My Lazy World

A lilting ode to nothing

2010-02-17T16:14:00.004+08:00

This is the story of 3 lost souls and how they spent a 4 day long weekend ... Chinese New Year in Singapore, doing next to nothing ... well well who's to define what is nothing?

The weekend was most importantly, one man's journey in search of love and how he found 2 knights on his way... they travelled miles and miles on foot ... getting help from well wishers ... our hero's passion kept the group moving forward... but our hero had nothing to gift to his loved one ... then mother earth told him to collect flowers from her gardens ... and make the girl a red bouquet ... and so they did with gay abandon ... while the quaint people of Lion City watched on in such astonishment ...

Then when our hero finally met his princess ... he sang songs for her ... and then there was a lot of eating and merry making for the entire village in this happy moment ...

And then there was also this unheard of incident of highest human compassion ... celebrating the existence of fellow co-inhabitants on this earth ... an elitisit celebration of life in every form ... even when the life is less intelligent than that of us ... so bourgeois yet so cute ...

And finally, the knights celebrated their valour with 2 days of rest ... punctuated by small feasts to celebrate the quaint people's new year, and a run feast at the garden of edens ...

They also ate orange fruits gifted by the strange men, and had visions of men staring at goats ... while one of them so valiantly tried to finish an odd shaped bottle ... filled with a shimmering amber liquid ...

P.S. All credit to Anoop. P.S.

Reinventing the wheel

2010-02-03T14:15:00.003+08:00

Groan. Read this.

Using their super fertile minds, the supposed "crème de la crème" of our country have come up with this – an IPL style cricket league in an institute of national eminence boasting of regional undertones. Don’t get me wrong – I have no problems with glamourising the night cricket tournament. It used to be a pretty lame affair in Jokaland. Even the intra-hostel night cricket tournaments in IIT Kharagpur boasted of sponsors, sound systems, live commentary and most importantly, actual prizes at the end of a match. Yes, I know it was just 1.5L of Thums Up at best, and it usually went to the team of juniors who had lost the match in the all pervading “jahanpanah, tussi great ho, match ka tofah kabul karo” spirit – but what the heck, even a free cold drink used to have lots of value in those days.

However, coming to the point – what disappoints me most is this. According to the organizers of this meet, not only were the teams organized by region – Punjab, Delhi, Chennai and so on – but a 20 per cent discount was offered on teams bidding for players from their own region. Quoting the news report “The idea was to give the league a regional spin to hostel rivalry. If we have regional teams and players hailing from those parts in the squad, the competition would automatically go beyond who is from which hostel.” Oh my, oh my. Talk about taking a step backwards.

Why didn’t the institute set up separate hostels for separate regions in the first place? Or at least, separate wings? I though the whole idea of having hostels was to develop microcosms of a healthy functioning society - to put people from different backgrounds and cultures together, so that they would evolve into better human beings with a more holistic point of view. The regional ties always bind people together in any institute or place of work. You don’t need cricket competitions to foster the regional spirit. I always believed it is actually the inter-hostel competitions which automatically went beyond who is from which region, and fostered ties between people as diverse as chalk and cheese.

Yet, people out there seem hell bent on proving the reverse. If this is the way things are progressing, then I might have to rethink about what I had said in my previous post, about our “centres of excellence” contributing to character building.

Of idiots and their dreams

2010-02-02T16:51:00.006+08:00

3 Idiots. The toast of the nation. First Hindi movie to gross more than 100 crore rupees in receipts. Let's come to the point. The movie was engrossing and entertaining – no two ways about it. However, it has provoked many to comment on the state of Indian education in general, and our IITs and IIMs in particular and the mad rush by parents to get their wards admitted in these premier institutes, regardless of the costs. The discussions at Suvro Sir’s blog have been further stimulating, and I would encourage readers to read the posts there before reading on here.

Now, I had been thinking about a suitable answer to Sir's post and the comments thereafter, but a logical coherent response has been very difficult to articulate. Having gone through the grind of IIT and then "wasting" it all by taking the CAT and getting into an IIM and landing an investment banking job thereafter, I must fall into the category most vilified in the movie and some of the commentators. However, from a purely emotional point of view, I would never want to distance myself from these so called "centres of excellence", because despite whatever misguided path I've taken in life up to now, the IIT and IIM have not been to blame. If anything, they have been huge positives. Of course, there are negatives as well, which I will point out. Overall, this will be a rather long, rambling and confused post. Please bear with me.

1. Why do some many people take the IITJEE exam despite not knowing what engineering really is? Because many of us just follow our parents' dreams, given the fact that we don't have any dreams ourselves. Because my parents come from a generation where they were not really assured of any financial backing, they wanted us to secure our finances first before thinking about dreams. The glamour of an IIT admission is not always the cause. More children in developed nations can easily think of alternative careers/ dreams/ passions because they can afford to, from childhood. They were brought up in a secure environment, whereas we were not. While that is not enough to kill dreams, the sad part is, at the point of my high school examinations, I had no idea where my dreams lay. Or my passions. All I knew was I found mathematics easy, I found languages interesting, I had an excellent short-term memory, I was speedy, accurate and efficient. I liked Chemistry as much as I did Geography. I had no idea where all this was pointing to. So I took the JEE, because I knew I could crack it. It gave me four more years to figure out what I wanted to do in life. It would give me a platform to pursue my dreams.

2. At this point of time, let me take the opportunity to share my loathing for all those who took one-two years off after their Class XII exams to attend some coaching centre in Delhi or Kota to make the cut. The advent and spread of these coaching institutes is the turning point where the quality of education in IITs took a nosedive. Before them, I believe only those children who consistently scored good marks in Mathematics and Science at school were “pressurized” to take the IITJEE. After Kota came, parents started to believe that two years and 3 lakhs investment could transform anyone into an IIT-ian. Of course, the quality of students does make a difference. I am not defending the Professors here, but why would the Professors take any interest in imparting quality education when the students themselves took no interest? For most students, clearing the entrance exam after two hard years of slogging is enough motivation to let their hair down and not care about academics any more. Thus, most would list their “Top 2 percentile rank in IITJEE” as an academic achievement in their CVs rather than a CGPA in excess of 8/10 in IIT.

3. I still believe the IITs and IIMs are centres of excellence as far as India is concerned. But, by no means are they the only centres of excellence. And it is up to the student to make full use of the facilities and infrastructure available at these institutes. The top IITs may or may not produce the best engineers of the country, but they do well enough on some other fronts. They instill a co-operative camaraderie among students as against the competitive framework that most parents strive to bring up their kids in. They do indeed promote the virtues of hard work, not only in academics, but in creative arts, drama, sports, technical skills, event organization, and even marketing and PR. All these are facets of active IIT life, which I have seen missing in most other institutes, where life is more about malls, motorbikes and women. And if smoking pot is a crime, I’m sure people in my father’s generation did it too, and they turned out to be some of the most dedicated engineers in their lifetime. Also, the fact that you meet people from all corners of the country, brilliant minds – some of whom are wholeheartedly involved in their thermodynamics and artificial intelligence and fuzzy logic, some who can speak in 9 languages and some who can convince Tata to part with 10 lakhs in sponsorship money by their glib talk – does help you broaden your horizons. That is, if you want to. If you don’t want to, you can stick to your South Point Calcutta classmates. But that isn’t the fault of the “centre of excellence”.

4. Are people wasting the Government subsidies by choosing to do an MBA and not using their engineering skills? Firstly, what exactly are the skills of an engineer – if you are saying screws and nuts and bolts, I beg to differ. I think it is the ability to approach a problem, analyse it logically and come to a scientific conclusion is what defines the critical skill for an engineer. And that should not necessarily be restricted to building bridges and assembling cars. In this context, let me also add, that speaking for the students of the Mechanical Engineering department, the first choice of jobs has always been among Tata Motors, Larsen & Toubro, ITC, Maruti Suzuki, Ashok Leyland et al. It is only because I did not qualify for any of these that I was forced to sit for IT companies like Accenture. And it was because I had no intention to pursue a job in the software industry and “waste” my talents that I opted to do an MBA, immediately after completing my graduation. Otherwise, I might have seriously considered honing my skills at any of the above companies. So why were there only 10-15 core sector jobs for the 50 odd students of the department, whereas there was no dearth of IT/ITES jobs for the whole institute? I am very sure I would have done more harm to my engineering degree by doing a coding job than what I am doing right now.

5. So why did I not get a job in an engineering services firm in spite of the fact that I was actually interested and was one of the few students who were able to secure the highest grade in the Comprehensive Viva Voce (the 30 minutes at the end of 4 years in the institute when you are grilled by 5 senior Professors on your cumulative engineering fundamentals)? It was because I was a complete zero as far as my soft skills were concerned. I was not able to communicate to the interviewer that I was passionate enough to do the job. That is where the Indian “centres of excellence” come a cropper, when compared to their international counterparts. The emphasis on grades, right from school, makes you feel that you are defined by your examination marks. Which, in the real world, is far from the truth. Thus, parents do not bother about the marks in “Elocution” in school as long as their kid scores 90+ in Mathematics. The first teacher who showed me the importance of this subject was of course, Suvro Sir, and thus, it was the first time in Class 9 that I got poor marks in Elocution. Unbelievable, but all the other teachers had just given me good marks in the subject because I was a “good student”, despite my all too obvious lack of speaking skills.

6. I have no complains with the underlying message of the movie “3 Idiots”, which is to follow your dreams or passions, if you are lucky enough to identify them early enough. However, I agree with Sir that hard work should not be undermined. And that the “centres of excellence” should not be the Mecca of all school goers and their parents’ ambitions. So, if our kids don’t really like dividing sin(theta) by cos(theta) or think integration is what the politicians of today sorely lack, lets not force them to the slaughter houses of Kota. But, lets not discourage them from a stint in the IITs and IIMs as well, if that’s what they want when they are out of ideas. They are not bad places. Maybe the greatest inventors and entrepreneurs have not emerged from the IITs in hordes yet. But, 4 years in IIT is a humbling experience. It produces good people, with hearts mostly in the right places. In terms of tangible achievements, there’s not much to write home about but I don’t believe that these institutions have been a complete failure, either. Contribution to nation building – ambiguous. Contribution to character building of individuals – definite.

P.S. Thoughts on the matter, anyone?

Just another day in paradise...

2009-11-19T15:05:00.006+08:00

Evening, to be precise. Here's a gist of what unfolded on that fateful day.

Tuesday, 17th November 2009, 6:00 PM – Thinking of getting out of office early today. Not much work anyway. The match is boring as well. Sri Lankans batting like the asuras and raavanas combined together.

6:10 PM – Happen to look outside. Startled. The world outside the windowpane is pretty much pitch black in complexion. Like a scene straight out of Armageddon or Apocalypto or whatever those doomsday movies are called.

(Oh by the way, its not supposed to be pitch black, let along even a hint of black before 7 PM here)

6:30 PM – Take a long peek at the situation outside. Pondering how to manage getting home amidst this cataclysm. Need to go for a hair cut urgently. Have a wedding to attend next weekend, and I don’t want to look my best, lest I impress any nubile and impressionable young ladies down there.

6:40 PM – I am informed that someone is coming to get me and has a spare umbrella. Bless her. As you might have guessed by now, I don’t have an umbrella with me. I stopped carrying those contraptions long back, after I had magnanimously donated quite a few of those to the general unassuming public within a short frame of time, during my adolescence. I also don’t carry water bottles to school. Rather, I didn’t. Long story. Suffice to say, I am pretty much resistant to the worst of water today.

7:00 PM – Reach the subway (MRT). Bid adieu to my gracious saviour and board a train back home. The hair-cutting saloon is on the way from the MRT to my home. Its called Sri Kandi. Reminds of a rather delicious Maharashtrian dessert. Anyway, they charge only $8 per haircut and the ambience is rather like one you would find back in my hometown. Only air-conditioned. No massage to top it off, though. But the cheapest and best I could find.

7:15 PM – Hey how’s that possible? I walk out of the underground station and on to an implausibly dry sidewalk. No hint of rain. No stormy winds. Am I in the same city or what? Barely 10kms from where I boarded but the world is showing no signs of ending here! It’s all pretty balmy out here. Rather.

7:40 PM – Haircut is done and a satisfied customer walks out, having again unknowingly and magnanimously donated his newly borrowed blue umbrella to the unassuming Sri Kandan gentlemen. However, God smiles on those who do good deeds and such must be the traits of my previously described gracious saviour. So, my barber uncle (I hope I don’t have to call him hairdresser uncle) comes running out after me and completes the cycle of Good Karma. Thank God, I think – at least, my record with umbrellas stays intact.

7:45 PM – Walking through a football field on one side and an unused school building on the other – which defines the footpath leading into the estate where I live – I come across a rat scurrying for cover. Probably initially attracted by my Ganesha belly but later intimidated by my rather stuck-up and indifferent presence, the rat tries to escape into the football field through a wire mesh fence at least 4 times and fails. On the fifth try, he succeeds, obviously. Dumb rat, I think. But wait, this is the first time I’ve seen a rat in Singapore, I believe. Is this an omen?

7:50 PM – Trudging up the steps to my apartment block on Braddell Hill (yes, its rather hilly, by Singaporean standards - must be at least 10 meters above sea level), I again wonder why there is no hint of rain or storm or even any breeze. It’s just eerily quiet. And calm.

8:00 PM – I’m the first to reach home today. As I settle down on the couch in our living room, again the absence of a breeze is discernible. Usually, the cross ventilation in our 19th floor setup can lead to an unnecessarily windy scenario if both windows are open. Today, the silence is palpable. A baby lizard leaps off the window grille on to my thumb, as I open yet another shutter.

8: 10 PM – I can hear a dog howling rather loudly in a neighbouring building. Very unusual – even the dogs and the babies are well behaved in Singapore. Suddenly, even the koels aorund here start cooing. Out of nowhere, on a still November evening.

8:30 PM – Where is all this leading? Why are things so unnaturally calm and quiet? Not even a leaf is moving here, when just 10 km away, I valiantly escaped a storm that was supposedly about to wreak havoc in the Central Business District. Why are the animals behaving so oddly? Why so many firsts in one single evening?

And then it hits me. We are in the eye of a storm. A huge one is brewing. It’s on its way. A twister or tornado or something. A shiver of anticipation goes down my spine. This is going to be a lifetime experience. One I can surely write about. Tell my grandchildren. The works.

9:00 PM – Finish a good dinner of French Toast and Maggi Hot ‘n’ Sour Tomato Chill Sauce (“Its Different”) to help me prepare for the eventuality that is fast approaching.

9:10 PM – The sky is weirdly white. Not even red. Just a whitish orangish grayish haze. I know it’s coming. I message some of my friends about the impending catastrophe, warning them to stay clear of open spaces.

9:20 PM – The streaks of lightning are more noticeable now. My eyes are hooked on the sky with feverish anticipation. I know we can’t be in the eye for much longer.

9:30 PM – We must be almost there. I can visualize myself being branded a hero for having predicted this, and saved so many lives. Getting a Red & White bravery award or maybe the Marlboro Man award or some tobacco company award will be a breeze now.

9:40 PM – Are we there yet?

9:50 PM - Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

10:00 PM – NO we are not. Unfortunately, nothing happens. All my romanticizing comes to naught. It’s just another boring Singapore evening - and windless at that.

Nothing to shout about. Sighhh.

R E S P E C T

2009-10-13T15:30:00.002+08:00

We have all seen able men. We have all seen brave men. Or have we? I, for one, have not had to look very far. As my dad turns 60 today, let me take this opportunity to salute him and the other dads of his generation – who have given much but not taken much in return. Who have opted for stability, and never bothered about all the so-called “options” in life. And in turn, opened up all the options for the next generation – us – to choose from.

While it may seem facile to thank our parents, I will again take this opportunity. So, thanks, Baba, for being the perfect gentleman always and inspiring us to emulate your integrity and humility. Thanks for taking the pains to find the perfect ilish maach every time I came home and for inculcating the love of eating – well, almost anything. (There’s always time to compliment Ma’s cooking, of course). Thanks for writing some of the best English and Bengali I have come across in my life and letting us know that the languages will stay with us, equations will come and go. (Which also means thanks for ghostwriting so many homework essays during my school days).

Thanks for watching so many World Cups and Wimbledons with us and braving Ma’s protests in doing the same. Thanks for teaching us to drive, swim and ride a bike – especially the latter! And thanks for believing in us and not bothering about our exams and results too much, unless we got 60 odd in Mathematics. And finally, among countless other things, thanks for getting our priorities right and putting our hearts in the right place. So cheers and here’s hoping you enjoy the next phase of your life to the fullest as well! Happy 60th Birthday, Baba!

Dev D - Bring it on!!!

