here again we all went to for engineering because medical was hell lot of study and science graduation rarely offered an amazing job. Yes the ROI at engineering was better. I passed my engineering and became IT professional; some of my friends passed medical and became doctors; few others completed graduation in science, arts and commerce and went for jobs. Few years down the line, having worked in corporate India, I am again making a choice, to upgrade myself by doing MBA. I will take loan rather huge loan to sponsor my education. But I am hopeful that the economic situation will improve and I will get a good job. I hope the ROI at MBA remains good. So it total 18 years of formal education and I land up in a situation where I can afford to support my family and lead a happy life. The ROI is education is descent.

Let us now take it other way round. I am person who likes politics very much. I follow what is going on in the country. And thus always tend to think as to what is the ROI of Politics. Education till graduation is a must so I could not plan to participate in politics till then. Taking a hypothetical situation here that I join politics now. ‘Joining’ itself is very vague term here if you are not from a political dynasty. So by joining, I mean that I sign for the primary membership of a party. I will start my work in a small village in Uttar Pradesh. UP because it’s the only place where you can learn politics. I will work for some 5 to six years and then I would be in a position to fight the gram panchayat elections. If things go well, I will be elected. Then 5 more years there and after a huge lobbying I may end up getting an MLA ticket. I may also win. I’ll then start building my image in the party politics and state arena. I may end up getting a MP ticket and win the elections. So finally at the age of some 40+, I will be in parliament. But this situation is as hypothetical as my joining the politics. And having said all that, we also need to keep in mind that before you win any election, its hell lot of investment with no assurance of returns. It’s a situation where you invest some 15-20 years of your life, a lot of money and you might end up becoming just a follower. Take the numbers into consideration and the situation is more horrifying. Just 572 seats in LS (forget RS), the nut seems to be very tough to crack. The ROI figure looks bad, pretty bad.

PS: I am apologetic to you all who intend to join politics for being so pessimistic, but then that is what I feel.

All Men are Dog..

I will start this one off with a note for all the readers. I am neither an anti feminist nor a male chauvinist (I have deliberately removed the third word of this adjective ‘PIG’ as it might go against the elections commissions’ election code of conduct and I don’t want to get booked under NSA). Day before yesterday, I was hanging out with my friends and during the normal course of talk something came up which kind of offended me. One of my very good friends who happens to be a girl came up with one of the most famous feminist adjective for men: ‘All men are dogs’. Even I agreed to it a bit but I was completely against the generalization. There is an exception to almost all the rule in this world and here in this case the volume of exception is larger than the volume of rule itself. Realizing that out of the five of us sitting there three fall in that dog class, she clarified that you guys are not included in that category so don’t take it personally. That was soothing but not healing. I thought a bit and went off to sleep.
The next day we were at Costa café. This time we were four of us. One of the male parties was missing. So the ground was pretty even. Two from the dog class and two from the dog owner class. And this time something came up which was healing, which was so cool that I (any male) started loving to be called a dog. The phrase ‘All men are dogs’ is in itself a complement. After all dogs is the most loyal mammal on this planet. A dog never cares if you are black or white, if you are beautiful or ugly, if you are hindu or muslim. What it really cares is your well being, your safety, your happiness. The dog's visual system is engineered to serve the purposes of a hunter. They have amazing hearing and smelling abilities. Dogs exhibit social intelligence uncommon in other animal class. They take orders, learn things and execute it perfectly. They have been helping police and bomb disposal squads all across the globe saving thousands live every year.
Dog’s fidelity remains unquestioned. And when women convey this same message by saying ‘All men are dogs’, we men get furious. Change yourself guys. Don’t feel offended, take it as a complement. Your female counterpart is actually congratulating you when she says, ‘you are such a dog’. So guys be proud and be a dog.