2009-02-24T14:07:00.005+08:00

Warning: I have never written a movie review before, so this may not be too inspiring a masterpiece. Also, this is not expected to be a literary marvel, nor an idealistic viewpoint and definitely not humorous. Basically, I am not that gifted.

So why did I choose Dev D for this rite of initiation? Well – while critical reviews of this film tended to border on either extreme – the Indian movie-going public seems to have agreed with me finally, giving Bollywood its second hit of the year and reinstating some hope in me as to the maturity of the audience. The hope, which I had lost, when movies like Parzania, Amir, A Wednesday, Mumbai Meri Jaan floated into oblivion without any public recognition. Of course, the movie I’m going to talk about is not in the same league as the above movies but I had not expected even this dose of realism to work. Especially when it was contending with history. Considering that Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s Devdas remains possibly one of the greatest tales of unrequited love ever told in Indian cinema and remade well over 10 times in various languages, it takes some courage to pull it off again. And I salute that bravado.

After director Anurag Kashyap’s last attempt “No Smoking” – a dark, ponderous and seemingly unfathomable disaster – my expectation meter was set rather low when I walked into the theatre. But all for the better. What Kashyap excels in here is the characterization of the lead (and even not-so-lead) players. All of them evolve from the unidimensionality etched in our memories – here there is nothing in black or white. Kashyap shows us varying shades of grey and darkness - even in the humble Sikh cab driver. Lest the audience feels good about themselves, Chanda (Chandramukhi, played by newcomer Kalki Koechlin) reminds us that when people labeled her a whore (reference to the DPS RKPuram MMS scandal), they forgot that those who watched and shared the MMS were probably more perverted than those who made them. Indeed, towards the end – when Kashyap’s filmmaking threatens to paint a world so real and so black that no light seems to filter in – I tell my friend sitting beside me that Kashyap would’ve wasted a brilliant effort if he ended it there. But he didn’t. Thankfully.

I assume everyone is familiar with the basic story so I won’t waste any time on that. I’ll just dwell on what struck me as interesting and brave filmmaking. Apart from the clever camerawork and the three guitar playing–tap dancing-drink-induced dream sequence over-lookers, that is.

What impressed me most was how the contradictions in the main characters are superbly brought out. So while rich spoilt kid Dev amuses himself by asking for compromising photos of his childhood sweetheart Paro (played by Mahi Gill – isn’t there an award for best casting director or something?) over the Internet, he has difficulty in coming to terms with her obvious sexuality when she comes onto him and accuses her of infidelity. Paro, unlike her predecessors, doesn’t grovel or plead with Dev, either. Though she may know that Dev has some inherent goodness, she obviously knows that he doesn’t really care for her either. No lighting of the eternal lamps here. And while the married Paro will still wash Dev’s clothes and give him a bath and even let him touch her, she desists from taking off her clothes or kissing him. And she doesn’t look back when Dev, in a fit of misguided machismo, pushes her out. Well done, Paro. And take that, all ye fluffy birds. And go kill yourself, Chanda’s altruistic father, for not supporting your little girl when she most needed you.

Diehard romantics and followers of Devdas’ eternal love theory should definitely give this movie a miss – as Kashyap threatens to shatter that myth. For even Dev here realizes in a final frenzy of introspection that all those fluffy notions of “love” were nothing more than probably a physical attraction. Just the concept of realizing your one true eternal love shouldn’t be that important at all, in the greater scheme of things. If it were so important, then he probably shouldn’t have let Paro get married. Or pine afterwards. Or justify that utterly irresponsible drink- smoke pot- drink- sleep on foreign whore’s bed- drink- screw up- call Paro- drink- call home for money- drink some more routine. This is where previous renditions of the story have fallen short. For they have tended to glorify the “losing your love, drinking to forget” part by casting superstars like Shahrukh in the part of Devdas, and chosen to overlook many of the evident shortcomings in the male protagonist.

Some of the dialogues and situations are worth a mention as well– a far cry from Shahrukh’s hammy “babuji ne kaha paro ko chod do, paro ne kaha sharaab chod do, maa ne kaha haveli chod do…” types. So we have Dev’s father telling him that his stay in London has changed his Punjabi taste – from whisky to vodka, chicken to fish and well-nourished women to stick-thin apparitions. Or Chanda telling Dev that calling her a randy is more appropriate than a “commercial sex worker”. Or Chunni wickedly asking Dev relay chalta hai na before embarking on a vodka-whisky-white rum-black rum- no gin spree. All priceless moments.

Overall, I guess the heady dose of realism that Anurag Kashyap injects into this movie is why it ticks for me. And the non-tacky dialogue. And the clever use of songs and innovative background scores. And Abhay Deol. The actor seems to turn whatever he touches into gold. I had long decided to watch any and every movie that features him and the rewards have been good – from Socha Na Tha to Ahista Ahista, Honeymoon Travels, Manorama 6 Feet Under, Ek Chalis ki Last Local, and Oye Lucky Lucky Oye – not one movie has disappointed me. Maybe it’s his choice and maybe it’s his luck. But the charm seems to be working for now. Go see Dev D, if you have not.

Heroes

2008-11-18T19:22:00.001+08:00

For the past few days, I have realized that there is something amiss. Couldn’t really put my fingers on it till I realized that I had finally lost my innocence, my childhood – I was growing older – I no longer wanted to rush to the nearest cricket screen after office and watch the last 15 crucial overs of the 2nd India-England ODI match even though it promised to be a thriller (that it was not and India won comfortably, I learnt on ndtv.com 3 hours after the match was complete). Cricket, I guess, was the last straw connecting me to that part of my life, when I had few worries, when the people who mean the most to me were always around me – in short, it still brings back so many good memories of time spent at home watching our good men do India proud on the cricket field, that the feeling that those scenes may not repeat ever again, emanates in a slow sinking experience that I am not enjoying at all.

I guess this affliction will affect many of us in the mid to late 20s, who have grown up on a steady diet of the heroics of Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble and Srinath to begin with, and then identified with Dravid and Ganguly in our teenage years to the extent of fistfights to resolve our heroes’ cause. We have been lucky enough to be privy to that magical day at Eden Gardens when the sublime Laxman and the gritty Dravid never played a false shot. And now suddenly, two of them have gracefully retired from the scene and the remaining are counting their days. Our boyhood heroes are growing older. Can we be left far behind? Time for major retrospection, I believe.

Over the course of the 18 uninterrupted years I spent at home, I must have spent at least 12 (assuming I don’t remember much before I was six, though I have hazy images of Border with the ’87 World Cup trophy) avidly following each and every of India’s fixtures around the world. And not only me, my whole family must have been cricket crazy, even the ladies. If my mom could eke out some time from her busy schedule of work in feeding us and doing all the other stuff that moms do to make sure that our lives run smoothly and we have time to watch cricket matches, she would invariably join me, my brother and father in making “watching cricket” the family experience of the decade! And the advent of Day-Night cricket only added to the zing. From Sachin bowling that last over in the Hero Cup Final to Srinath and Kumble doing the heroics with the bat against Australia, and Rajesh Chauhan hitting that last ball six, I can still recall the expressions on all the others who were there in it, cheering with me.

I have woken up early mornings to watch India negotiate the Aussies Down Under before leaving for school, I have stayed up late to watch proceedings in the Caribbean, I have finished my XIIth Board exams early to dash off home and watch the remainder of the day’s proceedings – I have done lots of stupid things for cricket. I have taken sides in Dravid vs. Ganguly discussions, even though I’m a “fan” of both, I have chewed more nails than Sachin ever did on the field (and defended it as something great people do, when my mom protested against this unhealthy habit), I have not moved a single inch for several hours if I felt that position of mine benefited India, but will I ever do it again? With Dada’s retirement opening the floodgates, it just feels like a part of me is no more.

I’d thought I would be visibly sadder on the day Sourav Ganguly retired, but I was not – maybe I ‘d been expecting it all through and that lessened the impact. I think the moment after the NatWest final when he took off his shirt at Lord’s still remains one of the most visibly etched memories in my mind, much like Kapil Dev’s lifting the Cup would be for a somewhat older generation. Dada, though not the ideal “good boy”, that our parents would have wanted us to be (that would be more Sachin or Rahul), has over the years, embodied so much – from ability, determination, courage, leadership, integrity to attitude and resilience – that I guess our parents would have been happier if we had turned out more like him. Though the media makes him out to be a regional hero, one survey of the undergraduate colleges across India, I’m sure, would reveal the fact that Indians are not as parochial and narrow minded as they are made out to be – and the constant chanting of “Dada, dada” at Nagpur brings out that spirit. Dada brought the spirit to the game, and its supporters, and will be sorely missed.

I hope the current crop of players like Sehwag, Dhoni, Yuvraj, Gambhir and Bhajji and those to follow can replace the Fab 5 at some point of time. Maybe they’ll bring me back to the TV screen and I can be a child again. Maybe I’ll have that sparkle in my eye once more. Much like my father does every time he watches a game with me.

The Crisis and We

2008-10-31T12:04:00.005+08:00

A sneak peek at how things stand, from the point of view of an average Indian MBA graduate working in the financial services industry

First, let us look at some things that have definitely changed

§ We finally deign to know how much our bank accounts add up to and consider more carefully before opening that salary account in any random bank (read: the bank we work for)
§ We try to remember if we had any balance in the ICICI bank account opened in Bangalore when we worked in Infosys and try withdrawing those savings
§ We call up our parents to know where they have invested their life savings and try to impart some professional advice, for once trying to put 2 years of hard-earned knowledge (sic!) into good use
§ We fish out the train and bus passes from the unknown corner of the wallet and start using public transport again, finally abiding to our long-time favourite slogan “Go Green with SMRT”
§ We cook up sumptuous meals for friends at home instead of taking them out to fancy restaurants for birthday treats
§ We are suddenly massively humble and treat professionals like consultants, marketers, even lawyers and auditors with a tinge of envy bordering on admiration
§ We convince ourselves that this is the best job, this is the best company and this is the best work environment we could have ever hoped for – no cribs, absolutely
§ We listen to whatever the “esteemed” boss has to say and carry out all ridiculous orders assiduously; also, we stop complaining about buying his/her coffee/ lunch every day
§ We become overtly religious and go to temples on all sorts of occasions to pray for prosperity; if that doesn’t suffice, call the priest home for some good ol’ Lakshmi Puja
§ We can now escape calling up friends and relatives with easy refrains on the lines of “hard times are here now you know” and “too busy saving my job”
§ We refrain from introducing ourselves as “investment bankers” when asked by pretty girls in pubs or by those cocky real estate agents
§ We have to read forwards like this, instead of this
§ We accede, at least to ourselves, that we are not the smartest alecs in the whole wide world

And some things that have not:

§ We continue to expect to be retained without making any significant contribution to the organisation as a whole; in other cases, we continue to believe that somehow our exalted contribution will get noticed and we will be spared the axe when others are not
§ We continue to expect bonuses better than what we had expected
§ We continue to believe in market pundits who can predict the price of Brent crude oil 30 years down the line when we don’t know how the market is going to react to a 50 bps Fed cut 3 hours down the line
§ We continue to advise our juniors in B-schools to take up those obscure optional courses in Credit Derivatives and Market Microstructures, without which no one is deemed to be a true blue “Finance” guy
§ We continue to book ourselves on flights, paying 3000 rupees (or more) fuel surcharge each way instead of taking the Janshatabdi home

I'd actually thought of a whole lot of points on both sides of the coin, while contemplating life on my daily walks to and from the MRT station. However, senility is getting the better of me these days. So dear readers, I beseech you to provide witty additions to this list in the form of comments. All selected entries will be added to the above list and credited to the author - so here's your one chance of being immortalized on this blog!

Sarkar Raaz

2008-06-06T11:17:00.007+08:00

Being a sucker for diversity, here's something to lighten up the mood after all the ethical and moralistic soul-searching that I led my readers to do, after my previous post.

One fine day, sometime in the month of February 2006, we notice our protagonist, a guy named Suvro Sarkar walking towards the office of a guy (well actually, respected Professor) named Sahadeb Sarkar, then Dean of PGP, IIM Calcutta, accompanied by a certain PGP Representative who later became famous as the private statistics tutor for the damsels in distress of our junior batch - but that's an entirely different story and hopefully, the damsels in question may someday add more colour to the episode. At this point, we stop to ask ourselves - what is our protagonist doing here? He has not been seen much to hobnob with the academic faculty, and today he's headed towards the most feared and viled dungeon of all - the PGP office! We asked him later and we reproduce the contents of his reponse verbatim below:

Top Secret Mission: To secure a fresh date for his STEP (Student Exchange Programme) interview, which he had missed, having been away from campus for a week to attend his brother's wedding.

He goes inside the Dean's room, and the PGP Rep decides to abondon him at this point, having more urgent matters to look into - or so we suppose - and so from here on, its a battle of the Sarkars.

Sahadeb (SDS): Yes? Who are you?

Suvro (SVS): Sir, I am Suvro Sarkar (stressing on the Sarkar part, to emphasize possible kinship), 1st year PGDCM student, Sir.

SDS: So what can I do for you?

SVS: Sir, I have a request. Sir, I missed my STEP interview...I had my brother's wedding to attend, Sir. Is it possible to reschedule my interview to today or tomorrow?

SDS: So you were away to attend your brother's wedding?

SVS: Yes sir.

SDS: Which day to which?

SVS: (calculating fast to reduce the number of days as far as possible) 1st to 5th feb, Sir (feeling pretty sure he can bank on senior Sarkar to feel nostalgic about Bengali weddings and let the point drop)

SDS: So, 5 days.

SVS: Yes sir! (feeling inordinately proud of his institute, now that he is sure his Dean can count).

SDS: Have you read the PGP rules book?

SVS: (trying best to appear truthful, unsure where all this is leading) Yes sir.

SDS: Did you miss the point that you have to inform the PGP Office if you are out of campus for more than 2 working days?

SVS: Oh! is there such a point Sir? (oh, that did not come out the way he would have ideally wanted it to - more of a spontaneous reaction he might regret).

SDS: So you did not think it important to read the rule book? (and regret he does)

SVS: (on the backfoot, well and truely) No Sir, I've read it, Sir. This one skipped my mind, Sir.

SDS: So you think you are above all such rules eh? If you good students do like this, what will happen? Eh?

SVS: (taken aback at the assumptions of moral and ethical standards of "good" students) Sir, good student...no sir, I am sorry Sir - I have read the rule book - just missed that point - won't happen again, Sir - I'm very sorry, Sir.

SDS: So you missed 5 days of classes I see.

SVS: Unfortunately, Sir.

SDS: Hmmm...who did you ask to mark ur proxies?

SVS: (aghast - trying to look like someone who has never heard the word proxy before in his whole life) What - me sir? Proxy- sir? No no, I don't believe in proxies, sir.

SDS: Oh is that so? (calls out to one of the clerical staff) Udayyyy (or watever the name was), bring me the - what section are you? - section C - attendance files for 1st to 5th feb...

SVS: (hoping that his over-enthu classmates had not been foolish enough to mark any signatures against his reg number) No problem, Sir...you wont find any proxies, Sir (trying to sound belligerent and brave)

SDS: (flipping through one or two sheets and not finding any proof against our protagonist) Okk I'll ask the PGP Office people to go through all the sheets in detail (proof of how jobless they are, usually)...you can go now - and give me the application you brought - I'll sign it.

SVS: (relieved) Thank you, Sir! and I'm very sorry, Sir about not informing PGP Office.

So our protagonist went on to live another day and sat through the STEP interview and then opted out of it - all this for nothing! - but that again, is another story. There were some other side effects, though, of the above episode. The attendance sheets were indeed checked - no proxies were found against his name (for the benefit of doubting Thomases, he had categorically instructed all his friends not to mark any before he left for his brother's wedding, having calculated that he was reasonably above water in terms of attendance in all the subjects) - but a pattern of regular proxies were found against many other names and as a result, attendances cancelled en masse, students summoned and warned- sparking large scale rows and debates, and putting an end to the mass-scale proxy signature campaigns as had been practised in the previous two semesters at Joka.

Friends, Romans, countrymen - I believe you will herewith bless our revered protagonist for accidentally removing one of the most widespread social evils in Jokaland, which was threatening to erode the very moral fibres of one and all. Hail the protagonist!

Odd one out

2008-05-21T11:29:00.001+08:00

The 40” Samsung LCD wall mounted television in our department was turned on a few days ago when news started to filter in about the quake in Sichuan province of China. The official toll started off with 1 killed, 4 injured and 900 students buried but gradually grew to about 10,000 by the time the next day’s newspapers went to press. Our technical analyst, a middle aged bachelor fond of deciphering charts and eating junk food, immediately sprung up and asked around if any company had exposure to the region (before you ask, I am part of an equity research house and we issue recommendations to investors on stocks we follow). Colleagues looked at their coverage and started calling up corporates to enquire about their assets in the region around Chengdu and Chongqing in Sichuan province. Nobody called up to express concern and ask whether their employees or their families were safe, though. Struck me as very odd. I couldn’t bring myself to call up any of my companies to enquire about possible delays in project completions and the like. Guess I am not cut out for this industry. As our technical analyst joked “Your pain, my gain” and issued calls to short any stocks with projects in the affected region, to the accompaniment of quite a few snorts and sneers from other colleagues, I wondered whether the scent of money has indeed, become stronger than the scent of pain, blood and suffering. Or, for that matter, the scent of power, as the military junta in Myanmar has strived to prove.

Your girlfriend must be really beautiful!

2008-04-17T16:28:00.004+08:00

This is what a certain Mr. Tony Ho, SVP (Sales & Marketing), Contel Corporation, had to say to me when he had realized the full implication of what I was attempting to do. It was 6:30 in the evening, I was in a car in a perpetually smoggy forbidden provincial town in China called Dongguan and I was attempting to cross the border some 80 km away and reach Hong Kong that night. All this for a 12-14 hour stay, since I'd have to leave HK (assuming I reached there) by 12 PM latest next morning to have any hopes of getting on my return flight to Singapore. Before you ask, the flight was from Shenzhen Int'l Airport. And just half an hour ago, I didn't have a single Yuan on me.

Okk...cut...rewind rewind rewind...

The trip I'm talking about is a plant visit organized for Singapore analysts and fund managers by a Singapore-listed Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer called Contel Corp. The plant is in Dongguan, one of the big three cities in the affluent Pearl River Delta region of China, just aft of Hong Kong. And the nearest airport is in Shenzhen, which is the electronics workshop of the world and also the nearest point on the mainland from Hong Kong. Well the airport is strictly not in Shenzhen but lets leave that for later.

So this trip of mine was initially planned to happen in the last week of September but was postponed owing to lack of interest among other participants. Back then, I was a trifle disappointed since I was quite aware of the proximity of Hong Kong and Shenzhen and on paper, a journey to and forth seemed quite do-able. Anyhow, chance presented itself once again 2-3 weeks later and the trip was happening this time on the 17th and 18th of October.

Early morning flight and I head for the airport in an early morning taxi. Finally, I find myself on the flight, next to a kiddish looking guy and a senior looking guy, who I supposed were also on the same analyst visit. The kiddish guy really turned out to be a kid, fresh out of graduate school into one of the local brokerages. The older guy was indeed, an industry veteran, who had retired from professional life to run his personal investment firm with his family's money. Towards the end of the flight, when people start planning how best to spend the night in Dongguan, I deem it imminent to break the news that I won't be there, as I would be going to Hong Kong. "So you are flying back from Hong Kong eh?" "No, I'll meet you guys back at Shenzhen!” I see some dumbfounded faces around me. But being peaceful Singaporeans, they don't press the matter any further apart from assuming that I must be on some kind of illicit mission to make so much effort worth the while.

I let them assume whatever they could and then I made the biggest mistake of the trip. We land in Shenzhen; I come out of the airport with the group, and being the organizer-type, start hunting around for the tour bus assigned to us and conveniently forget about foreign exchange! Halfway on the hour-long bus-ride to Dongguan, I realize this stark truth and my mood gets gloomier while the others sleep it off. The surroundings don't help at all but I'll spare you a description of the journey on the highways of China. Suffice to say that it is not a pretty sight - especially being accustomed to the lush green paddy fields along NH2 (the erstwhile Grand Trunk Road) and NH6 (Bombay Road) of West Bengal. Probably, with modern marvels like the Singur car factory coming up, we'll get to see less of the same, too.

Having reached Dongguan, and having disembarked at the hotel, I wonder aloud if I might find some transportation to Hong Kong from the hotel premises in the hope that some fellow analyst would care to translate and ask the hotel guys. The only female in our group was a pretty friendly one and she takes pains to find out, from various sources, including the doorman, concierge and tourist booklets, that the last bus to HK leaves at 5:30 PM. Realistically, we couldn't be back to the hotel by that time - my plant visit starts at 2 PM! My spirits suitably dampened, I seat myself at the lunch table and nibble at meats of various species while acquainting myself with executives from Contel. The COO, on hearing my HK predicament, immediately rushes off to enquire about options from the hotel management, but in spite of all the blessings I showered on him and his family, he returns with nothing new. Ditching the tasteless desserts and fetching my bag from my room, I saunter confidently towards the reception desk, where I'd hitherto spotted a foreign exchange counter. Woe and dismay, for they only convert HKD and USD. A big jolt for the Singapore Dollar and to the egos of the Singaporean analyst team. I sms my friend in Hong Kong, asking her not to wait up for me.

The gloomy day turns gloomier as we drive deeper into a perpetual haze covered country interspersed with gaunt white buildings. One of them turns out to be our final destination - Contel factory. After a boring presentation, we get to the Q&A session - and I am praying that my fellow analysts keep their interrogation short. However, it seems that they are intent to know all kinds of inane stuff in glorious detail and I am left in the lurches, counting the minutes as time rolls on beyond 4 PM. After what seemed an eternity, Tony, whom I have introduced before, suggests we proceed on the plant tour as the employees' shift would end shortly. I skip along with the Group, not deigning to ask a single question of the management in truly unprofessional analyst style (though I would end up as the only analyst filing in a plant visit note). As dusk envelops the hazy environs, I am itching to make a dash for the hotel or train station or bus station or somewhere. But not having a single Yuan in my pocket, kind of thwarts all my instincts and I wait for the ordeal to finish. When it’s eventually over, and we have seen assembly lines churning out electronic guitars for video games and LCD TVs and VCD recorders and all sorts of other useless stuff at one-tenth the price that Walmart and Circuit City retail them for, we get back to the Boardroom.

They gift us an E-Bible (if anyone is interested, I can forward it) and people take a lot of time to move out. I place my pleading eyes on Tony and Lip Kee (the CFO) and Tony (good man!) asks around for the best way to get to HK. 6 PM already. I had done extensive research on the Internet, which had informed me of trains at 7 40 PM and 8 40 PM, direct to some station in HK, but they seemed to have no knowledge of it. As I keep getting more despondent, the guy says there is a train to Shenzhen at 6:30 - do I want to try that? It seems people can cross the border there to HK. Of course, what are we waiting for? Our car, the CFO offers, rather apologetically. Some hope, at last, but there remains one last barrier to cross. Currency. And no bank will be open at 6 PM. I turn to the CFO. " Excuse me, do you have some extra Yuan on you? Can I pay you in SGD now...say 500 Yuan or so?" Flustered for a while, the guy fishes out five 100-Yuan notes as we settle on a willing buyer-willing seller exchange rate of 5 Yuan to a Singapore Dollar. "You might use it when you go down to Singapore once in a while", I offer helpfully. Phew! I had currency. Confidence back, I steel myself for a lonesome journey from nowhere to anywhere.

On the journey from the factory to the hotel where the management guys got off, the CEO, CFO and COO of Contel Corp offered me valuable advice on the dos and don'ts of travelling in China. "As long as you have your passport and your money with you, you are safe." "Keep my number. Any problem and you call me. Even if you lose your money, don't lose your mobile". "You know, if you get off and walk on this road, there is no guarantee you will not be robbed right now." Very helpful, all, but it left me feeling much less confident than I initially was. "So how many times you have been to China?” First time, Tony, first time. "So you can speak Mandarin?” NO. "You have been to Hong Kong before, right?" NO. "This is your first time in China, you can't speak the language, and it will be your first time in Hong Kong. And you are travelling across the border, in the evening. BOY, your girlfriend must be REALLY beautiful!!!" And, content in their assumption, they all had a hearty laugh about it. Not really wishing to contest their theory or interrupt their mirth, I joined in. "Oh yes, she is. Good guess, Tony!”

So they get down and the driver takes me to the train station. He gets down, locks the car and comes with me to the train station. Oh no, I can't read a single thing anywhere. It’s all Chinese (no, not Greek). I look on gratefully as the driver-chappie goes to the ticket counter, buys 2 tickets and hands me one. Without a murmur, I follow him as he rushes off towards the platform, and I'm relieved when a train rolls in 2 minutes later, which has a "Shenzhen" sign in English. As I try to push a 100-Yuan note into the helpful chappie's hand for the ticket, he refuses to have to do anything with it and instead motions me on to the train. An empty compartment beckons and I'm about to be in for a shock as the train covers the entire 90km stretch at an average speed of 160km/hr and in some stretches 180km/hr. If you are wondering how I calculated the speed, there was a LCD panel above the door of the compartment, which indicated as much. It took me about 45 minutes I think to cover the stretch. Whoa - China rocking!

As I get down at Shenzhen and follow the direction signs reading Hong Kong, I am reminded of what Tony had earlier told me - "When you exit the train station, you will see the Shangri-La Hotel. Don't go towards it. Go to the building in the opposite direction. You will find the immigration counters on the first or second floor. Be very careful!" - so I follow the signboards and eventually exit the train station at street level. I can see the Shangri-La at some distance but the signboards saying HK have petered out. So I walk all the way to the Shangri-La, click a few photos of night-time Shenzhen and discover that the only building that could be opposite it was the point where I had started walking. No problemos. I am way ahead of time, anyway, thanks to that super fast train. I meander back to the building and find the Chinese immigration counters on the first level. Forms filled out and they happily let me leave China. Oh did I forget to mention that my visa was a double entry visa. I had to re-enter PRC again the next afternoon for my flight back to Singapore.

After a pretty long walk through corridors and bridges of no-man's land, I somehow reach the HK immigration counter and after the guy had taken a look at my Indian passport, and heard my story about landing in Shenzhen, going to Dongguan, returning to Shenzhen, crossing over to HK, then back again and on to Singapore, he must have assumed I'm part of some currency racket on some quick errand. So I'm promptly shipped to the senior immigration officer's office to be interviewed. Frustrating wait and then I shove down the visiting cards of CEOs, CFOs and the like down the interviewer's throat in a brave attempt at intimidation. Bored with my version of events, he lets me continue on my journey of discovery. Dignity restored, I find a restroom, change out of my formals and fork out my maps of the Hong Kong public transport system. Having worked out my destination, I reach the ticket counter, only to realize the currency of business has changed. Bang opposite was a money exchanger, probably offering the worst rates in town, having set up shop to cater to morons like me. HKD in hand, I now had a ticket to East Tsim Sha Tsui (ETST). It was 7 30 when I had reached Shenzhen - it was past 9 PM now.

Anyhow, I reached ETST and then found the interchange to Tsim Sha Tsui - the subway/train system is way too complicated compared to Singapore - and here I met up with my friend AJ. I'll leave out the details of the remainder of the night except for the fact that the time between 2 AM and 4 AM found me having a few drinks with a banker friend of mine in Hong Kong's famed Lan Kwai Fong district and the remainder of the night till 8 AM found me sleeping it off on some other unsuspecting friend's sofa. The next morning brought with it my first glimpse of the great city in natural light and it was quite awesome and much beyond my expectations. There is a certain life in the people and a vibrant all-pervading spirit, quite reminiscent of Calcutta. I guess having a planned city takes the fun out of it. The narrow roads, congested alleys, British styled architecture, street side vendors, and modern high-rises jostling for space all lend to the unique aura the Hong Kong emanates. Singapore, by comparison, is sterile and lifeless.

So having taken in the sights and sounds, I now turn my attention to my return journey. I had gathered from various sources that the ferry from HK across the Pearl River Delta to Shenzhen is the quickest and most convenient way of getting to the airport. Smugly complacent in this knowledge, AJ and I call up the ferry companies but as luck would have it, all are fully booked. 11 AM in Hong Kong and I still have no transportation. Flight back at 4 PM. Will I make it? Tension tension. Train would take one hour to the border. God knows how much time at immigration. And then no clue how to reach the airport from Shenzhen train station and I had a fair idea it was 30 km away. No Tony and no driver-chappie to help me out this time around. I am pretty much royally screwed.

We make our way to the nearest ferry terminal in the hope of some ferry company we had missed out on but we can't even make out which boat is headed where, far less, when. Just when I'm beginning to think that I have to risk the train journey, we find ourselves standing in front of a bus terminal with colourful buses sporting Shenzhen/
Guangzhou signs. After some painful attempts at communication, we discern that a bus for Shenzhen airport will be leaving in about 10 minutes, but I'll have to change buses in between. Still not convinced that I am on the right bus, I try to ask the driver when we would be reaching the destination, but he remained unconvinced too. Running out of options and having already purchased a 100 HKD ticket, I decide to risk it and wave goodbye to AJ and Hong Kong.

A Good Samaritan on the bus decides to be my interpreter for the rest of the bus trip and safely guides me through all the formalities on either sides of the border. Finally, some pretty girls in traditional costumes notice a pink bus company sticker on my shirt as I come out of Shenzhen bus terminal and take me to a mini-bus and a short bus journey later, I'm inside Shenzhen Int'l Airport within one and a half hours of leaving Hong Kong. Wow! A fitting finale to a whale of an adventure. I'm damn pleased as I make my way home and promise to write about it someday. That day is finally here!

P.S. Took me about 6 months to pen this down. Apologies to all concerned :)

Kabuliwallah to Charlie Wilson's War

2008-03-14T18:37:00.002+08:00

Lately have had a lot of Afghanistan thrust into all the creative media entertainment that I have been indulging myself in. All = 4 instances, at last count. Well, I accept that to say that the latest Subhash Ghai offering “Black & White” had something to do with Afghanistan would not be correct in spirit, but would be very much correct in letter. So there.

If you are wondering where all this is going, let me say at the onset this is going nowhere. Just had to write about something before all my creative juices dried up in utmost entirety. So why Afghanistan? Well, ask Khaled Hosseini – for he’s the one to blame for my falling in love with the rugged country and its rugged people. The canvas that he painted through his masterpiece “The Kite Runner” – which incidentally I recently saw on celluloid – made, to put it mildly, a deep impression on my impressionable psyche. The snow capped Hindu Kush in the distance and the rugged brown mountainscape in the forefront, the smell of the kebabs roasting in tandoors and the mysterious beauty in the twinkling eyes of the women – I can conjure all that up in the batting of an eyelid, thanks to Mr. Hosseini. In fact, the film doesn’t do full justice to the geography at all, being shot somewhere in Inner Mongolia or thereabouts.

The British, the Russians and the Americans have all played their part in ravishing this beauty for their own petty gains over the last 300 years, and particularly so since the 70’s, when the country became a pawn in the Cold War endgame. The hot-blooded tribes that inhabit the unforgiving landscape have played their part too, falling prey to bloody infighting incited by scheming Cold War powers, that has wiped away entire villages, families, clans and generations. Power hungry warlords have ruled the mountains and fought for control of the Kabuls, Herats and Kandahars – even as foreign invaders were vanquished with the help of other foreign invaders. Why did the US military intelligence wait 10 bloody years before they realized that the only way to win the war was to supply the Mujahideen with anti-aircraft missiles, something that was known on the ground for at least 2-3 years before that? It seems they wanted to exhaust the Soviet Union’s resources in killing the Afghans, so that they could watch the disintegration of the Soviet empire later in gleeful mirth. And then they make films with Tom Hanks to glorify the fact that some Congressman wallowing in drugs and women found it worth his while to convince the CIA to send in those very anti-aircraft guns. And end the movie saying that US didn’t play the endgame very well. Ah, well…didn’t we know that?

As soon as the Soviet army left the land of the Afghans (originally Pashtuns, but also Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and others), the US conveniently forgot about them until they found a scapegoat in a bearded guy named Osama Bin Laden who reportedly owned responsibility (unproven?) for driving two passenger jets through the World Trade Centre in New York. Till then, the fact that the Taliban existed hadn’t bothered them – the fact that the Taliban exercised capital punishment in the form of stoning innocent men and women to death for adultery during half-times of football matches in Kabul’s national stadium and barred women from education and jobs hadn’t stirred their curiosity (as the global guardians of morality and human rights and such similar crap) – but the fact that they had had the gall to provide shelter to some small time operatives known as Al Qaeda (Arab Afghans) propelled them into a full blown war. Did you hear you saying its all a gimmick to gain strategic military position in Central Asia? You know the global political landscape well then, I must admit! A country, which had not yet picked up all the landmines that the Russians had planted in their land, (some of which were deliberately shaped like candies so that children would pick them up, lose limbs and their parents wouldn’t be able to take part in the war effort) has ever since been embroiled in another war. Some 2-3 million of them still live as refugees, mainly in the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan and in Iran.