The Love-Handle

Life becomes lethargic especially when you are working in an IT company and your tummy is growing leaps and bounds. Yes you got it right; I am going through a similar phase. My tummy growth is sinusoidal in nature. While I was in school, I was chubby (I don’t prefer to be called fat). Six packs or for that matter eight packs were not in fashion then, so life was not that tough. I move to college and then the mess food played its role. I lost almost 20% weight and then was in a position to call myself an owner of athletic body. Food was not the only thing to blame. I always kept myself busy in a lot of extra curriculars and sports, thus ended up getting a good body. Once I came out of college, the sinusoid started taking an upward trend. Two and a half years at TCS and I can again boast of having a well rounded tummy. I know the obesity is bad for health but then I am yet to reach that stage (I am yet to become a hamburger eating couch potato American). But still it feels sad at times that I have a tummy and I can not do much to get rid of it.
The emotion to get rid of this tummy was always there but no actions were taken even in this regard. But suddenly something happened and I started feeling proud of my prized possession. A friend of mine came out with a term (Not his invention but discovery for sure) to define the side lobes of this apple shaped structure and the term was LOVE-HANDLE.
A thorough analysis of this term and proposed benefits of this so called love-handle gave us a whole new angle to take our tummies as a boon rather than a bane. love-handle signifies that not only your are earning good but also are busy with your work. At this point of recession when people are losing job and those who are not losing are afraid that they might lose it soon as they do not have any work, this is one great advantage. Besides this the love-handle give you (read your partner) a great grip on you when you are doing some stuff together (don’t shy, you know what I am saying. Yes when you are walking together). I am falling short of space; else I would have written a lot more about the advantages of owning a love-handle.
So guys, if you have tummy, be proud. Boast. Show it off. Make those six packers jealous of the jewel that you own. You lead and the world will follow you.

The Kolkata I know...

Kolkata , name given to the city to make sure that the ‘English’ effect coming out of the word Calcutta is wiped off and to make it sound more Bengali. Although I have read about the history of the city but that is not worth mentioning here because we all either know it or are not interested in that. But just for reference, it is very important to mention here that Calcutta was the city from where the East India Company started their Indian venture which later translated into India becoming a British Colony (leaving apart the French and Portuguese ruled India).

I came to the city around two and a half years back. Not that it was my first visit to the city. But the earlier visits were more touristy in nature with the first visit being was when I was five, so the memories are pretty vague and the second one in June 2006 to meet friends (keeping in mind that I expected that to be my last visit to the city, at least for coming 3 to 5 years). Coming to kolkata this time was for a different, for a different purpose with a different feeling altogether. The city was about to become my home for the coming few years. I had friends in the city, most importantly Varun and Ashok, so initial settlement was not much of a problem barring few hiccups. On personal front I was quite happy to have a shelter to hide myself from the fiery summer Sun and extremely moist and pouring Rains along with my Flat mates, Varun, Ashok, Sumit aka Boxer, Roshan aka Prof and Mukesh, to share my experiences with. I office was also great with amazing friends like Rhea, Anu, Gunjan aka Bhalu, Varni and Avishek aka Chatto. Life was pretty well and frankly speaking, I never felt that I was actually in a city which I never wanted to be in (may be just because the word Bangalore sounded more happening)

The initial one year of stay in Kolkata was amazing or better say Rocking. Every day that passed , everything that I did was filled with fun. We discovered almost all the Rocking places in Kolkata. And it was during this discovery that I realized that transition of Calcutta to Kolkata , to me, was just a change of name and not a change of culture altogether. Kolkata still has roads named Park Street, Camac Street, Hungerford Street, Shakespeare Sarani, Louden and Rouden Street and may more that sound more English than Bengali. Kolkata still has places called Saltlake City and Alopore (and not Alipur) which no way is near the Bengali names. Kolkata still has Dics, Pubs and Night Clubs open till 4 in the morning which is much aligned to the English Culture (If we agree to concept of Westernization of Indian Culture). But having said all that, my question is: Is there any real change in the change in the way people talk, walk, sleep, drive etc after the city was remaned. No. the answer is straight No. Just changing the name does not change the people and their lifestyles. Be it Kolkata or Calcutta, The Babu still goes to the same office, to the same chair. The Rickshawwala still pulls the Rickshaw in the same locality as he used to. The Metro still runs on the same tracks. The people traveling in that Metro also remain more or less the same. Nothing changes. The only thing that changes is the Address. Now instead of using the word you were familiar with you start writing a word that smells more like a politically motivated soup than a real cultural change.