The most hilarious part in all this is that the US might have actually sponsored the holy war of terror against itself. Along with Pakistan’s ISI, the US invested heavily in the training and arming the Mujahideen who were fighting the Russians, and some of these same facilities were then used to nurture the young Talebs – madrasahs and militant training camps which came up all along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border has ever since, provided a steady stream of Talebs and suicide bombers to the world at large. The ISI and the CIA (and possibly all the world’s secret services, since it is rumoured all of them work hand-in-hand anyways) have washed their dirty hands off the issue but the fact remains that they are now fighting an enemy that they helped create themselves. Well they are not actually fighting an enemy – that’s just a ruse for getting closer and closer to dominating the oil reserves in Central Asia.

Well, some food for thought – definitely, at least, its fodder for authors and film directors who in recent and not-so-recent memory have churned out novels like The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns (again by Hosseini), Shantaram (by the Australian convict Gregory David Roberts who fought part of the Afghan war against the Russians on behalf of a Bombay mafia don) and movies like Kabul Express, Kite Runner (again) and Charlie Wilson’s War – that have kept us captivated. Thanks at least for bringing this beautiful country into the limelight – for those who have been to the upper echelons of the Himalayas where the snow capped mountains co-exist with harsh brown terrain like those in Leh, Ladakh in Kashmir and also north of Lachen in Sikkim, I’m sure they will appreciate the feeling of humbleness in their souls that the awe-inspiring, unforgiving, beauty awakens in us – such environs can only produce the most big-hearted of men for only they can match up to what the unrelenting vastness of nature demands. Will the Kabuliwallah ever return???

Singapore Exposed - the good, the bad and the ugly!!!

2007-10-22T17:48:00.001+08:00

5 good things about the city
§ You are never too far away from anywhere. You can reach any place within 1 hour, even at peak hours.
§ There is a shopping mall around every nook and corner-->your girlfriend/ wife will be happy-->you will be happy.
§ You can get food 24/7 and you can get all kinds of food.
§ The sex ratio is skewed in favour of females, most of whom believe in the maxim - less is more.
§ Everything is so bloody well planned and efficient!

5 bad things about the city
§ You are never too far away from office or for that matter, home. No refreshing change, whatsoever.
§ The underground remains crowded even on weekends - full of shoppers and their unfortunate boyfriends/husbands/noisy kids.
§ Much of the small talk is dominated by food - new places to eat & new cuisines to try - that's all people talk about!
§ All the females look alike and you can never tell whether they are aged 13 or 30.
§ There is no excitement - its never unpredictable!

5 odd things about the city
§ People like to make out on escalators in train stations.
§ The Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) services are not that efficient - they can stop in the middle of the tunnel, the doors of the train and those of the platform may not necessarily match and to top it all, they don't even announce which side of the train the next platform is on! (whoa Kolkata Metro rocks!)
§ Booze is so damn overpriced!
§ You'll see more elderly people than children on the streets - the birth rate is like the 10th lowest in the world and the Government provides financial incentives to people having babies!
§ Discussing politics is taboo.

5 ugly things about the city
§ There is a surveillance camera everywhere.
§ Freedom of speech? - even the Singaporeans accept the absence of that la!
§ There is no concept of a family dinner; husbands, wives and children are known to eat out at their favourite joints before coming home.
§ Taxi drivers are amazingly some of the most racist people on the road.
§ And yes - who can forget - Death to Drugs!!!

An Attempt at Narcissism

2007-10-11T11:28:00.003+08:00

And hereby, my comeback into the blog arena is being marred by a controversial self-obsessed post, itself inspired primarily by the Orkut profile of Suneet Kumar (well to put it into perspective - even he saw it on a friend's profile so I guess IPR is not much of an issue here).
So here goes my attempt at telling things about myself in a cute way - Its Just About Me :

* My favorite colour is light green. Don’t ask me why.

* I have about 30 friends who would hate me if I didn’t make it to their wedding. I can’t possibly make 30 trips to India in the next 4 years, though. Maaf karna, bhailog.

(Update 1 - 04/03/2009 - I've already missed those of Dhingra, Satrajit & Yash)

* I prefer co-operation to competition. In a competitive environment, I’ll be a dove. As a general rule, I dislike hawks.

* I measure time by minutes and not every 5 minutes. If the time is 4:24, I won’t say its 4:30 or even 4:25.

* I can be the most mature and responsible guy you have ever met, or the kiddiest. Depends on whether you are male or female.

* I prefer tea to coffee.

* The only virtual games I have played with any hint of proficiency are Snake III and RoadRash.

* My favourite novelist is P.G. Wodehouse. If you haven’t read him, you won’t understand me fully, ever.

* I think I’ll make a good boyfriend and an even better husband.

* I wait for Friday every week coz it’s the only day I can arrive in office in jeans.

* I want to do some kind of service to society some day. No clue how to go about it.

* I don’t dream big. Never have. Never will. Take life as it comes.

* I want people to appreciate me at work.

* I love kids. And I don’t like people who don’t.

* I derive much of my strength in life from Joydev. I won’t even begin to describe what this association means to me.

* Illumination and Controls are two of the best things to have happened in my life.

* I have really ever loved only two places – Durgapur and Kolkata. Surprisingly, I miss the cities more than the people I know there.

* I am a hopeless romantic optimist and spend much of my time thinking about non-existent females in my life.

* I have a very good memory when it comes to names, phone numbers, license plates, roads, directions, birthdays and the like. I could never memorize a poem for more than 2 days though.

* I'm a very good listener. Another way of saying that I’m not much of a conversationalist.

* I’m very good at 29. My father never taught me bridge.

* I am one of the few drinkers I know who used to like vodka and whisky equally. Now scotch is all I can tolerate. Never much a sucker for rum, though.

* I can flirt with girls effortlessly while chatting.

* I'm very bad at interviews and group discussions. Hopefully will not have to encounter too many of those in future

* I stayed awake for 61 hours once.

* I used to be a loner and liked it. Till DFE, Patel Hall happened.

* I am a big unabashed foodie. I am recently trying to master the art of filling my own stomach.

* I can play passable soccer, table tennis and badminton.

* I want to have a Fusball table in my house one day, a la Joey and Chandler.

* I have experienced wild weight swings. From 67 kg pre-IIT to 52 kg in 3rd year to 65 kg now.

* I like to dance when I am drunk. I only like to dance when I’m drunk, though. And not with girls.

* I'm usually superficially unfazed in all kinds of situations. As they say, mujhe kabhi load nahin hota.

* I like watching new Hindi releases and don’t much care about reviews.

* I hate chewing gum and bubble gum.

* My sleep is getting lighter these days. Still, do not expect me to pick up your call if I’m sleeping.

* I maintain that cigarettes are highly injurious to health. My health is deteriorating sharply.

* Thums Up is the only carbonated drink I’ve ever liked. Mountain Dew came close.

* Last but not the least, I’m not very innovative or creative, but I can write well. Proof of the pudding is in the eating :))

Okk I must admit - I was bribed one bottle of Jack Daniels to write this post ;)

The Pink Floyd Experience - adapted from the experience and expressions of Sourojit Bhowmick...

2007-07-19T23:06:00.001+08:00

The dream of watching the God live is one that most of us do cherish...and I am yet to realise my dream...however, here's a sneak preview of what can be...the words are not mine...rather they belong to my dear friend Sourojit Bhowmick, who is currently pursuing his PhD in the US of A...

"As I start writing this, I just pray that I do not forget, those 3 hrs, in the years to come.
Somehow I would like to hold those scenes in my mind, for the rest of my life. I will write what exactly I saw , felt and experienced. There may be many spelling mistakes and errors .. as I am writing in a flow…almost closing my eyes and remembering every moment of that DREAM…

Let’s begin …. The mega event was at the New England Dodge Music Center (a place where legends like Jim Morrison, Coldplay, Metallica, GnR to the Beatles have played.). So the show was from 8 pm, and we started at 6 (hoping to reach by 6:30). We got the first taste of Pink Floyd hysteria, when we reached the express highway, just 6 miles from the center. Now here I would say, in my 1 yr of stay in US... I have never seen traffic jam in the express ways… not even in the busy NY express way … but mannnnnn... when we were just 6 miles from the center... We could c the line of cars!!!! It was crazy!! People were shouting... Throwing beer bottles... doping … from the cars!! There were all sorts of squads around...SWATS, Dog squads etc etc …. But the best part of police here was … THEY NEVER INTERRUPTED THE FUN!!!!!They didn’t even stop ppl from doping n boozing! They were just watching for vandalism!!!!

Neways... when we reached the arena, the magnitude got me!!! it was like entering a packed Eden Gardens, for the first time !!!!! Around 40,000 people!!! From all age groups!! Hippies … druggrs, rockers, wheel chair bound people, old, young, men women of all sorts!!!!! It was just overwhelming!! So we went and secured our spot… about 40-50 mts from the stage ….. Just below the overhead ceiling. And behind us, was the wiiiiiide lawn sitting area... it was like a hill... And completely packed!!!!!

The show began with the trademark whiskey bottle and cigarette...on the screen... n then smoke came from the left on stage,as if someone was smokin … n thennnnnnnnnnn. .. a black figure .. in jacket & black pants .. emerged, with a guitar in hand.. accompanied by the euphoric thunder of 40,000 people … when they saw the living legend …ROGER WATERS was ON STAGE …in front of our eyes !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! .. I could c people crying... when the first sounds of his guitar hit us... Those first strings from “in the flesh”… as he sang “so ya ..thot ya ..might ..”.His voice reverberated all across the arena,and we were mad . After that … it was just pure magic ….. He gave us one song after the other … in that memorable voice!!! And the awsm vocals of Dave Kilministr, synth of Harry Waters (Rogers’ son)…. With the GREAT Jon Cairn!!!!!!!!!! And Andy Fairweather (The Pulse Concert Guys) …

The Wall part 1 had its usual head banging affect!!!!! There were ppl everywhere... Doping n drugging!! … It was going on…With psychedelic lighting... This led to Syd Berett’s face on screen... “Shine on” was coming...N then when we reached ... “Shine on you”... There was the harrowing picture of Syd Berrett on screen ... and slowly a laser face of Berett appeared on the crowd!!!!!!! …Suddenly he started those famous lines ... “Remember when you were young … you shine like the sun” …. That was it... we were just hysterical!!! Every single person was singing! It was dark ... n everybody was lighting some light. ..And holding it up... And swaying!! It was a scene worth watching!!!!! There was a laser that also swayed with the song.

The lighting and special affects was throughout unparalleled … during “set the controls of the heart of the sun” …. There was a fire on screen .. and then the smoke of the fire .. from the screen .. suddenly started coming out n spreading on the crowd !! such was the affect. It was pure psychedelia , and we were being hallucinated by music and machine !!!! While during “Time” and “Money” .. the whole video was on us !!! as if we were being grinded inside a clock …. I know , u wont believe .. unless u b a part of it .. but this is what each and everyone .. present there felt !!!!

After “shine on”, we could c a radio in the screen, some one was tuning … there was a silence in the crowd... We knew ... what was coming... “Wish you were here”!!!!! The moment those guitar chords sounded …. We just knelt down in respect …. While Roger Waters said “So ...so u think u can tell…”… the affect was heavenly!!!! Millions of small bubbles (like the soap bubble)… came from nowhere...And covered us!!!!! …. I must say here... something was soo emotional... it brought tears to our eyes …!!! Every one was just singing and swaying … everyone had sparkling eyes... tears dripping!!!! Wish You were Here, a song that had moved a generation .. was having its tremendous emotional affect !!! Following this there were other gems like, Fletcher memorial, perfect sense, animal (sheep)… and then was “leaving Beirut” … another masterpiece!!! He spoke again… “Thanks for coming… u have been a great audience”...He explained why he wrote this song ….and then sang it. Those of you who have watched the video of this song in youtube ..must know that its based on cartoons …. And there also it was cartoon, but the only speciality was .. sometime the cartoon figures came on the crowd .. from the screen .. thanks to the laser affects !!!!!!

After this song .. HE came near the crowd .. n said “Its been long .. will take a 15 mins break .. but will b back” Now the break was memorable... coz they left the huuuugeeee pig balloon from the stage... n crowd was passing it ... so that it can come out from below the ceiling area... To the open area ... n man... WE TOUCHED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was just AN electric feeling… n then it went behind us… to the lawn area ... finally into the sky!!!!!

The next part of the show was …the main Dark side of the Moon... and I really don’t have words to explain it!!!!! There was everything on stage!! Fire, smoke, moon landing, astronaut, and a huuuge moon!!! (Which became bigger from a small size, in that break of 15 mins) .

Part 2 started with “speak to me”,,Breath , great gig in the sky , on the run … and then came “brain Damage” . So before “brain damage” he thanked the crowd again … n introduced the band members. And then he started “The Lunatic is on the Grass…” and as it started... we could c that there was a sudden cloud on top of us … n then lasers were crazily moving on us …suddenly in the stage there was that world famous prism!! It was moving slowly on us!! It came on top of us,n a light from one end …entering the laser prism…And vibgyor coming out from the other end !!!!!!!!!! The whole “dark side of the moon” Prism logo was there on us... Made by lasers!!!!! We were all speechless to c that creation !! n the lines …“And if the band youre in starts playing different tunes,Ill see you on the dark side of the moon”!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I dunno wat happnd … but I was just overwhelmed by the music .. tears in my eyes .. looking at the greatest music innovator of our times !!! everyone was staring at the laser …. As he sang this song with impeccable precision , as all the other songs !!!!!

The brain damage song signalled that the show was comin to an end …. Then after a few other tracks like eclipse , break in the wall II, and bring the boys back home , Us n Them …. the stage darkend … waters said thank you … n he was leaving !! we were all shouting .. “don’t go” … there was a mass sadness !!! the show was over and we couldn’t accept it !!! BUT SUDDENLY out of the dark .. a ghastly voice said “Is there any body out there?”.. GOD that was like too much of a hysteria !!!!!!! N next that everlasting music .. from “comfortably numb” .. with a whitewash of light !!!!!! … all hell broke loose .. every single living being , must have shouted at that time !!!! .. Roger “God” Waters was singing “hello heloo .. is there anybody in there?... just nod if u can hear me” … the words from the god himself !!!... comfortably numb sounded as if , I was listening to the original track from the CD !!!!!!! ….. again .. we were lighting matches , candles , lighters , ciggerettes , torch .. into the sky !! .. swaying …to the music !! It was crazy !!! Listening to one of the most famous songs of this century .. from its creator ..!!!!!

With “Comfortably Numb” the stage was dark again … n this time it was permanent. We could not believe that the show was over … infact no one could !!! we didn’t even feel that we were standing /shouting and swaying for 3 hours non-stop !! ..so after the song .. everyone was standing ….. speechless .. atleast fr 3-4 mins .. n slowly we realized it was over .. people started movin .. very very very slowly. No one wanted to leave the arena…. We cldnt believe that , we had seen the living legend .. we couldn’t believe that we were so lucky to watch the god himself !!!! Me anurag and Veda , stood there for almost 30 mins more … there were fireworks in the sky … n we were just quite … it seemed that we were just out of a dream …. N then slowly started moving with the crowd …..

I would like to specially add something here about the crowd .. there were ppl .. doping , drugging , boozing all around !! people were druggd out .. n u cld just c them swaying and dancing like a child. And the best part was , beers were being sold inside the arena itself !!! policemen were everywhere .. but what I like that .. 99 % of them didn’t had guns (which u c with every policeman here) .. !!!! they watchd ppl drugging n dopin .. but didn’t stop !!!! they just kept an eye …there were people of arnd 60-70 yrs age !!! am not exaggerating !!n there were wheelchair bound floydians too !!!!.... that’s why they say .. Pink Floyd is not a music group .. it’s a mass movement !!!

So that was my experience .. I may have messed up with the song sequences .. but mostly they are correct.. I cldnt explain every single lighting, and also didn’t talk about all the songs e.g Any color you like , Mother etc .. coz words can explain them .

But I just pray that these memories never die ….. AFTER ALL .. I FINALLY DID SEE .. THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON .."

The race I never ran...

2006-07-04T06:19:00.002+08:00

Of late, I have been getting this sinking feeling that I'm losing the race. What race, do u say? Well, for the moment, let it suffice to say that this is a race that the organizers do not know of, and hence, they haven't advertised it nor they have kept any prize reserved for the winner. If that still does not satisfy you, consider it as just another figment of my not too fertile imagination.

The race was never meant to be in the first place. 'Coz there are no other runners. I am running the race alone. At least ostensibly. I forced it upon myself to participate and now I find myself at the crossroads, not knowing which way leads to victory. But I am just too attached to this long distance run of mine to give it up so easily. I'll continue running as I have been doing for the past two years. This race has not brought any rewards to me, neither any accolades. On the contrary, it has caused me untold pain. But it has been worth it. It has been an experience worth reliving.

As I continue my journey unto life, this one race of mine and the sights and sounds associated with it will continue to provide a source of sustenance as nothing else. The race has been long and arduous. But I have been hallucinating of late. Of late, I have being seeing people on the stands, watching me run and laughing at me. Often have I wondered at their mirth. They think that I'm running this race for the prize. I laugh back at them for their naivete. They can have the prize, for all I care. I haven't even thought of the prize, for God's sake!

But as I stated earlier, I'm finding it difficult to continue running at the same pace and with the ame vigour as before. Something seems to be lacking. The sights and sounds have changed. don't get the same thrill out of running anymore. Have those spectators spoiled my fun? Maybe...maybe not. I can't pinpoint the reasons. I am getting tired. I can see but emptiness staring at me with her unforgiving eyes, daring me to continue the race.

I believe I have strength just about enough for one last sprint. One concentrated effort. One last try. One last attempt to breast that tape which seems to move for ever and for ever away as I run forward. Should I preserve the strength and continue my lacklustre race or should I make that one last effort? What lies on the other side? The crossroads seem neverending...

I'm back and I'm tagged!!!

2006-05-24T15:15:00.001+08:00

So I'm back to blogspace after a gap of I don't know how many months...forgive me, my fans ( I hope there are some)...but I was too busy and too lazy to write. What I was doing all this time, I think I'll tell you once I'm back on campus but till then, u hava to be content with the fact that I'm writing this on my desktop at office at 12:45 in the afternoon, having absolutely no work on hand and trying hard to figure out what I'll be doing for the rest of the day!

Avinash "Guta" Singh tagged me a long while ago and thankfully so, coz it gives me a definite subject matter to mark my re-entry into this arena.

First the rules of the game -

1. The tagged victim has to come up with 8 different points of their perfect lover
2. You have to mention the sex of the target
3. Tag 8 victims to join this game and leave a comment on their comments saying they've been tagged
4. If tagged the 2nd time, there's no need to post again

This is difficult man! I think this will take up a substantial part of my vella hours today. Good for me! Anywayz I should focus on the job at hand -

So here goes:

1. My perfect lover should be smart, intelligent and have a sense of humour that's on the same wavelength as mine. I should be able to discuss with her anything and everything without things going above her head.

2. My perfect lover should not be a perfectionist but should not be too lackadaisical either. There should be a certain bit of order in our lives.

3. My perfect lover should be very talkative and capable of carrying on converstaions all night. One good listener in a family is enough!

4. My perfect lover should be very adept at shopping. Coz someone has to buy my clothes for me. I suck at it, bigtime!!! ( I can do the grocery bit, though!)

5. My perfect lover should understand my need to be alone at times and allow me the space which I need - I'll need my whisky-on-the-rocks, my floyd, my premiership matches and my novels without intrusion.

6. My perfect lover should not expect me to express myself everytime through words. My eyes and my actions should suffice.

7. My perfect lover should have the capability to love not only me, but my whole world including my friends and family.

8. My perfect lover should have a smile that I cannot do without, fingers whose touch will ease all my tensions and eyes into which I can lose myself.

I think I could have added more, but u have to play by the rules, u know!

So that's all...now tell me folks...what do u think...have I written this with someone in mind or is it all in the air? No biased opinions based on prior knowledge (however faulty that knowledge may be) please.

Oh BTW for those who haven't guessed, the sex of the target is female.

I won't be tagging anyone coz I'm so late on this game that everyone out here has been tagged.

Watch Out for The Fingers!!!

2006-03-02T21:08:00.001+08:00

Over the past few days, the fingers have been dominating me completely...to the extent that they have become the fulcrum of many a conversations I have been having with people...normal people, people whose lives don't involve having to deal with the whims and fancies of the fingers.
Lucky bastards, I must admit.

Living under the constant shadow of the fingers is not smooth sailing. That is not to take anything away from the experience, though, and I must admit, it has been a rewarding one, to say the least. Of course, you must keep in mind that it is me and not the fingers, who is doing the talking here, contrary to what some of you may have been led to believe!

So what are the pros and cons of the whole issue? The cons I will deal with later, but lets talk about the pros! Know what, these damn fingers seem to be very highly opinionated about any and every issue and unfortunately for some, they are not afraid of expressing themselves. Hence, neither am I (I wish that was true, but its a on-going process).

The fingers know how to deal with people. The fingers are strong, they can deal with hurt and disappointment. I am still learning to do the same, albeit under their apprenticeship. The fingers know how to take decisions, however unpleasant or off-the-track they may be. The fingers know that you don't always have to justify a decision. The fingers know all. I'm still learning. I hope I will learn quickly enough 'coz I don't know how long they'll hang around.

The fingers also know all about relationships. The fingers can define love so easily that it is almost difficult to comprehend. The fingers must have learned their philosophy from the Lord Krishna himself. At least, I get that general feeling that they are highly skilled in this area of specialization. And they teach well. And hence, I am getting better at this. There is no longer that niggling doubt in my mind, which has been my constant companion. Now I know.

So I go about happily in this world, trying hard not to feel the burden of my repsonsibilities and the pitfalls of my relationships, ably supported and guided by the fingers. I hope I can spread some resultant cheer!!!

Summer's Placement 4: The Final Cut

2005-12-22T01:10:00.001+08:00

People say all's well that ends well. I used to hold the same view. Now, I believe all's well that ends. Bringing you the concluding part of the six day saga that brought me into very close contact with my soul, forced me to ask lots of questions and helped me know lots of people inside out. Key learnings...isn't that the term? Nywayz lets join our protagonist at the beginning of Slot2.

Day5:
8:30 am
Okk so a new day and a new beginning awaited me as I brought out my 3rd new shirt and hoped for the best. Lots of shortlists. Today I'm bound to be busy. Lets hope things get over early. Wishful thinking!!!
Day starts. Nestle calling. GDs. How I hate them. Its like letting loose herd of hungry lions on a rabbit. You never know what the interviewers are looking for in a GD. What are the criteria? The maximum airtime? The critical points? The moderator role? I don't know. Never will. But one thing I made sure on this day. Maximum effort. I redefined my GD styles. More as the day wears on.

11:00 am
Have had 4 GDs I guess till now. Pretty insipid stuff till now. Problem now seems to be that I meet the same motley group of people in every GD. Guess Controls is using some optimal scheduling algorithm. I'll work for Controls in the finals, I think. This is interesting stuff. Complex non linear programming I guess. NP hard ???

12:00-4:00 pm
Flurry of GDs. From one room to another. Oh btw, I actually start a GD. Hehe. This is fun. Who am I? I no longer know myself. Somehow manage to squeeze in lunch. These packet lunches are fun, too. Seems like a picnic. Life is fun.

4:00-8:00 pm
Or is it? Entering the double digit GD region now. And I know I have the SAP 2nd round interview sometime in the evening. I need some time to chill out before that! Do I have time? Spend 1 hour waiting for a guy to make it 8 guys for a GD. Lady on the panelist want to ride a bike around the campus. Infra team frantically search for equipment. This is one team I won't join! What a life! Place rep calling on cell. SAP at 8:30.

8:30-9:30 pm
Nervewracking half an hour wait before the interview. Another telephonic round. Start scribbling notes. The phone rings at 9. Pick it up. Rehearsed opening line. The guy starts speaking. And keeps speaking. Arre lemme speak, too! I must do something. So I do. After every two sentences, I rephrase his words and throw it back at him. Nice strategy. Seems to be working. I don't know what this interview was meant to judge. Anyway, he hangs up and wishes me luck. Is that a good sign or a bad sign? Do I need the luck elsewhere?

Dude no time for that crap. Next stop Agrotech GD. Hurry up. The whole group is waiting for me. How do they expect me to come out of my interview inertia so soon! This is ridiculuous!

9:30-11:00 pm
I felt like screaming "I told you so!" when I came out of the room after the GD. Never opened my mouth even once. By the time I realised that a GD was in progress, it was too far gone!
Next stop ITC interview. Oh well, finally ITC realizes my worth and shortlists me after the GD.
Good goin, ITC but I guess our only relationship will be Wills Navy Cut. Made for each other? Don't think so. 11:00 pm and still not done. Can you believe it? I can't. Times Group calling. Get it done with.

11:30 pm
Finally I make it back to the arena. Whew!!! What a day. Can't believe so much action in one day. I don't know where I'm getting the energy after 5 long days. Pure adrenalin? People I did not know yesterday are friends now. Sharing the same adversity brings people much closer, I guess. And not sharing it or even trying to does alienate people. Lots of lessons life teaches. And finally, now that I have time to think, the goosebumps start all over again. What if not SAP? When will they declare the damn result? Why is the placerep not calling? Why does the front desk never call my reg no and send me to the place office? Why not? Why me?

Day 6

7:30 am
Know what? I have a direct interview call from Coats India. Lucky me! After a very nervewracking night and desperately seeking to stay calm, I wait in the arena. Breakfast? No thank you, sir! Oh btw my cuffs are dirty. RR's room and his shirt. His tie proved lucky for RS. Will the shirt do the same for me? Lets see. But I guess the term lucky was fast losing significance!!!

8:30 am
Front desk calling. Where to, dude? Which GD? Place office. My heart skips a beat. Place office, finally??? Will my prayers be answered finally? Try not to think. The next few minutes are a happy daze. I got through. I am supposed to tank interviews for the rest of the day.

I feel like sinking to the ground. Relief. Nothing else. I am numbed.

And I am happy. For the simple reason that I can now officially tell the bloody interviewers to go to hell and stay there, for all I'm concerned. Go to hell, people. Enough is enough. Bahut ho gaya nautanki!!!

Rest of the Day
Go around in that suit, which now feels like second skin, screwing up interviews left, right and centre and leaving behind baffled interviewers in my wake. This is fun. This is absolute bliss. Life never felt so good. Perverse pleasure maybe, but pleasure nevertheless. Retribution, perhaps? Finally changed to my jeans and kicked off the shoes. Ahh how good does it feel to have the simple things in life!

That's about the end of the story. Fantastic experience, without a doubt. Missed only two things in the entire process. Otherwise seen all and done all. Couldn't do the voluntary stuff and hence, missed the chance of helping others. And two, did not savour the experience of companies making a pitch. However, no regrets. You never get all the good things at one go! But how do you define the good things in life? Okk...I won't get philosophical...enjoy!!!

Illusions!!!

2005-12-11T18:51:00.001+08:00

I was just reading this book by Richard Bach called "Illusions". A pretty interesting book and may just give you a refreshing new way of looking at life. If nothing else, it will make you think!!!

It has this thing called The Messiah's Handbook- Reminders for the Advanced Soul. I'm picking out a few quotes from this handbook which made me think!!!

Learning is finding out what you already know.
Doing is demonstrating that you know it.
Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.
You are all learners, doers, teachers.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.

The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing?
Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.

Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world - even if what is published is not true.

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.
You seek problems because you need their gifts.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.
You may have to work for it, however.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.
Listen to it carefully.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Every person, all the events in your life are there because you have drawn them there.
What you choose to do with them is up to you.

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished:
If you are alive, it isn't.

This more or less is all there is to it!
So I hope you have now been sufficiently motivated to achieve your mission in life.
For those who haven't, there's still hope, coz

Finally, everything in this book may be wrong!!!

Summer's Placement 3: Slot 1

2005-11-29T21:17:00.001+08:00

Woh lamhe...woh raate...koi na jaane...thi kaisi baate...
Seriously it gives me the shivers whenver I think of those nights when I slept with uneasiness gnawing at my heart and all the time knowing that I had to take adequate rest to perform from early morning the next day. Frustration, exhaustion, fear, doubt, attempts at motivation, all rolled into that one little head in the darkness and calm of the night...it was a nightmarish few nights!

I'll skip day 2 of the process since nothing much happened really. Had one GD and being the first one in the process, you seriously should not expect me to perform! An HR consultancy firm decided to interview me and posed all sorts of situational questions to which I had standard kgpian answers of Illumination and other Hall activities...how the hell are we supposed to conjure up situations that wud compare with those having work experience? Anywayz, no cribbing! Oh yes...another GD in the evening and one of the topics I remember!!! "The humble farmer and Murthy"--plz enlighten me with your views if u have any...personally I took affront at the topic and decided not to make the effort of speaking!

Day 3: Slot 1
7 am
Wake up to find my name on just one new shortlist out of some 5-6. HLL Sales n Mktg wants me. Very nice, indeed! I' m absolutely cut out for marketing!!! Somehow get over the newfound frustration and make it to the arena.

8 am
Back in the same suit, new shirt, same tie. New faces arriving. Old faces there, too. Everybody raring to go. The wait starts, yet again.

11:30 am
Can u believe it? I'm still waiting and I have multiple shortlists today! Have the guys at controls gone nuts? Is my reg no. missing from their list. I'm turning paranoid.

12 pm
My day is made. HLL calling for a GD. Nice start. Some topic about killing a character in a saas-bahu soap opera. Goes passably well. Get up to go. Oh no...what's this. Another GD? Back to back? At that point I start hating all marketing companies and as a mark of sincere protest, desist from speaking.

1 pm to 7 pm
A blur. That's all remains of this period. I'd heard that people forget the name of the company they are interviewing with. I was lucky that didnt happen with me. I forget the exact no. of interviews I had, interpersed with a few GDs, one of which (E n Y) went well! (I was actually performing at GDs...man am i changed!)

8 pm
Back to room after dinner. Lots of small talk. Irrelevant. Try to think about my chances tomorrow. Not feeling very confident. Another bad night.

Day 4: Slot 1

8:30 am-12 pm
Okk today I'm out of the arena in a flash. Thank u controls. Couldn't have tolerated a third day of that fag-mint-wait routine. Had 4 interviews back-to-back. Interestingly, I was a very confused man at the end of it all. One Systems firm, one Fin, one Consult, one Marketing...my core competency had changed so many times during a stretch of 2 hours that I did not know whom I was bluffing! Man I must really have confused the interviewers. I'm not sure whether I highlighted the right focus area at the right place. By that time, I had almost stopped caring. Thought of giving my best. Just not doing it.

5pm
Not much activity the rest of the day. No other shortlists. People again start getting offers. RS makes it ti Citi finally. First kgp conversion in the slot. Me and Y start walking aimlessly. Arnie has an offer, too. Many ppl smiling. Me burning? Offers to be declared at 7.

6 pm
SAP shortlist out. 6 names. Mine included. A sharp pang hits me. I know this means sth is wrong. No Slot 1 for me. Damn. People still don't want to believe. I do. And somehow, my resolve steels suddenly. Telephonic interview at 7:30. Go back to room. This is my last chance, I tell myself. Focus. Convert. Focus. Convert. What a feeling. I forget everything else around me. No worries. No tensions. Just do it. Too melodramatic? So be it.

7:30 pm
Waiting on the Place Office stairs for the interview to start. Can hear the Slot 1 offers being announced and ppl clapping. Again the burning in the heart. Know my name's not on the list. Can't believe it somehow. Come to terms quickly. Telephonic interview. I have to show energy, Arnie had told me. Build up energy. Write points down. Even a opening line. I'll have to do this. No escape routes.

8:00 pm -9:00 pm
What an interview! The guy tells me then and there that I've made it to the second round. Done half the job. Half still remains. Have reached a state of peace by now. Know things can't be any worse. So from now on, no more worrying. Things will take their own course. A confident end to a bad day.

10 pm
Get ready for Slot 2 and Marketing. Crasher on marketing fundae. Dude am I multifaceted now!
Next instalment: The remaining phases.

Summer's Placement 2: Slot 0

2005-11-24T02:18:00.001+08:00

Okk so we come to the most awaited part of the whole summers process...the slot 0 firms with promises of a foreign placement and a stipend in dollars amounting to more than 500,000 in local currency! The preparations for these companies are the most focussed and its almost like the other slots do not exist at all. Slot 0 is the be all and end all of placements...in the lead up to placements week, that's the general impression that you get. The shortlists start coming and those are the first heartbreak points for many. People suddenly realize that they are still not good enuf even though they've cleared the CAT...that they can still be rejected!

Anyway I'll limit the discourse to personal experiences. So I, fortunately or unfortunately, had only 2 shortlists out of the 12 firms visiting campus and those were Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, two of the biggest biggies. I was all keyed up on the eve of the day...tried out my new suit...was quite impressed by the sight, the corporate image and all!

Day 0: 9 am
Everyone ready and raring to go. Quite a nice gathering of people in suits. People discussing current stock prices and P/E ratios. A few copies of the Economic Times circulating. Suddenly I remember I don't have the last closing figure of the Sensex. Rush Rush. Join my fellow Kgpians for some small talk and breakfast.

10 am
The first interview calls start. People start trickling out. A few among them will not return throughout the day. A few return, to be hounded by thousands of queries. I wait.

1 pm
I am still waiting for my first call. People with 3-4 shortlists are already done with the whole process. AJ is done but seems tensed. I smoke and chew mint with RS. Have packet lunch. The picnic feeling starts.