My CAT Journey

It all started two years back in the month of March, 2007. Gunjan, Rhea and I started our preparations for the ultimate goal -- becoming MBA. Although the decision affected our weekend fun but we were young and energetic enough to spend some extra time studying QA, DI and VA. We even managed to do some combined studies which mostly ended up into a fun session. By the end of May, we realized that it’s lot tougher that we thought it to be. Starting June, came up the Mock CATs. 1st mock was a special one. Ready to take on the world, we reached the center much before time. Those 2.5 hours looked long to us. But we ended up managing descent levels of concentration for the duration. Wednesday, results were out for the 1st mock, and it was pathetic. We realized that we are just small fishes in that bigger pond consisting of whales and sharks. But who cares, we continued to fight. Forms started pouring in and we as loyal consumers bought almost all of them. Somewhere back in the mind the thought of going onsite was always running but we (me and rhea) never got the opportunity. Gunjan got one, and that’s where his CAT journey ended. Much relaxed and contended, he skipped all the classes, mocks and for that matter CAT also (citing the reason that the center is far away). That was the time when we were joined by Gaurav Jain, one more CAT aspirant and a very good friend of ours. Three of us attended classes, mocks and study session at Barista together. Preparation was going smooth. In this whole journey I missed three more bright aspirants, Anu, Chatto and The Varun. In the end six of us appeared for CAT and other B School exams. For most of us (read Rhea, Gaurav, Anu and Me) the results were a mere disaster. Chatto and Varun managed Calls for NM and they were smart enough to convert it.

Mid January 2009 and I realized that this year is not going to buy me any happiness, I decided to dedicate myself completely to work. I single handedly managed the whole module and was not only praised my clients, namely Federico and Antonio, for that but also was awarded Appreciation certificate by Relationship director. But deep down somewhere I knew that I was destined to do something else. We reignited the fire in ourselves and joined the same coaching institute again. Similar story for preparations but better results this time in Mocks. I was excited.

November 16, 2009, I appeared for CAT 2008 at St Xaviers, Kolkata. Paper structure modified with 40 question in English and 25 each in QA and DI. Started off with QA then DI. Till now things went very fine. Then came the worst decision of my life. Instead of touching RC, which I was good at, I was lured by VA. Attempted lotsa questions and results show that I performed pathetically bad there. CAT 2008 ended shattering all my hopes of getting into IIMs. Then came JMET, SNAP, NM, XAT and FMS.

Results out, and got some calls. Don’t know where I am headed to, but one thing is for sure, I will and can not appear for B-School exams once more.

Leaders in Making...

Leadership: the work in itself carries a lot of weight. Although leadership the duty and leadership the right both upgraded their importance and relevance over time but the basic definition remains the same. Several management scholars define leadership as “Process of social influence in which one person is able to enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”. There are several alternate definitions also out of which the one I liked the most was “Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.”

I think I like the second definition more because of several reasons. The first and foremost will be because it explains the basis task of a leader: “Creation of Way”. Yes that what a leader is supposed to do. He needs to guide the energies in right direction so that collectively it creates enough energy to produce some exceptional results. The second reason is: “Making people contribute”. Although this sounds more of a manager’s role but after all a manager is just a subset of the larger group called leader. Making people contribute is the most important and challenging task for a leader. This becomes more demanding because the outcome of this task does not only depend on the leader’s ability but also on the willingness on the individuals in the team to work. And yes, the leader is supposed to create that willingness.

The third and in my view the most important one is: “Making something extraordinary happen”. And trust me there are reasons behind my saying that this is the most important reason. I think we all will agree that an object becomes more and more important to us if we are more used to it. The more you see your pet, the more you affection you develop for it. Ditto here. All through these days, in the last 10 years, I have seen extra ordinary things happen. I have seen young engineers working day and night to keep the conveyor belts running. I have seen the managers producing some results which were earlier thought to be near to impossible. I have seen entrepreneurs building a new brand everyday.

All this has happened because of the never ending zeal of each and every individual of this nation. With such great results in hand one thing that I am very much assured of is that we always had correct set of leaders who can channelize the contributions to produce extraordinary things. And with the young brigade taking the lead at many occasions, the future lies in good safe hands. With so many opportunities coming and each one of them grabbed by a potential leader I can safely say that Leaders are in making…..