3pm
Still waiting. Only people with 2 or fewer calls still waiting for the process to start. People desperately cracking PJs to keep from losing patience. A few more puffs and a few more mints. AJ even more tense.

4pm
Merrill Lynch calling. First bike ride to Tata Hall. Ushered into first interview. Tell the guy about myself. What's 92/85? 1 point er...er...08? Okk...whats the square root of 1000? Ahh...33 squared is 1089 so it shud be 32 point 4? Oh no I forgot that 32 squared is 1024. I, the guy whose been doing this stuff mentally since class 10. Oh shit. Guess the no. of flights Jet Airways operates in a day. Oh no...what's this...do some complex calculations and come up with a figure of 30. Try scrutinising the interviewer's face for any signs. Nothing. Some more crappy stuff. Then its done. Im wished best of luck. I'll be wished that for a few more days!

5 pm
Lehman calling. First interview goes really well. The lady is impressed. Am able to communicate my CG. Cudnt do that at Merrill. Solve probability problems and fin fundae with ease. Lady ushers me for another interview. But her seniors are too busy in convincing people why they shud join Lehman. Have the sinking feeling that they have realised capacity constraints. Offers are being made all around. A few like me stand around, oblivious to the rest of the world. Some guy eventually decides to do an interview for me. Asks some stupid stuff about my internships during graduation. Give even more boring answers. Neither of us are impressed. My day ends.

6 pm
Come back to the front desk (that's the arena). People discussing offers. Me ruing my luck. I was timed out of the process, I feel. Maybe, may not be. I had my chance, I did not capitalise. People were given more chances. They did. Leave the arena. On my way out, meet AJ. She's done it. Good for her. Relief on that front. Feeling a tad bit low myself, tho.

Rest of the evening
Cheer myself up. Do nothing much else. People come to room. Some console, some wish luck, some treat me to chocolates. Waiting for tomorrow. Still chance of a foreign offer. Let us hope for the best. Try some combined study with Arnie. Not much good. End the day with bakar session with RK and Stud. That wud be the pattern for days to come.

Tagged!!!

2005-11-23T00:03:00.001+08:00

Before continuing with the summers' story, I must finish this pending assignment. Curse Sandy for tagging me, tho :P

Seven Things I want to do before I die
1) Take a tour around the world, preferably with 3-4 friends
2) Taste some of the most expensive wines in the world
3) Puff at a Hawaiian cigar
4) Talk like an RJ
5) Be the centre of attraction at a party at a 5 star hotel
6) Learn how to do the Salsa
7) Quit smoking

Seven Things I can do
1) Eat 6 Tandoori Rotis, 2 Butter Naans and countless pieces of chicken at one go
2) Talk sense and walk straight after 6 pegs of whisky/vodka
3) Remember phone nos, car license plate nos and birthdays
4) Compute complex multiplications and square roots mentally
5) Chat with a girl non-stop for 6 hours from 12 in the night to 6 in the morning
6) Share space and sleep comfortably on a IIT hostel bed with two other people
7) Laugh for 21 minutes straight

Seven Things I say the most
1) Arre shit...
2) O Fuck...
3) Kya kar raha hai be...
4) Dada, 4te wills debe...
5) Peace mar...
6) Load kyon le raha hai...
7) Kya frustness hai ye...

Seven Things I can't do
1) Make tea
2) Make Maggi
3) Make an omelette (in short, I draw a blank when it comes to the kitchen)
4) Quit smoking
5) Keep my room clean for any length of time
6) Remember to carry my handlerchief with me
7) Wash my own clothes

Seven Things that attract me to the opposite sex
1) Simplicity
2) Intelligence
3) A sense of humour
4) Lovely eyes
5) A smile u cud die for
6) Dimples
7) The thing that's the opposite of possessiveness

Seven Celebrity crushes
1) Madhuri Dixit
2) Steffi Graf
3) Preity Zinta
4) Meg Ryan
5) Maria Sharapova
6) Madhubala
7) Shruti Seth (VJ , i guess)

Seven People I want to tag
Here I flounder...everyone I know on the blogosphere has already been tagged...do I now request people to start their own blogs because I tagged them???
Anyway...I'll do that
1) Dada (that's my elder bro)
2) Avik Chakraborty
3) Soham Dutta
4) Rajarshi Guin
5) Rohit Singh (Last time I heard, he was planning to start a blog)
6) Sachin Shukla (hell's prophecies kahan hai bhai?)
7) Astha Jain

Summer's Placement 1: Pre Placement

2005-11-19T21:18:00.001+08:00

34 companies, 6 days, 5 slots, 20 group discussions, 19 interviews...yes that's what it took me to land up a decent summer internship at India's premier institution of management!!!The first thing all companies told me was that rejection was not a reflection of my true capabilities and hence, I take heart from that, but eventually what transpired during those 6 days was a very interesting and unforgettable experience!

Let me start off with my initial perceptions about the recruitment process in any IIM. I sort of held the view that the placement process out here was a cakewalk with companies putting up stalls and running around you trying to rope you in! So I was in for quite a shock when things actually started hotting up round here.

Though the summer placement process started from 12th November, preparations had been in full swing ever since the DP hols. And man, some preparation does go in for the interviews! By the end of the process, I had interviewed with foreign I-banks, domestic financial institutions, FMCGs, IT solution providers, a telecom company, a newspaper...indeed, the whole gamut and I must say its a BIG learning curve! Fact of the matter is, I knew the answers to almost all of the questions I was asked in any interview, so it seemed to me that I knew a lot of stuff and that I had actually prepared for it. It was not like at IIT, where we just used to land up at any company without even bothering to look at the company website!

The process is long and is painful. Indeed, it starts from long before placement week. Firstly, there are those umpteen company forms to be filled. And the companies derive some perverse pleasure by asking all sorts of inane personal and situational questions...I don't know how or whether they get the time to actually read all that crap! The hand filled forms are more of a pain...even copy paste doesn't work! And in the midst of all this, there are the thousands of PPTs that one has to attend. Add to that midterms and mugging up whole chapters of corp fin, erivatives and kotler and you sort of start getting the whole picture. You sometimes don't really care about who's gonna take you on board as long as someone does...all the effort that goes in makes you wonder whether it's all worth it! But one thing that you really feel as placement week approaches is that you start knowing yourself and your priorities pretty well. Of course, there's a lot more to learn, as we shall see later!

And on top of that, there are the press releases and inane one-upmanship wrt A and B. Suddenly all the major dailies are flooded with news about IIM Calcutta's summer placements even before the week has started. The whole world has been informed about the super companies and the super salaries that are on offer. And they'll then start asking you...beta training lag gaya...kahan laga...US? kitne dollar kamaoge?...what an embarassment when you tell them that u'll be in India at some desi bank or consumer company...and the other person goes away thinking of you as some kind of despicable species who can't even land a foreign offer from an IIM. No I-bank? No New York, London, Honk Kong?...then what's the use of being in IIMC?...I'll explore the uses as I go along the journey of those 6 days in my next instalment.

When destiny calls...

2005-11-07T04:17:00.001+08:00

This post is dedicated to a very dear brother and long standing friend of mine, who is no more

Sometimes people wonder whether there really is a GOD above them, watching... rewarding them for the good things that they do and punishing them for the evil that they perpetrate...that is how we would like to imagine GOD. But things don't always turn out that way...good people are punished, evil men are let off...destiny, do you say? But what's destiny...who creates destiny? Why can't we control our destiny by our own actions? Why are our lives so dependant on the destinies of others? I have so many questions swimming in my head today...and I can answer none.

Today I cannot console myself the death of a 20 year old kid, who had not even begun enjoying his life, a kid who had worked hard his entire life to meet the expectations of his parents, to what end? Untimely death due to negligent driving of some other human being, who may be equally blameless! What answers does GOD offer us? Our parents tell us ki beta be nice, grow up to be a good human being...again to what end? Kya hua achha insaan banke...ppl tell me I'm a nice guy...in terms of niceness and concern for others, I bow humbly to this young brother of mine. No more with me. No more am I his 'ardhek', his half. No brother of mine will call me "chhordabhai" again. But life will roll on. My elder bro will get married. People will be forced to be happy, maybe not that happy, but they will be happy. The sorrow will live on, as long as he lives on in our memories.

The pain has not yet sunk in. Our frequency of meeting had gone down since he went to b'lore and it just seems that that frequency has got a tad extended. It somehow seems unbelievable that there is no existence. That when I was drunk and dancing away to glory on a wild post-midterm Thursday night, my cousin had ceased to exist in this mortal life. Someday I will, too. But who wants to believe that. Everyday we read in the papers about this accident and that. But unless faced by personal tragedy, the sorrow of these countless people, whose entire families are wiped out, never really hit home. The feeling of losing someone is an all-enveloping one, an overwhelming one, You just don't know how to react. You are numb.

I am numb. Unable to concentrate. Life seems to be one big dream presently. Or nightmare? Whatever. This is not real. Perhaps this world was too less a place for someone as "rawking" as my bro, Bhooto (I just couldn't bring myself to spell out that name before this...it hurts, real bad). Rock on, dear man, wherever you are. You'll always be in my heart.

Me and my girls...the beginning...

2005-09-22T07:25:00.001+08:00

Why have I been so bad with girls... I think about it sometimes...and receive no conclusive answer. I mean I'm not a bad human being ( and I'm being very modest here, trust me), I'm not bad at relationships ( okk it may be that sometimes I take a week to reply to an sms, but still that does not take away from the fact that my friend count keeps increasing by the day)...so what is it???

Don't give me the shit about good guys sitting on the highest branches of the tree where girls cannot dream of reaching and what not (this is quoted from some weird forward I received in my inbox some days back). I have seen good guys with girlfriends and trust me, they remained the same ol' good guys even after. So just plain bad luck for me, is it???

If at this stage, some of you are feeling that I belong to a depraved species, let me make it clear. I live this life for the experiences it has to offer. And being in love with a girl and being loved in return is one of the most satisfying experiences that life has to offer. I'm afraid I might not be lucky enough to have this facet of life in my life ever. If that makes me desperate, so be it. I am not ashamed to admit that.

So let me trace the evolution of girls in my life. Pre puberty I was in close touch with only two members of the opposite sex. One is still one of my very best friends,lets call her P, who I have known almost from the day she was born (well, we were family friends) and we spent our childhood together and much of our high school life, too. Granted, we were never like brother and sister, but we never had romantic feelings for each other, too. No hindi film stuff. Almost disproving the oft-discussed theory that a guy and a girl can never be true friends without interfering romantic angles!!! Of course, she is very much in love with a guy these days (actually for some 4 years, now) and in spite of my repeated requests to look out for someone for me, she hasn't done anything worthwhile yet. Girls...good for nothing!!!

The other was my cousin, Ar, one year younger to me. I think she has constantly been in love since she reached the age of 10 with someone or the other. She has all the crappy ideal romantic fluffy notions about love and relationships and of course, that brings expectations to all her relationships which are never fulfilled. So she flitted on and on...she was the one who opened my eyes to the fact that while we were chasing those "oh so innocent" girls all the time, they were not as innocent as we thought. We guys were much more naive. Our friendships were simple. To the point. Uncomplicated. Theirs were complex webs. I was a good listener. I heard her tales and I laughed (no actually, I gave her advice but I laughed on the inside). Maybe that's why she's laughing all the way these days and going steady with a kgpian working in bangalore while I fret and fume...

And what's this with kgpians and love across the cyber desert??? Both these childhood girls of mine now have boyfriends who were in IIT Kgp when they met them over the internet chat rooms. How is it that I got no girl to chat with me over the net??? My kgp tag didn't work and I don't think my iim tag will, either!!! What will, for god's sake???

I'll continue with the evolution process next time...

Of Weddings and The Bengali...(Part 2)

2005-09-18T01:45:00.001+08:00

The weather is really nice today...the sun is shining in full glory...the sky is blue...the birds are chirping...ahh the pujas are coming!!! The heart of the bengali starts skipping a few beats at this time of the year, and even though its the same thing every year, and every year i've the feeling that i've had enough of the puja festivities, i just cannot hold back the child inside me from imagining those "dhaks" and the "ashtami-r anjali" chants as i look out from my balcony!

The pujas are the time when the bengali spends his four most enjoyable days of the year, going out, having fun, no home-cooked meals, meeting friends and family, the whole gamut really! However, the bengali's idea of fun is quite far removed from how a north indian might rejoice. And this is where i come back to the topic of my previous post. A little difficult to pick up the threads from where i left off (blame the b-school time crises), but lets give it a try.

So the bengali celebrates in his quiet home-centered style whereas the up/bihari bhaiyya celebrates in his boisterous style. Quite distinctive but difficult to say which is better. A bengali "biye-baari" will be much more quiter and even a week before, u will not notice much difference apart from the hustle bustle of the family members. Whereas you have all these sessions in other communities where you have the ladies singing and dancing, loud music and what not. And booze.

Booze flows like water in north indian weddings, i mean you have to be in one to believe it. If you suggest booze to a bengali during a wedding, he would be offended, think you are a cheapo or pervert or something. I was literally taken aback that its all so transparent out there, i mean it was even being served in the place where the baraatis were put up while waiting for the groom to turn up and proceed to the mandap. Eventually, i could make sense of all the boisterous merrymaking and enjoyment i had seen in the countless hindi movies associated with the baraat and the shaadi. Booze, that's what. Should have struck me earlier but poor me, brought up in the conservative bengali household (where its okay to booze as long as the information that you booze is restricted to your parents, but society should be kept blissfully unaware of the fact), how could i have known. You may be grown up enough to live on your own 500 kms from home, you may deliver excellent academic results, but all that is nought when someone you know accidentally catches you at the local bar where you and your friends are drinking at one hidden corner at some obscure time of the day...well society turns its nose up and declares you as a dysfunctional juvenile addict and your parents are looked at as failures. That's how hypocritical traditional bengali society is about youngsters and drinking. That's why you wont find any booze at a bengali wedding (well you might, but you'll have to look very hard). And that's why its all so quieter, and it takes the groom only d/v time to reach the mandap (where d=distance from groom's home and v=at least 40kmph)compared to what seemed like an eternity at the meerut wedding!!!

But (yes there is a but, in case you were wondering), what also struck me on that trip was that the wedding did not seem like a family celebration, it was somehow, too contrived. I don't know why, perhaps it was too showy, and perhaps it was the fact that the actual wedding was witnessed by at most 30-40 people (of course, the fact that it was at 3 am cannot be ignored). From experience, a bengali wedding house is a chaotic place. Nothing is as organised, and should not be. Where's the fun then? So you'll find 10 people looking for the groom's "topor" when its already past the official hour of the wedding to start. And countless hours put in by the young people in arranging the "tattwa" (that's the gifts to be exchanged, remember there's no dowry here, a fact i'll dwell upon some other time) and there are so many people in the house and there is so much utter confusion that you might give up on the chances of the wedding actually taking place!!! And in most cases, we still have the wedding happening at the bride's own place instead of some contrived showy mandap, which adds the flavour of homeliness to the proceedings. The groom's household has its own share of festivities at "bou-bhat", a tradition not many other communities have sustained till today. And there's the "bashor-ghor" after the wedding, where all the young people from both sides have a nightlong fun session with the newlywed couple (still, no booze). Bengali society is still, largely free from the adverse effects of materialism, and so weddings may be less boisterous and boring for the casual observer, but look deeper and you'll find there's a lot of fun to be had!!! And oh yes, i almost forgot, the food is awesome!!!

~Disclaimer: No offence meant or intended. To be taken at own peril.

Of Weddings and The Bengali...(Part 1)

2005-09-18T01:42:00.001+08:00

These days there's a new spark on the horizon...my elder bro's getting married and that's an event i'm really looking forward, too. It just struck me that some of my wingmates back in kgp had long wanted to be present at a bengali wedding and i suppose some of them might make it to my brother's. But what i fear is that they will be disappointed, or to put it more bluntly, simply bored stiff!

This brings me to the one non-bong wedding that i've attended (excluding the few weddings/receptions that i've attended back in my hometown, those were merely social occasions where i would, mostly, not even be interested enuf to meet the bride/groom and just go straight to where the free grub was being served), that being my wingie deepak's brother's wedding in meerut. It was my first look at a hindi heartland shaadi from the inside and it was frankly, a hugely different experience for me.

Firstly, the experience of meerut itself was quite new, as i had hardly had any experience of life anywhere outside bengal, if you discount the tourist places (even those are infested by bengalis by the dozen). The concept of family, friends, hospitality, socializing, everything seemed quite different from what i was used to back home. And you have to consider the fact that i'm not the usual bangali-babu, having grown up in a more cosmopolitan environment than most calcuttans would be. An industrial township gives you enough exposure to various cultures and i was quite well off on that count. Still, i was absorbing new things, every minute of my stay in meerut.

Bengal and bengalis have an unique culture that they take pride in, actually more pride than it actually deserves, and are hence, more often than not, complacent in the belief that their ways and customs are superior to all else. They have a word of contempt for possibly every other indian state, whether it be the bihari, the maru, the madrasi, the oriya, no one's exempt!Having lived for 4 years in a multi-cultural environment, i sometimes tried to reckon whether the prototypes actually made any sense, but couldn't come up with any definite answers. Of course, every state has its own unique customs, but who gave us the right to judge them and proclaim what's good and what's not? The one thing that we, as a race, universally lack, is self-appraisal. We assume that we are superior and hence, do nothing to uplift ourselves. We lack the spirit to progress. How long can a community sustain itself on its past?

In a state that boasts one of the highest population densities in the country, can you believe that there's not one other top notch city other than Kolkata? Visionaries built new cities in the belief that they would develop around a major industry/ educational institution. 40 years down the line, what do we have? Kharagpur, Kalyani, Durgapur, Siliguri...cities anyone??? If you cross the border to Jharkhand, the land of those utterly contemptible "biharis", you have...let me count...Dhanbad, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Bokaro...at least 4 thriving cities. Still, we believe we are a much superior race...so nice and assuring. I'll not even begin to talk about work culture and stuff, that's all too well known, but notice the difference between an establishment run by a bengali and that by a "maru" the next time you are out shopping and you'll know what it is that has left bengal so far behind.I'll continue next time...i didn't even come to the wedding stuff...

Rakhi...and its ''fallouts''?

2005-09-18T01:37:00.002+08:00

Firstly, people who visit this blog and don't leave their footprints (read--comments), that is extremely undesirable behaviour and highly unwarranted, too!!! In future, refrain from such unsociable behaviour...your comments act as my inspiration!!!

This blog is inspired by the musings of Rashmi Bansal, editor of the popular youth magazine called JAM, and without due permission, I am lifting part of her post "The Ya-Ya Sister-Brotherhood" dated Aug 19, 2005 from her blogsite http://youthcurry.blogspot.com/ for your perusal. As you will obviously understand as you go along, this pertains to the festival of Rakhi.

So here goes Rashmi:

"Rakhi can however be extremely trying - for those who have no siblings of the opposite sex. And they are inevitably tempted into creating 'rakhi brothers' and 'rakhi sisters'.This is thoroughly and completely avoidable. Simply because there are too many examples of girls tying rakhis to the boy next door door for 15 years before realising "Arrey! I'm in love with this guy".And needless and endless complications follow. No one plots for this to happen but nature has its mysterious ways.

You can't ensure you will feel brotherly or sisterly except to a real, blood-related brother or sister.So what do you do? I say we also promote same-sex rakshabandhan. Sisters tie to sisters, brothers to brothers. Only kids to their (same sex) best friends.I know this sounds strange, and slightly kinky. But it's way less kinky than eventually marrying your rakhi brother or sister!"

Pretty incisive, to say the least. And the points are pretty valid. I can say that from personal experiences. I won't, at this point, verify, what exactly those expereinces have been, but I'm sure, as I go along, they will eventually surface. For the present, lets assume I have sufficient knowledge and authority on this subject to be commenting on the issue.

For those who feel...''Issue? What issue?...This is pretty trivial stuff and doesn't necessarily concern me!"...my advice to them is to look around more closely, and observe relationships in and around you and I'm sure you'll realise the validity of Rashmi's point. These days, most relationships at an adolescent level and even slightly beyond that, are governed by peer pressure more than self-willingness.

So we are governed by the superficial desire of having a girlfriend and it seems to us to be an issue of overriding concern and one that has to be dealt with grave urgency. Though this desire is also partly due to physiological wants, let us assume at this point, that we have enough control over our primitive urges (and of course, we have other means to satisfy such urges, I won't dwell on that).

To continue, this desire manifests within us in various ways and gives rise to a lot of frustrations. Some of us treat these frustrations as a stepping stone to further success, some simply give up (now,would that be me?) and some of us develop alternative stategies on the path of achieving our final goal. One of these strategies is to maximize time spent with the other sex on the pretext of being ''rakhi brothers'' (here I am only concentrating on the motives of the ''superior'' sex, since i consider the motives of the ''fairer'' sex at creating ''rakhi brothers'' to be less ego-maniacal and more practically oriented like affection, self-protection, caring sensibilties and so on).

This is an art developed by people who crave for attention from girls, per se, and what better method than appealing to their sensibilities on the pretext of being a brother! Blood-brothers hold a special place in the hearts of all girls and its just a matter of capturing some of that heart-space for yourself! What does a man want when he desires a girlfriend...to spend quality time with her, to be enveloped in her fragrance, to be mesmerised by her words, her touch, her affection...if you can get all that without any effort (actually some initial effort, but nothing compared to what you would be doing if you were to do it the right way!), what more can you possibly want?

Except perhaps to transcend the gap from being a ''brother'' to being a lover? Relax, that's not even a major concern for those who play their cards the right way. Even an innocent man can be convinced that he's guilty if he's told the same thing over and over again...and here we are talking about matters of the heart! Why blame a girl when she falls in love with her ''rakhi brother''? That is what was intended from the beginning! So girls, be slightly wary of people who go overboard in trying to prove their brotherliness (does the word exist?), there might be ulterior motives lurking! And guys, I know there's nothing fair in love and war...but c'mon be more sporting!!!

Lots of unsolicited advice for one day...more later:)

Disclaimer: This blog is not meant to hurt any sensibilities. NO OFFENCE MEANT or INTENDED. Just a pure spark of inspiration.

Feelings and me...some reflections...

2005-09-18T01:35:00.002+08:00

Well i don't know how best to put it but I never knew that what I wrote in my stupid blog could touch the hearts of so many people(now here I exaggerate, but anyhow, at least, a few people). Thank you guys, I am touched by your response and as Shubhashis aptly put it, it makes me feel that i will forever miss Kgp.

When we entered the strange world of IIT Kgp in our first years, fresh from high school and as naive and innocent as could be, we could never imagine that separation from the place could hurt so much. Indeed, in those first few initial weeks, all I heard was people cribbing about the town, the campus, the hostel , the rooms, the mess, the bathrooms, the classes, the professors (and of course, the girls, but that is an entirely different topic) and it was a neverending list.

In course of time, all that became trivial. What mattered were the souls that inhabited Kgp and the overriding spirit of the place that pervaded our lives in thousands of small ways and changed us for ever. All of us who have passed out and my friends still there in their 5th yr (as Sandeep put it, the last legion still standing) will admit that they are no more the doe eyed boys that they were 4 years ago. They have learnt the most important lesson of life - how to live - and they have emerged from the experience as mature adults who can face any situation in life without having to turn the other cheek.

Kgp has given me much, (forgive me for making this personal, but as such it applies to most) - it has given me my wingies, my other friends spread over all the 6 hostels (or shud I say 7, actually I should), it has given me the pleasures of spending time with them, knowing them, boozing with them, fighting with them, sympathizing with them, learning from them and teaching them.

Kgp has taught me the nuances of JIT, to do everything on time but never before time, it has taught me that I have it in me to achieve what I set out to - that I would ever play for my hall team would not have occured to me in my wildest dreams while preparing for IITJEE, being flatfoot and forever ridiculed as the studious geek who couldn't play - but I did it, nevertheless, and it will remain special to me.

The night outs I had during our preparation for ILLU in the three years I spent in Patel Hall is, by far, the single most vivid memory I'll carry for the rest of my life from my stay in Kgp - smoking those umpteen suttas to stave off weariness and sleep, to work on and achieve the utmost perfection reachable on those damned chatais with their damned white lines and that damned centre point between the 4 sub-chatais of the main chatai, where you had to climb between two slippery tables 15 ft in the air to tie those last few loops to maintain continuity - that along gave me a high that's incomparable!!! Slogging on through sheets of rain to get the chatais up on the bamboos, with Surya-bhai and Jha sounding directions despite a lost cause of a wet ILLU looming large - these are images that i can't get rid off, baggage I'll carry the rest of my life, for good or for bad.

Many of my friends would feel that I am not the emotional type, I have never been seen to get emotional, never get angry, never cry - indeed, my single largest defining point is my incredible laughter. Hence, it is a valid assumption that I am not the "senti" type. But believe me, it takes a lot of effort to be smiling always, a lot of emotions keep getting bottled up - but that's me. I may not be showing it always, but my feelings can never be doubted. I don't believe in expressing my feelings vocally - I feel relationships are too precious to be diluted by cheap expressions of affection. If that puts off certain people, so be it. For the rest, I will be always be there.

~ cheerioz and keep smiling :)

Last Days in Kgp...a brief note

2005-09-18T01:34:00.002+08:00

Now that I'm done with the kerala experience, I guess I should move on to the next phase of my life, namely, the last semester at IIT Kharagpur. After that, I'll come to life at IIMC but that'll have to wait for now. Kgp beckons first and I guess, always will!!!

First let me describe the location where I spent my last two years at Kgp -as we defined it, it was the Eastern Wing on the Middle Floor of the Farthest Block of the Oldest Hall in the Oldest Institute in the IIT Community - so respect!!! Here lived 13 very good and nice people and they really lived their life to the fullest! I'll give but one small example to highlight what I meant by respect - 7 of those 13 guys passed out this year and there was something unique about all of them - one was the Hall President, one was the Best Allrounder (passing out), one was the Patel Trophy (highest hall honour) recipient, one made it through the highest paying job on campus (that wud be Schlumberger Inc.), one was the erstwhile General Secretary (Social n Cultural) of the Institute Gymkhana, one made it to IIM Calcutta (yours truly) - really there was no end to what we had achieved in our time on the campus. And we had also had some of the greatest fun in our lives!!!

In the last two years, we had the added advantage of feeling that we owned the hall - though it will not please many of my friends, I guess it was but natural to feel that way. Since most of what happened in the hall happened because we made it happen, acquiring power was a necessity. But one thing was for certain, the fact that we had the Hall President among us was not the sole factor that made us feel we ruled the hall. There was more than that. There was the wing. Without the wing, the HP is nothing more than a decorative position, as I feel, many present Patelians would surely be feeling, and though I do not want to be embroiled in the present political scenario, I feel the boarders made a terrible mistake last time around when they chose an individual over a wing. The repurcussions are surely being felt, and will be felt for a long time.

Of course, I am not terribly concerned with the current state of affiars. Instead, what I'll remember and cherish is the Hall we had when we came in our 2nd years and the Hall we left in our final year. Final year is of course, a term which holds special meaning to all Kgpians. Well I am not talking about the 5 % "muggu" populace, but for the rest of us, it signifies a period of time when we can finally let our hair down and RELAX! Especially in the post campusing period, its "peace" all the way to graduation!

I didn't enjoy all of the peace though, mainly on account of the IIM interviews which were held in the latter half of my final semester, but still I guess I had more fun than the other IIM aspirants. From January to March, all we did was booze, dope and play 29. Upto our final semester, we were not aware of each other's card playing capabilities when suddenly, we found that most of us could play this dastardly addictive game of 29, and those who couldn't - after two months of being a very supportive audience - found themselves well equipped to match us veterans!

When I had come into the wing in my 2nd year, I was the only guy, apart from Tripathy (who has always remained a very casual smoker), who fagged - but by sheer perseverence, I converted 6 others to take the tally to 8 by the end of final year. Most of us were committed 'Flake'rs, owing to the paucity of cash reserves. As to boozing, we had Harsh Singh and our very own pub-owner, Sachin Shukla whose Cloud #9 hosted innumerable parties over the final four months. Most of my wingies were very concerned that I did not seem to be taking the GD-PI part of the IIM selection process very seriously since most of the other aspirants had been taking classes and all and I, simply did nothing apart from reading up on all material available. No mock GDs, no mock PIs for me at all. The first GD I faced was at IIMK!

Actually, post campusing season, I had come to the conclusion that I had no means of improving my GD-PI skills and so better leave it to divine intervention to save my ass. I almost relied on the fact that since my percentile was passably good, I would by default, get a call from one of the big three, at least. In the end that was what actually happened, but I cut it too close for comfort. Indeed by the time I had got down to checking the IIMC website, I had checked all the other 5 and all of them were negative. It was a strangely disconcerting feeling and I cannot describe how I felt while waiting for the IIMC results - it is a dark and painful thought even now! (Later of course, i qualified for L also, I'd like to kick their bloody asses for keeping me confounded for one day before the Cal results came).

Post IIMC i.e. 9th April, days passed like a dream - everything was too easy - a SGPA of 8.5 in the final semester, with an A in my BTech Project (I bow to my guide) and an EX in my Comprehensive Viva Voce was what i eventually achieved - and finally a sem in which there was not even a single C! When it came to the part when we were actually bidding goodbyes to each other, I couldn't but help not feeling too sad, because somehow I knew that this was not the end, that we were not being separated, that nothing, actually, could separate us. Finally, this is to thank my wingmates for being there for me, supporting me and giving me two of the best years in my life - this post is dedicated to u guys!!!

~Cheerz

My kerala trip part 3

2005-09-18T01:31:00.001+08:00

Ahh...eventually i find some time out for my blog. First there were the godforsaken midterms (which, incidentally didn't go too bad, except for that course on data structures, which i'll have difficulty passing!!!) and then there was the world war!!! Hey relax guys u don't have to panic, this world war was restricted to the premises of IIMC alone and we warriors, after 3 days without sleep resembled zombies in action! I lost my voice...well ppl in war do tend to lose something, i sacrificed my vocal chords, nothing much. Then i was in kgp for my convo...fun time after a long time with my wingies...love u all, guys!!! Finally here...so here goes the concluding part of the kerala trilogy...So from aleppey we went to kollam and this was one heck of an experience coz we covered some 35 kms on water on a rickety double decker boat through some of the most glorious countryside! It was Christmas Day and we started round 9 am and reached kollam around 5pm. Though my mom started off by falling off the stairs of the upper deck and landed into the arms of a bemused nipponese tourist, who was very apologetic about it all, the cruise remains the finest 8 hrs of the entire trip. The upper deck, barring me and my bro, was fully composed of foreigners of all shades and in varying degrees of undress (which prompted my mom to stay primarily below deck). One thing which disoriented me was the nonchalance with which these bloody tourists kept littering the deck and the backwaters with their banana skins and water bottles and what not, these same ppl would be so civic minded in their own countries! Anywayz the last phase of the cruise under the moonlit sky and the lights form the chinese fishing nets illuminating our way was breathtakingly beautiful!The next day (Boxing Day, 2004) we started off towards trivandrum on the last phase of our journey and stopped midway at a beach called Varkola. This is a little known beach, not on the usual itinery of Indian tourists, but nevertheless worthwhile as advised by the travel magazines we had referred to. The beach in itself, was quite a surprise since it was quite narrow and overlooked by a cliff...one had to climb down stairs to reach it. Once we reached down, i was pleasantly surprised to discover that indian tourists were grossly outnumbered by the bikini toting populace. Indeed shocked would be the right word...it was a scene straight out from california...never seen so many bikinis at one place! Suitably enthused, me and my bro took to the seas and my father followed soon after, though he hadnt planned on doing it and cosequently, was short of a bathing costume. However, true to kgpian tradition, agar tempo high hai, to kaun rokega...he goes into the water in his briefs and soon, we have to advice him to stick to being underwater!!! The waves were quite high at this time and we were having quite a whale of a time...my mom was of course, suitably psyched out since she was having difficulty spotting us during the time we were ducking under the waves. However, even our bravado was cut out when a towering wave crashed down, flooding the whole beach upto the cliff face in its wake. The tourists sunning themselves, suddenly found themselves without an umbrella! Another one followed, and soon we were scampering to safer places...two blasts on the whistle by the guards and even the burliest of the white tourists had come out of the water. However, nothing followed and soon the bravest among us ventured out again and continued our games with the sea...only later were we to learn that about that exact time, tens of thousands of lives had been lost elsewhere on the planet...the thought really chills you to the core.We checked in to our hotel in trivandrum and only then, i received an sms from my aunt, vacationing in goa, asking whether we were all right. All right? What the heck? I switched on the TV and we were literally too shocked for words. The images will forever remain etched in my memory and the fact that we had been so far, yet so near to it all really hit hard. We thanked our lucky stars...i mean, we had been on a beach at precisely the time when the tsunami had struck! 50 kms due south at kanyakumari (last stop on our tour, dead and broken) the waves had claimed at least a thousand...50 kms due north, the waves had eaten up whole villages in alleppey and kottayam distrcits, places we had been to just the previous day...the whole thing was too unbelievable, it almost made me sick!!Nywayz our spirit of travelling remained indomitable and we chugged on towards Kanyakumari, our last halt, inspite of being warned that tourits were not being allowed entry. In the meantime, we had been to the hallowed beach of Kovalam but red flags littered the shoreline and no one was being allowed within 10 feet of the pristine alluring waters which had swallowed up so many just the previous day and yet, that day, looked so calm and innocent! Kanyakumari resembled a ghost town, with its shoreline properly devastated and the jetty broken and the boats all on the roads with their owners playing cards to while away time. A place usually thriving with more than a lakh of tourists on any given day had no more than a thousand tourists to boast of and it seemed the townsfolk were still to come to terms with nature's fury. Finally, we come to the end of the eventful trip...lots of memories, some i've managed to pen down, some remain confined to my grey matter...in short, NICE!!!

My kerala trip part 2

2005-09-18T01:30:00.001+08:00

So cochin was where we had stopped last time. Nice city cochin (or kochi)...its actually a twin city concept...the mainland is ernakulam and there are 5 islands which constitute cochin. So a boat ride is what it requires to get a feel of old world cochin. The portuguese touch is very evident and the jew town has an antique feel to it. Next stop...munnar...sleepy hill resort, surprisingly cold compared to the rest of kerala (dec temperatures hover around 25 degrees). We had great fun on a power boat ride in a dam reservoir closeby...it was a topsy-turvy ride to say the least. We discovered a old hill road leading to kodaikanal but unfortunately, the road was not fit for consumption.Next on the itinery was the hilly lake town of periyar. We had a boat ride scheduled at 7:00 am, on my father's assertion that early morning is the best time for animal viewing (the periyar lake is surrounded by thick forests, infested by tigers, elephants and other varied wildlife, the lake actually was formed by flooding of forestland due to the construction of the periyar dam).As it turned out, at that unearthly hour, we couldn't even see the water from the boat...thick fog (the thickest i've seen) covered the entire lake surface. Animals...what...where? Where's land, for heaven's sake? When the sun finally broke through the cordon, it was a special sight, and though we eventually did not sight even a single species of wildlife apart from some wild boars (obelix, where art thou?), the fog created an extra dimension to an unforgettable experience.On to allepey...the land of sunshine and beaches and the annual boat race, it was a short stop but the beach was quite good. Oh incidentally, periyar will forever remain special to me 'coz that's where i checked out my CAT results and in alleppey the next evening, we celebrated my 6 calls and 99.85 percentile with a few beers. It was the first time i was drinking in full view of my mom and though initially unnerving, i was surprised to find that she was so cool to it all. I'll end this one now...the concluding part of the trip and oh yes...the tsunami(!!!) next time!

My kerala trip part 1

2005-09-18T01:29:00.001+08:00

Well i'll be going for the chronicling stuff with retrospective effect...so i'll start with one of the most enjoyable trips i have had in my entire life. That will be my December trip to Kerala, alongwith my family (parents n bro). This trip was in stark contrast to the one we had undertaken earlier in the year when we had gone on the haridwar-hrishikesh-kedarnath-badrinath route. That had been more of a pilgrimage, bitter cold, harsh environs, shabby lodging, and i wont even begin to talk about the food. Suffice to say, it was tough on the body and tough on the mind but that made it very a very special trip indeed. I'll never forget the 14 km walk/trek upto kedarnath...it was amazing...one of the best experiences of my life. The sheer up-climb, the glimpses of snow-clad mountains in the distance, always beckoning, the roar of the mandakini as it flowed alongside in the gorge all made for a heavenly experience. Add to that the multitudes of people, the khacchars (mules, for the uninitiated), the dolis, the pitthus, the coolies, the roadside(or gorgeside, for that matter) tea stalls, and u have the general picture of something unforgettable. The kerala trip, on the other hand, was pure indulgence. Comfort, luxury, good food, even better sights. Kerala has everything to offer - from hills (munnar) to forests and lakes (periyar) to beaches (allepey) to commercial centres (kottayam/ trivandrum).The trip started on a rather ominous note when i broke my glasses on the morning we were supposed to leave for calcutta. I was playing cricket (december is the time u play cricket, don't blame me!) and somehow, the ball found its way to my specs, of all days, on that day. I was initially psyched out but, somehow, managed the situation by running to the optician (i actually availed the bus service, though i cud have driven the scooter, but my mom wud have none of it), and we were able to reach calcutta on time. Dinner was on the Shatabdi Express since we were travelling executive class (for those who haven't guessed, my father's company was paying for the trip...wat do they call it...LTA i guess). We had our flight the next afternoon and it was a rather strange setup. My brother was going on the Sahara flight and we had the IA flight to madras and then we had a connecting flight to Trivandrum. As luck wud have it, both the flights got delayed (for very separate reasons!) and we missed our connecting. This incidentally was the first time i was on a flight (actually once b4 at the age of 10 months, so i discount that) and i did quite well for myself.This though, resulted in some fun actually as IA had to put us up at a nice hotel and all with buffet dinners and hot tubs and large screen tvs and what not. Quite nice, very nice, in fact. Who knows when i'll be able to afford such luxury, so enjoy while u have it. Two international flights later, we landed in cochin and on the way, befriended a local family who gave us a lift to the city (thereby saving us 1000 bucks). This now...rest will follow later.

Sunday, July 10, 2005: A new beginning!!! (hopefully)

2005-09-18T01:27:00.003+08:00

Ah how good it feels to be writing again...its been almost 10 months since i last posted anything on my blog! I am decidedly poor at this, unmotivated u might say but that's my attitude towards everything, or u might also say, common human attitude. The marginal satisfaction keeps going down but in my case the marginal rate of decrease of satisfaction follows an exponential curve. Ah see, now an engineer-cum-wannabe manager speaks in his engineer cum managerial jargon. So typical. And so unavoidable. So u might be wondering and so i make it clear...i've passed my engineering exams and am now officially a graduate, B.Tech (Hons.) in Manufacturing Science and Technology from IIT, Kharagpur. What an achievement! I feel like laughing. What a gross wastage of the nation's resources when they turn out engineers like me from the nation's premier engineering college. It reflects poorly on the system but that's the way things work here. Add to that, i've now decided to waste the nation's frugal resources further by getting myself admitted to another of its most highly rated institutes, IIM Calcutta and prrof of my unsuitabliity is that i have enuf free time now to waste on trivial issues of life like blogging. But I keep taking these plunges, knowing not where i'll reach finally. I try and make some sense out of the whole process but sense and sensibility eludes me. As Hemingway said so shall i ask, '' For whom the bell tolls?"...any answers? Not me...not today...not tomorrow but definitely sometime in the future which is ever so dark for me. Not figuratively dark but actually dark...i can't see into it, i need some very bright lights. Who's gonna provide me those? Anywayz i'll keep it at that this time round...short and enigmatic, to say the least. Next time i'll update u on whats been happening in my life all these days...how i landed up at IIMC and how life actually is at IIMC. I promise to chronicle my life out here, lets see if i can live up to it.

What to blog?

2005-09-18T01:26:00.002+08:00

The thing that follows logically from my last blog( for those poor lost souls who haven't read my earlier blog, this is one way of making you read it) is what i should be writing about in a blog. Sometimes it might be that you have been contemplating some idea sparked off as a reaction to what has been recently happening around you and you think you should pen down your thoughts. Coz that's why we are supposedly here...to pen down our thoughts. But tell me, is it humanely possible that you have incisive thoughts day in and day out...thoughts that are fit enough to be penned down that is, coz it would be an understatement if i say that we are not thinking all the time, but mostly the cutting edge of all those thoughts are connected with a blunt tool!!!So as i was saying, is it only about writing down what you have been thinking? Even that is a difficult proposition...who can ascertain that your mind works only when you have a computer handy? And it is really hard to write about some feeling that's come and gone...well ok, u can try but it won't come off that good.So another option is you can try updating on a daily basis or at least on a regular basis important facets and events of your life...that will throw some light on your character...what you like and what u don't...what you like to think about and what u don't...but here also, comes thew very important question of why you are writing, for yourself or for the readers.I would advocate a middle path...write about things that you yourself would like to read at a later stage and would make you reflect about yourself... how you are evolving as a human being.Or you could use this medium to advertise your writing skills by posting articles about any topic under the sun...by writing about personal experiences and how they have affected you...others might relate to your experiences and be compelled to consider how they themselves would have reacted under the same circumstances and appreciate the different ways in which a human mind works. Coz as a blogger, i know it is a pleasure to go through a well compliled blog, you not only learn about the other person but it helps to broaden your horizons.What i've written thus far may not appear to be quite compact and leading to any conclusion as a whole but that's the fun of the whole thing...who says all thoughts must follow a pattern...thoughts really are quite like particles of dust flying in the wind...you never know which one you'll catch when...so write whatever you feel like, whether on a predetermined topic (like this one) or sth that's just struck you or sth that's happened ages back...who cares what u write about, just do it!!!

Why blog?

2005-09-18T01:25:00.002+08:00

This time i thought i should spend some time thinking why i'm keeping this blog...this must be a much deliberated topic in blogging circles...however, since i'm a absolute newcomer to this arena, i confess i'm not quite privy to the accepted norms of maintaining a blog...i sometimes wonder whether i'm doing this just coz some of my peers are doin' it too...confess it, men, i know though you would like to pass it off as only inspiration derived, there is always the iota of deficiency if u haven't tried your hand at sth your friends have tried and found quite interesting...so even if u didn't think it was a good idea at first, u might change ur minds once u see ppl reading blogs of friends and appreciating the efforts!!!Of course, this is not the main reason for everybody, for some it might be a genuine urge to try their hands at something new...or as was the case with me, try to dabble in a creative arena just for the heck of it, a medium of expression when u've nothin' better to do or no one better to tell...but this urge might also be mixed with a sense of personal satisfaction or smugness with the knowledge that ppl will be goin' thru ur writings...ur 15 minutes of fame wat?Some of this might sound too concocted but they do affect you subconsciously while you are writing a blog and might render it a not wholly honest ''from the heart'' effort but an effort suited somewhat to the tastes of the reader...perhaps we do not intentionally want to keep the reader in mind but we cannot eliminate the factor either!!!Blogging thus, might be pretty useful for those wishing to promote glamour tabloidism but i'm not saying that we do not write just for the fun of it...for most of us, we derive happiness in our written word, the type of happiness we cannot get from speaking, we let our words flow away with us and carry more than we ever intended them to!!!So keep up the good work bloggers...we might just someday change the way the world thinks!!!( see that's wat i was just saying...that last sentence was aimed for the readers with blatant disregard to the tone of the article...not good...not good...i'm yet to be an honest blogger!!!)

Light at the end of the tunnel

2005-09-18T01:24:00.001+08:00

Well firstly i must inform you with absolutely no sense of pride that ive eventually landed a job at some weird software consultancy firm called accenture...for the uninitiated(dont worry i was in the same grp till yesterday morning) it means accent to the future...watever that's supposed to mean. The only good thing this does is make my mind a little lighter, which was beginning to feel a tad overburdened of late.Not that i was ever in fear of not getting a job, but time is a major factor, especially for someone who cannot look beyond a career in management and sees a certain sense of unaccomplishment(watever that means) and unfulfilment in anything else.Indeed i dont know where else i wud be if not in management.Any other scenario does resemble a horror story to me...i feel i wud be in a dark tunnel with no light at either end.Well i wont be more morbid today but these past few weeks have opened a lot of avenues of self-contemplation inside me.Like what exactly do i want from myself and my life.Like what are my current expectations and my current capabilities...after much contemplation i've come to the honest conclusion that i dont know much abt the basics of any technology but i've a good working knowledge, that i'm good at analysis and logical reasoning, that i've got a good grasp of language and that I'm good at MCQs...speed and accuracy are my main weapons.So what do i do with these in my armoury...what exactly are these good for...ive no damn idea.I would have liked to work in an industry i.e. factory maybe primarily coz my father has served so long in one.So factory stuff has always fascinated me and this childlike fascination led me to beilieve that i'd be very happy on the shop floor...i dont know how long this wud've held true were i given the chance!Well i wasn't and really after being kicked out by 8 bugging companies you wud take anything that comes ur way. I really didn't feel that waiting any longer was going to serve me any purpose save prolonging my exasperation. Because of two things i was very much sure, luck is the single most important factor in this respect and that your performance in any campusing event is hardly reflective of your capabilities. So keep faith in your capabilities and be strong...the law of averages will catch up one day...this was my only thought during the last few days.Anyway this weekend i'll be most probably going on a trip to Puri alongwith a 20 member team from my mamarbari(thats's mother's side of the family) which had been planned long back and had i been unemployed for a little longer, i might have put both mine and my parent's plans in jeopardy coz however much my mom might have denied not being tensed about my not getting through for so long, i was sure that was a charade so that i would not be unnecesarilly burdened! So it makes me very happy that i'll be enjoying with them this weekend, coz honestly speaking i deserve this and much more.Bad luck can only hold me back this much. Beyond that its my attachment to my friends and family and my belief that their happiness is what matters most(myself included) keeps me going.chalo this much for now...my friend sandy rath is breathing down my neck...so i'd better go now coz u see i'm using his computer and not allowing him to use the messenger. I may still be single, but that doesn't mean that i shud ignore the feelings of thoss who aren't...wat say?

Tension

2005-09-18T01:22:00.001+08:00

Well I told u i am lazy...so here i am, posting my 2nd blog a good 40 days after my previous one. I have excuses, no doubt, but nothing more than sheer laziness when u come to think of it a little more dispassionately.Now what do i write...my entire mind nowadays is occupied by one single thought...a job...koi mujhe achha job dila de plzz...jaldi!!! Unless n until i get a decent job, i'm not being able to concentrate on anything else and its a rather unnerving phase of life. Being rejected outright by companies is a nightmarish scenario but its true that all life is an experience and all experiece is an arch where thru gleams that untravelled world whose margins fade for ever and for ever as we move( not my lines, of course...adapted with a few pardonable mistakes from "ulysses" by Lord Alfred Tennyson)...ya so coming back from this literary stupor, wat was i saying? Oh yes, the constant tension is making me even more unproductive these days...so u guys who want my creative juices to flow better pray for me.Nothing much else is going on these days except long and winding discussions about future plans and priorities. Many of my friends have clear cut goals but some, like me, wud prefer to wait n watch...i'll take whichever path life offers me...but this throws up conflicting thoughts inside me...u know, all this while, all i believed in is that i shud be happy in my life, watever i may be doing doesn't matter coz happiness of myself and my near and dear ones is all that matters. These days i sometimes contemplate this to be a slightly selfish thought process...is my happiness all there is to my life...is that going to be that be all and end all of my existence or am i meant for something else?This morning i was having a rather stimulated discussion about the much publicised hanging of dhananjoy chatterjee and contemplating the pros and cons of a death penalty, or more generally any corporal punishment. We were unable to reach any concrete conclusion but the point that drove home to me is that there is a wider world beyond my own selfish ''happy'' existence and that there must be some contribution that i might be capable of making that might change just a little sth in some little corner of this earth. If i can achieve just that little and be able to influence ppl to do the same too, perhaps i would be making the best use of my education in one of the best colleges of the country because there is no denying the fact that IIT's education system is designed to make not perhaps the best engineers( I think ppl from the NITs are more capable academically that most of us out here)but to make us capable of handling and managing any situation and to broaden our horizons. That is why IITians have proved to be so successful men because the 4 or 5 yrs they have spent here has completely changed their outlook and mindset. And if so many examples are out there who have managed some change, however infintesmal it may be, then perhaps it would not be a good idea to shirk my responsibilities...perhaps i'm meant to repay the debt of the nation...its certainly no small matter and needs a lot of level headed thinking...if u have any solutions do tell me...till then,bye bye...i'm thinking, u see!!!

My rediffblog posts

2005-09-18T01:19:00.001+08:00

I am copy-pasting all my previous blogs on rediff for easier reference for future blogs. Here's the first one:

since this is my first effort at writing on the net i'll keep it short and limit it to an introductory one...myself, suvro sarkar, final year student of engg. at IIT Kgp...currently doing my training at Alloy Steels Plant, Durgapur...if you are wondering why i chose such a weird place, its coz this is where i hail from and this is the company that has fed me and my family for the past 32 years...so RESPECT!!!Anyway i got the inspiration for this blog from my batchmate,hallmate and friend kriti sen sharma who's himself started a blog and it seemed to me to be quite an interesting prospect what with the internet on my fingertips anytime i cud keep you updated on my life almost real time.So here i am...wish me luck...hope this will be quite an enjoyable saga...c u again soon...tata!!!

First Post in blogspot

2005-09-08T04:23:00.001+08:00

Well i'll just say this much...check out my blog at http://lazygarfield.rediffblogs.com coz that's where i have been blogging for some time and will continue to do so...i'll try to post the same things here too, but may miss out on some, so bear with me.
This account is primarily created with a view to post comments on blogs i read and enjoy...i believe commenting is an essential component of blogworld and without appropriate comments, the writer is incomplete...so there...nywayz till the next post
~ensoi